Professional Poker players

Question

How much can a pro expect to make per annum?

An average pro.

thanks

Answer 1

You could average 1-2 big blinds per hour if playing limit Texas-Holdem.  If playing $6-12, you could make $24,000 - $48,000 per year if you average 2,000 hours per year.

Answer 2

That's really a loaded question for a few reasons.  Here's why:

First of all it depends totally on the stakes the person plays.  Someone playing $1/$2 NL professionally is going to make a lot less (probably) than a pro playing $5/$10 or higher.

Second you need to consider how many hours that player plays and how many bb/hour they win on average.  This is the heart of answering this question.

I've recently moved up a level, and am now playing $0.50/$1 NL, and I'm 4 tabling.  I average about 35 hours a week, and have a winrate of 12.21bb/100 hands over several thousand hands.

So for me, I'm playing about 260 hands per hour, which is about $31.75/hour * 35hours = 1111.11/week * 52 weeks = 57,777.72

And believe me, I hardly would consider myself anything other than average.  I still can't really beat the higher games.  Not enough to compensate for what I make when I 4 table lower anyway.

Now imagine someone who plays as well at $1/$2 as I do at .50/1.  They're making DOUBLE what I do!  Beating that game for the same winrate yields an annual salary of $115,555!!!!  So the stakes do make a lot of difference.