The coronavirus outbreak led to an abrupt halt of live tournament poker action in March of 2020. While the global poker circuit effectively ceased all operations over the course of just a few days, the return of tournament action is likely to be much more gradual.

1. Is Live Poker Profitable Games
2. Is Live Poker Profitable Real Money
3. Is Live Poker Profitable No Deposit

Grinding out a profit in the micro stakes is not nearly as easy as it might seem. While beating the smallest online poker games used to be a cake walk, today it will take a lot of time and practice. Many micro stakes players are among the most consistent and biggest winners in the online poker world today. But “Live at the Bike” is the only poker show running five days a week, year-round, on YouTube. Feldman grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, went to college at Temple University and joined.

The first major poker room in the world to reopen its doors was the King’s Casino Rozvadov, which is one of the largest rooms in Europe. It resumed operations on May 11, nearly two months after it first announced a temporary closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cards were in the air in Rozvadov for two weeks before the venue hosted their first live tournament series, called The Big Week, which ran from May 25 – 31. The venue has continued to offer a selection of smaller daily tournaments and short series since resuming tournament action in late May.

Stateside, a number of poker rooms also resumed operations with only cash games available at first. Casinos in Florida began reopening in late May, including Derby Lane in St. Petersburg, the Seminole Hard Rock Tampa, and bestbet Jacksonville and bestbet Orange Park.

The Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, which resumed operations on June 12, recently announced that they would resume spreading select daily tournaments on June 23, after having first reopened on May 21. Derby Lane resumed spreading tournament events on June 6. Both venues currently include a maximum number of participants for their events.

“We are going to start offering tournaments again in July,” bestbet Director of Poker Jesse Hollander told Card Player. “We will likely have three tournaments a week in Jacksonville and two a week at Orange Park, no-limit hold’em tournaments with buy-ins of $60 and $150. We will offer those in July, and hopefully will offer more starting in August.”

The Las Vegas strip reopened on June 4, and with it three poker rooms resumed operations: The Venetian Poker Room (pictured above before the outbreak), the Orleans Poker Room and the South Point Poker Room. The Golden Nugget followed suit a couple days later, and three more rooms opened on June 18 at Bellagio, Caesars Palace, and Sahara. The Venetian was the first to announce a return to multi-table tournament action. The room will host two $250 buy-in no-limit hold’em shootout events, with one each on June 19 and June 20, with an eighty-player cap for the field and an 11:00 a.m. start time.

The events will have a maximum of five players per table, and will follow the shootout format that sees each table play down to a winner before moving on to the next round. The second round will shift to four-handed action, with the winners from those tables combining onto the final table of four to play down to a champion.

While these rooms and others around the country, and the world, have just begun to host live poker tournaments again, no major poker tours have yet announced the resumption of their publicly released schedules.

“I believe to have large scale multi-table tournaments [running again], the most important thing is that some restrictions have to be lifted,” said World Poker Tour Executive Tour Director Matt Savage. “Travel restrictions so that players can attend, capacity restrictions so that tournaments don’t have to be capped, and player per table restrictions so that tournaments can be played more than six-handed so that the properties that are open are fine with giving up cash games to run less profitable tournaments while maximizing attendance.”

Savage spoke to Card Player about the Coronavirus’ impact on the live tournament scene back in late April. In that discussion, he highlighted the most important factor for himself and other tournament organizers: the wellbeing of those involved in putting on and playing in potential events.

“The top priorities for us are to make sure that the players are safe and make sure our staff are safe,” said Savage.

Grinding out a profit in the micro stakes is not nearly as easy as it might seem. While beating the smallest online poker games used to be a cake walk, today it will take a lot of time and practice. Many micro stakes players are among the most consistent and biggest winners in the online poker world today. It is very hard to compete with players who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hands worth of experience.

Is Live Poker Profitable Games

Think about how many hands you get in per hour when playing one table, online or live. If you are lucky, you might get 90-100 hands in per hour when playing online, depending on whether you are playing full ring or 6-max tables. In live games, 30 hands per hour is the most you could ever hope for. Now, compare those numbers to a 12 tabling player who plays for 8 hours per day. At that rate, this player would have roughly 9,000 hands played every single day. Of course, few people have this exact work ethic, but it is not out of the realm of possibilities when it comes to the micro stakes.

