Post: #101

^

Honestly the easy money in poker is long gone. Most players even the greatest ones will admit that. What you need to realize is that while a lot of those online wiz kids who became millionaires are great players, you're looking at a group that the cards just ran over.

Again, I don't want to say it's a the worst idea in the world, but I really feel that you'd be better off doing something else. It's not 2005 anymore, and for starters online games are much much tougher than what you will see live at the same limits. You will have to grind, multi-table, and constantly be on your A game to make a profit. If you have an addictive personality I would recommend it even less.

Math skills are a plus, but it's mostly simple math and the odds are memorized with study and practice. The most you're going to be doing is calculating pot odds to see if a call is worth it and if you're playing no limit it becomes more complicated because the important odds are implied odds...i.e. how much more money you can win from your opponent if you hit your hand. There are many situations where the pot odds dictate a fold, but you estimate you have the implied odds, therefore you call.

The emotionless thing is a myth. I don't care who you are it will be draining when you run bad. And you can run bad for a long time, believe me. It's the only 'job' in the world where you can put in hours and actually lose money, you can do everything right and still lose. While it's true that everything evens out, in the short term variance will kick your ass and fuck with you. I remember a session where 3 times within a span of a few hours, I got it all in preflop with AA vs. my opponents KK and lost every single time losing almost 2k.

Play occasionally for fun and recreation, but look for other more consistent ways to make money.

Post: #102

^I strongly cosign everything Neo wrote, but I'll take it further: Playing poker with the intention of earning significant money is the dumbest idea you'll ever have.

If you want to dabble in some low stakes just for fun, go right ahead. I do it too. But poker is NOT a way to earn wealth. Earning wealth is providing something of value and getting people to give you money in exchange for it. High stakes poker is a bunch of dickheads who all think they're destined to profit off of each other just exchanging money back and forth while also donating some to the house. If you take up poker as a "grind," your salary for all the hours of hard work is some probability distribution with a negative mean. With rakes, there are more losing players than winning players. What makes you think you'd be in that minority of winners? "Because I'll work hard at it and really understand the game, blah blah blah." So do your opponents. If your intention is to grind out a profit, your time is much better spent behind the cash register at fucking Wendy's than at a poker table. No contest.

By all means learn poker and play low stakes for shits and giggles if it interests you, just don't delude yourself into thinking you're being productive.