Minimum Limit You Can Play To Make A Living

I would guess $1/$2 is the minimum stakes you could play at NL Hold Em, asuming you only play one table at a time.

In theory the game doesn't matter, its how much you average/hour.

In reality you can't make a living playing 1/2.


On a side note, whats with all these topics about making a living playing 1/2?

Why not?
You only need to win one big pot every 2 or 3 hours with $50 or $100 in.

How many will you have lost though?

so what kind of a bankroll should one have to make a decent living off of poker?

i dont know anyone that lives off 1/2, but know a couple of persons that make a living playing live 3/6

Think about winrates and hands/month. Let's say you need $4k a month to live nicely - rent, car, food, internet, girlfriend, whatever.

A really good player will win at 3BB/100 at $1/$2.
A good player will play (at the minimum) 500 hands per hour.

Playing 100 hands = $12

10,000 hands = $1,200
40,000 hands = $4,800

So let's just call it 35,000 hands are needed per month at $1/$2 if you're a GREAT winning player to make around what you need to live.

35000 (hands) / 500 (hands per hour) = 70 Hours

So that's not bad. 70 hours in a month. Seems kinda doable lol. Go go go!

Live it seems like you would play fewer hands, but given the fish the 1/2 tables get--you might be able to make up for it haha.

Different sources cite different amounts for BR. As a relatively high estimate, Ed Miller and co. suggest 100 buy-ins (a buy in is 100x the BB) to account for variance etc., most estimates I see are 20% - 50% of that amount.

They also suggest 200nl ($2 BB) is a level where a good pro can make 6 figures a year (see icemonkey9's math above, jack it up to 180 hours a month, or imagine that you're a really really really good player winning bigger than 3BB/100 - fwiw, I'm not serious about that, 3BB/100 is extremely solid).

So, for Miller's recommendation, you should have a BR of 100x100x2 = $20K, others will recommend somewhere between $8K (I've never seen a lower recommendation) and $10K+.

if u play 600,000 hands a month, u can make a living at 10nl

Depends on the kind of person you are. If you are single and low maintenance 25NL - 50NL can be do-able with a good solid low variance work ethic.

For most people with wives/girlfriends/lives 100NL-200NL is necessary. 400NL+ can lead to rich lifestyles for those that can beat the game

it depends how much work you put in as in anything

If you dont mind playing poker 50 hours a week you could be a semi-balla playing live 1/2 in the right areas. $40k a year is only ~$835/week. So attainable.

I'd say a multi tabling 400nl player could live comfortably, if he is a good player, poker is really hard with life cus your rent doesnt care if you're on a downswing!

I would have to say, it depends on how much you need to live. I'm disabled and live on 934 dollars a month. I have to stick to freerolls and micro limits and most of the time make a profit of 70 to 130 dollars a month,not much but it's 10 to 15% of my monthly income. So it's all relative.
Ya'll take care

500 hands per hour would mean multiplaying about 8 tables which would take some practice.

You can't be an online poker pro without multitabling.

And the threshold between casual play and tables where most of the regs are pros is 200nl. You can make a very decent living at that level if you're good.

My job pays me a very good living, and I like it, so I'm not interesting in giving it up to strictly play poker for a living. But I'd love to be able to supplement my income for "discretionary spending" purposes by playing say 50-60 hours a month at a decent winrate.

That's assuming you can do that every day - 5 days a week - for the rest of your life.

At $375 a week (avg. it out for winning $75 a day) That's $1500 a month.. $18,000 a year... Yeah, technically you can live off that.. but, if I'm quitting my "real job" to play poker professionally.. I better be making a lot more than that.

That describes me pretty accurately if you replace "i'd love to be able to" by "i do".

Yes i am going to have to agree with this!

I am looking to make like 70-100k if I would really want to quit my job and play poker...

Lets say that you really just want to make 35k a year... thats a little higher than a teachers salary so its a good base to look at... Hokay.. now if we want to make 35000 a year... You would have to make about 95 dollars a day... So I would say it is feasable at the 10/25 limits to actually make a living... but you have to be a great player to win this ammount... 25/50... looking a lot better of a chance... .5/1 we are looking pretty good here... So i definatley think playing the 1/2 with a winning player is very very very very very feasable...

I shall keep my job however and play the MTTs... because those are my weakness... but in the words of the great Johnny Tsunami... "Go Big or Go Home"... Heeeyyyy Pono!!!

goodluck if anyone is really thinking about doing this... keep me informed if you do it on Full Tilt... I love to watch people while i am MTTing it up!

I'd be more than happy earning $18,000 a year playing poker.
A lot of people earn less.

