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* should, but I appreciate that on Sky particularly the average player is too passive to beat on you when you take this line with what is a marginal made hand on the river and ideally wants a cheap showdown.
** of course, there is also the need to factor in PDDS syndrome and oppo has spazzed the hand by calling twice with utter junk, or is suddenly over-valuing a small pocket pair and betting for 'value'... that's normally what I tell myself to justify the times that I do sigh call these spots
Was just intrigued enough to play about with some sums after seeing a post elsewhere on how it is no longer a viable option for those new to the game to see it as the road to riches that a group of players once benefited from (admittedly a group almost certainly much, much smaller than the marketing may have had us believe).
/> Taking it as a job replacement I assumed we'd put in 35 hours a week, for 48 weeks a year.
/> We play 100 hands per hour on a 6-max cash table.
/> We win at 4 big blinds per 100 hands (appreciate this is likely optimistic in today's game at NL100 and above)
/> Assuming we'd be 4-tabling NL100 I get that to equate to £26,880 pa (around £45k pa gross). A fair wedge to pay the bills and live your life, but little more than that in this day and age.
/> To break the £100k pa (net) barrier we'd need to 8-table NL200 and maintain a 4bb/100 win rate (£107,520 pa) or get up to 4-tabling NL400
My reckoning is that you'd probably need to touch that £100k pa level, given:
a) The potentially uncertain length of time you'll be able to play until the game ends / changes / you fail to maintain a suitably high win rate - essentially creating your own 'redundancy fund' for when you have to cease playing.
b) You need to cover the cost of periods of sickness, cover your own pension, make NI contributions and cover any other benefits working for 'The Man' may provide (eg healthcare, childcare, company car, discounted vouchers etc).
c) The requirement to earn sufficient to buy a home for cash, given the struggle you will inevitably face to get a mortgage based on such an uncertain long-term income.
Then we also need to factor in that we will need to factor in:
a) working unsociable hours - given that it is unlikely that 9-5 will be the optimum time to play (absence of drunk whales)
b) 'unpaid overtime' - given that we'd likely need at least 5 hours a week of study in order to keep ahead of the game and maintain our 4bb/100 win rate
c) potentially struggling to commit to work/life balance given the uncertainty as to when and for how long the best games will be running
Now...
I know there are other factors tucked in here, rakeback, promos etc - plus I am looking at Sky Poker only and it is a big wide world out there, but this seems like an awful lot of hard work to make an easy living.
I do poke my nose into the mid-stakes lobby from time to time and there often doesn't even seem to be 4 games running, while those that are look to often have 5 regs and maybe 1 random. Sometimes there is 6 regs, presumably accepting that their minimal edge against the weakest reg will be worthwhile to play based on rakeback. Does make the 4bb/100 seem that much more ambitious in games of that strength though.
Are there really that many recs these days that can afford to donk off online £100-£400 (or above) at a time in order to support someone playing professionally?
Presumably most bad regs at that level are still at least 'quite competent' and at least breakeven (pre rake) in order to continue playing at that level, meaning we'd only ever be able to beat games vs them at maybe 1-2bb/100?
Take my metaphorical hat off to those that are grinding out a living at this lovely game, but wow does it seem an almightily steep cliff for a newbie to climb!
I did feel obliged to scale that back down to a more standard '2nd income' level.
I'm not sure I often put in anywhere remotely close to 35 hours per week at poker, but 4-tabling a mix of NL10-20 for that long (4bb/100 win rate) gets me to somewhere around £2,700 - £5,400 pa.
Or in more depressing terms, 4 tables of NL20 at a hugely respectable 4bb/100 would equate to an hourly rate of £3.20
High rolling
Can't even count in rake-back these days, given that I tend to get around 400pts per week and receive nothing more than a £2.30 token and a few free-rolls I often can't play (not moaning, just how it is).
It is pretty ace as a fun hobby that is better than self-funding though.
Even if it has left me a lot fatter than the previous regular hobbies of running and football did.
Think I mis-played this one. The only reg at the table had sat out while this played out, the others were recreational players. I'd only been sat at the table for one orbit and this was the first hand I'd played, but had watched for a couple of orbits before that and all the players dealt into this hand had limp/called at least once, most had done so several times.
Should be a fun game.
