Online Poker

[WillzZz]

Do yourself a favor and go onto any big poker site, pick the names of the last 10 tourney winners, and plug them into www.poker-edge.com

Tell me what % of those people are listed as Calling Stations. I was pretty astounded when I looked them up.

[Jadaki]

Originally Posted by Zinke

Anyone who wins a 1000 player tournament will be the first to tell you it had little to do with their skill.
Even Hellmuth, who considers himself the best poker player, says that any specific pro (including himself) is a huge longshot to win the WSOP events when you've got thousands of people playing. Playing your best game, and only going all-in on hands where your 90% or better to win, the odds state you'll still eventually get busted out.
You'll have to go against people many times, and one of those 9-1 underdogs will out draw you over the course of the tournament.

That is horribly inaccurate. Tournament play is as much about skill as it is luck. Just because your a 90% favorite to win doesn't mean you are going to put all your chips in the middle everytime. If you smart you are going to try and extract maximum value for hands where you are a huge favorite to win. Going all in everytime you think you are ahead does not make you a good tournament player. Oh and Hellmuth is not the best poker player in the world, he does not sit in on the highest stakes cash games. He is pretty much a Hold'em tournament specialist.

[Eida]

Jadaki. Hellmuth is actually known as an uberfish at the high stakes NL games spread online. He plays occasionally at the site hes affiliated with, generally buys in for the minimum, and whenever he does, the waiting list becomes gigantic because:

A) Everyone wants to stack Phil.
B) Most people can.

In summary, he is an extremely talented MTT player yet horrible at cash games.

[Jadaki]

Originally Posted by Eida

Jadaki. Hellmuth is actually known as an uberfish at the high stakes NL games spread online. He plays occasionally at the site hes affiliated with, generally buys in for the minimum, and whenever he does, the waiting list becomes gigantic because:

A) Everyone wants to stack Phil.
B) Most people can.

In summary, he is an extremely talented MTT player yet horrible at cash games.

Thats pretty much what I said in my post without going into details.

[Zinke]

Originally Posted by Jadaki

That is horribly inaccurate. Tournament play is as much about skill as it is luck. Just because your a 90% favorite to win doesn't mean you are going to put all your chips in the middle everytime. If you smart you are going to try and extract maximum value for hands where you are a huge favorite to win. Going all in everytime you think you are ahead does not make you a good tournament player. Oh and Hellmuth is not the best poker player in the world, he does not sit in on the highest stakes cash games. He is pretty much a Hold'em tournament specialist.

I did not say you would always go all in when your a favorite. I said if you only went all-in when you are 90% or more to win, that situation is still likely to come up numerous times in a 1000 person tournament. If it happens more then 10 times, statistically your bound to lose one. More likely your going to have coin flip situations that you have to win. You hear pros say that all the time, you have to win at least a few coin flips to win a large tournament. If you disagree there, I don't know what to say.

Extracting maximum value on a hand when your 70-80% to win, and then they catch runner-runner will also happen just as often.

I did not sasy Hellmuth was the best player in the world, but obviously he knows something about large Hold'em tournaments. But, if you don't like him.. T.J. Cloutier has said effectively the same thing.. as has Annie Duke.. Phil Ivey.. Howard Lederer.. pick a pro.

[Kemuel]

I was just in Vegas this last weekend at the Bellagio for some business. I had about 5 hours of downtime till my next meeting so I decided to get to the tables. Low and behold I see 3 pros playing at a table. Having merely 400 bucks on me I chuckled cause I saw them have nothing what looked like 100 dollar chips. I walk up to the huge mob of people and ask a guy standing there watching what there were playing and he said 25 and 50 no limit. I go WTF there is no way these guys are playing for that pocket change. He laughed and said ya, the blinds are 25,000 and 50,000 no limit with a minimum buy in of $3 million.

Astonished by the 8 person waiting list for this game I walked over to my favorite game, 10/20 full kill and resumed my collecting. Turned out to be profitable to say the least.

[fuvi513]

Originally Posted by Pillik

Greg Raymer is an idiot.

Greg Raymer is a tournament player. He does play some cash games, but his main focus is in tournaments. He's stated this publicly.

He's a solid tournament player. He's proven it. I don't feel as he is one of the best in the world, but he gets his work done when it counts.

By you calling him an idiot it only proves you are the idiot.

