Hey guys, I was a big online player specializing in big MTTs. I don't have too much experience playing in casinos (I won 4/5 trips). I was wondering if people can make a good living playing at these? Over break, I had an insane winning rate against terrible people. Theoretically, I could playing for weeks at a time in OK if I wanted to over the summer.Thanks.

Live donkaments are unbeatable for a living wage.

It depends on what you mean by "decent living", but it has become obvious to me that there are a lot of easier ways to make a good living. Thus I think the truthful answer is no you can't. Certainly you can be profitable, but not enough in my opinion to make what I would call a decent living, from just playing alone. I would however maintain that it is a good/fun way to supplement your income.

There's no way you can make a living playing live tournaments exclusively. It's common knowledge that all the pros made their money plaing cash games.

Check out the Poker Goals and Challenges section to see how others are grinding out a liveable income. Look for a thread from poster ButterflySymmetry about a $40K challenge that he is currently doing.

My personal favorite inspirational thread on 2p2 is MooreMoney19 'another kid another dream' located in the Las Vegas Lifestyle thread section.

Get good at cash game strategy and you can do it. Then use your bankroll to boink off a couple tournaments to catapult your winnings.

Problem is $40K is not a decent living. ($40K plus fringe benefits such as health insurance would be a minimal decent living.) I know as a young guy you'll think this is a lot of money, but trust me when your older it won't be.

Here's the thing. If you are smart, disciplined, and patient enough to grind a decent living playing mid stakes poker, those skills should translate into a better paying professional job. Unless you are super elite at poker and playing for large stakes, then by all means be a pro.

Winning $40k isn't the same as getting paid $40k. There exists a quantity called Certainty Equivalent, that you would take risk-free rather than accept a risk-laden higher amount. CE is always less than WR, but how much lower depends on the variance and your bankroll.

For example, you'd probably flip a coin for +$2 / -$1 over a guaranteed $0.10 payout, because you can easily stomach repeated $1 losses. But if someone offered to flip for +$200,000 / -$100,000 or a $10,000 payout, you'd take the certain payout unless you were super rich.

So if your alternative is to work a job for $40,000 salary (plus $5,000-10,000 in benefits) at a rock-solid company, you need to be winning something like $70,000-$120,000 to be monetarily equivalent.

Winning $40,000/year is probably not worth more than being a Starbucks barista.

Should probably incorporate how much you enjoy your job. If you love playing poker, but hate your 80K/year office job, it's a worthwhile consideration.

If someone enjoys playing poker, and makes enough money to live off of it, I think they should by all means pursue it.

There's a lot of intangibles though:

(1) For most of us, playing poker is a lot more enjoyable than work.

(2) It's a comparatively stress-free job.

(3) You have a great deal more freedom. Specifically: You have no boss or supervisors. You don't have to put up with ******* co-workers. You make your own hours. You can wear whatever clothes you want. You can't get fired or laid off. You can drink while you play.

For some people, those things are worth a lot of money.

It's a lot more fun and less stress than work until you have to do it or you don't eat

This is perfectly said, being a pro is a waste of time unless your one of the few and even those guys struggle often. Best thing to do is find a stable job that can become a career. Instead of moving up in limits move up in promotions. Much easier and much more enjoyable

If you are single (or at least have no kids), live in an area with EXCELLENT comps, then yes.

I currently live in a casino hotel. They offer promos that get me 4 weeknights free and the poker room comps the other 3 nights. The poker room also comps my meals. HOWEVER, I have to play to keep the comps coming in. So, aside from various tips, I live for "free".

I have winning days and losing days. If I'm honest, I lose more than I win. Fortunately, I have a day job. However, my poker losses are less than the cost of living if I rented an apartment and had to feed myself.

So, do I make a decent living? NO. But if you are a better player than I am with better tilt-control, it's possible. Let me ASSURE you that there are days I do not want to play, but force myself to (GREAT way to lose money).

Also, I play cash games. They don't comp rooms for tournament players.

I'd be interested in hearing more, ractar. How many hours a week do you put in to maintain free room and board?

Also how do you take a vacation?

Ractar, interested! If you have a full time day job how do you have the energy to grind the hours necessary to qualify for the free room? Where is this if you can say.

That's not what I said at all.

Sure, if the salaries are close, intangibles may factor in. But a typical CE/WR ratio is 0.5 and benefits add 20-50% to salaries, so the comparison between salary and WR woefully overestimates the value of playing poker.

