I hear this a lot "Everyone is going to be too good and the games will be unbeatable" but as long as the fish are there you will still be able to profit. It likely won't ever be like it was 2006-2009 ever again but with hard work, dedication and a passion for the game I believe you can still make a decent living or side income. Certainly better than a gas station attendant or pizza delivery guy. 

I guess I should have clarified that.  I do think there's a good chance there will still be ample opportunity in poker down the road and it can still be lucrative relative to alternative options for a lot of people, provided it fades all the possible D-Day scenarios like bots, legal issues, etc..  However, I believe that the big money opportunities are very much dwindling.  

I think it will likely still be very possible to make 6 figures a year with hard work and dedication.  But for those that have crushed for some big years in online poker, to think that opportunity will still be there a few years from now is pretty naive in my opinion.  The lack of "available" money at high stakes now is very apparent.  Far fewer games run, less people are willing to gamble, the players that are are much better, virtually no fish, fear of MAing or other shadiness, etcetc..  It's also very apparent that the sites recognize how bad high stakes is for their bottom line, and thus we have the euro sites eliminating 10/20+, Stars being Zoom only (where they rake a ton), etcetc..  

I'm certainly not the one to ask about MTT strategy so I would advise you to ask one of the RIO pros that specialize in that form of the game.  My guess would be that they'll tell you to study push/fold strategy for perfect ranges regarding stacks being effectively small/short.  Know what a good resteal range is for BTN vs. MP with 17bb effective, etcetc..

Read my response to So_Nitty.. I should have clarified that I meant the big money opportunities are dwindling in poker, specifically online.  I think it will still be very possible to make a nice living with poker down the road, I just don't think it's very realistic to expect to get mega rich from poker in the future.

Honestly I have trouble answering this question because the rake is so bad at low/mid stakes PLO that I'm not sure how viable it is to start there and work your way up, which would otherwise be my first suggestion.  It really takes a while to understand the intricacies of PLO when most of your poker knowledge comes from NL.  PLO is a far more dynamic game with respect to equities and ranges and how everything can change drastically from street to street.  Make sure you're not carrying over your NL habits to PLO, and try to think about every situation objectively.  Getting familiar with ProPokerTools is going to help a lot.  I'm not sure if there's any tutorials out there, but learning how to input ranges is essentially like learning a new coding language.  It's not easy at first but eventually you get better at it and can create some rough models for situations.  And of course, the RIO PLO pros are all great players and thinkers so watching all of those videos should help you out and give you some direction.  

Read Jeff Hwangs books on PLO.. excellent start. +1 on ProPokerTools.

I think there is such a bigger edge in PLO at the moment that you can totally discount/cover the high rake Sean mentioned. 

They are all good but I would say start with "Pot-Limit Omaha Poker / The Big Play Strategy". It goes over all of the wraps which are extremely important/mandatory to know. It also gives you some guidelines to keep you out of trouble when first starting... ie AA is a drawing hand, dangers of underfulls etc.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean but your first notion is true, yes.  However, in practice it's virtually impossible for this to be the case.  Even in very drastic cases where thresholds seem very clear without any merging, there will always exist some non-zero chance that villain can show up with a hand you won't expect.  So in practice, we tend to hedge our bets by "betting big" with overbets and not necessarily going all-in, given that the marginal value gained for our range by jamming likely isn't worth the risk in the event we might have made a mistake in evaluating the situation.  When we bet 2x pot and have a bluffing frequency of 40%, betting 5x pot risks 3x more pot for only a marginal increase in our bluffing frequency given that it can only ever get as big as 50%.  So my advice is generally that you can choose your overbet size in correlation to how clear and certain you think the situation is {nuts,bluffs} vs. {bluffcatchers} for the sake of hedging yourself yet still taking advantage of the situation.  

Great question.  I should start by saying that I'm not 100% certain that this is the case, but I am pretty sure as it makes sense to me intuitively.

I think the key is relativity.  Let's say both us and our opponent has a range of the top 40% of hands.  Our opponent has both position and initiative, so he's going to have a slightly higher R%.  He's going to realize (100+X)%, we're going to realize (100-X)%.  

Now, if we add the next 10% tier of hands to our range such that we now have the top 50% of hands, we can see how the situation for each of our individual holdings changes slightly.  Previously, hands like 97s were at the bottom of our range and now we have hands like 85s in our range.  I think because these weaker hands are going to on average flop less equity, it effectively has a bit of a drag effect on some of our stronger/medium holdings as they now shift within our range a bit.  Essentially, we're going to flop more hands that will not win at showdown and thus have to fold or bluff.. and this has implications for how we must now play some of our stronger/medium hands.  As a result, our opponent will now realize (100+X+Y)% while we realize (100-X-Y)%, where the Y% lost is spread incrementally among all the holdings in our range.

I think there may exist some exceptions to this rule, however.  For example.. if our range was previously {AA-QQ/AK} and we now add {T9s}, we now have a lot better board coverage and thus the T9s can help the other hands in our range realize more equity as they are now slightly less vulnerable on certain boards.  This is obviously an extreme case but I think the principle is worth taking note of.  Once we establish that both ranges are relatively plentiful and dynamic for most board textures (ie. the 40% vs. 40% example), I think the over-riding factor is the playability of the hands we add to the range (that opponent does not have in his range) and how the rest of our range must adjust to make up for it.

Hope that helps.. I should have prefaced this with saying that it's been a long time since I've done much thinking within the context of using R.  I think it's a really useful concept but for my progress as a player recently, it hasn't been an important topic.

Thanks for the kind words.  GL Germany, and congratz on the Cup.  :)