Playing Poker for a living

Are you thinking of becoming a full-time professional poker player?
I have been playing online poker on a full-time basis for the last three years and have experienced booth the benefits and the downsides with it.

If you are good at it you will make a lot of money. You can see in the ”How much will you win? “, section what you can expect to earn if you learn to play reasonably well. Playing medium level No-limit you make more then most other jobs, especially if you  don’t have to pay tax for your winnings. In most European countries you don’t. Problem is that your income are not very stable, some month you makes lots of money and some you will lose. In the last tree years I had six losing month. Best month up $19000 and worst down $3000. And I play with very low risk. If you play higher limits or a more loose aggressive game the swings will be much bigger. It’s important to save some of your winnings to build a buffer to survive the bad months. I believe a lot of good players have problems to handle the swings. They spend most of their winnings or plays to high limits and then goes broke when they have a bad run, and are forced to quit playing poker full time.

You can work your own hours

If you, like me, really don’t like to get up early in the morning then this is nice. You can play anytime you want. There is always a lot of poker action 24 hours a day 7 days a week. In some of the European poker rooms it can be harder to find a good game between 04 and 09 but that’s no problem. Just change to a site with mostly US players. It will be prime time there then. And you can take a vacation any time you like.  The bad thing is that you have no paid vacation days. This is another reason why you must save some of your winnings. I think it’s very good for your game to take some time off from poker now and then. I always make the most money the weeks after a vacation so I think it’s good business to take lots of breaks. This is also a good time to read some poker books.

It’s a lot of fun to play Poker

If you don’t  think so  maybe this isn’t the job for you. However when you play 40 hours a week year after year it starts to be a little less fun and sometimes a bit boring. But you have to do something for a living and I can think of a lot more boring jobs then playing poker.

A lot of good poker players who easily can make it as full timers choose to play only part time. I think that’s the best choice for most people. A part time player often have a higher hourly win rate then the more skilled full timer because he can be more selective. You only have to play when you really feel like it. And you can choose the best games to play in.