ok now lets talk to someone who actually has been involved in the poker world for a long time



its not that americans dont play poker online, they cant. the wire act was passed in 1961 and never considered the internet obviously, not to mention if you read the act carefully it says int he act that the bill shouldnt be used to stop overseats bets (playing poker online on off shore sites). in 2006 the UIGEA was hidden in a must-pass defense bill which pfretty much banned most banks and payment processors from working with poker sites. poker took a hit then because it became harder to deposit, but it came through and started building back up, then on april 15th the DOJ basically made it so that americans can no longer play online by seizing american accounts. a lot of the american poker pros are either moving out of country (mostly to canada) or are forced to play in casinos now. its pretty crappy because for years republicans spoke out against online poker talking about immorality, addiction, etc. but now that this has happened, theyre all set to legalize it again so that winnings can be directly taxed to them. hypocrites.



can you show the statistics on your databases? because mine has a much higher percent of winning players than your 2%. youre either exaggerating or have a big anomaly.

the rake taken is not bad at all and it shouldnt have a big difference on your win rate if youre any good. compare it to any casino and its not even close. rakeback was usually about 27-30% and yes serious players had rakeback to help the win rate, but again rake isnt that big a determinant.




online poker has gotten harder compared to years ago yes, but unless youre playing the 1 cent 2 cent games you should still easily be able to make more than minimum wage playing 10 tables. given your last sentence it sounds like you were a breakeven player at best. which shows that theres still profit to be made

Well, there is still online poker that doesn't involve actual money (although, I suppose it could be argued that this isn't really poker).

Stats on databases.

If you have pokertracker http://www.pokertracker.com/ then how you carve up the stats is up to you. I don't care if its 2% or 5%. At one point I cared that my opponents believed that the figure was as high as 50%. At typically 20000 hands a month over a couple of years my stats were robust I feel.

"Gamblers" like to believe it is easier to win than it actually is and the evidence they look for is the number of other winners and the big winners. They also look at he guy they know down the bar who made $1000 last week on the tables and was buying everyone drinks).. He forgets to mention that over the last six months he lost $10000. The reality of poker is a grind for blinds and the minimisation of losses. Gamblers remember their big wins and know they are a winning player.

xDragonx if you believe you are a winning player I would say build your roll, use good BR management and exploit. In poker, your biggest opponent is yourself - it is never those around the table and it certainly isn't me.

My experience of running PT for about three years was that you tended to get a lot of players who deposited and lost very quickly - never to be seen again. This does drive that figure down. This is not go. Players can NOT create multiple accounts because poker account are tied into your bank account and you need id to withdraw. Poker isn't like blackjack - it doesn't seem to appeal to many gamblers as you tend to "bleed to death" very slowly and you don't get the rushes.

My experience was mostly ring games. I'm content that I was a winning player at 4bb/100 up to $1/$2 NL $200 dollar buy ins for the unintiated) . If I multitabled this tended to drop to 2-3 bb/100 - you need to watch the table a bit more carefully if you want to go LAG. At $2/$4 ($400 buy in) and $5/10 ($1000 buyin). I briefly played $10/$20 ($2000 buy in) but it was an accident:). By happy coincidence I am a winning player of 50 bb/100 at $10/$20 but that was pure dumb luck and I only played 30 hands!!.

I never got the player base to make it worth upping the game.

I've just opened "24 hour poker" (a scandanvian site) It has a large player base but there is only one table at 0.5/1 euro level. That's two limits below mt comfort zone.


My stats tell me there were better players at my limits over a prolonged period (and yes I avoided them). BUT, out of thousands of players these guys could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

You may quibble about the wire act. It seemed at the time that it was invoked by the big American casinos to suppress competition and by the government who didn't like the billions of dollars being lost by American citizens to companies that were "offshore". It certainly made it hard for Americans to play and the loss of player base has resulted in consolidation of the poker houses and loss of profits.

"the rake taken is not bad at all"

I respectively disagree. Again it depends how you cut it up and what the caps are on rake but as a simple example the house takes 5% for every pot (OK many house have no flop no rake but to a first approx). This means that for every 20 active hands the house is claiming a pot. On some SnG's the house charges 10% (usually 5%). These hands happen very quickly 5% may seem like a small number but it adds up very rapidly. Poker tracker has rake calculation built in... check the biggest winner over all hands on your database - it's the house. Importantly, the person you have to make believe this to be the case is yourself. Look at your numbers.

