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.

[Zybomb]

I do not play poker professionally... but unlike a lot of the these responses, I don't think it'd be a bad thing to do IF planned out properly and starting with both a sufficient bankroll and sufficient money stashed on the side for expenses (say for a year) in case things dont go as planned. I guess I just don't get people who can make 100k+ and have fun while doing it and then say they want to move onto different things. Good luck making 100k+ in a real job right out of school.

Anyway as for me A monthly average is hard to say, like SJay said because of the varience.

So far this year my #s look like this (nothing special)

Jan: +3.2k
Feb: +2.4k
Mar: -1.6k
April: +.7k (so far)

although these #s could have easily took a 3k swing in the positive if I had avoided 3 total hands

I've also begun playing a bit more online poker lately, and although I dont have a month breakdown, my yearly figure is +1220 at this point

My biggest winning month in the last 2 years is +5.8k and biggest loser is -2.3k

[MAYHEM45]

Man, you need to find a bigger game, these numbers are nowhere near your potential.

[Robbie Robb]

This is a great thread for me. I've talked with Nikki in the past about eventually playing "full-time". What I'm unsure about is doing it by grinding out the cash games or grinding SNGs.

Regardless of the method I choose, I have already set goals that must be reached before I can even begin to seriously think about making this move. First off: bank roll MUST hit $20K. $10K of this would come out and be stashed away in a savings acct for months where earnings would not cover expenses.

The advantage for us would be that someone would always be home with Alex so child care would cease to be an issue.

Another possibility is working part-time and playing part-time. Haven't set down any real numbers for that to work yet though. But with my success rate at the $16SNGs on Stars it really wouldn't take MUCH more elevation to my play. (Not an increase in skill, just an increase in hours/SNGs played). I've got what I consider a pretty decent ITM/ROI rate on these since January at 44/30. Granted the sample thus far is fairly small (only logging about 100/month) but seems pretty consistent month-to-month.

[Zybomb]

lol, I had a feeling there'd be at least one response along this line.

One thing to keep in mind is that I havent been playin a ton this year bc of my 6 day/wk job, although I've gotten in 2-3 live sessions a week on average and a little online play as well.

Truthfully though, I've been running pretty awful this year and riding a rollar coaster the entire time as well. The size of the game I'm playing isn't the issue, if you add up all the session in which I won $ (without subtracting the sessions in which I lost) it's +17.6k, I've just had multiple bad sessions as well, bringing my yearly total to only a 5-6 G's.

In the next few months my goal is to increase my online play to the point where 50% of the poker porfit is online... we'll see how that works out

GG +33k for the year BTW.... is that including the Tourny Cashes you posted about or strictly cash games?

[Ando05]

wow these are great answers, all of u, its kind of good looking at different views of peoples opinions on this matter or topic, i never said i would wanna play poker full time though, i said if i did i might make that much, also i made roughly 15k last year in poker that is y i said about 1 to 2k a month, didnt really think of the varience just gave u the avg so far, but thx a lot for all these great answers, it is teachin me a lot

[lightfungus]

How old are you if you don't mind me asking?

[MAYHEM45]

I forgot to suggest playing more online as well. Play with rakeback and get like 10k hands in a month. Learn 6max and you'll make some crazy money.

My numbers breakdown is 16k cash, 14k tourneys (running like shit lately) and 3k bonus and rakeback.

[Ando05]

soon to be 20

[Invigilator]

This just reminds me why I love this forum. I am a micro stakes player who is slowly building a bankroll.

I love that I can come here with a question and get it taken seriously by high stakes players like the ones that have already posted in this thread.

Ahhhh to be able to make that kind of money (consistently) on the side. (some day).

[Talking Poker]

Agreed.

Remember though, he likes to play live, which causes him to play 90% less hands (that's a very reasonable number, IMO) than he could if he were multitabling online for that same amount of time. Even if we cut that number in HALF, because he'd lose some of his live one tabling edge by making the transition to online, I still think he could EASILY be making 5 times as much if he were to play online instead.

My

[Talking Poker]

I wilkl be very, very, interested to see how many hours you end up playing live vs. online once you reach this goal. I have a funny feeling once you do the math, you're going to be playing a LOT less live.

BTW, do you even have a Tilt account with RB uner me? If not, you really should get one. You'd be surprised how much difference 27% RB makes.

[Zybomb]

No... I PMed you about it a while back, but you said that you weren't able to do it for existing accounts anymore (the offer fell thru)

[Talking Poker]

Ah yes, right.... Sounds to me like it's time for a new account.

[sjay2k]

reasons 3 and 4 above are by far the most significant for me

[herschelw]

I play mtt's full time and it is definitly an up and down ride. I get a little cash stud in from time to time as well. I was very fortunate to take 2nd in a tourney for 300k in January so life has gotten a lot easier. Prior to that I was grinding out wins at $20-$50 buyins, and the occasional larger buyin staked. Playing full time is incredibly stressful if you dont have a ton of cash stored away and a very sizeable bankroll. The transition from fun poker to job poker is very difficult. You have to be incredibly disciplined and also have to manage yourself emotionally on days where you family members(i.e. wife) are stressing you out.

[ChipFish]

The heck you say! Wives don't do that at All!

[stormswa]

wait till that little-chipfish comes along, that is like zero added stress.

[Reel Deal]

This would be every day for me.