Yeah Id have to agree with Mortis. If Im going to quit working and play Poker full time Im going to need slightly more as well. When your playing for an approx. "Teachers salary" and paying all of your expenses out of your winnings, imo, way to much can go wrong. And if you have a real bad run you might not make it out.

Be very careful when making the descision and your quality of living hangs in the balance.

Don't know where you guys live, but 35K is hardly even a teacher's salary around here (Georgia) and I know GA doesn't have the highest paid teachers. Teachers here make 40K-55K, more if they have advanced degrees and seniority. At least in our local public school system.

But personally, it's been many many years since I lived on 35K a year so it would definitely be an unpleasant drop in lifestyle for me. I think I'd have to be well on my way to "pro" status to be able to maintain my current income and benefits on poker alone. So as much as I love poker and the notion of doing it for a living, I think I'll stick with my day job and just play poker for fun.

Well I guess I have to admit that I've done pretty well this year as far as secondary income goes -- I'm up around $8K for the year (thanks primarily to a $7K tourney win a week or so ago), but I'm also well aware that variance is a fickle beast. I don't yet have a lot of confidence that I'll maintain that level of earning, even though I do feel my game gets a little better every time I play.

If you have a decent win rate + a rakeback you'll be bringing more cash each month just by the rakeback. Some site offer as much as 30% rakeback....something to look into if your serious about doing it for a living.

where do you live, Xavier?

Problem with that is rakeback promotions are typically only offered for first-time promotional signups, so if you (like most of us here) already have an account at the sites you want to play at, you're out of luck on getting rakeback. If you've already signed up under some affiliate promotion deal, such as where you get a prize, bonus, books, software, discount, etc. in exchange for your signup, then you can't go back later and get the rakeback.

I've been told that sometimes if you signed up blind (unreferred by an affiliate) you can get a rakeback affiliate to negotiate your existing account into a rakeback arrangement, but I've not had any luck doing so with the affiliate I tried -- all of my signups were apparently referrals even though I remember only one for certain, where I signed up to Sportsbook to get a free copy of Hold'em Indicator. I think I may have signed up to FT under CC's affiliate link. Not sure where I signed up for Stars, but as I understand it they don't offer rakeback anyway.

If anybody knows any way to convert old accounts into rakeback accounts, I'd love to hear them...

You can live off 1/2 easily. if you put in 100 and you win 1 big pot hour and you play for let say 4 hours a day. you could profit between $250 to $400 a day and times 6 thats like working a good part time job lol , consistency would have to be key and also discipline otherwise you would win and lose it the next day or before sundown lol

You have to make room for loss and error in there. What happens if you go on a bad run? Do you have enough money to fall back on in case that happens? At $18,000 a year, I don't see any emergency back up money.

Again, the 18K a year, playing at minimum is assuming you're flawless in every single table you play at.

I would love to play poker full time as a job! When I was 21, my mom and stepdad took me to the casino and taught me a very important lesson, "Never bring more money than you can afford to lose.".... I'd like to think I'd play well and when every hand if I were to play professionally. But it doesn't always happen that way. Even the best pros lose sometime.

I am sure you could make a living in the live games in Macau (China) at the lowest limits (Which are approx. $1.5/3). The living cost in Macau can be from $100 up and the food is $3 per meal. And the best thing is that the players are awful and the very passive play means variance is not that high although sometimes they do call you with crappy hands.

Living off poker : (Stakes x Win-rate x Time) - Costs of living - (Cost of Alcohol * Amount consumed) - Shirnk costs

I think if you want play in $1-2 , for do this succesfull . 2 tables or more at the same time, and shorthanded table preferently.
Anyways Im still thinking $1-2 is a low level, try to advance to $3-6 or more

LOL flint thats a good one, alcohol and online poker is a match made from heaven :P

Hey you mention trying to make enough to live on playing poker and that you need $4,000 a month? Dang thats high! Ha! But seriously one of my friends does what he calls living the "vanabode" lifestyle and moved to Vegas. I think you can google it but he says he only spends $25 a day for EVERYTHING. So yes if that is true you could easily make double that in a day at 2/4

cant be done unless $6 an hr is a living great players make 3 bbs an hr thats whay they play 20 tables so its not really possible at 1 table Leatherass made 5 bbs and hes considered one of the best furthermore just asking the ? means you are not there yet Daniel N wrote a great article for FT about going pro and how unlikely it really is good luck
PS most would be better off with real jobs and playing semi pro till they have a large sample of play to see how good they are.

If you play one table live (100/200NL), they play exactly like 1/2 NL online.

You can easily make $100-300/day. My friend's bro use to and stopped for "religious reasons".. ????

i think to make a livin at 1 2 poker limit u need to be 12 tabling and have money to burn an a good bot workin for ye