Hate min c/r, esp as he snap raised so had obviously decided he'd do so regardless of what me and the other guy in the hand did.
Then goes from a little tickler of a bet that I felt obliged to call, to a bomb that leaves us both committed.
Snap call turn, call any(?) river? Close eyes and shove all in on the turn? Fold? Other?
Aside from getting a proper structure in place at Forest before next season, plus a good manager (seemingly Gus Poyet, which would be alright I think), we really need to be free from the transfer embargo. If not then we'll be incredibly lucky to avoid being bottom 3 next year, especially as a continued embargo will likely see our current captain and most promising youngster leaving the club for pastures new.
Can't moan about poker so much, can easily moan about football. Seems nuts that because we don't get promoted we get an embargo, but because they do get promoted, QPR and Bournemouth break the same (nuts) financial fair play rule and merely have to pay a £7-£8m fine out of their premier league treasure chest with no other recriminations. Stupid rule.
Wonder if any of the top 8-10 this year will have fallen foul in their attempts to shoot for the stars.
I was reading this article taking the positive side of positive 'table selection'
http://thepokercapitalist.com/poker-ethics-table-selecting-bum-hunting/
Interesting thought that Poker is probably the only 'sport' where cash money appears in title celebrations. It's like a game of 'Where's Wally?' to spot a WSOP bracelet amongst the piles of dollar bills that champions are pictured with.
No sign of the mega bonuses that the Leicester players must have earned from the title win when they were picking up the Premier League trophy at the weekend. Although it would have made a great site to have £50 notes raining down on to the pitch as they celebrated.
Which makes a fair argument that, as poker is much more about the money than the prestige, it makes total sense to always take the most EV+ move (ie choose to sit only with weaker players and, wherever possible, to their left) - taking the moral high ground only benefits the owners of the poker site (more rake payable).
Often wondered why that isn't always the case and there are tables with 6 regs playing each other. May make sense if in a live game (sure, we want to challenge ourselves against the best occasionally), but less so when they are all playing 6+ tables and therefore are unlikely to even be playing their A game. Regs, playing with the main goal of winning as much cash as possible, playing in games where the rake means they are going to struggle to even break-even over a decent sample size.
That said, in spite of the compelling argument the linked article makes, I can't bring myself to move seats mid-game. Table select and sit down in the best seat at the time, definitely, but move seats mid-game just feels too dirty.
Am I the mug for taking that approach when somebody else will, and the weaker player is going to donk his money off regardless of to whom?
Are there any significantly winning players that don't take seats against obviously inferior players?
FWIW I played it badly. I think turn is a definite check.
This has happened a lot lately though, albeit mostly in DTD. I don't know how I've got such a reputation as a bluffer that people keep calling me with 10-high?
FWIW oppo's limp seemed out of character. They are a decent winning player at higher limits than this. Figured that this narrowed their range to small/mid pairs, suited connectors, or weak Axs - it was unlikely they'd have a 10, and A4s and 54s are the only hands I crush, but I felt that if they were that strong then the raise would have come on the turn.
UTG+1 was spewy all round. He'd won some big pots in recent orbits by showing up in 3b pots with 72 and 83, made loose calls on flop/turn before he rivered oppos. Not sure why BU wouldn't have opted to try and iso him.
Trouble I often find in these spots historically is that I call flop but then often have to face c/c another two streets with no real idea where I stand by the river (ergo call flop, turn then fold river).
So 3b seems the best option in spots with this sort of dynamic. Albeit it's essentially turning 2nd pair into a bluff, which in a vacuum seems spewy.
Think my 3b here is fairly standard, reg has iso'd the weak limp, I've tried to re-iso but found myself playing a bloated pot vs two fairly aggro regs.
I was saved a decision by the shove. Is this remotely standard as a line by either oppo though?
Can't envisage seeing this hand play out in this manner in the nl10/nl20 games I normally frequent. Wondered if it is just a one-off, or the sort of approach I should be giving a greater consideration to if I continue to give the low stake games a bash.
Not sure if this particular one is a genuine coach, or a troll though. Could imagine certain Sky player putting on a dodgy eastern European accent and 'coaching' in this manner. Especially the hand that is reviewed from around 7 min 50 sec into the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv4NdsByE3Q
I suppose you have to be cruel to be kind if your students are to improve?
Don't sink to my level