to make the money to live on poker doesnt necessarily take long at all. You can make a living on poker pretty early if you pick it up quickly. Other people take a lot longer to make a living at it. I have done it before, but currently I am not at the moment. Its all about discipline, That is it!!! if you can keep your
bankroll limits under control you can easily make a living of it. Keep up on your reading and keep up on your playing and practicing and you shouldnt have a problem. A pro poker player generally places in about 1 out of 5 tournaments. if you arent doing that then maybe poker isnt for you. If you are talking about cash then you are going to want to make a certain ammount per week. generally around 500$-1000$ a week. you will have your up and down swings but if you keep at it these should be easy to maintain even playing 1-2 NL poker cash or 100$ buy in tournaments.
The biggest thing is to make sure you do the correct percentages. if you have the cashflow right now to start a bankroll chances are you can live off of it right away. Generally though to be a professional at anything in life you need 15,000 hours of doing that, or 10 years(meaning 40 hours a week for 10 years). thats how most generally identify a professional.
Now for your cash poker you are going to want to have at the very least 50 max buy ins. That is if you are playing 1-2 NL poker everyday then the max buy in is probably 200$, you are going to want to have 50 of those, which is 50x200=10,000$ in your bankrolll just for your cash. I have heard some of the younger players in vegas say that you really wanna have about 100 max buy ins for cash, which I like a little bit more so if thats the case you are looking at more like 20,000$ and that is totally dedicated just to your cash endevours. That way you wont be afraid and throw away
hands when pot
odds are telling you to call w certain draws, sometimes the money is just too much even if you are behind in a hand.
Now for tournaments you dont usually have to have as much money but that depends on what tournaments you want to play. Lets say you have 10,000$ for your tournament bankroll. You should never risk more than 4% of your entire bankroll on a tournament. so if you have 10,000$ you can risk 400$ on a tournament. if you lose however, your max buy in for a tournament is going to go down a little and now youll only be able to buy in for 375$ or so. and this will continue until you get yourself a decent cash. Now once you do, your roll may go up to say 15,000 and then your max buy in will be 4% of that. So if you keep yourself within the right limits and the right buy ins you can make a living of it pretty easily as long as you have a decent understanding of that game and know what to look for. Read up on some literature and give yourself at least 1000 hours of poker before putting money into a bankroll that way you can see for yourself just how the poker tables go. So that may take about 6 months. But basically its not how long you have been playing the game its how disciplined you can be with your bankroll!!! always remember that.... DISCIPLINE is what makes these Professional poker players keep playing... DISCIPLINE... not pipe dreams. as mentioned in rounders lol. they have mortgages, car payments, insurance, kids to feed! so discipline is what makes it possible for them to play this game for a living, not the fact of how many hours they have been playing. But just for a general rule before you invest any money into a bankroll, give yourself 6 months to a year of playing just to get used to the game and keep up on the literature, and you too can be a professional poker player.
