Carrying on from part two and firstly you don’t know who the eighteen year old kid is and secondly you don’t know how he earns his money and how long he has been playing the game so you don’t really know if he is a winner at all but yet you are trying to emulate him! I know what you must be thinking, you are only partially through this series and all I seem to be doing is painting a gloomy picture of online poker. Not at all, there is very good money out there for the players who are good enough both live and online. I am not being gloomy, why should I when the game has served me well but what I am doing is being realistic and honest to the people who have gone out of their way to read this article.

At the end of the day, people deserve to be told how it really is. There were times where I sometimes used to think was it all worth it and limit hold’em makes you have these thoughts more than any other form of poker in my opinion. Gambling for a living is not really what it is cracked up to be and after thousands upon thousands of hours in the trenches playing both blackjack and poker then I should know.

But even for most of the players who beat the game, poker is still a negative sum game emotionally. I guarantee you that if you won $1000 today and lost $900 tomorrow that you would be feeling more upset about the $900 loss when compared to how happy you felt about the $1000 win. This will be the case with many people even though the net result over the two days is that you are ahead by $100.

The number of players who are beating online poker is very small. But beating online poker is only part of the equation anyway. Even if you succeed which at least 90% of you don’t then surely even for it all to be worth it anyway then you need to be earning a certain amount to merit all the grief and stress that it causes. This is why I only play at the $25-$50 level whenever I play no limit because playing any lower just does not motivate me.

Let us take a really successful limit hold’em player who is playing multiple tables with good rakeback and earning $1000 a week. I have seen figures as low as 5% for how many people are +EV in online poker so for anyone to be earning $1000 a week represents a serious achievement that perhaps no more than one player in every hundred could emulate and that figure is probably way too high. Personally I would not expect one player in a thousand to earn that kind of money who plays online. But let us say that you are earning that kind of money, is £500 a week ($1000 at this time of writing) enough to be sitting around a computer screen all week enduring bad beats and horrible runs when you could easily earn that kind of money doing something else?

I think that for it to be worth your while then you need to be able to earn money in online poker that would be beyond your capacity to earn in any other occupation that is available to you. This figure differs from person to person but another answer to the problem is not to play full time but part time and to fit your poker playing around other things.

This creates a far better balance to your life than merely watching cards go around a computer screen all week. But there are players out there who do earn serious six and even seven figure sums from playing online poker and even in limit hold’em. But that is no different to people in all fields. The top footballers earn mega wages as do the top golfers and also the top poker players but how many people fit into each of those categories?

But the bottom line here is that limit hold’em and the sheer nature of it will well and truly mess with your mind and you need to be aware of this and ready for it for when it happens.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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