I have said this before, but in many ways the best poker book ever written was "Death of a Salesman".

The poker economy relies on convincing a great many people that they can achieve something only a tiny few can achieve. Which is exactly how Miller felt about American capitalism writ large.

EDIT: And judging by many, many heated discussions in 2+2 threads, there are a ton of Willy Lomans in poker.

Where are you getting this?

It seems to me that you're overestimating how large poker profits need to be in order to be equivalent to a real job. It's not like your yearly income playing 2/5 is going to vary 50k depending on how you run (I don't believe.)

I see it as more of a working capital issue. If you have say 40k and low living expenses, then you have plenty of money to play 2/5 with little to no risk of going broke if you are a solid winner. However, you can't take that 40k and invest it, so there's a opportunity cost there. If you are under rolled, then sure you are taking a lot of risk. It just seems that the CE/WR ratio will vary wildly based on your savings, risk tolerance, and living situation. If you can live comfortably on half of your expected win rate, then the intangibles are a huge factor. For most people, doing something that they enjoy for a living will make them infinitely happier than having a few extra thousand in the bank anyway.

No doubt the secret to a happy life is to find something you love to do and convince someone to pay you to do it.

Although I love to play poker as a recreation. I don't think I would love to to play it as a profession. Mostly because:

1. I am not convinced it is possible to make enough to have a comfortable life from playing poker alone.
2. Poker income fluctuates to widely, that I think the stress from the necessity of making rent and meals would not only make me play poorly it would also destroy my love of poker. What will you do when inevitably you have a week, a month or year with no poker income? (I have seen it happen to very good players.)
3. It is not very satisfying, because you create nothing. What will you have to show for your life?

I for one have never met a poker professional that does not have something else on the side. It may be investments, endorsements, book deals, lessons, or a second job. But some other way to make money.

Concerning stress, I'm a university professor which according to careercast.com is the least stressful job. So to me poker as a living would be very very stressful. I would hate it!

Maybe you can make it work and be happy. I don't think I could.

Search for a post by me with "Certainty Equivalent" in the title in the SSLHE forum.

I readily accept there is a large gap between my number and popular belief. Am I overestimating or is everyone underestimating?

If you have a 5 bb/hr WR, 60 bb/hr SD, and play 1,500 hr/yr, your confidence limits are 2,900-12,100 bb/yr. That is, with 95% confidence, you could make as little as $14k and as much as $60k. Not quite $50k difference, but a 4x spread none the less.

- There are those who think because they win 10 bb/hr playing at the juiciest 10 hr/week, they can sustain that rate for 30 hr/week.

- There are those who think their variance is smaller because their sanple size is small and just haven't hit an actual rough patch.

- There are those who think they can put in 2,500-3,000 hours of play per year. This is generally an overetimate, especially for larger games that may not be available 24/7.

It does. There's an equation in the thread and you can play with the numbers. It will generally be between 0.3-0.6.

You have to realize that I'm being realistic, not pessimistic.

If you're giving up a $50k job for $50k winnings, over a career this adds up to several hundred thousand worth of CE.

The CE model is based on the desirability for exponential growth in your assets. Gambling, especially poker, has two negatives:

- Winnings are linear, and exponential growth in stakes is generally not possible.

- Downswings are murderous, so that one catastrophic month that you will inevitably have in a lifetime really hurts.

Most successful pros end up supplementing their income with a high-CE income stream - passive investments, coaching, etc.

I think it all depends. Can you earn a living playing at casinos? Sure. Can you earn a living playing LIVE tournaments at a casino? Sure. Can you earn a living playing cash games at a casino? Sure.

Now, what do you consider decent?

This question comes up on various threads over and over again. The answer is yes you can! BUT it is very hard to do and most folks just can't make it work for reasons discussed here and earlier on thread after thread. Still many folks are going to try it anyway , and a few will succeed despite the huge odds against it working out! So if you are determined to try, give it a shot! You will likely end up a good rec player with a normal job if you are lucky, you could do a lot worse too. Good luck and be carefull!

For those interested, this is the post from callipygian that I found (not sure if this is what he meant, but it's all I found.) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...ctures-781379/

Thanks for this. Very interesting and insightful. This actually gave me some numbers to quantify what I was thinking.

A better question to ask is can you do more than create a job for yourself in poker? Making a "decent" living isn't enough because poker is a means to an end.