Yes, 50k a year isn't a quite extraordinary sum which makes you rich. But i think these people are not taking that as a job! They take as fun-they are addicts to win big events and get another trophies and the main part to enjoy the game.

Why do we assume our person playing poker hits 50k income and then completely stagnates for 6+ years?

Crossing the 5 figure threshold and entering well into the 5s should open so many doors for the person, whether it be coaching, staking, playing live or taking backed shots. The idea shouldn't at all be a guy literally making 50k every year with nothing else going for him because there are parts of the west where 50k is honestly a joke.

At the end of the day careers are what you make of them and poker offers many adjacent possibilities, not so much so in other careers, but it is up to the individual to take advantage of them. Yeah someone like Cumicon was a top "pro," but it's clear he lead a very miserable existence doing it, there are people that are less successful in every regard that have a way better life and time, it's all what you make of it.

i wonder how many people manage to live off 50k a year...... thats upper upper class of the whole world. not below anything in usa at least

50K is top 1% in the world.

Really? I think this forum is also based on US or European countries so based on that 1%

50k is noting. Java programmers earn over 100k a year and basically, they have guaranteed job for entire life.

I think it's pretty EE heavy, 50k according to this chart is actually pretty solid:



This was after the recession, so let's take Canada:



Basically same thing+Canada's cost of living is expensive AF.

Let's look at Russia because although they are a bigger country and thus poorer than all of EE (due to the mass of population living outside of major cities), it's still relatively close



If we go 50/50, western and eastern european peoples posting on this forum, the average is around top 5% on the whole, around top 10% in the west and top 1% in EE, so honestly not too shabby.

When 50k is a top 1% income then you can assume that 99% of the 99% dont have the means to make 50k by playing poker. Bankrolls wont create themselves out of thin air. If you dont have money to spend there is a high chance you wont be able to build a decent bankroll or even think about playing poker.

We were also talking about saving 2-300k. Even if you save 1k/month of your 3.6k/month it will take you over 16 years for 200k. And most likely you wont be able to save that unless you make huge sacrifices. I also wrote "That is decent in low wage or emerging countries" so I dont necessarily speak for them.

You also overestimate the possibilites to make money via coaching. Being good at poker doesnt mean you will also be good at teaching that stuff to others not to mention that the market is probably already pretty dead with RYE, Upswing and RIO. Playing live requires a lot more cash on hand than playing online. So unless you bink sats you will think hard about going to play live if you play poker for a living.

Somebody above also wrote that one of the more avid grinders of 2+2 averaged around 60k/year the past years and its safe to assume he isn't the worst player so making 50k a year might not be that easy as some think and the room to make even more on average might not be there for most of us.

What? It doesn't take 50k to make 50k, absolutely no idea where this comes from.

Sure, we're also talking about achieving something that probably 99% of poker players don't do ever, so it should go without saying that the person doing this is going to have to be at least better than average.

I really don't, if you are good at the game, you should be able to coach/stake low end players on their way up, this isn't a matter of making 50k a year doing it, it's a matter of getting good hourly rates to help you achieve it. And if you're good online, people won't stake you for live?????

Tonka, Kevin Martin, All In Pav, Buhlero, Lex, Jaime Staples, Matt Staples and other streamers have made 50k, are they extraordinarily intelligent? No it's not easy to be in the likely 1% of anything, but poker is much easier than other fields and 50k isn't some massive hurdle if you are willing to put in the hours and learn poker correctly.

Srsly you shouldnt just pick something out of the whole post and run with it. I never said you need 50k to make 50k. What ABI do you think would be right for a 50k year? 30$. So with 300-500 buyins that would mean a 9-15k bankroll if you are comfortable with that. I am nitty in that regard I wouldnt start below 500 if I played for a living. If you dont have other incomes you also talk about a year of live expenses in your bank account and soon we talk about 30-40k. Where did that money come from?
If you play an 30$ ABI you also shouldnt coach unless you are keen to reduce your own EV in the longrun.

Most of the players you name have made their starting 50k long before 2019. And we are talking about average and not just one year samplesize. Not too long a lot of people where ****ting on Staples that he isnt that good. Now most stats by these guys are blocked so I am not even sure your post is correct regarding all of them.