Yes... I can make more than the minimum wage by playing poker even now and it is tax free with no overhead. BUT.. how much do you think a highly qualified professional in his 50's makes every hour? My time has a value well beyond $25 an hour... life is too short.

I'm not sure I follow the logic. Even the very best players don't claim more than 6bb/100 (and I wasn't that good). There simply are not the number of higher limit tables available anymore. If you were making 5bb/100 (which s a very strong game) even on Pokerstars (no rakeback allowed) you'd be lucky to get 4 ($1/$2) tables open throughout the day on average.

Even with convoluted logic, what you want to be shown is irrelevant. The bottom line is win rate/hour. If your WR is good then go for it. However, if you believe that online poker offers a good way of earning money and represents a good career development opportunity in your twenties or thirties I would disagree...

this sentence is quite revealing in itself. the dream of income w/o regular work must be tempting for quite a number of young go players for the same reason as becoming a go professional looks attractive at first sight (however out of reach for most). in both cases it isn't easy money and wishful thinking won't help you in either endeavour. ("rake doesn't matter" is a strong indication for wishful thinking.)

the disturbing side of this is to see some players trying poker upon realising that they won't turn professional in go. it would not surprise me if an impressive percentage of younger mid-dan upwards players who dreamt this dream also play poker or even more poker than go these days. (based on anecdotal evidence).

Eventually you realize that it is painful dull work (for the grinders, at least).

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Just a side note: when talking about bb/100, one should tell whether one is talking about big blinds or big bets (2xbig blind, a measure coming from limit betting structure and used by many trackers)

Edit, more relevant to recent discussion: When one talks about earning money with poker and compares it to a job, one frequently forgets things like paid vacation, paid sick-leave, healthcare, pensions etc (of course the effect of these varies by country and legislation, in Finland it means a coefficient of 1,5-1,6)

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Janice Kim

just rekindling my affair with poker.. I looked up Kim.. see here:

http://www.sharkscope.com/?username=Jan ... ive#graphs

She came fourth at a WPT a few years back (winning $11k). But is now down -sharkscope has hew down as -$15k for her major site. She's a lot better at go.......

Well spotted. I'm talking about No limit and you're right, PT, BB does work off the limit betting structure.

The first few years (2002-2006) were clearly lucrative. By bonus whoring alone you could make $1000 a month and people had little idea how to play. I remember Party Poker one Christmas declaring a bonus of something like $800 for 5k hands. So after a week - just doing three hours a night - with winnings I'd cleared the cost of a holiday.

Now.. you just have to grind and grind and grind... and I don't believe the hourly rate is there any more..

5%? i cant access my db right now but i can guarantee that at least 20-30% were pretty good winners in my db, probably more. i also have to ask why youre trying to compare poker, a game not played against the house thus can be beaten (rake isnt a take), against a game played against the house and cant be beaten in the long run legally.




you can easily get rushes if you go on a heater (a string of good fortune). that drives the figure down, yes but it does not make it as low as 5%



given how youve spoken, i have a hard time believing those figures. nevertheless, it is still very possible to win at those rates, and youd still be looking at 40-60/hr with 10 tables. not that bad.




yes, it appears pretty obvious that caesars paid off the DOJ to go after the offshore sites.




that is a huge exaggeration. lets look at a site that was popular up to april 15th, full tilt poker. their rake system was pretty simple. any reputable site will not take a rake if the pot doesnt reach pf, and even any reputable casino wouldnt do that either. anyway, for HU tables, the rake capped at 50 cents no matter what limit, 2 for 6 max, and 3 for full ring. however, if youre playing lower stakes, you will have to play a pretty large pot relative to the stakes to reach this rake max, and then by the time you reach stakes that the max is reached easy, the dollar amount is inconsequential. compare this to a casino that will either have a time rake (none taken during hands but every player pays 6-7 dollars every half hour) or a regular rake (10% per hand typically capped at 4-5 dollars). online poker rake is very reasonable. im not even considering the 27% rakeback offered on that site.

as for tournaments and sngs, yes that is more accurate. however, again compared to casinos its very reasonable. tournaments in casinos are usually not worth playing at smaller stakes because they can easily take 20-30% rake at least.

online poker sites have to make money too, and their rake is lower than youll find at any casino. so deal with it or stop crying...

also when looking up stats dont act like tournaments are the only type of poker like sharkscope does.

