Living on poker.

bricht

bricht

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Hi! How realistic is it to get at least ~ 500$ a month from playing poker about 4 hours a day, 6 days/week? What stakes would I have to play? Im a student and I'm sick of shit part-time jobs. Right now I'm just learning and grinding slowly at 2NL on 888, so my dream is to be able to rely mostly on poker for my income. Right now all I have is a 15.6in laptop and I dont think that more than 6 tables will fit on my screen. I play ~550 hands per session(~2h) and after 9k hands(yes, a tiny sample) I have a winrate of 22BB/h.
You might call me a dreamer... but hey, it's a goal right?
 
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micromachine

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You could probably make about $500/month playing 10nl for that many hours with a 5BB/100+ winrate. Easier said than done though.
 
Vollycat

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Dear Dreamer,

Keep the part-time job.

Don't mean to be mean, but you just need a bit more (read that as, a lot) time under your belt. Watch your game carefully and continue to learn.

With time you can find that poker will add some extra income but in the mean time do not quite any job for it. Old school rule of thumb...6 months winning in a row covering your nut, and 3 months of fully paid bills in the bank. Then and only then start to THINK about quitting any job for poker.

Best of luck.
 
bricht

bricht

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You could probably make about $500/month playing 10nl for that many hours with a 5BB/100+ winrate. Easier said than done though.

Already starting to rub my hands :)

Dear Dreamer,

Keep the part-time job.

Don't mean to be mean, but you just need a bit more (read that as, a lot) time under your belt. Watch your game carefully and continue to learn.

With time you can find that poker will add some extra income but in the mean time do not quite any job for it. Old school rule of thumb...6 months winning in a row covering your nut, and 3 months of fully paid bills in the bank. Then and only then start to THINK about quitting any job for poker.

Best of luck.

Yeah, Im not quitting yet. Just trying to understand whether my goal is actually realistic ;) . Extra income will do just as well, altough withdrawing before reaching my goal would'nt be healthy for my bankroll. I will make a withdraw for a HUD though, sitting on a trial for now.
 
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I couldn't do it to be honest, tried it... swings hit you even more cause you rely on it more.

In the last year I've been making up for my tilt binges and losing multiple buy ins cause I'm not 100% reliant on living on the money I make off it, its just the icing on the cake.

To those that can, wow. Its admirable.
 
trucker103

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its a tough living to make it
lots of downswings and then u got withdrawal time and keeping enough of a bankroll to keep it moving forward !
 
KerouacsDog

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bricht, whats ur username at 888? I play there, same stakes, and some mtts/sngs.
Im KerouacsDog there, same as here.
 
Arjonius

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It's not hard to figure out if $500 per month is reasonably achievable within the parameters you've laid out. Just do the math. 4 hrs per day x 6 days per week = about 100 hours per month. So do you average at least $5 per hour?
 
starsmyle

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Think trying to play for a living can mess wit your head and then yourgame.....I would just play your game and see if it :albertein can work as you go
 
jordanbillie

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You need a much larger BR before you can consider playing poker as your only source of income. Right now you are not accessing poker money for everyday living expenses.
 
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You need to have a larger hand sample to get a clearer idea of how good you are at that level. Poker is very swingy, and players go through hot and cold streaks, so you could be going through a hot streak. With a beginner player, which is what you seem to be, an initial hot streak happens more often than not.

Here is something you can do to get some vague idea of whether you're running hot or not:

1) download and install Poker Tracker 4 (you can just select the free trial).

2) import all of your hands played into the software, as per its instructions.

3) go to the Reports tab and select the values "Ev all in expected" and "Amount won," then run the report.

Have a look at the summaries in bold print at the bottom. The Ev all in expected shows roughly how much you can expect to have won just given your hand strength against opponent hand strengths if all things were equal. It's a flawed metric and highly controversial, but it has its rough uses for this purpose. The Amount won shows you your actual profit. Compare the two numbers. If your amount won is $100 but your expected amount won is -$200 (that is, losses of $200), then you're running hot and can expect to go on a losing streak at some point. If, on the other hand, your amount won is $100 and your expected amount won is $300, then you're actually running cold and would be crushing the crap out of your limit were it not for the cold streak. The third alternative is that your amount won is $95 and your expected amount won is $102, or vice-versa, in which case you're pretty much at the statistical average. This kind of thing can help you get a better idea of what kind of results you can expect given the way you play right now and the opponents you face over a proper sample such as 100,000 hands.
 
D_russo88

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I make about $300 per day playing poker. I've been making that much for about 3 years. I've even quit my job.
 
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I make about $300 per day playing poker. I've been making that much for about 3 years. I've even quit my job.

Holy mackerel, that's potentially over 100K a year! Could you provide some details:

1) live or online or both, and in what proportions of live versus online

2) what games

3) what limits

4) what time investment involved in both live and online

5) what live poker rooms and/or online poker sites

Really, really interested in your kind of success story. Looking forward to your response.
 
FastOne

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I make about $300 per day playing poker. I've been making that much for about 3 years. I've even quit my job.
300$ per day?!?!

What limits do you play?

Cash tables or tournaments, or both?

How many hours/day?

Thanks in advance for your response.
 
bricht

bricht

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Yay, thats 28BB/100. Only 10k hands though.
mycurrencywoninusdoverh.jpg
 
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Ieatfish

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The big thing is you want to be frugal. I live in my van while I'm making my living playing poker, and I stretch a dollar really well. You can definitely do it, but you don't want any major expenses unless you're playing high stakes.
 
cardriverx

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It doesn't sound as if you are going to be living on these expenses, right bricht? You're a student so obviously you're not looking to become a poker pro or anything as you hopefully have some sort of career aspirations to eventually make bank not in poker.

So it's not as stressful as people in here say, sure if you go busto it absolutely sucks but it's not like you'd be living on the street.
 
otari

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my only tip is stop playing after several hours if you get tired of playing; don't force yourself, because when you're burned out on poker you will make some dumb decisions, but do it up, man.
 
bricht

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No, I just play cash. Usually around 8PM
 
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Im so glad I dont have to play this game to support myself, the poker pro must a long lonely road cause even the occasional good showing I make, that poker high doesnt last longer than the next time I play. I see these guys at my local cardroom, its like the live there they play every MTT usually 3 or 4 a day, the real degens even hit the cash tables during breaks during the MTTs and the usuallly decide which is going better, so if they dont return to the MTT for a while, you know they are killing some cash tables.
 
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