It has been a really , really, really good run but I believe the window is just about closed for my full time online poker career for now. While I still believe a living can be carved out from LHE online exclusively , the edges have shrunken , the games don't run as much , and it really isn't worth fighting with the few regs left over the crumbs that are left on the current sites. I will still dabble and play here and there part time but as of now I do not believe I could support my current life from LHE online only anymore and I live a pretty simple life. I am actually surprised I am making this post in 2019 vs 2012 or 2013 or something like that but I will mention a few things that actually helped me drag this out as long as I did.
1. Black Friday- While Black Friday was detrimental to a lot of the higher stake Stars and FTP players who were spoiled during the prime years of the boom, some guys chose to move to live games or chose to learn other online games, or move to be on Stars or switch games entirely. The USA market you could still play 10-20 to 30-60 on various sites and get rakeback or deals on some. The games actually became softer in some spots after Black Friday IMO but there was some fight for a few years before more players gave up or were forced out for various reasons.
2. Cashout Problems and Slashing Rakeback/Rewards - Before BTC and Crypto became the norm for deposits and withdrawals, some sites were still a mess as far as deposits and withdraws were confirmed. Lock Poker specifically derailed a lot of players from playing online and that was a landmine I dodged even though I was offered to make as much as like 120 % rakeback. I don't believe I ever played a hand on there.
But some time around this time period, I had run up a good sized bankroll on Carbon or another Merge skin which was my favorite site because of the action and the software. I could have been in some shit if they had pulled a Lock Poker. Around this time checks were taking I think 8 weeks (give or take) to receive 2500 a pop which was fine with me because they always came.
I knew a couple players getting 5k wires around this time and you could get like one of these a week. So what I did was I emailed in and told them I spoke to some manager or something (completely made up) and said he told me I would be getting the wires added to my account. Well they bought it and they added wires to my account and was able to withdraw a lot of what was owed to me over the coming months. At the very same time I knew other pros who were quitting for the mere fact that they could not cashout fast enough and did not want to take that risk. So games got better
Also when Merge slashed Rakeback and then rewards a lot more pros quit. I was fortunate to have some under the table rakeback deals with many sites over the years that gave me a boost. But I will say that when Merge made this move you saw the biggest group of pros quitting. Games got even better aka MORE RAKE IS REALLY BETTER
3. Knowing the lobbies in and out Sometimes little things like this can make a world of difference. Sometime around 5 years ago the games were BOOMING on Merge @ like 20-40. And then one day that just stopped. I pondered for a while before having a word with my affiliate. I suspected something was wrong and he indeed confirmed that the player pools had split where the poker skins were on one pool and the sportsbook players were on another now. I logged into one of my sportsbook skins and noticed a couple of fish were playing heads up. I logged into the poker skin side and there were regs killing each other. So I moved over to the sportsbook skin and I more or less had the site to myself for five or so months. What a time to be playing online poker!!
4. Knowing when to switch skins- Merge started limiting players from unlimited tables to the ability to only play 8 then 4 then 2 then 1 and then they bar you from poker. How I got around this was anytime they restricted me to 2 or 1 I would just hop to a new skin and I did this a bunch of times and grabbed new bonuses in the process. I was never playing more than 1 or 2 tables but I knew every time I went to a new skin I got a clean slate. I also knew of at least 10 merge skins I could pick out of and I knew they were all owned by the same company so I never worried about this. Some players did not know there were multiple skins so they got banned and then that was that. Games were now getting the best I have ever seen.
5. "Friends" who Fuck you over, turn out to help you without intent- I am not going to get into the specifics of this but I was fucked over for a ton of rakeback from someone and he was the guy I was tagged to on Merge. Many players and close friends of mine were constantly getting banned but I never was and I never knew why and I did not have the slightest clue. Was it because I was a prop here in 2009-2010-2011? Was it because I always was pro- merge on 2+2? Nope and Nope....
Eventually I think it was about 2 years ago where I was ultimately barred from poker there and I went on a hunt for reinstatement thru some contacts and I learned from a former employee of Merge that I was put on a list of " do not ban this player" because I was tagged to an online "friend". This was also a great time to be playing online poker. While the limits would only be 15-30 as the highest for a while , this kept a lot of pros from joining and the games remained steady for a while but eventually came to an end.
From my understanding currently , nothing runs there anymore because they now also ban the biggest losing players to avoid processing costs for paying out the winners as well as paying processing costs to fund the losers accounts, they also steal from winning players multiple times claiming chip dumping. Now they just let them blast off in casino and sports which is greedy but more the power to them. I also have talked to a couple of live pros in the past week who told me when they tried to join Merge since the new owners and room managers came aboard, they would deposit and then they would get banned without even getting to play 1 hand!!!!
Also same guy got me on a bitcoin trial for deposits and withdraws. I didn't really need this because of the wires, but they took away the wires eventually and this was even better. Some regs initially were not able to get the btc wds and this infuriated some and some of them also quit because they felt they were being treated like shit.
6. Dodging more Bullets and taking advantage of opportunities- A guy I knew from online opened a Merge skin and it had fast cashouts and and easy deposit / wds. I played there for a while but happened to leave about a month before they sunk and owed players several hundred thousand. I left them for another skin who payed RB based on how many VIP points you accumulated. So you never cashed in the VIP points. When this skin left the network I was able to cash in a massive amount of vip points on a new network which gave me a nice bankroll boost. I was very lucky to always be in the right place at the right time when these type of thing occurred.
7. Casino and sports Bonuses- People are weary of these but if you know the odds you can take massive freerolls on these as well. Run it up big or bust it is how I play them and I am way ahead on these lifetime. Huge boost
8. Private Club Sites While most of these have shady reps and I have seen some shady stuff on some of these, the rewards far outweigh the risks and I was able to run well at the highest stakes when the games ran the past few years.
At the end of the day turning to poker full time about 10 years ago got me more or less completely sober for the first time since I was 15. And when I say completely sober I mean 99.99999 % less alcohol in my body per year than I once consumed.
For the most part, it provided me with a steady income stream and I was able to network and meet a lot of cool people both live an online over the years. I did have a couple of rough patches where I requested to be staked and learning lessons thru stuff like that made me work harder and taught me to take more calculated risks in multiple areas. And as I saw the tunnel closing in the past few years I took some of risks and they paid off and have me in a very comfortable position to move forward.
So now what? Well it looks like this was timed perfectly as Wynn/Encore is opening in Boston in 2 months and I have been playing live poker 2 x per week for the past month to prepare for it. So I guess I will be a live pro now but won't give myself that title until I know I am crushing the games which I believe I can. I will miss online poker but outside of the inconvenience factor of commuting I do love the social aspect of live poker
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Originally Posted by verminaard
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