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Making A Living Playing $1/2


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Lets say you beat the game at 8BB/100 and play 30 hours a week 2 tabling...you can make more doing this than in many career jobs imo, my friends disagree...but look...8*2*$2=32 [i multiply by 2 twice because the original BB/100 hands means big bets and is designed for limit...to convert to NL you have to multiply by 2] dollars in EV per 100 hands...assume you play 200 hands per hour 2 tabling...thats 6000 hands per week. so 32*60=$1920...lets say you play 46 weeks a year...thats 1920+46=$88,320....a very nice salary...thoughts?

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Lets say you beat the game at 8BB/100 and play 30 hours a week 2 tabling...you can make more doing this than in many career jobs imo, my friends disagree...but look...8*2*$2=32 [i multiply by 2 twice because the original BB/100 hands means big bets and is designed for limit...to convert to NL you have to multiply by 2] dollars in EV per 100 hands...assume you play 200 hands per hour 2 tabling...thats 6000 hands per week. so 32*60=$1920...lets say you play 46 weeks a year...thats 1920+46=$88,320....a very nice salary...thoughts?
Might as well work a full-time job, because thats a freaking grind.
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Lets say you beat the game at 8BB/100 and play 30 hours a week 2 tabling...you can make more doing this than in many career jobs imo, my friends disagree...but look...8*2*$2=32 [i multiply by 2 twice because the original BB/100 hands means big bets and is designed for limit...to convert to NL you have to multiply by 2] dollars in EV per 100 hands...assume you play 200 hands per hour 2 tabling...thats 6000 hands per week. so 32*60=$1920...lets say you play 46 weeks a year...thats 1920+46=$88,320....a very nice salary...thoughts?
So using your math, no one ever gets stacked off or runs bad for an entire month. Pass me that Kool-Aid.
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one of my buds from hs has supported himself solely from online poker since he graduated from college may 2005. He plays only 1-2 nl and 55 sng's on stars. He just got a real job yesterday since hes feeling like its time to move on, but he did it succesfully for 2 years, paying rent in philly, a car pament, cable, phone etc. and always as flush or more so than the rest of us. always plenty of coin to go out and always taking trips. But i will say its a real grind for him and he rarely plays for fun any more.edit: bdubhc on stars btw. (recently moved to dc)

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thoughts?
Maybe you aren't as good as you think. Maybe the game gets tougher. Maybe you only win at 5BB/100.Say you aren't hitting 100 hands/hr. Say you are only at 80/hr.30 hours x 160/hr = 4800 hands/wk.$20 per 100 hands x 4800 hands/wk = $960/wk.46 weeks a year is $44k.EDIT: If you want this to look great, try this:8-table $2/$4NL for just 1BB/100.
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Yes, it can be done, but after a year or so, you will seriously be asking yourself hard questions about our reason for being on this earth and if you have any firearms present, you will probably start to consider using them to blow your ****ing head off.Look at it like this.Imagine someone told you that they were willing to give you a job picking up dollars in the desert. They would give you a Land Rover and all you would do is drive around and stop to pick up money that you would find. Drive around all day and every fifteen minutes or so, you would find a five spot. Maybe a ten. At first, you would be like "****, I've hit it big. This is the best job ever! There isn't any work involved" and you would drive around with the AC on and the radio blasting, picking up the free dollars. In a month or so, you would start to bore of it, but because of the money you would keep doing it.After a year, you would want the **** out of that desert, money be damned.That's what small stakes online grinding is like. There is no thrill. There is no excitement. There is no stimulation. It's simply repeating a series of predetermined events over and over and over and over and over again for the sake of profit. It's about as rewarding as adding 1+1+1+1+1+1 on a calculator until you reach a million.

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Might as well work a full-time job, because thats a freaking grind.
...and if you're too careful, your whole life can become a fuckin' grind.
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So using your math, no one ever gets stacked off or runs bad for an entire month. Pass me that Kool-Aid.
variance doesn't really matter, if we assume he can beat 1/2nl for 8bb/100 over the long run.however, I also honesty believe that if you can beat 1/2nl for 8bb/100 in the the long run. You should also beat 2/4nl at 5bb/100.
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Like everyone else said it's certainly possible. Very boring, lots of discipline required. And if you were actually good enough to do it you would be costing yourself money in the longrun by not improving and not moving up.

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Even if we assume the $88k salary is a bit of a generous estimate, it is still a solid salary.If you figure an average salary for a person straight out of college is around $40k (could easily be more or less depending on area of the country, major etc.), that number is PRE-tax. The take home from that 40k would be around 30k.Compare that to the $88k estimate, which even if you make half of your estimate would be around $40k, and if it is all from the internet it is basically tax free. Obviously it isn't entirely legal to not pay taxes on this, but since none of the income is declared and internet poker is kind of in a grey area anyway, there is no way to even pay taxes on your earnings (that I am aware of).As for how exciting or boring it would be, all I can say is the real jobs I have worked have all made me want to kill myself. This is coming from a person who graduated from one of the top ten universities in the country and got a solid job right after graduation. I could only keep my sanity for one year before I had to quit. So, I say if you can make a living playing 1/2 NL, give it a shot.

