Time magazine article on online poker

Pretty basic but keeping the story in the news at least.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2068228,00.html

If you're playing hundreds of hands an hour, its not really poker, its a poker slot machine. Wouldn't playing poker this way make you susceptible to the same swings in variance that regular players experience?

Quote: EvenBob

If you're playing hundreds of hands an hour, its not really poker, its a poker slot machine. Wouldn't playing poker this way make you susceptible to the same swings in variance that regular players experience?

Online poker is unique in that a winning player can increase his hourly income by simply playing more tables at once - something that is impossible in a B&M poker room. If I look at my S&G (Sit and Go - single table tournaments) stats I can see that my average buy-in is around the $40 mark. I usually play $35 or $55 S&G's. My average ROI (return on investment) is a paltry 6%. This means that over time I'll average about $2.50 per tournament. Not much of a living, is it? The great thing about on-line play is that I can play as many of these as I like AT THE SAME TIME which means that if my comfort zone is about 10 tables and from start to finish the S&G takes about 20 minutes (Super Turbo) I can get in about 20-30 of these in an hour. My YDT hourly income on these S&G's is just under $55. There's just no way I could do this playing live. I seldom play live tourments as I prefer ring games and my income from this source is fairly substantial. Between the two of these and multi-table tournaments on-line I do quite well, set my own schedule and more or less do what I want when I want. Sure, there's always variance but it's all about the long term results - not days or weeks or even months that count but at the end of the year it all flattens out. The good players will always make money over time just as the fish will always donate.

I'm a poker player and I play for a living but only play the live version in Calif. & Nv. I've never tried it on-line, yet. I guess I'll have to wait. I've always thought playing on-line was more luck than anything else because you can't watch the others. Any insight on that anyone?

The article mentions hundreds of thousands in the usa who make a living playing on-line poker. It id's several who said they win millions and others in the $40k to $80k/yr range. That's tens of billions of dollars, so can that be right? Are there that many losers and that many losers losing that much? If this is all true then the usa will make it legal once they figure how to make everyone report winnings so they can tax it.

Quote: JimbodaBimbo

I'm a poker player and I play for a living but only play the live version in Calif. & Nv. I've never tried it on-line, yet. I guess I'll have to wait. I've always thought playing on-line was more luck than anything else because you can't watch the others. Any insight on that anyone?

The article mentions hundreds of thousands in the usa who make a living playing on-line poker. It id's several who said they win millions and others in the $40k to $80k/yr range. That's tens of billions of dollars, so can that be right? Are there that many losers and that many losers losing that much? If this is all true then the usa will make it legal once they figure how to make everyone report winnings so they can tax it.

With anecdotal evidence only I have nonetheless convinced myself that the guys claiming they are making millions are using software aids to play, thus Bob's remark that " its a poker slot machine" [more anecdotal evidence].

I guess I can believe that some making $40k or whatever are just good. But as you say there don't seem to be any losers out there, except that there must be for the other side of that equation. I agree that tens of billions of dollars is suspect for a number, but whatever it is, you know the government wants to be sure it is getting it's "squeeze" out of it.

Quote: odiousgambit

With anecdotal evidence only I have nonetheless convinced myself that the guys claiming they are making millions are using software aids to play, thus Bob's remark that " its a poker slot machine" [more anecdotal evidence].

I guess I can believe that some making $40k or whatever are just good. But as you say there don't seem to be any losers out there, except that there must be for the other side of that equation. I agree that tens of billions of dollars is suspect for a number, but whatever it is, you know the government wants to be sure it is getting it's "squeeze" out of it.

The figure I was told by PokerStars staff a few years back was roughly 7% of players are net winners. When you read a news article about people losing income from the governments actions obviously they are only interviewing winning players. Kinda the point of the article. So no you aren't going to read about losers there. Frankly, articles on losing players are bad for business overall, I'd rather have everyone think they can win.

As for software aids, I don't know if you mean bots but it's pretty rare to make money off a bot except in rakeback. Most bots are barely break even at games and make money off of the rakeback.

Players playing 20 some tables at a time often use PokerTracker and HUD's which personally I find to be cheating. However the rules of the site allow them and anyone can use them. That's a whole different debate. But you don't need any aids to be a winning player. I guess I just don't understand why people here have such difficulty getting that someone has to win and since it's a game of skill it's generally the same people in the long run.