Live Limit Hold'em Pros

[henrikrh]

What limit do you have to play at to play live professionally and crank out a decent living? 20/40?

the first question is what do you consider a decent living. after that it becomes much easier to answer the question. If you want to live at the quality of life of your average civil servant (somewhere around 50,000/year pretax which comes out to be (in nyc at least) about 550/wk after taxes) then I think if you are rock solid you could live off of 6/12 or 10/20 with little issue assuming you have sufficienct bankroll to survive the inevitable up's and downs of playing every day. If you find a solid regular game at a casino you begin to recognize the other semi regulars which is a big bonus as well as the fact that you eat and drink for free during your time playing...

I know I'm going to hear the bb/hr crowd say it is impossible to live at these games but I really don't see where you can't make at least a hundred a day playing one of those midlevel games. If you want to live more extravagantly then obvioulsly you need higher stakes

[henrikrh]

I'm thinking bare minimum, rent & food. What limit breaks you even?

This is strictly hypothetical btw.

[cwsiggy]

I've read 20/40 is sorta the minimum. Of course, you could switch to no limit but hold on for the rollercoaster!

[A_C_Slater]

I'd say 10/20 if you're single with no kids and live in a cheap studio apartment. 100 bucks a day is only 5 BBs a day. No problem. 5 days a week, $500 a week. $2000 a month. You play 11 months out of the year. $22,000 a year. This is comfortably livable under these circumstances. Of course, you can play longer than 5 hours a day to earn more. But if you're a lazy minimalist than 10-20 is fine.

[Tom1975]

[ QUOTE ]
Of course, you could switch to no limit but hold on for the rollercoaster!

[/ QUOTE ]

A brilliant player can get a strong hand cracked, go on tilt...and lose his mind along with every single chip in front of him. This is why the World Series of Poker is decided over a No-Limit Hold 'Em table. Some people, pros even, won't play No-Limit. They can't handle the swings. But there are others, like Doyle Brunson, who consider No-Limit the only pure game left. Like Papa Wallenda said..."Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting."

Like everything in poker, the answer to your question is "it depends." I regularly play at a B&M casino near Chicago and play $5/$10 hold'em. On a decent day, it's not unheard of for my to leave with a $200/day profit after 10 - 12 hours of play. Of course, I'm usually playing with 3 or 4 of the same guys every week, and I have a recent handle on their styles, and 2 of them are complete fish who are retired and are playing mostly for fun.

The answer to your question depends on the following: (1) game selection; (2) quality of players; (3) quantity of pros and/or knowledgeable players who frequent the room; (4) house rake; (5) travel expenses; and many other factors.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is that right now, poker is in the middle of a huge boom, with a large number of fish in a growing pond. As I said earlier, I regularly bring home $200/day playing $5/$10, but I do this because the players I play with are horrible and numerous. In 5 years, I would be surprised if I was able to maintain this win rate as newer players grow tired of losing or go broke. Having said this, I know of no players at my local casino who make a living playing $5/$10, but personally know of 2 who make a decent living (i.e lower-middle class) playing $10/$20 limit. However, they acknowledge that they are usually playing upward to 12 hours per day, 6 days a week. Most are hoping to learn and acquire the necessary bankroll to play in bigger games ($15/$30 or higher) within the next year or so, as they fear that the poker bubble, like the .com stock bubble, will one day burst, forcing them to search for bigger games in order to earn their living.

Of course, all that I have said applies only to live B&M games. It may be possible to earn a sufficient living at low limit games online b/c you can play multiple tables at once and more hands per hour, the more you can make at lower limits.

[henrikrh]

I decided not to start a new post so as not to clutter the forums. Here's another question:

What background/education/experience would be needed to work as a pokerroom or casino manager?

Once agian, hypothetical.

And of course what I haven't seen anybody mention yet is that you must have the required skill and personality traits to be able to become a long term winner at the game, which 99% of the people playing poker -- no matter how much Sklansky they've read -- simply do not have.

[ThaHero]

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I've read 20/40 is sorta the minimum. Of course, you could switch to no limit but hold on for the rollercoaster!

[/ QUOTE ]

If someone is a solid player, and actually has the personality traits to play NL and not tilt(99% of the time), should his swings be less in NL? I know some have proven that swings are less in NL. Of course, you could lose your whole stack on one hand, but a good player should be able to avoid that happening more often than a bad player, who would be more inclined to get his money in with the worst of it.

I play limit online, and notice the swings. I couldn't imagine being a live pro and going on a 10k hand downswing in limit. That would take forever to come out of. I'd rather bore myself to death folding hand after hand in NL.