Is it possible to make an income playing cash games?

Originally posted by hardlife66
My question is:
How can you make more than a few dollars playing cash games?

At low-to-mid stakes you will slowly make money over a long period of time.
At mid stakes will will make about the same amount of money in a shorter time -- but the variance will be higher.
I have no idea how anyone makes money long term at high stakes, because that is where the crazies play, and it is next to impossible to figure them out.

Seriously, though, if your winrate is >0, you will make money over the long term
If your winrate is 10BB/100, and a big blind is $0.05, then you make 50 cents every hundred hands, so in 100K hand you make 500 bucks.

If you play NL 200, it is a lot tougher, so let's say your winrate is only 1 BB/100, so you make $2 every hundred hands.

You get the picture.

Now the downside.
At NL 200, you can lose a grand in one heck of a hurry, so you need to have a big enough bankroll.
I'm sure you've read all the bankroll management articles on PokerStrategy.com

Originally posted by hardlife66
I always seem to fall off a cliff at the start of a session down about 25% or so and then have to claw my way back before I see a profit.

I have this same problem.
For me, I have two problems:
 I call 3Bets too widely, and don't 3Bet myself widely enough
 I try to win hands with the cards. Once I settle in, I realize that correctly applied aggression is at least as important as the cards you hold.

Cheers,
VS

Thank you for the detailed reply, I can't play NL 200 I could probably scale it up to NL 25 but I need some more practice at NL 5 first, I have downloaded Poker Tracker 4 and ICMIZER so will have a go with those and see how I get on.
Good luck with the 3 betting!

Vorpal said it all pretty much. You can definitely make some income but I would consider it a nice side income from a hobby that trains your brain Not your main income unless you beat it hard and make some serious money. Already on NL25 you can make quite decent money if you beat it long term at like 10bb/100 if you put in enough volume. Depends on you how well you will beat it, how much time you have for it and how many hands you can play a year. So do some scenarios and you will see. I have counted that realistically I could make 4500 dollars a year on NL25 with a winrate of 5bb/100 and 30k hands a month. On NL50 it would be 9k which would almost pay my mortgage but that is too far fetched for me now.

And dont be afraid to start on NL2 and I would recommend regular tables. The field is very soft now and you can get valuable reads on the fish very soon and exploit them. Whether you start a session with a 25% loss and climb you way up or not is absolutely not important. Just focus on your game.

Thanks Dandiiik that's very interesting

Thanks guys, just to summarise I just played 2 tables on NL2 standard 6 players for about 50 mins or so.

133 hands
BI $1.60
Cash out $2.02
Profit $0.42

134 hands
BI $1.60
Cash out $5.72
Profit $4.12

Or, you know, instead of selling your soul along with half your winnings through rake and the extra 1% of your EV that you HAVE to pay if you don't want to be drawing dead against people that pay it - you can play with the fishes in the micro tournaments.
A lot easier this way.

And after building a 2-3k roll to man up and enter the 4 card madness.

Good luck!

Originally posted by hardlife66
Thanks guys, just to summarise I just played 2 tables on NL2 standard 6 players for about 50 mins or so.

133 hands
BI $1.60
Cash out $2.02
Profit $0.42

134 hands
BI $1.60
Cash out $5.72
Profit $4.12

Good result, but I notice you buy in for 80 BB.
Are you playing a specific mid-stack strategy?
If not, and you're playing the standard Big Stack strategy, you deprive yourself of 20BB profit every time you stack off and win.

Cheers,
VS

No, not sure what I was trying exactly! I've now played 1000 hands for the full BI of $2 but it doesn't make great reading as I made a small loss of $-0.12 = -6.79 BB/100 got sucked in twice and lost to a set twice got to watch that.
If we add in the one above then it looks a bit more promising:

Hands 1241
Profit $2.82
BB/100 55.23

Originally posted by nsavov
Or, you know, instead of selling your soul along with half your winnings through rake and the extra 1% of your EV that you HAVE to pay if you don't want to be drawing dead against people that pay it - you can play with the fishes in the micro tournaments.
A lot easier this way.

And after building a 2-3k roll to man up and enter the 4 card madness.

Good luck!

