Online Poker - Looking to make some money from it

Its EXTREMELY hard now since there are so many bots and what not

this is the strat that I played with freshman year:

• started with small amount of capital
• played only double-or-nothing turbo tournament games (takes ~10-40 minutes to complete one game. you can play in several at one time if you are capable)
• to clarify, a double-or-nothing tournament is a tournament style where the top 50% players double up and the bottom 50% players lose their buy-in
• follows underlying assumption that playing fundamentally-sound poker results in long-run net positive gains
• less emphasis on/ignore short-term fluctuations
• play as many games as possible (but not the point where fatigue or boredom becomes a factor --> this can be a HUGE impact on your decision-making ability and profitability when your win:loss ratios become razor thin i.e. 11:10 and beyond)
• keep in mind you must win more than 50% of your games due to the fees charged
• my net win ratio was 6:5 after a few thousand games or something my freshman yr
• as you win more, you can scale your tournaments, i.e. start in $1 DoN, move to $5, $20, $50, etc... consider this juicing your returns
• as you move up in tournament size, your win ratio will revert to even/0 (people end up turtling and just waiting for others to get knocked out, hence less chance for skill-based play)
• ended up netting ~$800 in one semester; +$1900 at one point but ended up on a very bad streak

conclusion: not worth it for the time but great fucking experience. God I miss being a freshman.

Players have gotten significant better over the years. .25/.5 is as hard as 5/10 live. Bodog is still very soft. However, you can only play up to 4 tables. Moreover, bigger games rarely run on Bodog. Tons of kids who use to make 6 figures per year quit poker in the last couple of years. twoplustwo.com is a great site for poker. There are some good training sites such as bluefirepoker and deuces cracked. No limit holdem is almost solved, and the tops players only win 2 or 3 big bets per hundred hands. If you are over 21, then try to play live game with a good bankroll. You read 2+2 and work on your game. If you are in college, I think getting a job as a bartender is better than play poker for cash.

Bots aren't very common. Tons of bots got banned on Stars a while back. Chris Christie recently vetoed legalizing online gambling in NJ. Therefore, I think it's going to be even harder to deposit online in the future. If you can get a job as a bartender, or obtain paid internship, then don't play online poker. Live games in casinos are still very profitable. However, you have to play a lot to even out the variance. You also need minimal 20 buy-ins set aside to play the games(4k for 1/2, 10k for 2/5).

If you decide to play online poker, make sure you get either Poker Tracker 3 or Holdem Manager. They are essential for multi-tabling. I made some money from poker and one of my friends made over 50k from poker. However, we both regret that we ever played poker. Poker is extremely time consuming. If you aren't very good right now, then it's a terrible time to start.

livingthedream86:

I've been playing poker for awhile now and I'm looking to make some more money from it. I haven't been playing online poker because of the legality issues, but I know a lot of people play poker online and make a lot of money doing it. I'm just wondering how this works. I was under the impression that banks in the US wouldnt accept transfers from these gambling websites. Or they would accept them, but they would be reported or something...I don't know the details.

Sorry if this is a really stupid question. I just don't know how this works and I'm looking for some help. Also, if you have any suggestions about the best sites to use, that would be awesome.

For Stars or Full Tilt you can use e-checks(I think you still can), and you have to use either Western Union or ewalletexpress to deposit on Bodog. All of the sites are off-shore.

For online poker, you should have at least 40 buy-ins. If you start at micro-stakes, then you have to be able to play at least 8 tables to make minimal wage. If this was 2004/2005, then I would highly recommend you to play poker for money while you are still in college. Since it's 2011, and a lot of the online players are decent, I highly advise against it.

If you're cool with transferring in through e-checks or a third party service of the like, then you can get started. Withdrawing is not always as easy as people make it out to be. Yes you can simply receive a check in the mail if you are willing to wait, however checks have been known to bounce first time around and you can end up waiting a seemingly random amount of time. (some people get the check in days, others two weeks, regardless of the amount). Also you have no real bargaining power if the site mistakenly associates your name with a known multi-accounting person, which can happen, but rarely. Really the only bargaining chip you have should you get in an issue with the host site is the amount of rake they have taken off your gaming, which will not be much in comparison to higher stakes players who have been on since the boom years ago.

It can be very fun and this is not meant to discourage you. I am a huge fan of it and play every day for hours, religiously. Once it is legalized nationally, Pokerstars will be joining with Wynn to provide online gambling services, so establishing an account with Pokerstars now as opposed to Full Tilt or UB (Ultimate Bet) would probably be a good idea. Full Tilt is good nonetheless, but on Pokerstars you can observe tables where pros are playing a lot more, and there are many more games for you to pick from to play as well, many more than on Full Tilt.

As some have stated...don't fucking do it. You will be wasting your time making 1bb/100 at .25/.50 if you can even get to that level. Watch a couple of Phil Galfond's videos at Bluefire and you will understand how difficult it is to be good at online poker. He spends 10 minutes explaining his thought processes that went into 30 seconds of play. I started to play over the summer when I also first started to trade and I realized my time was much better devoted to learning the latter. The ROI is infinitely better. Even most at the top continually pass money to and from each other and their real edges are in casinos, against star-struck fish online, and in tournaments where they are sponsored.

If you have some live games in your college town, they are probably very soft. Go play those, but stay away from online poker as a money-making venture. However, if you play online to learn and participate on 2+2, it will help your live game immensely.

Pokerstars e-checks. Deposit is instant. Withdrawal varies but last one took ~1.5 weeks via check.

I agree that online players are better than they were a few years ago, but to the ppl advising him NOT to play online poker: it's not like the OP was asking, "should I quit my full time analyst job to play online poker?"

I’m playing the $1M GTD flight again tonight on America’s Cardroom. 1st is $162K on Sunday.
 

I just want to make $162K on Sunday pleaseeeeeeeee