US Online Poker Players Uninspired By Live Casinos

In the wake of last week’s crackdown on PokerStars, Full Tit and Absolute Poker’s US operations, the professional poker playing community now seems divided into two camps.
On the one side are those pros who are looking to head abroad and continue their careers from such locations as Canada, Costa Rica, Holland and Thailand.
Click here for the poker rooms still accepting players from the USA.
On the other side, there are those pros who are now preparing to give the live game a go at their local casinos. However, it is acknowledged that most of these ex-online players will face an uphill struggle if they are to experience the same levels of profitability they once enjoyed online.
High on the live poker disadvantages list is the fact professional grinders will now find it impossible to take a high-volume approach to the game and profit from rakeback and VIP bonuses, as they did before. For instance, players such as Randy “nanonoko” Lew, Andrew “AznTracker” Li and Dusty Schmidt basically had a game plan which involved playing dozens of games at the same time with the intention of at least breaking even over the session. Their profits would then come in the form of rakeback and bonus schemes, such as PokerStars’ Supernova Elite programme.
However, playing thirty hands per hour in a live game as compared to a thousand, and with no bonuses to speak of will now remove this revenue stream from their options.
Furthermore, playing live will also see these players expenditures skyrocket when you take into account their gas, food and lodging bills. In addition, casino hidden expenditures, such as a rake of around $10 to play 25 hands of $1/$2 NLHE in an hour, plus tipping will make profitability near impossible for the majority of these ex-online players.
However, it would seem that those pros still determined to continue their careers from inside a casino will now have to find a completely different approach to the game that will work for them.
In the meantime, more experienced live poker pros, such as Daniel Negreanu, have tried to put an optimistic spin on playing at the casino, but have so far sounded less than inspired:
“I tried to get a game together with Sammy Farha, Sam Stein, and BenB the other night, but it played super small. $50-$100 NLH/PLO. I genuinely thought there would be more action this week, but maybe I’m just being impatient. I just really want to play poker, but I don’t want to play 12 hands an hour either,” he said.