I shouldn't rise to this but..

go here:
http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rake.php

the 50 cent max for rake is for Fixed Limit poker at low stakes. The point with limit (although it was not my game) is that at these stakes you will see a lot of flops because you can play a lot from mid position.

At No limit the stake the rake caps at $4 for $0.25/0.5. But the point isn't the fraction of all those lovely big wins you make. The pain is the the continuous leak of 5% of hands that just see the flop..

From FT:

2 $0.05 $1 in Pot $0.50 $1
3 $0.05 $1 in Pot $1 $1.50
4 $0.05 $1 in Pot $2 $3
5-9 $0.05 $1 in Pot $3 $4


players :: rake per dollar : max pot. RIT correction (ignore)

On a 0.25/0.5 games sb + bb = $0.75. One 4bb raise in late and a call is $2.75 in the pot. Even if one player folds after this the house says thanks to $0.1. One CB and flat call and two passive checks on the river and you have $4.75 in the pot. The house says thanks for $0.20 - and nothing really happened!

Two player (HU) games get through 5 hands a minute - bigger tables get through a hand every one and half minutes. This is the reason for the low cap on HU games.

Sharkscope I hardly used - I was interested to see what Kim was up to. She is not a ring player to my knowledge so what you see there might be quite indicative.

As to 25% of poker players being long term winners, I will continually, but respectfully, disagree with this. No poker forums (who make money by encouraging people to play poker) or poker house will release or discuss the figures. There was a time when Poker Tracker could be set to "mine" tables, The idea was that you would open up 40 tables and let poker tracker run for week. At the end of that time you had a very good profile of everyone currently playing on the site. This technique was used to select tables (avoid sharks) and get position on players. This data mining is no longer allowed but of course I did it when it was and I stand by my figures. About 5% of players are "winners" in the long term. There are quite a few breakeven players in that 5% who may be just content with rakeback and bonuses).

If you wish to disbelieve this figure and underestimate the extent of the risk then it's your money...

uhh, no, 50 cent rake applies for all HU tables, even the 3000/6000 limit HU or 500/1000 NL HU tables. you can refer to websites all you want, i can give you actual experiences of being at those tables and seeing the rake. so you show the rake being 5 cents for every dollar. if your figures are accurate, $4 max cap at 5 cents a dollar, that means you need 80 dollars in the pot to take the max rake, and that doesnt happen all that often at 25 cent 50 cent. even though uits on the site i dont buy that max rake is 4 bucks. as i recall i never saw rake being more than 3 dollars anywhere. according to your figures it explains pretty much what i said in my post.

youre only playing 20% of hands if youre a decent player, a decent bit of those pots arent even going to the pot. so youre complaining about 10 cents being taken out of the pot the 10% of the time youre in the pot? if youre playing for any amount of money at all, that money is negligible.

normally i should be thrilled that people have so much misunderstanding about poker...but alas i doubt that you play it.

The games are quite dissimilar in structure, but there is a close relationship in a couple of key points that makes me not at all surprised that both games appeal to the same people. I recall comments made by two go professionals.

Kim Myungwan 9p, in a class in LA, said that creativity was a crucial element of playing go well, and the better or higher level you play at, the more important it is. Playing at his level, your opponent is liable to know all the patterns, be able to do all the calculations and be able to read ahead as far as you can. You have to find some other thing, some new thing, or you won't do well. My thought about his comment is that playing a creative move, you don't know the outcome. You are deliberately taking the game into an unexplored branch of the tree, thinking, at least partly intuitively, that it will work out better for you than your opponent. That is a risk, possibly a heart-stopping one, possibly a career-ending one. To be able to make those moves, you have to have some understanding of and control over your own emotions. The calculations are different, but the emotions involved and the decision, are very similar to making a big move during a poker hand or tournament.

