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So you want to become a professional poker player?

It’s hard, but it’s possible.

You just need to put in your number of hours (and reasonable amounts of cash) to become more adept with the game you love.

Ask anyone who is a pro and they’ll tell you the same. While we advocate good bankroll management ahead of anything when it comes to becoming a poker professional, every up and coming player should take opportunities to turn up the heat and win a tournament with a big guarantee like The Uppercut on Sundays for example. Do you want to know how to become a professional poker player? Read 6 tips & the pros and cons of poker pro life, to make sure it’s the career for you. Jun 17, 2016  How to Become a Poker Pro. By Paul Seaton on June 17, 2016 0 Comments. When it comes to playing the game of poker, many people have different viewpoints on exactly what it means to them. For some, poker is a recreational pursuit, a fun way of enjoying a hobby that can provide thrills along with profit. But for others, profit is everything,.

A fair warning though: accordingly to poker experts, only an estimated 10 percent of poker players are considered long-term earners of the game.

It’s every poker player’s dream.

That means there’s a load of poker players who think they’re good, but they’re not.

They often overrate their skill and once faced with sleek opponents, they often get up from their seats empty-handed.

It’s a tough and grueling sport and lifestyle.

So, are you still up to it?

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Do you win consistently?

Are you a winner?

The first thing you need to consider before you turn professional is your skill level.

While it’s true you could kill every home game in your backyard, the big league – the casinos, the professional card rooms, the office that is open 24/7 – is a different ball game.

Objectively assessing your skill level is crucial to ensure that your chosen path is worth pursuing.

Going professional means being able to pay for bills relaying only on the money you make from playing poker.

So if your skill level isn’t high enough you might run into some financial problems if playing poker is your only income stream.

So in here lies a much needed reality check: How good are you at poker?

I mean really. There’s a difference in “knowing” if you’re really good at poker and “believing” you’re good at it. I used to “believe” that I look better than Brad Pitt, but my friends “know” it isn’t true.

You need to know in your heart of hearts that you’re not kidding yourself because the mind is a prison and it’s quite an expert in deception to make us believe what we want to believe

Keep a record book

Keep a poker record book.

What you should do is to keep tabs of your poker performance on a regular basis.

If you want to become a No-Limit Hold’em professional poker player, you need to treat it just like any other job – professionally.

In your day job, your employer keeps score of your performance and you get that (dreaded) monthly employment appraisal.

Why not do the same with your game?

You need to have a baseline of data to compare the number of your wins to the number of your losses. According to poker experts, you need a minimum of two thousand hours to play poker and use the results of those games, win or lose, in order to make a sound case

Target Monetary Gains

Money, money, money…

Picture this: you’ve had enough professional work experience and you’re vying for a position in a new company.

You aced the qualifying exam, the interview went well, and it seems that you blew your competition away.

The CEO of the company was pretty impressed with your answers and he’s dying to have you on board.

But there’s one problem.

The salary range is not what you expect.

Sure there are benefits, but you feel the monetary offer won’t cut it.

Do you think the offer is an insult to your capabilities and sense of worth?

If your answer is “no” then you should treat your decision to turn poker pro the same way.

Of course, you’d say “poker is different.”

Yes, poker is different. As opposed to your regular job that pays you a regular monthly wage, winning at poker on a regular basis is not easy as you think.

You need to consider the target amount of cash that you need to pay your mortgage, your tuition, your credit card, etc. (and if you’re like Joey Knish in Rounders, alimony).

Get your record book that we’ve suggested above.

Go to the page of your wins and losses, and compute how much you’ve won and lost each given night, each week, and each month as per the number of hours you played.

You’ll be your own manager and employee, founder and accountant.

It’s a tall order if you ask me.

Poker is fun if you’re winning when you’re losing a little bit during your spare time.

The story takes on a new face when it becomes the main source of your survival and lifestyle.

What separates men from boys: Pros versus Newbies and your bankroll

Men vs Boys

The harsh reality is that poker is not easy.

