I’m not a gambling man (but I’m a bad liar) but if I were to bet, I’d bet that a lot of you are playing poker because you like to win money. Hopefully, you realize that the reason you win money, if you do in fact win money, is because you play poker better than your opponents. Maybe not better than all of your opponents, but at least better than enough of them to make a profit. And if you’re somewhat experienced, beating the lower limits of poker is easy. Since online games are always available, beating the low limits is not just easy, but it’s easily accessible, making it double-easy!

Poker is easy money, in other words. Right there, 24 hours a day, sits a goldmine that just waits for you to come chip at it, milking off a few bucks now and then. The problem is, and I’ve gotten the impression that this is a fairly common misconception, that while it may be easy money, it’s not a lot of money. It really isn’t.

If you’re a college student (or perhaps even high school student, potentially playing illegaly) the extra money you make off of poker may make a difference to you. But if you have a career of any kind, the kind of money you make off of poker, as hourly wage, is likely relatively small, unless you’re an exceptional individual. People take this game so seriously that I often have to wonder if they realize that it’s a game, and a game of relatively small profits. Sure, there are some people making a living off of multitabling $2/$4 limit tables 40 hours a week, but they are in a tiny minority. And they’re very good at what they do, something that most players will never be. I’m not saying that to discourage anyone, but to be a winning player you have to be ahead of the curve. There are only so many rich donks out there, and there are thousands upon thousands of players who are reading books, playing a lot and posting on forums, trying to beat the game. Most players won’t be good enough to show a profit of any significance in the very long run, especially not when they’re playing eight tables at a time.

Poker isn’t an easy road to riches. It takes a lot of time and effort to get good at, and even once you get really good at it you still won’t make tons of money. Have you done calculations on how much you would need to make in order to actually make a living off of it? Did you remember to subtract income tax from the equation (unless you’re living in the UK, where I’m told gambling is tax excempt, your government is going to want its share of your cake, so to speak, and attempting to evade income tax on any real income is a risky gamble to make)?

For me to sustain the income I currently have (numbers aren’t exact, but you get the idea) I’d have to make somewhere in the order of $5000 a month playing poker… On average. What kind of limits would I have to play, and how much would I have to beat it for in order to make that viable?

Let’s stipulate that I multitable online, and that I can manage to play 30 hours per week. The remaining 10 hours of the “work week” are spent reading books, posting hands on forums and managing other parts around the game that don’t explicitly involve getting dealt hands. I can manage to play about three tables at a time and feel that I have enough focus on each of them to play well. Each table averages about 80 hands/hour, so I’d get about 80*3*30 = 7200 hands per week, or 28,800 hands per month. Let’s say 30,000.

With a winrate of 2BB/100, this corresponds to…

$2400 at $2/$4
$3600 at $3/$6
$6000 at $5/$10

The third option seems like the closest to my income today. Not many people sustain 2BB/100 at $5/$10 though, so perhaps $10/$20 is more like it, if I can manage to beat it for $1BB/100.

Alright, so if I can play three tables simultaneously for 30 hours a week, at $10/$20 and beat the game for 1 measly big bet per one hundred hands, I’m at the same level of income being a professional poker player as I today have being an engineer. Of course, I miss out on some stuff like coworkers, paid leave, pension, free coffee (not that the coffee machines at work are so great, but still!) and, of course, a stable income. If I’m smart, I’ll have a huge bankroll that can more than handle any downswings I will fall prey to, but there will be psychological impacts nonetheless. Worrying about whether or not I will manage to pay my next month’s bills is not something I have to do today. I know how big my paycheck will be, and I know when it will arrive. How much is that worth?

Besides, not a lot of people are good enough to beat poker at $10/$20 for 1BB/100. Sure, there are people who can (and who knows, maybe I’m one of them) but they can’t be that many. Someone has to lose money at those games for at least as much (”at least” because rake will eat into the profits), and I’m not sure how many people there are that can afford to casually lose $6000/month. Some of it comes from the pyramid effect, where people are promoted to their “level of incompetence” (an interesting observation that fits well with poker - google it) and beat the $5/$10 game only to move up to $10/$20 and losing their money, upon which they move down and rebuild. But someone still has to lose it in order for you to win it. And even if it seems like it sometimes, suckers don’t actually grow on trees. Some wisen up, some lose all their money, but no one keeps losing big bucks forever and ever. No one that I know of, at least.

Being able to live off of poker seems like quite a chore. “A hard way to make an easy living” indeed.

Maybe it’s better to treat it as a game, cash out the small earnings and buy myself something every now and then. Like a new Dell 20″ monitor that I’ve been wanting for awhile. Or a vacation somewhere. But I’ve since long realized that that’s the most that I’ll get from poker. And I feel okay with that.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not willing to quit my day job. It’s a fun game though, and I’ve learned to treat the money I make off of it as a bonus - it makes the game even more fun. I feel especially okay with that.