Yesterday ended my second month straight of making at least $1200 at poker, playing pretty part time - maybe 12 hours a week on average. Only took me a few months to become a winning player, which is faster than usual, I gather.
My other job is also very part time and low paying, so that $1200 a month is the majority of my income. I expect that number to keep steadily increasing, as it has been.
So, I guess I can start thinking of myself as a pro poker player of a sort - a minor one, but it’s almost kind of cool.
That is pretty cool. I’d love to get into poker playing but I’m too chicken. I’ve played a lot of thefake money types online (I realize it isn’t at all realistic that way), and I’ve watched a lot of online games with real money but I just haven’t been able to actually get myself to start playing for real money. One of these days maybe. I love poker but I need to learn a lot more.
Just watch out for standard deviation and long-term averages. Or, to put it bluntly, you just experienced a winning streak… look out for the other side. Congratulations, you now have a bank roll… don’t spend it.
As a “pro” you can expect to make 1 small bet to 1 big bet an hour playing poker. So if you are playing 10-20 or better, thats decent money. If you’re playing smaller limits, you’re better off flipping burgers (money wise at least). If you are just playing for fun, any money you win is gravy.
Mike Caro has some keen advise for “semi-pro’s”:
If you can give one piece of advise to somebody thinking of going pro, what would it be?
Depends on where you’re playing the game.I did pretty good one winter in between jobs by playing in the back room of one of our local bar/hangouts,but the competition was all bar regulars working varous daytime jobs looking for a game every couple nights or so.I was there every night.
Going to a casino poker room is a whole different story where at least half of all tables are clogged with no calls if they’re not holding anything after the first bet.
Cool man. I play a bit myself, and things finally “clicked” for me recently, so now I feel like I know what I’m doing. I’m also starting to make some decent money instead of just staying in the same old rut.
Right now I play mainly .25/.50 NL tables on Gaming Club and some multi-table tourneys when I have the time. I used to play alot of single-table tourneys, but I think I’m done with those.
Were do you play and what tables do you like to play on?
Check out http://www.pokerpages.com/ - it has a listing of a lot of card rooms. There’s a page out there dedicated for listing and finding home games, too, but I can’t recall what it is offhand.
No, I’m quite confident it’s not a winning streak. I’ve had a lot of variance within those months, but always finished up ahead anyway. I’ve got hundreds of hours under my belt now, so I know the difference between general improvement and streaking. I was a fast losing player for 2 months, then a slow losing player for 2 months, then a break even player, and then a winning player. I’ve racked up quite a few hundreds of thousands of hands during that period.
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As a “pro” you can expect to make 1 small bet to 1 big bet an hour playing poker. So if you are playing 10-20 or better, thats decent money. If you’re playing smaller limits, you’re better off flipping burgers (money wise at least). If you are just playing for fun, any money you win is gravy.
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That axiom only really applies to middle to high limit games - in most $3-6 or $5-10 games, while 1 BB isn’t much, it’s not unreasonable to average 2-4BB an hour due to the average quality of the opposition. Online, of course, is even bigger.
Mostly I play online, actually. I live in Ohio, which is terrible for poker - except ‘charity games’ - where a professional company runs games but has to give a portion to charity. The results are mixed - since Ohio is bad for poker, you don’t encounter pros here - your opponents are terrible. But because they share profits, the rake is really high, and it makes the games harder to beat.
I’m not sure I fully trust online poker, but I’m already well into the black overall online, so even if I go completely broke now, it’s nowhere near a net loss for me. I’ve decided I won’t put another cent of my money from my pocket/bank account into online poker, but I will continue to play with winnings.
I mostly play at partypoker.com because it’s the easiest to beat - recently I’ve been playing mostly $100 and $200 pot limit and no limit cash games, along with $30 and $50 sit and go tournaments.