Growing up, we’ve heard old folks say you have to grind and work really hard, day-in, day-out.

You subject yourself to harsh boredom of doing repetitive and monotonous things in life.

How to become a No-Limit Hold’em professional poker player is no easy task and requires commitment more than you can possibly imagine and the most important thing you need to consider is your poker bankroll.

Your bankroll

Poker bankroll management.

How much money do you have or need to support your playing time and your life away from the tables?

Do you have enough to keep you afloat when you’re game is moving downstream?

Sooner or later you’ll suffer a big loss as is the case of most professional No-Limit players.

No one is exempted.

Some even disappeared from the poker universe radar after going “bust” big time. Others have sunk so deeply in debt they couldn’t get back up.

Determining your bankroll is a continuation of the importance of keeping an honest record of your game’s performance and your financial targets.

Your bankroll ultimately determines the stakes you’ll be playing. It will help you identify the blinds you’re most likely to find yourself playing and the maximum buy-ins you’d allow yourself to have.

The bankroll that you will set must be pegged with the persistent probability of you getting badly hit by variance and losses.

Preparing to become a professional poker player is no different from an entrepreneur who’s starting a business – there must be capital involved that you’re willing to risk.

Do you know how and when to walk away?

Time to walk away?

I remember watching a cash game poker in one of the local clubs and there was one player whose stack was so short and yet would continue to soldier on.

From what I’ve heard, this player asked money from other poker players there.

Seeing this made me question myself,“is this the kind of pro poker player that I want to be?” “How could he allow himself to be put in that situation?” “How could he be so square?”

I know this sounds a bit discriminating, but you have to agree I have a point here. There’s a difference between a professional poker player and a gambling addict.

This is what separates the men from the boys, the pros from the amateurs.

The pros know when to quit, while the amateurs get stuck.

The pros know when to get up from the poker table and leave while they’re on the winning side. The losers will continue playing and sometimes embarrassingly leave the table without any cash left and with their chins down.

Do you know that feeling?

Both are difficult to do. That is, it’s difficult to leave the game when you’re still winning big. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same.

It’ sooooo hard to leave the table when you’re still winning and you continue only to realize you’ve lost more than half of what you’ve earned in the last 8-hour grind. How much more if you’re losing?

If you don’t know how or when, or should I say if you “can’t” walk away from the poker table, then you’re not a No-Limit Hold’em professional poker player yet.

The mindset of a No-Limit Hold’em professional poker player

Holdem wisdom for all player

In “Hold’em Wisdom for All Players“, Daniel Negreanusaid that if you can’t forget and let go of a previous bad play, you’re not yet a professional poker player.

If you’re the type who keeps talking about your bad beats or you can’t believe your made Flush on the Turn got outdrawn by your opponent on the River and kept complaining about it, then you’re not yet a pro.

Trust me. You’re not yet a pro.

Dealing with sharp emotional swings

How do you feel today?

I’m not saying you can’t feel bad about it.

You should.

But you also need to learn to let go.

Here’s an example. I was in a big local tournament with championship prize money worth US$60,000. It was time for the “In The Money” situation and I was mid-stack at the time. It was a heads-up match between me and a known aggressive player.

My hand was among the last plays and I had J♠,10♠. The board was showing 4♣,. I hit my nuts when the Turn came. It was an 8♠. The aggressive player hit his two-pair 9♣,8♣. He was first to act and went all-in.

I called.

The River was

After that experience I knew I wasn’t ready for the big leagues.

Variance and Psychology

Psychology of poker

However, I got an epiphany from that game.

There are two crucial things in poker: Probability (some call it lady luck) and psychology. If you don’t understand any of the two, then you’re in trouble.

You’re in bad shape if you can’t accept that variance plays a big role in poker.

Time and again you’ll hit a brick wall.

You seem to be capable of fairly calculating the odds and expected value of a hand you’re playing, but you can’t predict what’s going to happen next. That’s right. You can’t predict what the next card will be. All you can do is estimate what will come next.

The other thing is psychology.

“It’s not the cards you’re holding. It’s about the man.”

