I've seen a bunch of threads asking about hourly rates of brick and mortar grinders at $1/2nl, $2/5nl, and above so I hate to bring this up for fear of getting attacked for asking the same question but I've been talking with a fellow player who is full-time and while having the hourly rate comparison discussion (I'm part-time), I asked him what his annual salary from poker was in 2009, 2010, and also 2011YTD.

He looked at me blankly and said that he doesn't measure it that way. We got into a discussion about it and I was wondering if anyone can give an idea of what someone grinding $1/2nl or $2/5nl makes in a year. I've never heard anyone share yearly numbers for some reason, only hourly. Does no one stick around grinding for more than 12 months? All other careers in the US are measured by annual salary, why not poker?

My hourly is between $25 and $30 (don't want to disclose the exact amount) for $1/2nl but I only play part-time. I come to Vegas for 2 months and play full-time but then I leave. So figuring that my hourly is $25 (low end) and that I play 50 hours a week (yes a bit much but I like poker so no problem and my non-poker job is similar hours so I'm used to it) so I'm making $1250 a week. Now, if I stayed in Vegas all year instead of 2 months, I would probably play 42 to 44 weeks. With poker, I would take 6-8 weeks of vacation a year to clear my head and to work on other projects and business ideas.

So playing for 42 weeks would be $52.5K and 44 weeks would be $55K pre-tax. Does this sound about right for a $1/2nl grinder?

(I guess the numbers would be low because I do play $2/5nl more and more now and my hourly - so far - is higher with $2/5nl than $1/2nl but I don't have enough hours yet, just a few hundred, to get a proper hourly rate.)

Forgot to include my hourly comps on 2000+ hours a year so add $2K+ in comps to my salary. Call it benefits like a free lunch at the workplace cafeteria or something.

I'm not sure if $25 is ever a low end for 1/2 unless games are redic soft, definitely sustainable though, but ya sounds about right.

lol, yeah. Find me a poker player making 50k a year at 1/2 and I'll find you a liar.

I'd say there are two big reasons that people discuss "hourly" instead of annual income. First, people that play for a living rarely play the same game all the time. Almost everyone will play tourneys from time to time, and no one plays the same stakes for an entire year. Second, "my hourly" times the number of hours that I play never sums to my actual annual income.

And finally, people that talk about "hourly" in this way tend not to be full-time players. A more professional conversation about "hourly" would be:
"so what do you think your hourly is in that game?"
"**** do i know... somewhere between $25 and $200 per hour."

hahah 40-50k+a year at 1-2 would be pretty ridiculous, maybe in 2004 when people were complete idiots.

Lol thank god everyone said this, i was definitely concerned about my hourly at 1/2 being much less..

besides wouldnt hourly be the most important rate if its accurate?
I could make $1000 an hour but be lazy and work an hour a week for $52k a year or make $5 an hour and work 20 hours a day and still clear 36.5k....

1/2 or any silly capped buyin NL games didn't exist in 2004, and I wish they didn't exist today too.

hi - I think that win rate above $25 can be definitely classed as 'success' - speak to any on line player and they always say 'yes but that is such a small sample size' - I too have a similar win rate and sample size but 'know' that this is success, because I can go back and review a session look at the number of mistakes I made, was I actually running particularly hot (no) just average cards, yet my opponents were generally similar/weaker/mega weak

so to conclude I feel comfortable by saying I'm a winning player at 1/2 based on this general analysis

whether I could make a living out of this, yes if my living costs were low enough, sure it's doable, however I don't think you really can make a living out of 1/2 it's just not quite high enough stakes, plus increasing the number of hours you play per week isn't going to help that much as I tend to play the bulk of my poker (just like the majority of others at this level) at optimum times when the tables aren't full of regulars, which makes a huge difference to your win rate

I'm pretty sure 1/2 NL existed in 2004. I didn't start playing in casinos until 2005, but by then, 1/2 was already the most popular game in every room in AC.

But the echo the other comments, $25/hour at 1/2 NL in Vegas is not sustainable.

Right, the moneymaker World Series in '03 (I think) is the start of widespread NL games. So, you got in right after the boom. Ask an "old-timer" what it was like in 2000, don't assume it was always as it was when you started.

Cardsharp touched on it, but people that like to state their hourly are probably omitting "before", "minus the shot I took", "when sober" or whatever else their excuse is for making less than they are trying to represent.

But it all counts. A big part of playing poker for a living is the actual grind. We all have leaks, some more so than others, and we all would like to forget certain stretches where we lost more than we would have liked to, for whatever reason.

A lot of people like to sell themselves like they are selling a car. They only mention the positive however they can while staying within their own moral compass of not out right lying (to those who care).

A year is a long time and crap happens, but its suppose to and its all part of the big picture of the true struggles of playing poker. Look at graphs people post on here. One might look at them and think they are no long term players because most everyone's aren't for that long of a period.