[Jadaki]

Originally Posted by Zinke

I did not say you would always go all in when your a favorite. I said if you only went all-in when you are 90% or more to win, that situation is still likely to come up numerous times in a 1000 person tournament. If it happens more then 10 times, statistically your bound to lose one. More likely your going to have coin flip situations that you have to win. You hear pros say that all the time, you have to win at least a few coin flips to win a large tournament. If you disagree there, I don't know what to say.

Extracting maximum value on a hand when your 70-80% to win, and then they catch runner-runner will also happen just as often.

I did not sasy Hellmuth was the best player in the world, but obviously he knows something about large Hold'em tournaments. But, if you don't like him.. T.J. Cloutier has said effectively the same thing.. as has Annie Duke.. Phil Ivey.. Howard Lederer.. pick a pro.

Your missing the point. Since you like to use Phil as an example so will I. At the recent Tournament of Champions he never put all his chips in the middle until it was down to the final 3 players. He went through an entire field, without putting all his chips at risk until the final table. You have to win coinflips, but stack size is just a big a part of tournament poker as winning races. Also being a 80+ percent favorite when you put money in is not a coinflip/race sitaution. He could have put all his chips in in several coinflips and lost them all but due to stack size it would not have hurt him that much.

Yes luck is involved, but there is plenty of skill too. The thing most amatuers in those events do incorrectly is constantly put their tournament lifes at stake by pushing all in and constantly overbetting. If you keep putting your tournament life at stake on coinflips then you are asking to lose. Guys like Phil don't do that very often in the early stages of tournaments.

[Sabyn]

Is this going to be a real poker thread, or just scrubs bitching about luck v. skill?

Anyway, I just moved up in limits (0.25/0.50 to .5/1, what a high roller). It is awesome to run well when you move up. I was at a dissappointing 2BB/100 at my previous limit, but so far I have been running really well at .5/1. I have gotten $300 from party just from bonuses, which is nice. I just got the IGM-pay one, giving me a proper BR for .5/1, hence my decision to move up.

[Warrik]

The real question is, how much "real" money can legitimately be made by a good poker player on these online sites.

[Zinke]

Originally Posted by Jadaki

Your missing the point. Since you like to use Phil as an example so will I. At the recent Tournament of Champions he never put all his chips in the middle until it was down to the final 3 players. He went through an entire field, without putting all his chips at risk until the final table. You have to win coinflips, but stack size is just a big a part of tournament poker as winning races. Also being a 80+ percent favorite when you put money in is not a coinflip/race sitaution. He could have put all his chips in in several coinflips and lost them all but due to stack size it would not have hurt him that much.

Yes luck is involved, but there is plenty of skill too. The thing most amatuers in those events do incorrectly is constantly put their tournament lifes at stake by pushing all in and constantly overbetting. If you keep putting your tournament life at stake on coinflips then you are asking to lose. Guys like Phil don't do that very often in the early stages of tournaments.

Wait.. Tournament of Champions.. the Harrah's invitation only tournament? the one that has less then 120 players?

We were talking large, 1000+ player tournaments. You'd have to be really lucky to avoid going all-in until the final table in a tournament that large. If you avoid going all-in like it's the plague, a good player will pick up on your hesistancy and re-raise you all-in when you make a stab at a pot. You'll lose chunks at a time doing that. It also depends on the tournament structure, starting chip count, blind schedule etc.. Start off with a huge amount of chips, with a bunch of pros, and you could do that. If you have amateurs at your table who are overbetting all-in a lot, someone is going to have to call them. If you have AA and some maniac goes all-in for 75% of your chip stack, your telling me you'd fold? If not, what if he squeeks out a win, now how are you going to avoid going all-in as one of the shortest stacks at the table?

If it was 100% skill, you'd see many more repeats then you currently do. I fully believe it's a large part skill, I never said otherwise. But, while a pro can consistently finish in the money, he does not consistently win tournaments. You don't see anyone winning seven 1000 or more player tournaments in a row. You also see that a relative 'amateur' has won the WSOP the last 4 years. Hachem is a pretty Good Australian player, but by no means a legend. Raymer has supposedly played a lot of smaller tournaments, but had practically no previous experience in a tournament that large. Moneymaker? yea. Varkonyi, won his entrance through a satellite.

The reason is that for every poker legend that plays in the WSOP, there's 10 amateurs or newcomers with some skill. Playing your best game, there's still a high statistical probability you will get unlucky in a field that large.

