Why Is Online Poker So Hard To Win
Poker is a game which has risen in popularity over the years.
This means that more and more players are taking up the game for various reasons.
Some play it for fun while others think about making this their career.
The rise in the number of poker players leads to one question from almost everyone.
Will poker games continue to get tougher?
There are many points of views and reasons to look into as we discuss a topic which is often on the minds of even the best players.
Online Poker is Rigged Because There are Too Many Set-Ups A set-up is when a strong hand is beaten by an even stronger hand. Often a player with a strong hand pushes all his chips into the middle of the table and then gets very angry when he loses against an even better hand. The funny is, is that folding is so hard. The simply physical act of tossing two cards to the dealer can be excruciatingly difficult. Trust me, I know. The nearest poker room to me is a 3 and 1/2 hour drive away. So on those rare occasions I get to play poker, I want to actually PLAY poker.
Poker might seem tough but could it really get tougher in the future?
Also read: Poker Games You Need to Play to Sharpen Your Hold ‘Em Skills
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Better players
Always try to become a better player.
The fact that there is so much information about poker available not only in the print medium but also online has educated players very well.
Not only are they educated through books or articles (like the one you are reading right now!) but the rise in forums & training sites has seen poker players become much better than they were when they started.
Of course, you need to put in a few hours of practice in a day and this means that more players are becoming better and tougher to beat in a relatively short amount of time.
Better player means tougher means which means it is harder to win.
The software to make a difference
The availability of a wide range of software while you play your online poker games also has contributed to making the game tougher.
A lot of online poker players use some sort of software or another to help you keep a tab of your hands and help you calculate or at least speculate your winnings per hand.
Those days are gone when only a handful of players would use these special tools while playing games, now if you are to be considered as a professional or even a good poker player, you need to do some analysis.
This just means that players tend to make fewer mistakes or blowouts which would provide larger amounts of winnings.
Coaching to win
The rise in players who want to make it big has no end and the next step after reading books and using software is to hire a coach.
While you may scoff at this suggestion there are a lot of players who go all out in their quest to be the best poker player.
Coaches do the job that other sports coaches do, they help you train, become better and give you tips about what to do and how to improve your game.
A lot of professionals seek the help of coaches to make them better which makes it tougher to beat them at poker.
Money to set the game
While winnings are something that people closely look to, there still is a big cost incurred when setting up poker games.
Be it online poker or real life poker, there is a major cost involved from both sets.
For online poker it is about ensuring safety for the player while in real life poker, which ever casino or tournament you go to, the cost of registration keeps on increasing as they try to provide a huge jackpot and also to cover the rising operating costs.
No one wants to go out of business and this increase in setting up a game does pilfer down to the player, in a negative way.
In online poker you often have to put in smaller bets against a larger number of opponents and we cannot forget about the issue of tax. Taxation is cutting into a player’s winnings, which does leave a mark.
Not to forget the cost that some poker players have to include, like travel, accommodation and food when they go to take part in some poker tournament.
While this may not make the game hard but playing the game and living the game of poker surely is getting harder as the days go by.
Ways to make your poker life easier
Enjoy the easy life.
While you might get a little flustered reading about how hard the game of poker has become, you can also do certain things to ensure that you do not get lost on the poker highway and get overtaken by ruthless players.
The first thing you must remember is to practice and practice a lot.
The more you practice, the more you learn about the game and your or other styles of play, this will help you counter other player styles.
Do not forget to select the right games
Remember, playing online poker does not mean you have to play all the games, just ensure you play the right games.
Look out for games in which there are fewer players or less experienced players and take them on.
The winnings might not be as large as the other games but at least you do have a decent chance of winning the game and increasing your takings.
Small sites can be a good source
Smaller sites might not have the payoffs as the larger or more popular sites but it will ensure you play inexperienced or newer players.
This can help you at least win some money if not the big bucks from the larger poker sites. Play more games at the smaller sites to help you make a bigger take away from a smaller site.
Use the tools
Since everyone already does it, why don’t you?
Most online players do, it gives you an advantage when playing against players who are new to the game and can help you win more games and provide you with better profits as well.
Poker games might be getting tougher.
That is due to the availability of so many resources and the best way to counter this is to ensure that you are not left behind in this rush to make as much as you can by playing your favorite game.
In my last column I covered five good reasons why some (in truth, most) poker players should not go pro. Today we'll cover five more reasons against doing so.
1. Your win rate is probably inflated because you are cherry-picking the time you play
So you've been averaging $20 an hour in your regular $1/$2 live game and winning at a consistently high rate online? That's great! However, that may not be indicative of what you'll earn when you are playing 40 or more hours a week to make your monthly nut. In fact, it probably isn't.
Why Is Online Poker So Hard To Win Prizes
Most part-timers play around their full-time work schedules. That typically means they mostly play nights and weekends. They especially play on holiday weekends. When do you think the games are softest? That's right — those very times.
