Can you make a living playing poker?

Question

is it possible to make a good living playing poker? and where would most pros be? online or live?

Answer 1

Most pros are found in live games, especially this time of year during the WSOP in Las Vegas. Almost every casino usually has a "resident" poker pro group, and they love it when the out of towners come in.

As for making a living at poker, like many professions, most of the money is made by the top players. If you spend time developing poker skills and gain experience, you can win some money playing a tight-agressive game.

But even the pros have their bad streaks, amateurs have won the WSOP lately. While the best known pros can supplement their income by endorsements and other means, most average players have to depend on the tables for living money.

A good living? Not likely. But possible at the top of the heap, lol!

Answer 2

i dont think its a very good living from a moral point of view. if u win big, then someone else goes bust and u will be enjoying the money someone else is suffering because they lost.

Answer 3

No.

Most of the professionals you see on TV, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, etc. make their money through sponsors.

Answer 4

yes you can make a living playing poker.  If you plan to make a living you need to manage a bankroll.  Do not buy in to a cash game with more than 4-5% of you bankroll.  The lower the better.  This will help when dealing with variance(aka: bad beats).

Most pros are online.  There is noway to know this number.  casinos can only hold so many people.  online is unlimited.  Hope this helps.  

James

Answer 5

It can be possible, but you have to know how to play very well, and you'll probably need a real job.  You'd need a real job unless you want to be a hobo for half your life, seeiong as everything can change from one bad hand.

I don't really know where most of the pros would be, but most likely live.

Answer 6

Yes but you need to be good, and most important to be able to afford your own losses.

You will lose money, even if you were to play a noob sometimes because the luck of the draw does make a difference.

Learn about pot odds etc etc I wont go into everything but learning the maths of the game, ie the outcomes etc then that will help you.

If I was you I would keep a "real" job and learn about the game playing it has a hobbie.

Small games with friends, play online.

You have to to beat your friends, make money online and try your luck getting through to big tournaments via internet satelites etc

Good Luck

Answer 7

Absolutely, and people do. It can quickly become "work" though and burn out is like any other job. Stick with it though, it's a lot better than flipping burgers.

Pokerstars has many pros that play there. Daniel Negreau, Joe Hachem, Vanessa Rousso, Isabelle Mercier, Chris Moneymaker, Barry Geenstein... obviously, you can play against them at WPT or WSOP events, but they seem to keep their practice up online.

Answer 8

I don't think so. It's way too unpredictable.

Answer 9

Well the answer is yes and in fact there's way more online players making a living at it than at poker rooms/casinos and the main reason is that it's very difficult to do it live versus not that hard online comparitively speaking anyway.  

The amount of skill needed to beat online games consistently is nowhere near as high as some people think and nowhere near as high as on the pro circuit.  The reason is that you've got millions of players playing at any given time of various skill levels, mostly low and a lot of very low.  To be successful you just root this stuff out until you find a table with a bunch of chimps at it and while you certainly will have your losing experiences due to luck, if you are diligent with your game selection, you will definitely win money over time.

This legion of online pros isn't anyone you've ever heard of nor would you have any reason to have.  We're talking a diverse group, and not necessarily high stakes stuff either.  Many multi table the lower limits.  I never could play more than one table at a time but these folks are playing at 6 or 8 at a time and the competition is so bad you don't even have to pay attention to anyone at any of the tables to make money, not that you even could really.

As you move up the levels the players do tend to be a bit better on average but not remarkably so.  Here you're probably going to need some good tracking software to keep tabs on your opponents every hand they ever played and every tendancy, and the stuff is available cheap.  Try to use that stuff in a live game :)

You've got your people who are making what they could be making at a "real" job, but liking working from home, right on up to people making some real serious bread who play the higher levels where 5 figures changes hands in a single hand.  Pro doesn't mean rich necessarily and most aren't what you'd consider to be rich but some definitely are.

In the end anyone who has attempted this will tell you that playing for a living is a lot different than playing for fun and it's not really fun when you're playing that much.  Still though it's an experience that's for sure.

Things have gotten tougher over the last year or two in terms of finding profitable games and a lot of games are so tight that only the house makes money but there's still a bunch of people sitting home online cranking out a living at online poker, just as there are gigantic schools of fish who haven't tired of losing theirs.

This stuff is not for everyone believe me and I hardly play anymore after several years of this stuff playing every day for 10 or more hours and feeling guilty when I decide to take a day off since I know there's some money waiting for me a couple mouse clicks away.  For every pro though there's at least 10 wannabee pros and my advice is being good at poker and even good enough isn't even the beginning and you really need to think hard on this.

I did manage to build up a big enough bankroll during this time though that I can sit home now and just spend an hour or two a day "working" at sports betting and fooling around on the internet like this and also on poker education websites so I really can't complain although I will tell you that full time poker is definitely work not play.]

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