Before you say, I'm not looking to grind poker for a living. Not unless I get very good at it. I wouldn't mind making a small side income from it.

But I'm curious - how difficult is it to grind poker full time for a living, AND make a decent wage from it ($50,000 or more per year)?

If there's a long thread about this already, can someone link me to it? Thanks

Well I hardly believe that it is possible for an "average" player to become a real pro.
I think the most important thing is to have a good start capital so that you will not become a bankrupt if you'll loose it while testing your strategies. The more I read and watch about poker - the more I realize that there is no "ideal" theory or strategy of how to win even on a distance. So these "poker stars" that we see on TV - I think they simply won 1 or 2 big tourney, make their names and now they are earning from the advertising companies or playing with noobs according their contracts...etc. It is impossible to be in profit constantly just playing poker IMHO.

Pretty difficult or there would be more people doing it.

BillyReg - Tom Dwan plays live cash all over the world in the highest stakes games in the world. Phil Hellmuth 12 world titles.. These arent people who binked once. Esfanardi was a winning pro for years before he won the one drop. There are plenty more.

Yeah I think all the big players make most of their money from sponsors and jobs at the poker sites. But they had to be winning players in the first place to get these sponsorships and jobs, surely? They must all have had to grind their way up from the low limits to get there. Once you get a bigger bankroll, it's easier to get an even bigger bankroll, sort of thing.

I heard that Tom Dwan has made many thousands on the internet. He must get the money to play high stakes live from his sponsorship with Full Tilt?

yes Tom Dwan did make a few thousand on the interwebs

http://www.pokertableratings.com/ful...-search/durrrr

Dwan made only one deposit of 50$ now he is involved in bigest pots of online and live cash games.

Blom deposited 1k$ and in couple of weeks made couple of millions.

well these are 1 in a 1000000 examples....

With the rake and hours put in, the averagely or slightly above average skilled player will be better off with a day job...

Substitute any profession that involves some combination of skill, natural ability and luck for "grind poker"and the answer is about the same.

How hard is it to play music for a living?

How hard is it to professionally box for a living?

In any such profession, most people who try do not succeed. In any such profession there are low level pros that nobody hears about making a living but not being a star. In any such profession there are failures who attribute the stars success to just luck. (and occasionally there are stars who aren't that good.)

If you think about it, every profession has some combination of these things.

To make $50k/year, imagine the BR you'd have to have online...

First step, get 6 figure account balance.

Second step should be easy after that.

+1

It's extremely difficult. It's not 2004 anymore.

I'm imagining...

And I'm not saying it would be easy, but,
50K/year = 1K/week (with a two week vacation)

So that would be $25/hour with a 40 hour week.

Or 2.5 blinds/hour at 5/10 stakes (playing just one table) So call that a 1K buy in, with fairly conservative bankroll management of 50 buy ins, would only a 50K roll. Admittedly, a 100bi bankroll would be better, so that would be into the six figures, but

2.5 blinds/hour at 1/2 on 5 tables. $200 buy in, 50bi bankroll= 10K

or am I missing something?

I think you're missing the fact that you can't just "make 1k/day" at Poker.. you have ups and downs associated with the game!

Sorry, I thought we were just talking about the bankroll to earn it, not the liferoll needed to survive the swings.

Certainly, A player needs a couple of years of living expenses in the bank before relying on poker income, no matter how large their bankroll to play.

The fastest way to have $50,000. in poker............ start with $100,000 and play some.

Blom then grinded it to 4 million.. Then lost it all in 1 session lol

And dwan is just a sicko

I agree with that, because an average player loses money. Only about a third of players are profitable, but most of those are close to breaking even.
You must be reading/watching the wrong things, then. If the strategies discussed on this forum and in books published by 2+2 didn't work, then it would be pointless publishing them.
The fact is that players that have a solid grip of the fundamental theories of poker, while controlling their emotions better than other players, will make money in the long run. There's a lot more luck involved than some winners would like to admit, but poker is fundamentally a game of skill. The players with the best skills win the most money.

