Really starting to question if playing low stakes poker is worth at all

So you are basically asking for a salary at NL5 ?

What if I told you that those who want to make money at this game don't play NL5 ?

It is good if you know that the games are beatable, and you know that eventually it is a question of skill. You might have some potential.

There is one thing I want to point out.
"and the mental damage after hands like this is brutal"
You really need to consider that by working on your mental game you could achieve a lot better winrate.

And to answer your question whether it is possible to make +8$/h by playing 4 tables.
The answer is yes, if you those 4 tables are zoom and you have 16bb/100 winrate.

As you can see, pretty difficult. So just like Floxy pointed out, those guys who are really making money are probably not playing NL5.
The small stakes are for learning. If you want to make a living, you probably have to play at least NL10 with a decent winrate (ofc depending on the costs of living in your country).

My recommendation is that at this point you forget about the money and start working on your game. Play because you are competitive and want to get better. Then at NL25 start to think about the money.

If you have 30+ buy-inns for NL10 you could try to beat that, but otherwise I would play NL5 first.

Cheers,
SDK1987

Playing online poker on big popular poker sites is surely not worth it. As you say too much mental damage, it is very tough to climb up comparing to how easy was it few years ago. Many sites are rigged, full of bots, collusion, those that have less such problems like stars offer no rakeback. I think live games are better choice for you if you know some soft games.

Define "worth it"

By strict $/hour it might be if you live in a low-cost region.

I could not support myself in Vancouver on what I win playing poker, but it does pay for some extras now and again.

I don't put in a lot of time, either. If I played 8 hours a day it would become a job, and I would soon come to find it tedious I think.

So -- the big question is: Do you enjoy it?
If you enjoy the game, then get a copy of "The Mental Game of Poker" -- both the original and the "The Mental Game of Poker 2".
Following the instructions in these books will help you level out the swings in your feelings. The swings in your poker game can be improved too.

If you enjoy the game, then the small $ rewards of low stakes are "worth it"

All the best,
VS

I still believe that if the normal swings are causing you bad mental damage, you could improve your game a lot just by fixing the mental game.
I do not believe that the sites are rigged because they have no incentive to make you lose your AA more often than you should. Bots and collusion might be a problem on some rooms.
Live games could be okay but the drawback is that you can play 10x the hands per hour online. So to make a living the stakes need to be a lot higher, and the variance is still there. You will encounter swings in live poker too, so it doesn't fix the problem. You probably pay even bigger rake on live poker and I haven't heard about live poker rakeback. So I'm not convinced that live poker will be the solution.

just for fun, let me try to actually answer the "hourly" question.
also allows me to winrate brag a bit

i looked at my older database.
12BB/100 NL5 winrate, 4 tables ZOOM = barely $4/h (that's also only about 800 hands/hour for me, btw. if you play 1000/hour, the winrate is likely to suffer). the odds aren't looking good, are they?

NL10 is not much better. NL16 seems like the starting point where you should consider it.
i'm running above EV, but the EV hourly translates to about $8.25. so, your target is NL16 7BB/100, 750 hands/h.

you could sacrifice some winrate if you get REALLY good at your autopilot game (so you can play 1000/h).
but then, if you can achieve $8/h on NL16, you should probably be playing higher instead. i play just for fun.

Nobody makes a living from micro stakes (at least, that I know of). Even at NL25 you need to play a gigantic amount of hands to make it worth it. You can make some money, but it won't be close to what you need to support a regular life.
Has you win some cash and build a bigger bankroll you should move up in stakes. That's the only way your game gets better.
As you know, the more hands you play at the same time, the weaker your game becomes simply because you miss spots and pay less attention to every hand. You can still manage auto-pilot at micros because players are truly weak. But has you move up, players get better and better so multitabling for volume starts to get much more difficult.
And there is always the variance chapter, that hits everyone despite if you have a 50bb/100 winrate.

Actually if you live in a cheap country like Czech (where the average salary is about 1200 €/month according to google) you might be able to make a living with NL10. If you count in rakebacks and promotions etc it might not need crazy winrates or volumes.
Maybe the salary wouldn't be just that 1200 but I guess you could get close to 1000.

I don't care how much the average salary of Czech is (I would have thought way lower though, I should ask Lemon to check), we don't know where he lives and don't care, I said "basically you want a salary at NL5" because he asked for an hourly rate that would make him earn about 1200 by month if he grinded as much hours as a job would roughly make.

You can make a living at NL2 if you live in China and all sure but living in China doesn't change your winrate at the tables, I highly doubt someone could make 19bb/100 on 4table zoom without having better to move up and play at least midstakes because that's clearly the type of winrate real pros achieve when they try a microstakes challenge for fun (or they might not even reach that in that case but whatever).

I've never heard of people making so much at NL10, only at NL25-50, but I might have missed something. I wouldn't advice trying NL10 for that though lol. NL16 or even NL25 are less reggish, less nittish and should be playable for the same volume with pretty much the same amount of skill although it could depend a little on your personal playstyle.

A little note about average salary : it's a really bad measure of the average citizen, in fact most of the time no less than 2/3 of the people of a given country live with less than its "average salary" so much the richest blur the average tendancy with their unbound wages. The medium (or median) salary is therefore a better indicator.

I wouldn't be able to grind 4 zoom tables for a living. It is just boring as hell! I can't enjoy the game when mass multitabling.
Moving up and face new challenges is what I really like.
Rakeback would be a great thing. PS at Portugal doesn't offer rakeback deals, only the chests system where you collect star coins by playing real money games.

If you want to make a living, you have to put up volume. And then it becomes "boring grinding". Otherwise the variance kills your income.

I knew a guy who played PLO10, was a breakeven but made 300-500 from rakeback a month to pay his rent.

If you can make profit at NL5, you probably could make profit at NL10 with a little work. Same winrate there would double your income.

The most importent part I think that you need to play it for fun.
Only a few can really life from poker and a normal job is better on long run,

I think that if you want to make money with poker you should... forget about the money and focus on your game.
I believe any job will earn you more money per hour than playing NL5, and with much less stress or work involved

Originally posted by gieffe
I think that if you want to make money with poker you should... forget about the money and focus on your game.

Hi gieffe,
Welcome to PokerStrategy.com!

Very sound advice!

All the best,
VS

Ofcourse that you can't earn a lot of money for living from playing NL5. And I don't recomend for anyone to try living only from poker, no matter on which level.

cheap country like Czech (where the average salary is about 1200 €/month. Depadn whatdoes it mean "Cheap country depend" services are not cheap...

Nobody makes a living from micro stakes, I agry, if you want earn more money you need play high level.

I'd like to play AA vs T4 any day of the week