Legit online poker job...

Okay, the title sucked, its kinda hard to put a one liner for this... Alright, for the last 8 months I've been playing on PS, learning to grind, doing some Tourney play, but mainly learning how to play 8 low level tables and make a decent $25-30 an hour. I mean it isn't like I'm trying to get rich quick, its just a nice cash cow for a while. Anyways, I got a few friends from school onto PS and they all made a decent ammount of money and it was great because we could talk over hands afterwards, discuss strategy for the low levels and in the end we would just grind, 5-8 tables each at the 0.05/0.10 level and make good money.

Switch to now. My girlfriend went on a bad run on PS and said, "fuck it, I need a break from this anyways and cashed out the remainder of her money" and stopped playing for a whole 2 days... When I showed her the Partyfify.com offer. Well, now she took the $50 they start you off with and has run it up to over a thousand in the span of 5 days. Now she is multi-tabling the 0.25/0.50 tables as is one of my other friends who is using the same offer from partyfifty.com and although hasn't quite as successful, has been doing pretty well. And the other two that are on Party are up, but not significantly. So as it stands there are 4 of us on Party and only two of us on Stars now.

So this brought us (group of 6 friends) into thinking that maybe we could do this, not full time since we are all students, but part time, but make it serious, almost a job. (as of right now I'm the only one who really has been using online poker as a primary source of income). So they have been talking about essentially having an office for playing poker. Alright background done...


Now my questions...

I haven't paid taxes on my poker earnings yet (because I haven't been doing it that long), but I know what I need to do and can help the others with that. But, I've been told by several finance/accounting professors that the money we make in online poker is in a grey area of legal vs illegal, so essentially we could be reporting to the IRS illegal money. Obviously, these guys that I've talked to are smart guys that know their stuff, but none of them really have ever dealt with this specific of a case. Any of you guys that make a lot of money playing poker have any info to share?

Next, what are your outlooks on the online poker scene? I mean we've pretty much learned how to beat the PS 0.05/0.10 cold, I mean no questions asked, also the low levels of PP are littered with complete morons (I'd be willing to even say the PS 0.05/0.10 players are BETTER than the PP players up to the NL50...) Anyways, are these tables going to change? I mean we can always try to find other sites, but if PP is going to disapear, or the tables change dramatically in a month, it would kinda suck. How much variation has there been in the past between sites and players?

Lastly, and I don't think this applies to many of you, but does poker lose its fun after a while grinding? I find that I already start to lose interest in the games and its more of a chore than anything. We still play live cash games and those are always fun, because of the people, but other than that poker just seems to be all work and no fun. =/


Cliffs: If you are looking for these you probably shouldn't reply.

how would playing in an office setting benefit you


why not just set something up in someones basement or something if you want to play together ?


also, grinding wont be any less tedious with 5 other grinders sitting next to you

disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor accountant, but I did stay at a holiday inn last night, so ...

the real question you should be asking is "do any of the entities giving me money report that event to the IRS?" For example, if you win a significant amount of money in a casino (like a big slot pull or something like that), the IRS is right there to record the win and get their money. If the entity that is paying you is not reporting the payouts to the IRS, then I don't see any reason why you would either.

I dont think you should base your "buissness plan" on a 5 day upswing, what is that? a few thousand hands if you play part time?

and youre right grinding low limit is tedious as hell and got boring real quick - but its good money and thats what matters.

how would playing in an office setting benefit you


why not just set something up in someones basement or something if you want to play together ?


also, grinding wont be any less tedious with 5 other grinders sitting next to you

well, the idea was that we are usually talking on aim while we play and its more fun to sit playing 5 hours of poker when you can chat with people at the same time as opposed to IMing people constantly. We weren't thinking of a real office, just a common room, or a room in my apartment...

I dont think you should base your "buissness plan" on a 5 day upswing, what is that? a few thousand hands if you play part time?

and youre right grinding low limit is tedious as hell and got boring real quick - but its good money and thats what matters.

Well, thats the thing, watching those tables, the NL25/NL50 tables, they are so soft that they are ridiculously easy to beat. Even if we stayed on PS, the entire group is up and has been doing prety well there...


On a side note, one of our friends (who transfered to another school last year) is coming back for break today and because he is coming back we are playing a live $1/$2 game, in the middle of final exams tonight...

PP isn't going anywhere, the site is no less fishy than it was 3 years ago when I first started playing there.

1. poker money isn't a "gray area." you are required by law to pay taxes on it. they even invented a clause for poker winnings to make you pay taxes on it. now, in reality, if you don't make very much they aren't ever going to notice, but if 10k jumps up in your bank account all of a sudden at regular intervals, the irs WILL come snooping.
2. when people say the games are gonna dry up, i think they're only referring to the higher limits. there are still a ton of fish at 1k/2k nl now, but those are probably gonna go. as for the lower limits, i don't see them ever drying up.
3. grinding out those 5c/10c tables is pretty tedious, and that's probably not gonna change. but when you play higher and face the same opponents day in and day out the game becomes very challenging and fun. that's my main problem with poker... the most lucrative games are never the ones i want to play because they don't challenge me. i've always been bad about moving up before i was ready (financially), but i'm beginning to discover that's just how it has to be.

cacophobia is a man among fish

hey, you don't play poker.... GTFO

also, grinding wont be any less tedious with 5 other grinders sitting next to you
No wonder I lose with 5 of my 8 opponents sitting in the same room vncing their hands onto a 108" projection screen...BITCHES!!

have fun when your account gets frozen for collusion.

Also, gambling from a workplace is usually a big no-no...