The other was Takemiya Masaki 9p when he was giving his lectures in Portland. He said players should stop trying so hard to win, and should instead make the move they want to make, looking afterward at whether it was a good. Do you want to win or do you want to get better, he asked. Nothing to do with poker, but a lot to do with intuition. Your mind can perform many more calculations and make many more and better inferences than your conscious mind is aware of. Takemiya 9p was strongly recommending learning to pay attention to, interact with, even subtly train, your intuition, to play go better. It is a powerful ally. A similar dynamic applies in poker, where the game is ludicrously simple but the betting conflict is devilish in its layers. Some authors have said in poker you are playing your opponents, not your cards. Reading them and reading their cards from them, is a complex and intuitive task. Another author described how many poker players go to the poorhouse "ignoring the frantically blinking lights of experience." Your mind should, by the end of an evening of playing with someone, be able to make a better guess than from the cards and bets alone, whether the guy actually has three jacks. Whether you do or not depends on whether you can hear, interact with and improve, your intuition.

They're also forgetting that good jobs help build resumes and skills. These in turn lead to better jobs in the near and far future.

Many jobs also contribute to society.

Others answered this already, but in case you want to read more about it the term you're looking for is table stakes.

If you're in the U.S. gambling profits are not exempt from taxation. I paid taxes on all of my poker profits. The IRS is the one agency you do not want to screw around with.

I hate poker.
I love go.

That's pretty much all I have to say about it, other than leaping into a rant about betting card games.

Poker and Go are different on many levels.

In go generally luck is not a factor. You can do everything right in poker and oftentimes lose. The chances of this occurring are much less in go.

Poker rewards deception. Go is better for mental training in that it teaches you how to play assuming the other player can see everything you do. Not so in poker. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Which would you rather play a game in which you can lose money when you make no mistakes or a game which teaches you how to play with no deception and yet your opponent is powerless to stop you? To me nothing could be more thrilling about the idea of mental training teaching you how to take steps to win, your opponent can see these steps and cant do a single thing about it.

I have played poker and understand pot odds and hand odds. There are many different types of poker players. Yet I have found the whole game is bs and rewards slimeballs and trickery.

Poker doesnt even compare to playing Go. Poker is a close in interest to listening to women talk about female topics or watching paint dry.

Additionally, poker causes physical tension whereas go gives positive energy and relieves stress. No wonder poker is grouped with other negative vices.

There is a new twist in Poker: the Duplicate Poker. Or most specifically, Duplicate Texas Hold'em. This game is played almost like regular Texas Hold'em, except each hand is replayed at several tables and the scoring is based on what you do relative to others sitting in the same position at the other tables. It is just like Duplicate Bridge.

Competition can be carried out among individuals or among teams. I will give you an example of a team competition.

In a prototype team competition, six people from six teams play each other at one of six tables. Members of each team sit at different positions at the tables. Each hand is replayed at all tables. The chips are reset after each hand. The hands are scored on a 1-6 basis: whoever wins the most (or loses the least) in a particular hand, relative to other players sitting at the same seat at the other tables, gets a 6; the next gets 5; etc.; exactly like in Duplicate Bridge. So, for each hand, every player on a team gets a score somewhere between 1 and 6. When all the hands are played, the team score is the sum of all its members' scores on all hands.

(Side quiz 1: how do you extend this to individual competitions?)

This form of Poker reduces the factor of luck greatly and is what the International Federation of Poker (http://www.ifpoker.org/news/ifp-preside ... ampionship) is using to apply for membership in IMSA and SportAccord.

Where is the skill factor? Let me give you a simple example. Let's say on a particular hand one player gets a King pair, another gets a Jack pair. The other four players all throw in, and the open cards are of no consequence. Obviously the K-pair wins the hand. But that does not mean he wins the duplicate score: the skill is in how he extracts the most chips from the J-pair holder. The winner in this case is whoever wins the most chips with the K-pair and whoever loses the fewest with the J-pair. Both of these players get a 6.

(Side quiz 2: why Texas Hold'em and not other forms of Poker?)

The first-ever Duplicate Poker World Championship will be held this Fall in London. Go is invited to stage a parallel demonstration event. Well worth looking forward to!