Truth is its hard and year long results either aren't that impressive (especially compared to people who inflate their numbers) or the truly gifted ones are also more likely to be modest and not brag telling everyone how much they made.

agree with cpitt398 - but it's not always through rose tinted glasses, my win rate is 10.904 big blinds per hour taking every live session into account in 2011

surely this can't be just a good spell yes

Last year i played about 12 hrs a week.@ the end of the year i was up 2300.

sorry to answer the question of the original poster, IMO, 50k a year at 1/2 er.....no I don't think so, possible just about, but very unusual - I would say if you are good and stand out from your opponents then 20k to 30k is about right

so as I said earlier, can you make a living out of this, which is your real question, yes possible but no not really

hope this is of use

I think that part of problem is that we tend to assume that things scale linearly but in reality other factors come into play. So you may make $25/hr playing part time but you're playing nights and weekends and if you try to scale those hours up you'll have to play other times when the table composition is different and your winrate suffers. Or you make $25/hr playing 20 hours a week but if you suddenly start playing 50 hours you get tired, make more mistakes, keep playing when you're tilted and your winrate suffers.

This is silly. It means he doesn't want to answer because for whatever reason he thinks the answer is embarrassing. He likely doesn't win the amount hourly he tells you, or doesn't put in the number of hours he tells you. It wouldn't be hard for someone playing for a living in a math based game to take X# of hours @ Y$/hr and figure out a yearly.

Bingo. Very, very few people are playing 1/2 or 2/5 NL for a long period of time as a sole means of supporting themselves. All the people here who start threads like, "should I turn pro" etc don't end up lasting.

Someone on 2p2 who makes $25-$30 hourly playing 1/2 NL live. Shocking. I clearly wouldn't have guessed this would be mentioned when I saw the thread title.

Also, you "don't want to disclose the exact amount"? Why not? You've given us a $5 range; people aren't going to ignore the thread if it's $26.09 but love you to death if it's $28.48.

The chances that someone makes $55,000 playing 1/2 NL live are about equivalent to the chances that the Pirates and the Royals face off in next year's World Series. Not mathematically impossible, but it isn't happening.

Disregarding the winrate portion of the equation, you'd have a much harder time than you think playing that many hours 44 weeks a year.

that's very hard to believe, but you might be right.

nah you shouldn't be worried bout your wr, making 25-35k/year playing 1-2$ is respectable for any solid player.. who can actually do this

and imo i think hourly rate+volume shows the most consistency when doing something like live for a while.

making 18$/h playing 1-2 over 1000 hours shows alot more bout a player then some1 who wins 75$/h at 1-2 over 30 hours.

I'm sure it was very different in 2000. But we arent talking about 2000, we are talking about 2004. And I dont think it is that much of a stretch to assume that a game that was ubiquitous in 2005 at least existed in 2004. In fact, I remember talking with friends in my poker home game about their trips to AC during this year, and they always mentioned playing 1/2.

cash only player living in vegas who goes to CA one week per month. over last 12 years my average $ 121,296 per year. Not great, but good enough for my wife and kids lifestyle.

Not degan, put in solid 50 - 60 hour "work weeks". Haven't team/partner played in about 10 years, so all on my own.

Another thing that should be mentioned, it is really hard to put as many hours in as you expect to.

Let's say I go in and get my clock cleaned early in the session. If it's really bad I go home, which is def better for me then staying there. So instead of getting 8 or how many hours I wanted to get in for the day, I might only get in 2 or 3. This happens often enough where it would be unrealistic to make these hours up. I mean it's possible but most people won't.

People also leave early when they won a ton, won a bunch and then lost most of it back, etc. There are good and bad reasons for doing this but more importantly to the question OP asked, most people fall into this category. Only the sickest or the best don't.

Annual income has a big range depending on how much the player wants to make, because he can play however many/few hours he wants. With real jobs you tend to work a predetermined number of hours a year, so the question is relevant for real jobs but not so much for poker.

For instance one poker pro might average 25 hours a week this year. Does that mean whatever he makes this year is his set-in-stone annual income? No, so I think his hourly rate is a much more relevant gauge of his success. He can always choose to play 40 hours a week or more if his need for money increases. If another player has to play 80 hours a week to pay his bills then he has a low hourly rate and isn't all that successful.

If you wanna define a year as fifty 40-hour weeks, then just multiply the hourly rate by 2000.

Is 500 hours a good measuring stick? I play 2/5 live with a pretty solid win rate. $42.43 an hour. I had 43 winning sessions and six losers. My losing sessions always pretty big though because i never had a stop loss limit. And of the 43 winners some were more like 3 in ones. Straight 38 hour benders.

Seems really stupid to spend the money traveling to Vegas, spending the money to live there, just to grind 1/2 full time for two months. You're not going to make $25-$30/hr long term playing 1/2 and it isn't a real $25-$30 anyway because of expenses and time invested. Move up to where they respect your raises.

Agree with 2OutsNoProb.

Really, please tell us you were kidding?