Playing Poker Professionally - Tips For Professional Poker Players

A popular poker saying is “Poker is the hardest way to make an easy living” and whoever said it, was one smart smart man. I think very few people have the ability to become a SUCESSFUL professional poker player. Notice the emphasis on successful because many people try and scrape by barely, in my opinion those people are not professionals.

So why is it so hard to play poker successfully on a long-term scale? Surely it cant be that hard? Everyone thinks there an expert at poker, surely all these idiots will just donate me money! Well… that may be the case but the games may not be as easy as you think.

First of all you need the technical skills to be a winner in one form of the game. Second of all you need to be sure about it by putting in a large sample size. Third of all, you need to be able to deal with the financial and emotional swings. Last of all you need to play high enough stakes or a large enough volume of hands and sustain it month in month out. Think its still easy, ok give it a shot for 6 months and tell me what you think!

A reason why many players don’t make it is because they don’t practice smart bankroll management. Always leave yourself with outs! Its ok to use aggressive bankroll strategies, that is fine. But you have to be able to move down as well as up fast. If you cant do that you may go busto like hundreds of players who have gone on a hot streak, climbed up the stakes too quickly then eventually lost it all playing in games they cannot beat.

Other players play great when they are winning and are running good. But when things start to go the other way, they compound there bad run by tilting, spewing and generally losing there mind like a donkey. Unless you have experienced a huge downswing/break-even stretch over 75k hands in your career, you cant truly know if your good enough to make it. The best players in the world don’t have “downswings” they play good enough during these stretches so that they become “break-even stretches”. If you get a graph of any top online pro, you will notice that they will have sections of hands where they make tons of money, then sections where they break-even/lose a little for a while and then repeat the cycle.

Other players don’t succeed playing professionally because they have other leaks in life which aren’t poker. Say you are trying to play professionally and are 6 tabling nl100. Over the past 6months, you have earned $3500 a month playing poker,  You also have a monthly nut of $2500, IE that’s how much you spend on rent, food, gas, electricity etc. This leaves you with $1000 a month left to play with. Smart people will spend that money on learning to increase your income, IE poker training, poker coaching, adding money to your bankroll. Dumb people lose money playing blackjack, sports betting or buy a $30k car on finance. These people put themselves in unnecessarily tight financial spots and put themselves in situations where they start to eat into there bankroll to keep up there lifestyle and ultimately go busto.

Hopefully you have got an idea by now, becoming a poker pro isn’t as easy or as desirable as it seems. A lot of people cant deal with the stress of long break-even/losing stretches. If you go through some good times, put the money aside for the bad times that will most likely follow. Please try and stay level headed. I have succeeded in playing professionally for the past 2 years. Maybe I am not as skilled as some of the best players on the planet and my income hasn’t really increased exponentially over the past 2 years. I’m not struggling by any means but I’m not a millionaire yet either. If your young and contemplating not going to college to pursue a poker career, its most likely a bad idea. I would only do it if your earning over $100k a year already playing poker. The games aren’t going to get any easier and you will continually have to get better as mid stakes are only going to get harder and harder as the fish lose there money, regulars get better and there’s not a constant influx of new players. I’m not going to say things look bleak since we have the possible reversal of the UIGEA bill but poker will never return to the days where there is an abundant supply of fish just giving away there money. Good luck at the tables and dont go busto!