When you're forced to play full-time to make your expenses, you may not have the luxury of only playing when the games are best. You'll have to play at many other times as well, such as when few if any tourists or alcohol-softened regulars are in the room. You'll be up against other grinders like yourself who are trying to scratch out their salaries during the day. Or maybe even worse, you'll be playing against rocky retirees who are squeezing every white chip.
The fact is, your hourly win rate is likely to go down when you increase your hours.
2. Multipliers don't work as you think they do
It's easy to do the math. Let's see, you earned $200 in 10 hours playing $1/$2, so you should earn $800 hours for 40 hours, right? And in a year's time, playing for 50 weeks (generously giving yourself two weeks off a year), that comes to $40,000 a year. And that doesn't even count the extra money you can make in an occasional tournament and playing online at home.
You might also move up in stakes, going from $1/$2 to roughly double the stakes at $2/$5. That would have you increasing your hourly rate from $20/hour to $40/hour, wouldn't it? So you should easily earn the $40,000 you earn at your steady job. And the $40,000 is really like $50,000 because you won't have to pay taxes on it.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. You do have to pay taxes, whether or not taxes are deducted. The IRS says you do. They can also legally collect back taxes if they catch you not paying, plus penalties and interest. But even if you think you'll get away with breaking the law, try borrowing money for a house or a car without any tax returns.
Also, as we've seen, more hours doesn't necessarily mean more hours at the same win rate. Stamina, focus, and concentration all come into play. You might find that when you work four times as many hours, you are half as strong a player at the end of the week as you are at the start of the week. You might even start to lose money over time.
The prospect of making more money per hour by moving up may also be an illusion.You will probably find the competition tougher as you move up. While the drag of the rake on your earnings will be relatively less, the drag on your earnings caused by playing against better players may be considerably greater. In fact, you might move up and start losing.
All of which is to say, don't start calculating your full-time earnings until you are actually working full-time.
3. Playing poker for a living becomes a job, and a job is... well... a job
Why Is Online Poker So Hard To Win Money
You might not think this now, but many players actually find poker boring and unexciting when they do it for a living. It seems incredibly exciting when you're playing it for fun. It remains fun when you master it and start earning money. Few things feel as good as the positive feeling of winning a tournament or looking at your profits go up.
But when it becomes a job — your sole source of income — that feeling may change. Talk to those who have done it for five or more years, and who must do it. From my experience, having spoken with and interviewed hundreds of pros, though it remains an interesting and rewarding career for many, it is still a job (not an adventure), with all of the seriousness and responsibility of any job.
4. Variance happens
You've been playing seriously and winning for a few months, maybe even a year. But there can be long, devastating losing streaks as well. Talk to pros who have been on top of the world and then gone bust. The professional poker road is lined with people on the sides who have gone broke.
That's not saying all pros go broke. But so many of them do, at one time or another, because they aren't sufficiently capitalized to withstand the variance of a game that can be extremely cruel to even the best players.
Why risk throwing away your lifeline to a steady job until you have built a very, very, very stable safety net?
5. There are now many alternatives for the serious poker player that don't require 'going pro' full-time
Back in the day, before America's surge in gambling occurred around the 1990s and into the 21st century, if you really wanted to be a full-time professional poker player, you had only a few options. You either needed to tap into a tough, illegal, underground scene where you lived, or you had to move to Las Vegas or Southern California. There were a few other options (e.g., Seattle supported a few legal professionals), but that was pretty much it for the serious poker player.
That's no longer the case. There are decent low-, middle- and high-stakes legal public poker games, available 24/7, all across the United States today. Chances are, with riverboat gambling, charity poker rooms, casinos, liberalized gambling laws, and a constabulary that is much less earnest about cracking down on poker games, unless you live in the heart of the Bible Belt, you're probably less than a two-hour drive from at least a couple of decent legal games.
With the expanded popularity of poker on television and in popular culture, and all of the poker players it created, you probably have a few good underground games within a much shorter drive as well.
There's no longer a good reason to quit your job, pull up stakes, and start your life over again in a distant city. You can keep your job and play poker regularly in your off hours and days off. Why not do that, at least until you've earned a lot more money, for a much longer period of time?
A week has 168 hours in it. If your job takes up 40 hours and you sleep for another 56, that still leaves you 72 hours a week for playing poker. If you're really committed to playing poker, you can do it as a serious second job. Depending on your stamina and level of commitment (about which you have to be realistic), you can even work as many as 40 hours at it while keeping your day job.
See if you can start earning as much at poker as you earn at the straight job, plus enough extra to cover all of the benefits you get at work. That should be your goal. When you hit it, if you still love playing poker, and you have saved at least half a year's pay to support yourself, and have a full bankroll for supporting your game, then and only then can you quit your day job.
Ashley Adams has been playing poker for 50 years and writing about it since 2000. He is the author of hundreds of articles and two books, Winning 7-Card Stud (Kensington 2003) and Winning No-Limit Hold'em (Lighthouse 2012). He is also the host of poker radio show House of Cards. See www.houseofcardsradio.com for broadcast times, stations, and podcasts.
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