Is it possible to make a living playing poker

I have been playing poker professionally for about 7 years. Of course, this is not the only thing that I have been doing all these years. During this time, I received my bachelor's degree, visited 45 countries, worked on my book, consulted several online startups, but poker has always remained the main source of income. During that time, I experienced many ups and downs, both financially and mentally. Poker helped me in a fairly short time to get a huge life experience, including quite inappropriate moments for a 20-year-old guy.

When money starts to pour into your hands, everything seems possible

I've seen the emotions and feelings of players change at the poker table. I have noticed more than once how at different moments I myself was in seventh heaven with happiness, then in complete despondency. I saw tears of joy, and also saw people on the verge of poverty begin to pay six-figure sums only in taxes. I have seen people fail and incur huge debts. Playing poker is like a roller coaster. She makes you feel both excitement and depression. Poker brings out the best and the worst about every player at the table.

Poker is a strange profession

This is similar to the process of turning water into wine. There is no set wage here, you can't just get a good job interview and go to work on Monday. You will need a huge amount of groundwork (some kind of foundation) to at least try to turn this occupation into a source of income.

A beginner poker player can be unsuccessful for a long time (or even remain so forever) until he makes some progress. The level of difficulty of the game itself is also very changeable, and this process does not always have a time dependence. You can make an annual fortune in just a few hours (I've done it many times), or you can play for a month and stay in the red (and this has happened to me more than once).

In the beginning it was just a game

When I started playing poker, I didn't think about making a profession out of it. The game is meant for communication, and when I was 18 years old it was very interesting and exciting. Poker is intriguing. I enjoyed the competition and creativity that was needed in the game. It's like a polymath or chess, but with additional elements. I liked the feeling of celebration, I loved intellectual games. I even loved moments of despair, when you feel stumped and spend hours thinking about strategy. For me it was akin to an athletics competition, only without physical exertion.

Further more

In the end, after a series of losses that forced me to play at the lowest rates online, I began to analyze my mistakes and improve my playing skills. I started reading poker strategy books, watching games on ESPN to understand where, when and why I was losing. You may consider yourself a genius, but for every genius like that, there are thousands of other players discussing strategy for 10 hours a day.

In poker, you need to constantly adapt. You cannot get a patent and then just make a profit for the rest of your days. Remember, when money is at stake, your opponents start to evolve very quickly.

Need time

After a few $ 100 bets, then with my father's credit card, and many sleepless nights playing, I suddenly realized that I was starting to make progress.

Over time, you begin to notice what worked and what didn't, pay attention to the play and tactics of your opponents, identify repetitive situations, and differentiate the approaches to each player's play.

Poker is not always perceived as reality

Sometimes it seems like a kind of loophole that most people around you do not notice.

I made my first six figures in a year when I was 19, and at 21 I made that much in one day.

Some people never get even half of it in a year of work. And what did I do for this? Just practiced playing cards. In my previous job at Baskin Robbins, I was making $ 6.75 a day. And suddenly I found myself in a whirlwind of events around the world, starting to meet interesting people, staying in expensive hotels, eating cool restaurants and buying whatever I could want. This activity allowed me to travel. And, most importantly, I had the opportunity and time to simultaneously do things that I liked, including blogging, sports, as well as spend enough time with loved ones and family.

Everything comes to an end

But poker is addictive, and also has a significant drawback - it does not allow you to experience satisfaction. Some players find it in an ever-present challenge, while others feel dissatisfied. In addition, one of my main critics of the poker community is that when I looked around, I saw a lot of smart and talented people who just played cards, instead of leaving their mark on life and creating something really necessary and useful to society. This was one of the main reasons why I decided to end my poker career and start a new stage in my life.

In addition to Michael's story, another professional poker player Chris Sparks decided to summarize by highlighting the positive and negative aspects of the profession.

The pros of poker

Money- a very small percentage of players make substantial money (enough to make them world-famous professionals), and it's almost impossible to get rich in modern games. Your options are rather limited in comparison with other professions, but with the help of poker you can provide yourself with a comfortable existence.
Autonomy- only you decide when, how and where to play. At the end of the day, you are responsible only to yourself. For most, the lack of structure can be a disaster, but for self-confident and determined people, this structure expands opportunities and rights.
Flexibility- play when you want it. Sometimes, when things are going well, I can play for several days in a row. If I am unlucky or simply not inspired, I can safely leave the game and, for example, fly to another country for the weekend.
Call - you play in order to live, which in itself is amazing. I was very passionate about poker and loved the competitive edge. Many successful people talk about the need to love your job, and with poker, that was true. I've rarely felt poker work.

The cons of poker

Stress - I think you can imagine how tense the moments of victory and defeat are when large sums of money are involved. When you play online at several tables at once, you make more than 1000 hands per hour, that is, you manipulate a lot of money. Add to that the fact that short-term results are highly dependent on luck. This is why there are a lot of 20-year-old balding players in poker.
Difference - you are always in a very small margin from other players (in my career I won only 52% of my sessions), so it is very difficult to assess how you play. In my practice, there was a three-month period during which I lost a fairly large amount of money, and my friends even more.
Balance - there is no end to the working day in poker, and it can consume your whole life if you allow it. Extreme levels of concentration and discipline are required to achieve any level of success, as one bad decision can destroy hundreds of optimal ones. Therefore, 8 hours of online multi-table gaming is more intense and stressful than a typical workday. Not surprisingly, I stopped being interested in other things in my life besides poker, and it took a lot of effort for me to find my balance again.
Predators - Most of your winnings come from inept players, and the better you can hunt them, the more money you will make. You can also fall prey to a predator.
You are not creating anything - lack of play in order to earn a living. At the end of the day, you work to increase the number on the screen. You are useless to society, and after you achieve a certain prosperity, poker is not able to satisfy you.
Cultural acceptance - This area has advanced significantly thanks to the over-exposure of poker on TV, but many people remain ignorant about poker as a profession. To avoid being condescending, I often omit the topic of poker when dealing with new people.
Impermanence - Most successful poker players have similar entrepreneurial activities and always have something on the side. However, a large number of professionals have never worked in any other job, and many of them even dropped out of college to pursue poker. And when fortune turns away from them, they find themselves at a broken trough with no backup options.

These few stories confirm that poker can be a profession and make money for your life, but there is a very fine line that can turn success into complete failure.