Perhaps don't say things like this then:

When 50k is a top 1% income then you can assume that 99% of the 99% dont have the means to make 50k by playing poker.

Again this is why I don't get what you are saying, you're asking me where 9-15k comes from? I don't know, maybe grinding it up playing lower stakes????????????????? How about getting a regular job and saving money up?

I honestly don't know why you say things that are verifiably false and easy to check:

All In Pav made 70k last year in only 9 months of play
Tonka made 180k last year
Lex made 60k 2 years ago
Buhlero was around 100k last year
Staples made 25k last year and 50k 3 years ago
Kevin made 45k 2 years ago and made at least 70k last year
Matt made 62k last year

Literally go on playerscope or sharkscope, not too hard to find at all, Lex is the only one you'll have to take my word for as he removed his stats, but I know he had a winning year before he took them off which others can confirm if they remember, you can even take him out of the sample size and I'm still right. Are these guys mega geniuses or sickos with crazy work ethics? Ok so then how hard really is it?

Your figures are off. It's been estimated that Lex lost around 200K in Poker last year online, see the twitch thread. He is not a good player. Kevin Martin made quite a lot last year (over 100K I think) but most of it was live. I'm 100% sure he only made a few thousand last year 10K-15K online and no where near the $70,000 you are claiming. Tonka's amount seems way off as well. I have no idea on the others but you seem like you are spewing out random figures here.

Just tried to look up mattstaples on sharkscope and he's not even Opted in. I'm pretty sure all these figures are made-up tho I think ALL IN PAV and BUEHLERO are decent winners.

Maybe it's not exactly top 1% but it's not that far. Take into account that the only countries in Europe that come close to that income are probably Switzerland and Luxembourg, but it's also true that most jobs that pay average salary are easier than poker.

I worked in Spain for one year and earned less than half of that and now that I'm back in portugal earn much less than that, and I wouldn't call them poor or developing countries by any strech.

Lex is a good poker player, but if he's playing some mid to highstakes tournaments online while streaming and interacting with audience it would be pretty tough to be winning. He even said in the commentary booth of the recent Bahamas tournaments how tough the players are to play against that are regs in midstakes in pokerstars.

It's honestly staggering that you use the word spew and then you don't have the decency to even check playerscope.

Yeah Lex did lose because he played way too high of buyins, being a moron with your BR does not have anything to do with making 50k which he did the previous year.

And? How do you get to play live? You become good online, he made 30k online and would've made more with any sort of an effort to "grind."




So around 28k, no idea where you get your figure from, but if you are too dumb to use playerscope, I can see why you choose to makeup numbers instead. 28+64+his few other small live scores=70k+, hope this helps.

Yeah SEEMS, based on what exactly?



Doesn't even include his 888 or party accounts or live.

And the answer in regards to you making 50k is clearly no, if you don't have the capacity to use basic poker websites after being on here for nearly a decade, then 50k is out of your reach.

Yep made up



Please stick to making snarky comments and playing $3 tournaments after playing poker for a decade because it's clear you're too dumb to contribute anything real to this thread.

So and where do you see the profit on this side?
When I put in KevinM987 on OPR he has a 66% rating for 2018 which basically means there is no such thing as a profit on Stars.
And we are talking about averaging at least 50k/year. So that does count out MattStaples as well since the years before he didnt do it either according to OPR. Taking only 1 year sample sizes isnt a good basis for analysis. Buehlero got a huge score on the special sunday million and followed it up the next week with another big score.
If we going by this then yes everybody can have a 50k year as long as he plays the Sunday Million.

Keep defending Lex bro he is not a good player. Him making 50k a year was him running insanely good. He lost 200k last year. Also think playerscope is way off for Kevin. Even he said he only made a few thousand online. I do not care about your "live" arguments. This thread is about online poker, live is irrelevant (It's way easier)

Also wouldn't most of these streamers be in the top 1-2%. They all put in insane volume and stream which is great for thinking through hands. The average grinder is not putting in as many hours or study as the streamers. You fail to look at grinders like Blaakman08 and instead base all your research on twitch streamers as per usual.

Playerscope does not count rebuy/addons at all. Sharkscope puts you in for the average amount of rebuy addons in the tourney whether you paid more or less.

