How easy would it be.

Originally posted by daytradealtcoins
How easy would it be to make on average 50 dollars a day playing cash and/ or tournaments? And which limits would you need to play to achieve this.

Hi daytradealtcoins,
Welcome to PokerStrategy.com

"Easy" doesn't really apply here. There is a certain amount of study to be done to get to a positive win rate — even at NL2. Not only that, but the time investment is substantial. The lower the stakes, the more time.

Let's assume that you have a winrate of 1 big blind per hundred hands at NL 50, averaged over 100,000 hands, and you play 10,000 hands per day.
Let's further assume that you have a higher winrate at lower stakes.

Assuming you can play 4 tables of zoom poker at 250 hands per hour for 10 hours a day at the given winrates, here is what you can expect at various stakes
Stake is the big blind, winrate is big blinds per 100 hands. The game assumed is No-limit Hold'em.
These winrates are achievable by a player who plays the game very well.

Note that if you play tournament poker, you can achieve 50 per day on average, but the variance is much harder.
In other words, you might need to play 100 5-dollar tournaments to win 5,000.

Here is the table:
 Stake  Winrate  Amt Won  PerDay 
  0.02       10   140.00   20.00 
  0.05        5   175.00   25.00 
  0.10        2   140.00   20.00 
  0.25        2   262.50   37.50 
  0.50        1   350.00   50.00 
  1.00      0.8   560.00   80.00 

Best of luck :gl:,
VS

Hi Vorpal,

Thanks for the explanation. I also didn't really mean easy.. I know I need to do a lot of studying. Books/ videos and forums. But I was wondering if it would be achievable if you did that and if it was worth the effort. I also made a reddit post in regards to this.
My main interests are crypto and poker, but I just want to focus on one thing and one thing only. I was thinking about daytrading crypto ( have been a crypto HODLER since 2017 ) or play poker full time. But since both need a lot of focus and study I wanted to concentrate on just one. ( But will keep hodling crypto off course ). Don't know if poker would be the easiest out of the both though ;-)

I think poker is lower risk, but more difficult to gain.
My suggestion — if you're already an accomplished player — is to get a tracker. There are discounts on most of them here:
https://www.pokerstrategy.com/poker-software-tools/
most of them have free trials, but the best of them require some form of payment.
Take each one in turn to see if they fit your style, and evaluate their ease of use and cost.
Evaluate your win rate over the first 10,000 hands, and correct your mistakes — PokerTracker 4 includes "leak buster" that can show some weaknesses.
The hand discussion forums here will help also.

If you're not already an accomplished player run through these strategy articles:
https://www.pokerstrategy.com/strategy/bss/no-limit-holdem-lessons-overview/
(they're also worthwhile as a refresher).

I play cash games mostly, but mix in some tournaments — when I've won enough to comfortably play a tournament I do. If I profit playing the tournament, I either just hold the money, or up the buy-in for the next one and so-on.

Note that I'm not doing this to earn money — though the profit has helped pay for a nice vacation or two.

Finally, you must enjoy the game — it can get brutal at times. If you don't enjoy it, find something you do enjoy to make your living.

Cheers,
VS

Tournaments = Pretty easy. Also check out games other than holdem (my suggestion is starting with PL/NL Omaha Hi/Lo, when you feel comfortable maybe add one 8-game or HORSE), study the "guidelines" for each game (nothing that will take more than an hour) and see for yourself that some players in those tournaments are clueless, some of them go as far to not know the rules of the given game. In $2-$11 tournaments you can have an ROI of like 70%+. Also, very important - ICM. In one PLO tournament where I was the short stack at the final table with 7 players, I didn't play a single hand and got 3rd place, with a solid chance for more

Cash = No. Just no.

Originally posted by nsavov
Tournaments = Pretty easy. Also check out games other than holdem (my suggestion is starting with PL/NL Omaha Hi/Lo, when you feel comfortable maybe add one 8-game or HORSE), study the "guidelines" for each game (nothing that will take more than an hour) and see for yourself that some players in those tournaments are clueless, some of them go as far to not know the rules of the given game. In $2-$11 tournaments you can have an ROI of like 70%+. Also, very important - ICM. In one PLO tournament where I was the short stack at the final table with 7 players, I didn't play a single hand and got 3rd place, with a solid chance for more

Cash = No. Just no.

I prefer PL Omaha Hi/Lo over NL, and I wouldn't advise 8-Game without some practice with Razz, Stud and Stud Hi/Lo first. One of the more interesting tournaments is the $3.30 NL 2-7 Single Draw PKO on PokerStars at 20:03 GMT daily. You can frequently grab a few bounties from people shoving flushes, straights and even trips in this tournament — 2-7 Single Draw is lowball.

nsavov's point about playing "anything other than hold'em" is a good one.