I don't play many multi-table tournaments at this stage of my game. I play a lot of one table sit-n-gos for a similar reason as you mentioned (about amateurs pushing all-in). The casino I play at pays out the top 3. I only play group 1 hands, and I play them quite conservatively, in the first round. There tends to be 1 or 2 amateur maniacs at a table who end up butting heads and knocking each other out. Pocket 4s vs A10s all in on the first hand, that kind of bullshit. One will often end up with a lot of chips because of it, but the tighter players who got out of the craziness quickly take those away. I also get a feel for the rest of the players. If it's an aggressive table, I can mostly coast into the money by folding. I pick up the blinds or a small pot here or there when I'm in a good position and I end up in the money easily. If I get lucky once or twice while we're shorthanded, to have a sizable chip count, I generally end up winning the whole thing, I'm very good at heads up irl. If I can focus on less opponents, I can get very good reads. It takes me awhile of focusing one person to really get a read, but it's often right. At a full table, I don't always focus on the right player or I don't spend enough time on one person and make a bad read because of it.

If it's a really conservative table, even better. The blinds are a decent amount in relation to our stack, somewhat of a turbo tournament but not a turbo blind schedule, so stealing the blinds is very worthwhile. Most times I can over value my hand with a bet and steal the blinds. If not, I'm called and I see the flop and can often out-play them from there if they didn't flop the nuts. They rarely re-raise.

Bah, I'm over simplifying. It all depends on the players at the table obviously. I've sat down with a complete maniac to my left, which doesn't really bother me, just makes me tighten up and wait to bust him, but then when I actually get hands to call him with, he had pocket A's two hands in a row. I had KQs and then AKo those hands. Both times, it was just me and him seeing the flopped, it missed me, and he went all-in so I folded. But, he took my pre-flop bets with those and effectively crippled me for the finishing blow later when I had AKs and he calls my all-in with 63o, but catches a flush on the river. It was a horrible beat, and it was frustrating, but 9/10 if he played like that I would have had all his chips, so I let it go.

[Sabyn]

Originally Posted by Warrik

The real question is, how much "real" money can legitimately be made by a good poker player on these online sites.

2BB/100. You can easily make 50k a year multitabling 5/10 6max. There are plenty of professional players. www.twoplustwo.com has awesome forums. Being a professional (or just making extra money from poker) is way easier online than real life (no tokes or travel costs, more hands per hour). Even if you are only good enough to beat 2/4 or 3/6 full ring, you can still play 5 to 10 tables, and make a pretty decent income.

Bonuses are usually for micro / small stakes players to build their bankrolls.

[larseny316]

Out of curiousity, whats the turnaround time on removing money from the poker site? I used to play on Absolute Poker and it was something like an 8 week wait if you wanted to cash out any money. Even if I had a great night and turned my 100 into 500, bottom line is since that 500 wasn't actually in my pocket it didn't mean shit to me.

Edit: What I mean is as a college student going month to month with some play cash, when something comes up that I require money for, its money I need that instant. Its not like I can say "I'll withdraw that grand from Absolute poker, then use this 1000 dollars from my checking account, and replace it with the poker money." Its shit, if only I had that 500 from Absolute Poker, I could pay my rent (extreme example)

[Sabyn]

I cashed out from Party using Neteller and from Party to Neteller it was instant or a day or two. Then from Netelelr to my bank account it was a few days. Less than a week in all.

And I think that is a bad mentality to have. Any money in your poker account is yours. If you lose your "profits" that is no different than losing money you originally invest.

[Eida]

Originally Posted by Warrik

The real question is, how much "real" money can legitimately be made by a good poker player on these online sites.

Define good.

The longterm winning players at 30/60-100/200 (considered high stakes limit) are making $100-$400/hour or even higher depending on how many tables they can play at once.

I can't comment on no limit, but the top no limits players hourly rate can be considerably higher (although its a far more exlusive club). These guys are playing with stacks of 10k-100k and win rate is speculative on them, to say the least.

In case you're interested, the minimum bankroll for 30/60 is 20k, although you'd probably want 40k because the game is rough at times =P

A rule of thumb for gauging potential profit. Assume a player is making between 1bb-3bb/100 hands. Adjust the bb # depending on how "good" they are. Then assume every table they play is approx 50 hands/hour (for 10 person tables).

A 3bb/100 player at 5/10, playing 6 tables at once (300 hands an hour) = $90/hour. Throw in some beautiful rakeback and they're at 100/hour.