Here are his last 2 years:





Averaged 33k online and with his live scores last year totalling 150k, that's not bad.

Ok and? How exactly do we know how good someone is if they don't rise up the ranks? Him NOT doing it before and then posting his amount is actually more impressive and a point for me than it is proving how "difficult" it is.

The real problem with your sample size point is how big do you want the sample to be? Do you want me to find your crushers and say "look it's possible" or will their high roller play skew their results or something? The streamers are good examples because we know a lot about them as people and thus can deduce how hard something actually is.

Why don't you find people and showcase them if you don't like my sample size?

Literally no one is defending Lex and if he's not good and can make 50k a year, what does that tell you? No it wasn't running insanely hot, it was just not playing tournaments where he has no edge like he did last year playing tons of high buyins.

Ofc you don't care about the live part, I wouldn't care about the strongest part of my opponent's argument either if it made me look bad. Because online players are always confined to the internet right? Nobody will stake you any money to play live if you make 50k online consistently right? Or let me guess, it's not in the spirit of the question to discuss how poker players can use their poker skills to make money?

Streamers are literally the best examples because we can quantify many variables, unknown people are not because they are unknown, how much do they study, how much do they tilt, how seriously do they take poker, what's their IQ, do they get any coaching etc etc. UNKNOWABLE, so that makes them bad case studies.

The reality is that either these streamers are honestly very brilliant people who study a ton, grind a ton and do everything right and thus irrelevant or they are not so overly special and going back to his question prove that making 50k online isn't the daunting and impossible task some make it out to be.

Even if this is the case, his live scores totaled 150k+ last year and his average for the past 2 years has been 33k per year.

Yea it's easy to make 50k in online mtts, just bink some live ones

Lol 70AD sorry you got such a pumping during debates with friends/family over the legitimacy of your poker career that you had to bring the argument here only to look even more foolish

Just do your thing since your obviously an addict and are hell bent on your path anyway, but stop bull****ting yourself. Instead you maybe as wel just enjoy it now and save the regrets /self loathing for when your old/busto/alone

In my country if u make 50k$ a year u are god allmost i mean.Legally its very hard allmost imposible if u dont have business .But theres is a lot of people which make this and much more but most of them are in corrupt goverment/illegall business/drugs etc and seamans which ofc dont make their money in the country.Legally the best salaries are in medical and it sector i believe but still not 50k$ a year mby only the best can make this or even more .I forget ,we are EU union country !

Nobody got a pumping you absolute moron, if you play poker long term and can't make 50k in a year, it's either because you're low IQ or lazy. If we're talking sustainability, that is obviously more difficult in online alone, but doable.

These are YOUR words:

Now I’m break even-slight losing even maybe ...just playing a handful of ss pkos a week and some 25 plo, exclusively on my phone

You probably fall in the low IQ part considering you've been here a decade and you're losing, on that front alone you are in no place to comment considering I started playing 2 years ago and I win.

Tell you what though, since it's SO hard, lay me some nice ass odds and we'll escrow money and see whether or not I can make 40k over the next 2 years in a 365 day period, I'm certain you won't though since reading your posts you just want to whine, ***** and moan because you're trash.

Ya those are my words genius and as you *should* be able to see from what you quoted I don’t take poker seriously anymore, I play on my phone lol

Am I smart? Don’t know but I own two businesses doing very well. It’s easy to start up now if you have sales skills and with the current state of the internet giving you good distribution

Why would I bet I don’t think it’s that hard if you dedicate your life to it, but the whole discussion here is it’s a waste of time /life with so many better options you are stuck on the poker grind . Honestly that just makes you a loser. “I’m a poker pro” How’s your love life champ? Hahaha thought so. Seems you are the defensive bent out of shape and stupid one here

I'm glad you don't.

Sure you do.

Glad you admit you're a pussy and yeah I'm the loser, lol you're the moron that comes on a forum for 10 years and fails spectacularly at the activity and then proceeds to call other people trying to succeed names. The equivalent would me going to a business forum for 10 years, failing at business but acting like a winner because I apparently win at poker. But I'm glad you admit that it is doable, all we had to do is tell you to put your money where your mouth is and how you recoiled.