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Could you stay focussed/not go completelt insane playing poker for 8 hours a day?
I'd prefer live in a nice atmosphere at a nice casino, as opposed to online.
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Even if we assume the $88k salary is a bit of a generous estimate, it is still a solid salary.If you figure an average salary for a person straight out of college is around $40k (could easily be more or less depending on area of the country, major etc.), that number is PRE-tax. The take home from that 40k would be around 30k.Compare that to the $88k estimate, which even if you make half of your estimate would be around $40k, and if it is all from the internet it is basically tax free. Obviously it isn't entirely legal to not pay taxes on this, but since none of the income is declared and internet poker is kind of in a grey area anyway, there is no way to even pay taxes on your earnings (that I am aware of).As for how exciting or boring it would be, all I can say is the real jobs I have worked have all made me want to kill myself. This is coming from a person who graduated from one of the top ten universities in the country and got a solid job right after graduation. I could only keep my sanity for one year before I had to quit. So, I say if you can make a living playing 1/2 NL, give it a shot.
There are so many things wrong with this advice, I don't know where to begin.
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Even if we assume the $88k salary is a bit of a generous estimate, it is still a solid salary.If you figure an average salary for a person straight out of college is around $40k (could easily be more or less depending on area of the country, major etc.), that number is PRE-tax. The take home from that 40k would be around 30k.Compare that to the $88k estimate, which even if you make half of your estimate would be around $40k, and if it is all from the internet it is basically tax free. Obviously it isn't entirely legal to not pay taxes on this, but since none of the income is declared and internet poker is kind of in a grey area anyway, there is no way to even pay taxes on your earnings (that I am aware of).As for how exciting or boring it would be, all I can say is the real jobs I have worked have all made me want to kill myself. This is coming from a person who graduated from one of the top ten universities in the country and got a solid job right after graduation. I could only keep my sanity for one year before I had to quit. So, I say if you can make a living playing 1/2 NL, give it a shot.
There is a line for gambling winnings. But to do it as a living , you would set yourself up as a business. and then blah blah blah
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Yes by your formula you can make 88k a year pre-tax. Taxes will knock that down to about 45 - 50k, but if I make 88k a year at my job I only take home about 45 - 50k also so that's a wash. Aside from the discipline it takes I see a major problem with this ideaThe big thing is when you play online you have no health insurance or any other benefits. I know the benefits I get with my job are worth a minimum of 10 - 15k a year.

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you can easily make a decent amount of money, but remember there are a lot more grinders than fish then there use to be. I don't really think you have any chance of beating $1/$2 game on FTP or one of those for 5ptbb/100 over a long period of time. If you you are calculating this I would say you need to be safe and count 2bb/100.

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you can easily make a decent amount of money, but remember there are a lot more grinders than fish then there use to be. I don't really think you have any chance of beating $1/$2 game on FTP or one of those for 5ptbb/100 over a long period of time. If you you are calculating this I would say you need to be safe and count 2bb/100.
sorry, im not sure what the difference between 5ptbb/100 and 5bb/100......Also, when I get out of the army, that's going to be my plan...obviously I'm going to move up stakes to 2/4 then 3/6 then 5/10....and so on....but I'm just saying that beating 1/2 is a joke...it's so easy for me and if you can make this much money playing such low stakes, why don't more people do it?...I don't want to be playing 1/2 for a long time...I'm going to be moving up with a plan and everything but that's not my point...my point is some people don't like huge fluctutations and playing 1/2 you rarely have days when you're down 1k...yes you have them but it's not a regular occurence...so for those ppl rather than work 40 hours a week [btw...someone said they wouldn't be able to play 8 hours a day...i said 5 hours a day 5 days a week] they could play 1/2 and make more with more freedom....take 20k away for benefits and health care (although if you're in canada it's free) and you still got 60k minus taxes which is more than an average salary.
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sorry, im not sure what the difference between 5ptbb/100 and 5bb/100......Also, when I get out of the army, that's going to be my plan...obviously I'm going to move up stakes to 2/4 then 3/6 then 5/10....and so on....but I'm just saying that beating 1/2 is a joke...it's so easy for me and if you can make this much money playing such low stakes, why don't more people do it?...I don't want to be playing 1/2 for a long time...I'm going to be moving up with a plan and everything but that's not my point...my point is some people don't like huge fluctutations and playing 1/2 you rarely have days when you're down 1k...yes you have them but it's not a regular occurence...so for those ppl rather than work 40 hours a week [btw...someone said they wouldn't be able to play 8 hours a day...i said 5 hours a day 5 days a week] they could play 1/2 and make more with more freedom....take 20k away for benefits and health care (although if you're in canada it's free) and you still got 60k minus taxes which is more than an average salary.
Karina Jett wrote in one of those FTP e-mails they sent out awhile back about how she plays relatively low stakes comparitively speaking to others who've made about what she has in her career. She says she's more comfortable with the win/loss fluctuation and it supplies her with enough income to still be somewhat comfortable with her husband's, Chip, income added into. But I agree that the grind would be hard.
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