I bet you’ve heard this. if you’re in the game in a long time. It’s a grain of salt.

You need to learn to read other players’ tell – see their betting patterns, how they played in the previous hours, sessions, or last week.

Most important of all, it’s about controlling your emotions. I’m not sure how you do it, but when I’m in the zone, I could easily change gears and often tell myself not to tilt (which, by the way, still happens).

The Big Picture: Amassing A Lifetime Bankroll

The big picture

We couldn’t stress further why your bankroll (management) is the be-all and end-all of a professional poker career.

Think of it this way: you should treat your dream of winning millions of dollars at the World Series of Poker a windfall, not a cash flow.

Unless you live off playing tournaments on a regular basis, the true source of professional poker income is in cash games.

The idea is to beat the game fairly and squarely, one big hand at a time. You don’t rush things. You wait for that big hand or play at the right moment and move strong to win enormously.

Your strategy should be to never give up what you’ve worked hard for and to get as much as you can in each game.

You need to build your bankroll, manage it, and protect it at all cost because everything depends on it. It’s your profession – you don’t want to get laid off, right?

Sure you wanna do this?

10 000 hours poker

In summary, you need to show up day-in, day-out. T

hat’s what the grind really means.

Professionals, in all fields of expertise and not only in poker, are those people who show up and carry on with what they do even if sometimes what they do already feels like a drag.

You need to put your heart out in every game and you can’t slack-off because it’s your chosen profession.

Try slacking-off in your work environment and you get a memo. Worst, you can get fired, right?

That’s the same thing with playing poker professionally.

In the non-poker book, Outliers: The Story of Success, author Malcolm Gladwell posed a theory called 10,000-hour rule.

The theory goes that if you keep doing the same thing over and over and amounts to 10,000 hours then you’ll be very good at that chosen activity.

I think that applies to poker as well.

The 10,000 hours is roughly equivalent to three years if you’re playing poker eight hours a day.

That means making sacrifices.

Now let’s see a pro in action in this video. Will this be you one day? Start playing today and find out.

Don’t let the movies fool you. The life of a professional poker player is not all big tournaments and winning big pots. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have its glamorous moments, and there’s a certain freedom to basing your livelihood on playing games whenever you want.

Still, when you’re a professional poker player, playing the game becomes about more than just winning the hand. It starts to mean that if you lose the hand, bills do not get paid. Of course, I would never dissuade anyone from answering the call if professional poker is what they want to do.

Instead, I want to point out that playing professional is a job that has similar concerns as any other job. A lot of poker pros who are just starting out don’t always enter the profession with that mindset. They just want to play the game and worry about things like insurance and groceries some other time.

Fortunately, when you decide to go pro, that won’t be you. You’ll be prepared, because I’ll show you some things you must have as part of your poker playing career.

1 – Motivation

Starting off as a poker pro, you might not think that motivation would be something you need. However, there’s a lot more to the life of a poker pro than you see on television and, after a while, it can start to seem like a grind.

You’re going to need to be sure that when you’ve played 12 hours of poker on real money gambling sites, you can play a few more if you have bills due. You need to make sure that even as things aren’t going your way, you will still want to play.

Fortunately, motivation can be tested before starting life as a pro. Put yourself in a few extreme poker situations (playing for hours everyday after a day job or entering a marathon of tournaments) and make sure you always want to play. If not, just play for fun.

2 – Savings

If you’re considering the life of a pro, you probably know how much money you need to be successful in a given tournament. Now, you need to start thinking about exactly how much money you’re going to need to be successful in a tournament and still eat, pay rent, keep the gas on, etc.

How much any given pro needs to live varies based off of their lifestyle, whether there’s a spouse with their own income, etc. If possible, though, a poker player should look at what they’re doing as if they were starting their own business. Experts say you should have at least three months’ worth of expenses in the bank before starting on your own. That money does not include what you think you need to gamble.

We’ll talk more about poker bankrolls later.

