To all in this forum...

[Ando05]

i see almost all of the big posters in this forum are the ones who play the big stakes, but i never thought about if u guys treat this as a main job, or somethin to make money off the side...if u guys dont mind which one of u play poker as their career, and do u guys make good amount of money? about how much? since i brought up the question i guess i'll go first, its not my main job but i make like 1 or 2k off poker a month, like 15k/yr. which i dont mind at all on the side, but i think if i were to do this full time i might make 40k+...but then again im not that experienced, i dont think, for full time yet

[eejit101]

ill be first then.

I work in real life. I do marketing mainly, and i help out at a mates bar if he needs someone. Howver i am going to greece i think in 3 weeks to work there for 3 months in the sun, cant go wrong there.

Been playing poker for nearly 2.5 years now. First few months i was learning and lost a bit.

Average since then (Discounting $65k tourney win) is about $14k a year.

Some of that went on holidays and stuff for the house and whatever, some of that on bills, and the majority of this years went on breaking up with the "ex".


P.S i play between 1/2 and 3/6 NL ring tables, and various tourneys from $5 turbos to $215 sunday events (if i feel it). Every other big poster except AEQ plays higher than me and laot more, so my numbers arent for as many hands as id like to play.

[stormswa]

Unless someone came since I have been gone I don't think anyone does this as a job. JD kinda does but he is in college so that really doesn't count does it? I personally would never do this is a job, one I have a great job that I absolutely love and second I'm not good enough to do it as a job. When you decide to do this as a job a lot of things change.

poker as a job LOL that's all I need more stress in my life!!!!

I don't really play seriously anymore, If I feel like playing I deposit and play whatever level I feel like playing that certain day. Like if there is a $50 tournament I want to play I just deposit and play, been busy last 2 weeks so haven't played a hand of poker in weeks. Think last time I played was with TP and Boobie, think I played the day after that and haven't since. I have turned from a every day player to a occasional player. Honestly I would just rather drive up to A.C. then worry about all the hassles of trying to get money on and off online poker. I have a family vacation coming up, maybe after that might play a little, who knows.

[sjay2k]

i don't know how you can claim to make 1-2k per month. even if you play the same number of hands in the same games each month, your profit/loss will vary so much that you couldn't claim to have an average monthly win. you've also got massive variables outside your control (e.g. US legislation, increasingly difficult games etc.). moving up in limits or playing different games will also add to your variance.

my record looks something like this (gross estimations, probable inaccuracies):

first 12 months: 10,000 hands (low limit LHE, low limit SNGs- i played very sparodically), +$3k
next 6 months: 80,000 hands (mid/high stakes LHE, mid stakes HU SNGs), +60k
last 7-8 months: 120,000 hands (mid/high NL), +120k

even the last 7-8 months (since i switched to NL) have been wildly inconsistent. i think i've played anywhere between 3,000 and 30,000 hands per month. as for variance in winnings, offhand it would look something like this:

sep 06: +12k
oct 06: -5k
nov 06: +18k
dec 06: +12k
jan 07: +40k
feb 07: +8k
mar 07: +6k
apr 07: +27k

there's really no such thing as an average monthly earn. losing months are devastating to your confidence. poker has been my only source of income for the past year or so (i just turned 21 and don't really have many expenses though). but poker is not something that i see myself doing as a full-time thing when i graduate from university for the following reasons:
1. the variance would stress me out
2. the future of online poker is too uncertain to rely upon
3. it's pretty unfulfilling. anyone smart enough to make serious money from poker probably has intellectual needs and dreams/desires that poker will never satisfy.
4. whether i like to do admit it or not, playing poker has a huge impact on my lifestyle. my sleeping patterns suck and i waste lots of money. playing poker also makes me more prone to be unfit, anti-social and engage in degenerate gambling (although i have done well to avoid any of these)

honestly, i would advice against playing poker "full time" if you see it as a "40k-a-year" type of decision. it's nothing like that.

[2Tone]

Given that I play the high stakes/high drama world of 3/6 to 4/8 limit, poker is obviously a recreational rather than professional activity. Still, it is nice to have a hobby that makes rather than costs money. All the ones my wife enjoys are the other way around

Reading this thread so far, I'd again suggest that even for the casual player, it is important to keep good records. Online this is a no-brainer. PT and other software can track your # of hands and earnings/loss down to the penny. For live play, it doesn't take long to keep Excel sheet detailing every session. And then you don't have to guess at these kind of questions.

[Talking Poker]

First, let me just say that you should go read sjay's post again. Seriously - cause it's spot on and I couldn't have written all of that better myself. +Rep.

I also would not want poker to be my full time job, for the same reasons listed already, and probably some more. The only way you'll find me palying poker "full time," would be if I scored some huge (like, retirement huge - well over 7 figures) win in a poker tourney. If that happened, yeah, I'd travel the circuit for a while and play a bunch of poker... but I'd be doing it more for fun and to challenge myself than I would be doing it to try to make a living. I would fully expect that I COULD have a breakeven or losing year if I was spending $200-$400k on buy ins. Hopefully I'd grind out a nice profit, but you just never know. It's very hard to reach the long run playing torunament poker, IMO.

As for my results to date, (non poker) people ask me all the time how much I make playing poker - and that's almost an impossible question to answer. I've won > $20k in a month (cash games only), and last month - my worst month ever by a LOT - I lost 10k. Fortunately for me, most of my months have me winning some amount of money in the $0 to $10k range, depending on how I'm running and how much I play, but there is still no way I could give you a monthly - or even YEARLY average.

I was a losing player for the first HALF of last year, but I didn't really play all that much. Then I final tabled a WSOP Event for $30k, and started killing the cash games the last 3-4 months of the year, so I ended up a having a pretty decent year. But if you had asked me in June how much I thought I'd make in 2006, I would have been way, WAY off. Tax planning is a bitch for me every year.

Hopefully I at least answered your question.

[MAYHEM45]

Poker is my job. I love it. I cant think of anything else I could be doing while in university that would let me make 33k already this year.

That said, it's not gonna be my job forever. Grinding is fucking boring, I get my 1k hands a day in and then get the fuck out. Thanks for the money dummies, cya tomorrow.