Back in early 2000s, during the years of the Poker Boom, thousands of freshly minted poker players pursued the dream of becoming professionals and making millions playing poker.
Some succeeded, others failed and went back to their day jobs, while many continued playing poker as a hobby for decades to come.
Today, some 20 years later, the game has evolved in many ways. With more learning tools available than ever, both online and live poker games have become much tougher than they used to be. This begs the question; Is poker still profitable in 2025?
One man set out to find out, as he went back to his roots and played 300 hours of live $5/5 games in Los Angeles, trying to make $100 per hour.
Marc Goone of Hungry Horse Poker set himself this goal in 2024 and has since completed his challenge. In his latest video, Marc published the results of his challenge, and we look into those to find out if live poker can still be a profitable endeavor as 2025 kicks off.
Key Takeaways from Marc’s Challenge
In 2024, Marc Goone set out to make $100 an hour playing $5/5 poker with a $1,000 buy-in cap. Over the course of a few months, the Hungry Horse Poker coach played 300 hours of this game at Hustler Casino, using a poker strategy that revolved around exploiting the player pool instead of balance.
After 300 hours of play, Marc had two main takeaways about the low-stakes games in 2024 compared to 2017:
- The games are harder than before
- The games are still good
Goone noted that the games did become a lot harder than they were in 2017, when he was coming up.
For example, a lot of players have “seen a Doug Polk vid or two,” so they understand they should be 3-betting more preflop. However, this doesn’t mean these players can’t be beat.
In fact, a lot of the things players are doing to improve, such as 3-betting more preflop, can also be used against them.
For example, Marc notes that the players at Hustler Casino still call too much preflop, squeeze with polar ranges, and significantly under 4-bet in relation to GTO strategy.
The frequency of side games like the 2-7 Game, Nit Game, and Straddles also makes the games softer than before, as all of these side games entice gambling and promote poor play.
Did Marc Make $100 Per Hour?
At the end of his low-stakes challenge, Goone managed to play a total of 300 hours and win $89.61 per hour before jackpot payouts (which act as rakeback in Hustler Casino games).
At $5/5, this translates to 18bb/hour, which is a win rate many poker players consider impossible to achieve. Of course, the 300 hour sample is not conclusive, but it is also worth noting that Marc’s actual win rate was closer to $110/hour after accounting for rakeback.
In either case, Marc’s challenge was quite a success, as he proved that he could jump into a player pool he hasn’t played with in years and win at a very high rate right off the bat.
While many live poker pros struggle to achieve significant win rates in their games, Goone’s video series showed a series of exploitative plays that could help skyrocket your win rate.
Everything said and done, Marc may have failed in making $100/hour at the tables, but came dangerously close, a feat that many pros he asked throughout the challenge believed to be impossible.
What Does This Mean for Poker in 2025?
So what does all this mean for us? Does Marc Goone winning $90/hour at $5/5 have anything to do with our poker careers?
It most certainly does!
Marc went down in stakes with the idea of proving to aspiring poker players that poker is still very much alive and that a career in live poker is perfectly possible in 2025.
Looking at Goone’s win rate of $90 per hour, we can come to a conclusion it would take a successful poker player about 1,100 hours of play to make $100k at $5/5 in 2025.
Getting 1,100 hours of play in a full year is not even a full time job, which means a player would have plenty of “business hours” to spend studying the game and improving, all without ever working overtime.
What’s even more, Marc did not account for the jackpot payouts, which also brought a substantial stream of income on top of his regular win rate.
All of this is to say that a player of Marc’s caliber could somewhat easily make six figures playing $5/5 poker in 2025, all with a bankroll of $10k or less, as a downswing greater than that is statistically improbable for a player with this win rate.
The big question, then, is how do you become good enough to achieve and maintain this win rate over the long run, and is the same win rate attainable in every $5/5 game out there?
How to Make Six Figures at Low Stakes Poker
Mimicking Goone’s win rate and making close to $100/hour at low-stakes poker may be possible, but it is not easy!
During his challenge, Marc used a complex exploitative strategy that takes both experience and precision to execute to perfection.
The strategy is explained in full in his video series, which may be one of the best teaching tools for aspiring poker players in 2025.
Yet, even this strategy won’t necessarily work in every game out there, and you will have to adapt the exploits to the actual player pool you play against.
The impact of various side games, straddles, and other factors is nearly impossible to account for, which means the actual win rate you may be able to attain is up in the air.
The one thing that’s clear is that the poker dream is still very much alive! If you have been waiting for the right time to try and make it in poker for years, 2025 may just be the year.
Check out Marc’s low-stakes challenge over on YouTube, see what he did to beat the player pool for 18bbs/hour, and start a challenge of your own to see just how far you can get.
If you play your cards right and adapt the strategy just right to your player pool, there is no telling what the cap is and just how high your win rate could go even at the lowest of stakes.