What It Takes

-Bankroll

Micro stakes poker takes a few different skills and attributes if you want to be successful. First, you will need to have an ample bankroll. While the variance is not going to be nearly as dramatic in these games as it is in small stakes or higher games, you will run into the occasional 10+ buy-in swing. For this reason, you should always be playing with roughly 30 or so buy-ins. If you are playing 25NL, the number of ideal buy-ins is not as high as it would be if you were playing 100NL. The higher limit the game, the more variance you should be prepared for.

Is Live Poker Profitable Real Money

-Emotional Control

Bankrolls are hardly the only thing needed for success in micro stakes poker. You will also need an awful lot of emotional control at the tables. Most poker strategy books and guides neglect to teach perhaps the most important skill that any player could have, a tilt-free approach to the game. No one is perfect, and everyone tilts a little bit from time to time, but it is vital that your emotions are kept in check. If you are playing six tables at a time, blowing off three buy-ins due to tilt can be a lot easier than it might seem. Players who are on tilt tend to forget everything they learned, like this very article, though, so this is something that is best accomplished through practice and implementation.

-Multi-Tabling Skills

The ability to multi-table and multi-task should never be understated for micro stakes players. There just isn’t any good money to be made playing one or two tables at a time in the micro stakes games. Even the biggest winners at 100NL (the highest micro stakes limit) would be lucky to win $15/hour playing two tables of 6-max at a time. It can be a difficult transition, especially for new online players, to learn how to play four, six, or ten tables at a time. The fact of the matter is, however, that all serious micro stakes players have a solid skill set when it comes to multi-tabling. This isn’t to say that you need to play 20 tables at a time, but being able to 8 or 10 table would certainly be beneficial.

-Poker Tracking Software

Is Live Poker Profitable No Deposit

HUDs and other poker tracking software are an absolute must for multi-tabling, serious micro stakes players. A HUD (heads up display) will be a tremendous benefit when you are trying to concentrate on a number of different decisions at once. Instead of forming your own reads on opponents, a HUD will allow you to have a quick summary available for anyone you face. It will be much easier to shove all in pre-flop with pocket queens if you know that the original raiser plays 90% of their hands. Now, imagine if you had no information on that same player; you would have to decide whether queens are ever ahead. Some old school players feel that software and HUDs are nothing more than cheating, but that makes no sense since most poker rooms are perfectly OK with it.

Aside from allowing you to make more precise reads at the table, poker software like PokerTracker also provides in-depth statistics on your own play. You can easily analyze all of the hands that you played in your last session, no matter how big or small. Beyond this, poker software can tell you how often you raise, what hands you win with, if you fold to re-raises too frequently, and much more. Plus, who doesn’t like to see a graph of their winnings? For an investment of $100 or less, any micro stakes player would be making a big mistake if they played without some sort of software.

-Work Ethic

Last but not least is the need for a sound work ethic. If you want to beat the micro stakes for any significant amount of money, you will need to put in a whole lot of work. People who don’t know poker tend to scoff at the idea of poker being a lot of work, but it certainly is. Today there are infinite resources available for players who want to improve their game. From books to training sites, there is something out there for players of all skill levels and all limits.

Books are the most outdated method of learning how to play winning online poker. The flaw with most books is that they are old and generally teach concepts that are quite basic. Books would have been a great way to aptly learn the game back in 2002, but the competition is way beyond that at this point in time. There are a select number of books that concentrate on winning online play and teach more modern concepts, but they are far and few between. Be sure to read a number of up to date reviews before you lean on any written book as your poker bible (especially if Hellmuth wrote it!).

Online resources are the best way to improve your skill set for tough micro stakes games. There are innumerable online sites with strategy guides of varying quality, but the video training sites have taken over in popularity. There are a handful of different poker training sites that offer video tutorials for aspiring players. These videos consist of a winning player recording their play and relaying it to the viewers. The players record themselves during play, explain their thought processes, and viewers soak in the information. As was the case with books, you should carefully analyze who is making the video and whether they are a reliable source of information.

Going hand in hand with poker training videos are poker coaches. Coaches are people who will watch you play over the internet (known as sweating) and offer their input and advice as you play. These coaches vary in quality and rates, but some can be had for very affordable rates. Shop around at the video training sites for your choice of coach if this seems like an attractive way to learn the game for you. It is not for everyone, and it could be costly, but many people have transitioned from losing or break even players into big winners with the help of a solid coach.