> do you still play online?

No longer online. I quit with UIGEA. I hate Bill Frist.

> I used to railbird FT back then, watching patrick antonius/sahamies/durr/jungleman etc. exciting times.

I never played with those folks. For reference (and maybe I was vague, and maybe I show my age), plo 200 is 1/2 blinds plo, and 2000 plo is 10/20 blinds plo. My heyday was when 10/20 blinds were the max. When they created the 50/100 and higher limits, they killed the 10/20 blind (former max) games. I never played over 25/50, because I didn’t consider myself properly rolled for it. That said, in retrospect, I should have gone modified Kelly criterion and take shots at the higher stakes — some of those dudes were total donks.

I did play against huck seed on FT (nit), and I played against Doyle and Todd on Players Only (I think their room was a skin). They also played tight, but they may have been doing required hours. People donated to them religiously with light calls.

> How many hours did you put in for you to be good?

I would argue that I am still not “good”. There’s a hierarchy in the poker world, and you don’t feel comfortable until you’re at the top — and even that is fleeting.

To answer your question, though, I was profitable at 5/10 and 10/20 after maybe 1000 table hours (usually 4-8 tables) and 500-700 study hours. Note that this was when poker was super soft, and note that I am a specialist in learning (degrees, experience, and whatnot), so I learn things like new games more quickly than most people. My job lent itself to a lot of study away from the table, so I availed myself of that time.

I remember several breakthroughs for my game:

1. I had a dream one night in which I finally understood the bidirectionality of plo8. This was the game that I built my bankroll on (after cashing in a few free rolls). That took me to plo8 100 ($0.50/$1 blinds) in short order. After that, I just grinded to 200 and 400 plo and plo8.

2. I remember getting crushed by a LAG player in plo 400 one night. I went to four plo 50 tables and played 12 hours straight playing with a 55% or so VPIP. I broke even in that session, but it helped me understand LAG players a lot better. In retrospect, that session helped me understand how to exploit LAGs really well, and that paid off a lot at higher stakes. It also helped my SLAG game a lot.

3. The next big leap was realizing that there were three lines to exploit in poker — players who are too weak (fold too much), too passive (call to much), and too aggressive (bet/raise too much). Being able to exploit these tendencies is optimal. Being able to induce these tendencies is insanely profitable. The above is easy to say, but not always so easy to do.

4. The last phase of my development was understanding “gears”. Changing gears is the ability to switch between being passive/aggressive and tight/loose depending on the context. Most people change gears predictably — for example, if they lose a big hand, they tighten up (or some players loosen up). I played my best when I was able to adjust to the texture of the game and play the way that my opponents least expected me to play and/or wanted me to play. It’s a lot of psychology, but when I mastered this, I felt like I owned the table. No one could read me, and I read them like an open book. This is the high that skilled poker players live for, imho.

To close, I twice considered becoming a pro poker player. Once before UIGEA, and once after.

Before UIGEA, I didn’t because I realized that I was only good for about 20 top notch hours per week, and I could play those hours after work. Furthermore, the tables were only juicy for maybe 30 non-consecutive hours, so I didn’t feel like i was missing much. I was also worried about the non-legalization of poker in the US, so I wanted to keep my day job.

After UIGEA, I thought about moving to Thailand or Canada, but I (rightly) thought that games would get much worse without the US market. My earn would have been a solid $100-200k based on some of my former peers, but that’s not terribly exciting money for me. Anyone who can make $100k or more in online poker can make way more than that by being a programmer or by doing some sort of tech business (SaaS, e-commerce, consulting, etc.) or financier.

Ok, that’s a wall of text. Feel free to ask follow ups.