It depends of your persona and likings of how difficult it is to grind it at any level like a job. The odds of becoming a pro are from small to nothing, just like at any other sports, and statistics prove it. There are maybe 50 2700+ rated chess players in the world that people who play chess know about and it isn't basically different in poker either, those pros being the best and they play the highest games. Then there are 2500-2600 rated chess players who make some money also, and those then play something like 5/10 (30-60 at limit poker), and then there are master level players (you can get the statistics about chess, tennis, and at least in the past of poker also) that then play like 2/4 (10-20 limit poker) and beat it. And so it goes down the line as expert (1/2; 5-10 though I am not sure if the limit games here and below this are beatable for profits), A-level player (NLH/PLO100; 3-6 or 2-4), B-level (50; 1-2), C-level (25; 0.5-1). The C-level is the average player and the game IQ is about 100, and one can add 10 points every level up from that and there is no way to beat higher games than one's game IQ, though one can pick better tables and play live poker and the players on some table are not all high caliber enough but it makes no difference to the stats of the number of professional players.

If this "table" isn't true, then there is some other reason why there are no more professional poker players than at so many other sports areas; I don't see another reason. Learning the abc's of the game and then one should be able to soon play close one's potential and for those with less than highest levels of talent, there is no way to beat up to anything higher than where one ends after the abc's as the sports are mainly about talent, not about learning and one having more talent can play any crap in any crap way and he still wins with some experience, beating the more knowledgeable opponents as his natural game understanding is better.

There's a simple reason which explains why it's much more difficult to earn 50k/year playing poker than working at a day job these days: supply and demand.

Every NL10 reg browsing the strategy forums dreams that one day he'll get good enough to play for a living. Making a living playing poker has a huge number of perceived advantages over sucking up to a boss in a boring day job. So there's more competition for "positions" as a professional poker player than for most jobs. Just like there's more competition for jobs that are perceived as interesting and fun as there is for jobs that are known to be boring.

Basically, aspiring professional poker players, or even the players putting in a consequent enough amount of time in poker that it stops being just a game, have to accept being "paid less" than their skill level should be worth at a normal job. If they put the same amount of energy and time learning a skill that is in demand in the job market, they would earn much more than what they make playing poker.

he is grinding now at micros?

of course we know a guy(Isildur1) who transform 1k$ in 1mil$ but we doesnt know couple of thousand maybe people who lost their entire bankroll to him

Superbly succint and so true..

Isn't that a paraphrase of Doyle Brunson? "It's easy to make a small fortune in poker... just start with a large one"

it all depense how you approch to poker which means must spend playing poker and see how it goes while studind.its all about your scord and talant

A lot of negative people on this thread and on this forum in general.

Ok, so how difficult would it be to earn a small side income from poker? Say $20k a year? Seeing as playing for a living is apparently impossible unless you have a huge bankroll already and major skills.

First of all you would have to put in some extreme volume
Grind a long time everyday, every week (just like its a job so 40hrs/week grind MINIMUM, preferred is 50hrs)
Also when u not grinding... U should be studying and learning for like 10-15 hrs/week
Thats 55-65hrs/week avg on poker

Second of all u need some INHUMAN emotional control and patience..
If u starting from a low bankroll, ur gonna make about 10k that year probably assuming u continually put in 60hrs/week

U will see ur friends making like 30k-50k with 40hrs/week
U might lose faith at that point.. dont worry alot of people do.

U jus gotta remember ur "raises" per year is higher than a basic job.. if u make 10k in 1 year the next year u can probably make closer to 30k.. then if u still continue these 60hrs/week u can MAYBE hit 100k in the next 3-4 years or so depending on how much u learn and how determined u were to hit ur goal

I jus think people cant take the leap of faith and devote THAT MANY hours to poker
imagine if u fail/stop in like 2 years when ur only at like 25-30k/yr..
Count how many hours u just wasted of ur life

I disagree strongly with the part I bolded. People arent being negative, they are just honest with you. There are people every day or two posting about how they want to make a living playing poker, it doesnt hurt to get them grounded in reality right from the get go.

Making $20k a year in poker is as difficult as making $50k or $100k in a year if you are just starting out. As Khangura says, it takes a while to build up - and an awful lot of study and practice.