TOURNAMENT PRO, HOW GOOD DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO MAKE LIVING

[Smoothcall]

I was wondering how good you have to be to make a decent living(60 or 70k or more a year cleared after expenses ) playing tournament poker on the wold poker tour? And how good to show a profit? How many players do you need to be better than? What is the perecentage of the field you have to be better than?

[betgo]

If you are looking to make $70K / year, I wouldn't try it in $5K-$25K tournaments. It is much easier and safer to do it in smaller tournaments or cash games. If you want to be a tour pro, you should already be averaging a lot more that that from poker. Most of the tour pros also play smaller tournaments and cash games.

[valenzuela]

Do you realize that making a living playing 20 10k tourneys is not that safe????????????

[Piers]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you realize that making a living playing 20 10k tourneys is not that safe????????????

[/ QUOTE ]

If you padded out the rest of the time playing 20 tournaments a day on the internet it might work.

[valenzuela]

Were discussing if you can make a living playing WPT tourneys. You can make a livng playing roullette 15 hours a year if you add a full-time job.

[Smoothcall]

? i'm not understanding why instead of anwering my serious question you chose to talk about roulette a gambling game. I'm talking about poker. A profession you can make money at.

[SoftcoreRevolt]

Poker, a gambling game.

[Smoothcall]

Not necessarily true. There are many famous players on the wpt that are champions that haven't averaged 70k a year playing poker before they hit their wins. In fact many of them couldnt beat middle limit live games to be honest. I have a few in mind. Acutally many but don't want to call them out. And where is your proof they are making 70k a year now on wpt tour? My guess is many aren't doing that good to make 70k or more a year. Except maybe somee now cause of all the freerolls but otherwise it looks glamorous but mnay are broke because its not as easy as it looks.

[valenzuela]

ahrrrgggg....u asked if u can make a living playing WPT the answer is clearly NO, another poster pointed out that if you add some ring game it can be done, i point out that of course u can make a living playing wpt AND smaller tourneys but the question was only WPT, thereby I responded with a little bit of sarcasm. DO U GET IT NOW?grrrrr /images/graemlins/mad.gif

[lastchance]

No one, and I mean absolutely NO ONE, should be able to make a living solely playing the WPT.

Do you realize how much the variance would be playing these 10k tournaments for a living?

There are what, only 20 tournaments per year? There is almost no way you could guarantee winning enough to make a living on a year to year basis.

This is not to say that playing the WPT is not +$EV for certain players. It is simply to say that the variance of this game is such that it is impossible to win consistently enough that it would be wise to waste any time trying to make a profession of it.

If you want to make a profession playing poker, you should stick to cash games, SNG's, or even Online MTT's. All of those have far less variance than playing a 10k tournament, plus there are no travel costs.

[lehighguy]

The variance of large live multi-table tournaments is huge. You can be Johny Chan and it doesn't matter. He won two WSOP right. Well what if he got outdrawn on two hands that he won. Then he wouldn't have any WSOP cash ins.

Money Maker isn't that great at poker. But based on "results" you would have to conclude he is one of the best. But what really happened is he outdrew alot of people. He got lucky. That's the truth of the matter.

Remember, for a lot of these pros they chased in on only a few big tournaments. A few bad beats and bye bye millions. Men the Master got his aces cracked at last WSOP. Moron fish made a stupid call and got lucky, that is life.

It doesn't matter if you are the greatest pro in the world. The variance is too high to make reliable income off of large poker tournaments.

RELIABLE income comes from cash games and side games. You need to play alot of hands to average out all that variance. That is why people like the internet. Four tables at once means more hands and less variance. You get to the "long run" quicker.

Ask yourself this question. Why do many of the pros get staked. Many of them have the money to play in these tournies. They get staked because they would rather lock in profit for a weeks work then risk it all on what cards fall.

[bobby rooney]

In my opinion, it's not how good you have to be that is the main question of whether you can make a living. As long as you are significantly better than the competition, you should make it as long as you have adequate bankroll to withstand the variance involved. That makes it sound a lot easier than it is, considering the bankroll for 5K-25K tourneys is fairly astronomical. You probably need a quarter or half million to even think about it.

[Smoothcall]

Yes i got it before. But i used your comment to be funny and point out that poker is not a gambling game like roulette. See for those of players that think poker is not gambling thread not too far down. Do you get it now? Grrr lol.

[Smoothcall]

What about changing it to playing all monthly big events. I mean playing every or most events in every monthy event year in and year out. I agree with you mostly. But are we to say these guys aren't making a living doing it? Then why do they play all the other events and waste all that time when they could be making the money in the side games. It seems the main reaosns to play big events is ther fame and money that will go with it if you win. That makes sense. But the others don't unless there not good enough to beat the side games right? I'm rambling a little just wondering if its possible to make o good living being a strickly tournament player. I make my living playing side games but have the dream to do it in tournaments but not sure if it a good roisk and or possible.

[lastchance]

First of all, there are a lot of juicy side games that go along with the tournament circuit.

Secondly, just because it's insanely hard to make a living off tournament poker doesn't mean that it's not +$EV, and maybe even hugely +$EV. It's just that the variance is insanely big. In MTT poker, most of your money comes from hitting the top 3 or the final table. So, it is very easy to OOTM 5 straight tournaments and still post a profit, which would happen often if you wanted to do this for a living. So you really have to wait a long time and a lot of money till you get a big score.

There's a reason that almost all tournament poker players play side games, and it's doesn't go vice versa.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
I was wondering how good you have to be to make a decent living(60 or 70k or more a year cleared after expenses ) playing tournament poker on the wold poker tour? And how good to show a profit? How many players do you need to be better than? What is the perecentage of the field you have to be better than?

[/ QUOTE ]

run, forrest. run!