Poker Pros - Do they really make it?

[Oblivious]

Most of this thread makes me sick.

The point:
1. A reasonable living differs from person to person.
2. If you can't make what you consider to be a reasonable living playing poker, then get a job.

Two answer OP's question; poker, like any other profession, pays proportional to effort. If you want to make 100,000 per year, and were gifted with the raw intellect to do it, you could, provided you learned the skills necessary and put in enough quality hours. If you so desperately need someone to tell you that "its impossible to make a decent living at cards," it's probably because you're not a winning player.

And shame on mshalen for suggesting "business" as a reasonable one-size-fits-all alternative to poker. Entrepreneurs in the 'real world' are the same small minded opportunist slackers that they were when they were students in the b-school. Business school is where students typically go when they want a degree, but can’t stand intellectual pursuits. There are plenty of chemists, lawyers, researchers, artists, and authors that make very nice livings, even though they aren’t business people.

[sternroolz]

A few things people are forgetting:

1.) As others have pointed out, cost of living is drastically different in varying areas of the United States. They have not pointed out how much different.

-There are many areas of the country where a new house will cost $70-100K and a HUD repo will be $40-60k. I'm pretty sure many people in Los Angeles are fully unaware of this.

-Gas is cheaper by $0.50-0.80/gallon in many parts of the nation than in Los Angeles.

- Medical expenses, car insurance, taxes, government fees, etc. are also lower in some areas than in others.

2.) Public schools in Southern California stink and many are dangerous. I grew up in a middle class area, albeit in a minority community. I just found out that several high schools in that area, including the one I attended, now have metal detectors and full time police officers on campus. Someone going to private school has some degree of inherent advantage simply due to the fact that their surroundings are not constantly dangerous.

3.) Poker changes. California poker was awesome when I first played. Commerce ran 30 $6-12 LHE games a night. At least one player at each table would have 5-6 racks. Jackpots were regularly $50-80K(aces full beaten). Games were loose and wild. Then jackpots got killed. And smoking was ended. And all of the sudden, there were games that were constantly shorthanded(not good considering the mandatory drop). Drop amount increased by $1. All of the sudden, you had to be playing $9-18 or $15-30 or higher to be making any decent kind of money. Poker will change online as well. It may become tougher to beat. More players will become better. They may not become winning players, but they may give up very little.

[phish]

To butcher Winston Churchill: If you are 20 and not a liberal then you have no heart, if you are 40 and not a consevative then you have no brain.

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I think the quote is: "If you're not a revolutionary by the age of 20, then you have no heart. But if you're still a revolutionary by the age of 40, then you have no head."

To be 40 and not conservative is not indicative of a weak head. (Tho to be 40 and a revolutionary in America may be.)

But to get back to the question of how much is a good income: I would say that if you're only making 50K a year playing poker, you almost certainly have the brains to make more in another line of work, without the stress and burn out that playing full-time small stakes would induce.

In my opinion, the truly successful pro poker player should not need to play more than 20-30 hours a week (lower end for online players, higher end for live players) to make their nut comfortably and build their bankroll (save), whether this is 50K for a kid just out of college and living with friends, 100K for a person with a modest lifestyle, or 200K+ for someone with family and upper middle class aspirations.

There are simply way too many marginal players miserably squeezing out a subsistence income. Those guys have 'not made it'.

[WichitaDM]

I have no idea about live pros but i can tell you quite a few people "make it" playing online. I have made in the low six figures the last several years playing maybe 30 hrs or so a week and let me tell you it is awesome compared to the jobs i have had. I have a bachelors and am currently working on a masters and have not decided what i am going to do after i get my graduate degree. I was also a moron who didnt get rakeback until the last few months and so could have probably been making another 40-50k a year just in rakeback at my level of play pushing me up into the 200k+ range. It is possible, and it is a comfortable lifestyle. Sure its stressful sometimes, but its rarely that boring as you can watch tv, listen to music, read 2+2 etc while you are playing 2-3 tables rather easily. Additionally i have a lot of friends that will get together and play poker together which makes it a lot more sane experience than sitting in a room all by urself. (Dont even think collusion lol, we all play diff limits/games).

Basically before poker i was broke, had tons of debt, little free time and no freedom to do what i want. Now i live in a 2500 sq ft house that i bought, have little debt, and the freedom to travel whenever and wherever i want. For me it has been a huge blessing and made my life 100x easier and better so far than a lot of my other 25yr old friends grinding out 25-40k at entry level corporate jobs.

Median household income in the U.S. is $44500, so how can $50k be a 'good' wage? It's basically an average wage.

[benfranklin]

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Median household income in the U.S. is $44500, so how can $50k be a 'good' wage? It's basically an average wage.

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The average household is probably a couple, with maybe a kid or two. I think that the assumption in this thread is that we are talking about a young single person making 50K.

In any case, a good wage is in the eye of the beholder. If you like what you are doing and are happy with the money, than you are making a good wage. Much of this thread is pointlessly hung up with judging other people by one's own standards or situation.

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Two answer OP's question; poker, like any other profession, pays proportional to effort. If you want to make 100,000 per year, and were gifted with the raw intellect to do it, you could, provided you learned the skills necessary and put in enough quality hours. If you so desperately need someone to tell you that "its impossible to make a decent living at cards," it's probably because you're not a winning player.

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I am not desperately trying to find somebody to tell me it's impossible to make a decent living playing poker. If you read the original thread, my basic hypothesis was merely that I thought that there were probably fewer people "making it" than many people assume, and that a lot of the big names don't win as much in poker as you might think (since almost all the big names supplement their income with tangential things like books, etc.).

Also, I never said I wanted to become a poker professional. In fact, I can guarantee you that the chances of that ever happening are almost zero, considering that I definitely can make more in other pursuits than I would make in poker. I merely wanted people's opinions about how many people out there actually made a good living playing poker. I know I could not do it (nor would I want to), that's never been at issue.

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Much of this thread is pointlessly hung up with judging other people by one's own standards or situation.

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I guess, but I suspect there's also an undercurrent of vastly underestimating how much it costs to raise a family.

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Much of this thread is pointlessly hung up with judging other people by one's own standards or situation.

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I guess, but I suspect there's also an undercurrent of vastly underestimating how much it costs to raise a family.

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If so, it's surely because many of the people who post here regularly are too young to have a family, or appreciate how much things can cost.

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I am not desperately trying to find somebody to tell me it's impossible to make a decent living playing poker. If you read the original thread, my basic hypothesis was merely that I thought that there were probably fewer people "making it" than many people assume, and that a lot of the big names don't win as much in poker as you might think (since almost all the big names supplement their income with tangential things like books, etc.).

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I think in your post above you could replace "poker" with just about any small business owner label. Many "mom and pop" shops find themselves in the situation of running a store/business (think of the neighborhood hardware store vs home depot as an example) that in reality they have the intellect and drive to make the same if not better employed for someoneelse. They trade some of the financial success for either non-monetary benefits (freedom of schedule, etc) or for the chance to "make it big" (the big score where they discover some niche and get purchase by a microsoft-type corporation).

Of the number of small business owners I talk with, a large number of the financially successful ones have a diversified portfolios. For example they may have made their original "nut" in making/selling widgets but then have taken that money and invested in the real estate market to build a large recurring income base.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that while you can make $X doing something for 4-8 hours per day it's smart to make $1/8x by signing your name to something and letting the recurring royalties roll in without applying much time/effort to it.

Your observation about people "making it" in poker, could be applied to just about any business/living field.