Thanks for all the info guys! Was just checking a video from this weazel dude on YouTube. Someone in the comments mentioned that it really was impossible to win at low stakes or even at poker in general. Due to the rake and stuff. Only regs at the table feeding from each other. Then player 1 wins then player two and vice versa.. No profits to buy gained anymore.
Having serious doubts now haha

I've done both successfully and here are some of my thoughts.

With low capital you need less money playing poker than daytrading for same income.

You can make probably the same on poker with $2k than daytrading with $10k.

Poker is easier in the beginning than daytrading but much harder with large capital. Poker get's tougher the higher limits you play because the regs get better. Whereas daytrading stays almost the same because you can simply diversify more and focus on swingtrading instead of actual daytrading.

And last but not the least: Don't go broke.

Practice bankroll management. Every poker player should also have table limit and tournament buy in restrictions set if possible (that block you from playing above your brm).

Trade only spot for the first 1-2 years until you are proven winner. People trading margin etc on the beginning of their trading career are usually the ones that end up broke. Trade spot and avoid coins you don't know. Most importantly have a stoploss on every trade you take. If you were too slow to set up the stoploss you had planned and it was already reached, just sell the coin and move on to the next trade.

Keep on learning. Learning poker is easier at first because most of the sources that teach poker are okay at worst. Learning trading is more difficult because most of the material is straight up bad or invalid (for example anything that has trend lines on it) so finding the correct source to actually learn valid strategies could be tough.

Best of luck with the way you choose. Personally my hearth is on trading but I love poker as well

Thanks for the explanation colorflusher! Played a few bounty tourneys ( micro ) on GG yesterday. Lost them all thanks to unbelievable suckouts on the river lol...
Another advantage of crypto might be the fact that if you have a diversified portofolio and everything goes down like 75 percent you still have the coins ( you don't have to sell them at a loss ) but with poker: a few bad beats can destroy your bankroll.

Are you a cryptotrader or regular stocks?

That happens a lot in MTT's. Luckily you'll end up on the other side often as well

I trade crypto but I'm looking at stocks also. I have a plan to trade more in the future but currently my main focus is still on poker because it pays the bills.

Btw if a trader ends up -75% on a coin/stock he's an investor, not a trader

yeah well, more of a hodler I guess haha ;-)
I think I am gonna give poker another shot and DCA into crypto some more instead of daytrading :-)
First: going to order that Jonathan Little book. Secrets of professional tournament poker: the essential guide. Study that and off to the races!

Your nickname is bizzare for a hodler.

Jokes aside, Absolutely, give poker a chance. Tournament poker. Not cash. The rake kills more than half your winrate in cash. The tournament fees are negligible compared to the ROI you can get.

I am not completely sure how decent you are in Holdem, but your posts give me a pretty good idea. You shouldn't feel bad. It's only upwards from here.

My point regarding your skills is - do you see how I told you tournaments are easy money and you jumped into them and only after that you considered buying a book or whatever to study? This is what newbies do. Most of them don't even consider studying and complain about luck. They hear poker is easy, they deposit money and then they lose. This is why tournaments are full of players you can easily beat.

Jonathan is an excelent coach. Watch his videos and take notes. The only problem I have with him is that he tells new aspiring players to start with cash games. Don't. It used to be good to start with Sit-and-Gos or 9-man cash tables. But since it's hard to get a 9-man cash table going (let alone 8 or 9), it's SnGs or MTT/MTSnGs. 6-max cash tables are full of decent players. There are some bad players there too. But everyone tries to get position on them, isolate them and fight with other regulars in order to win the money the fish put in. Sure, you can be a beast and try to beat everyone, but is that what you want? Do you want to be the best player in a hard game or a decent player in a game full of retards and make easy money? Do you want the room to take more than half your winrate from cash games, or do you want to win actual money, climb limits and not mind the 12% tourney fees? Have you heard of Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Joe Cada, Jonathan Duhamel, Jamie Gold? They are tournament players. They made most of their money (in poker) from tournaments. They lose in cash games. All of them. Have you heard of Garrett Adelstein? He's a "very good" cash game player. Most known for getting cheated 2 months ago. Doug Polk? If you watch his bankroll challenge, he made money mostly from tournaments, then lost them in cash games (even in Heads-Up which was his bread and butter game). The times cash games were a decent choice are far gone.

Sorry for rambling, but it's been a long time coming. Don't be afraid of the rake - instead, you should avoid it. So if you are going to buy a book or video class or w/e, get something about tournaments.

Also, complete the PokerStrategy quiz, they may give you 20-50$ (idk what it is these days) to play with. And you will become Bronze Status. Then you can add friends on this site. You can add me. I may or may not have a couple grand worth of materials free of charge. Arr!

Well: actually I am not quite a newbie. I have read about 100 poker books, translated coaching videos for stoxpoker back in the day and wrote for a Dutch poker website where I did poker book reviews. I just never managed to play to seriously though. Only microstakes and never played higher because of other interests and stuff. But want to give it another go and I thought to learn the more modern stuff, it would be best to read Little's book ;-)