3 – A Deep Understanding of Downswings

Every poker player hits a run of bad luck in the casino and online. There are some nights where no matter what, the slot machines keep coming up empty, the dealer keeps hitting 21 or you keep getting dealt 2-4 off suit as your hole cards.

Sometimes, these runs of bad luck last a night and sometimes, you start a downswing that can last for months. If you are playing at a friend’s house or for fun, you can always shrug off these runs of bad luck, stop playing, and come back to fight another day.

If you play poker for a living, you don’t get to just play when you’re on a heater.

Good professional poker players soon learn that downswings happen and they keep gambling because that’s their livelihood. Hopefully, they have a way to keep up their spirits and many will switch games for a bit for a bit of fresh air, but ultimately, they do play on because they understand downswings go away eventually.

4 – A Large Enough Bankroll to Survive Some Downswings

We said we would get back to talking about poker bankroll because it’s important that a poker pro’s bankroll be large enough to survive rotten luck without sacrificing their lifestyle. Certainly, there’s a give-and-take when it comes to funds for poker and funds for living, but you don’t want to dip too far into either one to pay for the other.

That’s why, when you’re figuring out how much money you need to save, think about the number of tournaments you plan to play in a given week and their fees, how much money you plan to deposit into online accounts, etc. That should give you a basic idea of how much playing poker is going to cost you.

Next, assume that you make absolutely no winnings for a period of time (e.g., two months). Hopefully, your savings can keep you fed, with gas in your car, and clothes on your back, but you need to take your weekly poker costs and multiply them by eight (or more) so that you have money to keep playing even when your luck goes south.

With that being said, practicing casino bankroll management is extremely important, no matter what kind of casino game you’re playing. So this applies to every player.

How To Become A Profitable Poker Player

5 – Paying Taxes

That’s right. Poker pros pay taxes, too. Money earned as part of gambling is taxable, which means it’s as certain as death. Not including it in your financial plans can be deathly, too.

This can be partially offset by your gambling losses (which you will have), but you will still owe money at the end of the year.

To figure out how much you owe, if you have all the losses reported, poker pros would do well to hire an accountant to help them figure it all out. A financial planner can help, too. Unfortunately, both of those services cost money.

6 – Emotional Support

Great entrepreneurs who start businesses always talk about the need for a network. Great athletes have agents. Golfers have caddies. You get the picture.

Any professional poker player would do very well to find an emotional support network on which they can lean when times inevitably get bad. They’re also good for celebrating when things go right, too, but that’s another story.

In all seriousness, before becoming a professional poker player, you would do well to find people who genuinely care for you and want you to succeed in the profession. At the very least, find people who are willing to help you pick up the pieces when you’re in the midst of a downswing. This will keep your mind right and ensure you don’t tilt in the midst of a run of bad luck.

7 – A Good Laptop

If you’re going to do the professional poker thing, get used to the idea of playing online poker. Sitting at several different tables at once playing poker is the easiest and fastest way to ensure that a steady flow of poker winnings heads your way.

However, you cannot do that on a crap laptop that lags, locks up, or doesn’t get a clean connection to the internet. Even the best internet will sometimes glitch and those glitches can cause your poker client to time out or fold or do other things that don’t result in you winning money.

Therefore, good poker pros have good computers to get online and fast, clean, reliable internet to play online games.

How To Be A Professional Poker Dealer

Conclusion

First, I said it before, but I will reiterate—if you want to be a poker professional, absolutely go for it. It’s a life of freedom that few will ever enjoy in their careers. It can also turn into a life of adventure, travel, and lots of stories if you do it right.

However, the life of a poker professional isn’t all sun, fun, and playing high stakes games James Bond-style in Monaco. You have to grind, and you have to win or else the money goes away.

That’s why we wanted to highlight these things that people who go pro need but aren’t thinking about. It’s really difficult to add paying taxes to the fantasy of sitting final table at the World Series of Poker, but if you aren’t doing the one (pay taxes), you can’t do the other because the government will have some things to say.

Still, good luck. Keep these things in mind, and you can have a rewarding life as a poker pro.