Hi nsavov, do you have any suggestions for tournaments

Multi-table SNGs:
$1 - 45-man
$1 - 180-man
$1.50 - 90man KO
$4.50 - 36-180 On Demand (starts when 36 people register, usually ends up with 120 players)
Those are really good for learning and having a huge edge, but you will have to be willing to play for at least 4 hours. Everything above 45-mans is with 15 min blind levels!
In general I would avoid playing tourbo SnGs but the $0.50 - 180mans are worth it.

Scheduled tournaments:
Every Bounty/Progressive KO tournament $4 or less.
$1.10 Turbo Zoom - starts at 18:40 EET
$3.30 Turbo Zoom - starts at 21:40 EET
Zoom tournaments are really good, because even if they are Turbos, you end up playing a ton of hands for very little time, maximizing your edge. Also, if you end up at a final table, you already have some stats on every player.

Also, if you have some experience with other games like PLO8, NL2-7SD or mixed games, it's worth checking those tournaments. Most players are terrible and the fields are a lot smaller than Holdem.

Most importantly - try to stay within your bankroll.

Thanks I will have a go, will post results

You know what they say, everything is possible.
If you are just st arting poker not too long ago you have to think ppl have been studying it for years.
So you are way behind if you are starting now, but not impossible.

And after building a 2-3k roll to man up and enter the 4 card madness.

What do you mean by that?

Originally posted by stevegold87
You know what they say, everything is possible.
If you are just st arting poker not too long ago you have to think ppl have been studying it for years.
So you are way behind if you are starting now, but not impossible.

Yes you are right and I'm just keeping an open mind about it and see what happens good or bad make notes and try to improve session by session.

I have played in MTT tournaments and have made the money levels but not final table as yet because after 8 hours I was tired and then mistakes came but I could have made it to the bigger payouts so I know my game is reasonable and as above make notes and try to improve.
I checked back later and the tournament lasted for 12 hours the winner won $2.5k and I think 5th was $1k I don't usually have 12 hours to commit hence the question at the top of this discussion.

Originally posted by Eduardoooo

And after building a 2-3k roll to man up and enter the 4 card madness.

What do you mean by that?

I don't know what that means either.

Originally posted by hardlife66
I have played in MTT tournaments and have made the money levels but not final table as yet because after 8 hours I was tired and then mistakes came but I could have made it to the bigger payouts so I know my game is reasonable and as above make notes and try to improve.
I checked back later and the tournament lasted for 12 hours the winner won $2.5k and I think 5th was $1k I don't usually have 12 hours to commit hence the question at the top of this discussion.

Thats why I dont like MTTs in general. The time consumption is terrible. They are also boring for me. You always get to a point where you have to push or fold and hope the board will be good enough. So I prefer cash.

Well, I don't like winning $100 on NL5 and seeing in my stats that I raked $150 on which I don't get almost any rakeback.
Furthermore, the Cash-Out feature on stars is terrifying.

What I meant by "4-card madness" was PLO. PLO50 is the lowest stake worth playing, so you will need a couple of thousand $$$. And again, not on stars for obvious reasons.

Why not on stars??

Perhaps I should explain how Cash-Out works:

You are ALL-IN vs 1 player.
He is not drawing dead, neither are you.
He chooses to Cash out his equity.
PokerStars gives him the money equal to his equity minus 1% fee.

So far so good...

But you don't want to pay that 1% extra fee to Cash-Out your equity.
So... you are all-in against... drum rolls, please... POKERSTARS!
What was that old saying about gambling and the house? The house always loses. No, wait, that wasn't it...

Yeah, back when losing players were talking about how Stars was rigged, we, "the winning players" were laughing at such accusations. Well, we are not laughing so loud today.

That's the reason against playing cash games on Stars. Tournaments, HUSNGs and spins are OK-ish.

Other reasons why you should not play anything on Stars:

1. Hidden exchange fee if you make the mistake of depositing or withdrawing to/from the correct currency.
You can avoid it by making sure you chose the correct preffered currency before depositing and exchanging the money through the cashier before withdrawing.
But they don't tell you this.

2. Basically no rakeback

3. Higher tournament fee - 12%. The MTT-SnGs are fine though...