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This is of course a question a lot of people are wondering about. After having played online poker for some time now and also having quite some experience with live play at home games and in casinos, I thought it might be nice to share my view on this particular question. 
First question asked should of course be, can someone be a consitent winner at (online) poker, merely because he is more skilled at the game then the other players ? I'd have to say yes. Anyone with a little bit of poker knowledge has an obvious advantage over pure beginners and at more advanced levels the differences between the level of skill of the players involved is smaller, but still present. However, if this advantage could be expressed in percentages, I would have to say that at the higher levels this advantage is only about 1 or maybe 2% at the very highest. This means they will have to play a LOT of poker before the money will be coming their way. Consistently, is something else. This is maybe easier at the higher levels as the swings that your bankroll will take are quite regular and in general you will slowly be increasing your bankroll over time. At the lower stakes, everything is upside down. You do have a large advantage, but because the players play such a wide variaty of hands against you it's hard to make any reads or predictions on their play. This means you will experience heavier swings as it will be harder to make the proper call on the river. Often at these stakes if there is a good amount of chips already in the pot, you will barely ever make it to the river without going all in anyway. More pre flop all-ins means less skill involved in the play of the hand. This happens a lot more often at low stakes, so there is a lot smaller advantage to the skilled players in the end. So even though they have a huge lead because of their higher skill, it affects the outcome of the game less because of the luck involved in low stakes holdem games. So my answer to the question is .. yes you can be a consistent winner, but you have to be very very good and be willing to play against the best of the best at the highest stakes. Better bring a nasty big bankroll for that job my friend. So my ambitions are not high at all with online poker. I'd like to be able to win back my money most of the time, maybe win some or lose some and during that time I'll learn the finer points of the game to prepare me for perhaps bigger live tournaments when me and my wife move to Vegas.
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