There is not a winning poker player on this planet who has not thought about playing the game for a living at one point or another. Many people attempt to play poker for a living and most of them fail. Even more players realize before they try that it is not a realistic goal. The fact however, is that playing poker for a living is a realistic goal. It is very possible. The problem is that you need much more than just good poker playing skills. Being a good poker player is not enough to be a pro. There are a lot of other skills that you must occupy before even thinking about playing professionally. The first question that comes to mind for many is how much money you would need to make in order to make this a realistic accomplishment.
There is not a set amount of money that needs to be made. It all depends on how much money you want to make. It depends on your lifestyle and your living expenses. It is much different for someone who wants to make $2,000.00 per month versus someone who wants to make $20,000.00 per month. Obviously the second player will need to make a lot more than the first.
Budgeting for Living Expenses
If you want to play professional poker then you first need to figure out how much money you will need to make. If you already have a normal job, then think about how much money you make at that job. You will need to make twice that amount to playing poker in order to replace that income. The reason being, is because of bankroll expenses and bad swings. You are also going to need to get in the habit of saving money often, if you are not in that habit already. Once again, this is to cover bad swings and every poker player has them. Your living expenses are obviously your first priority.
Bankroll
As you play poker you will need a significant bankroll. Your bankroll is for poker and poker only, so that money does not count towards your personal income. If you have $100,000.00 total and $50,000.00 is your bankroll, then you only have $50,000.00. You need to forget your bankroll is even there, because it is for poker and nothing else. That is the only way this works. Not only that, but if you are going to continue to make higher amounts of money, you will need to build on to your bankroll in order to move up to higher limits. If you are smart enough to play poker for a living, then you are smart enough to figure out how to factor in bankroll growth into the amount of money you will need to make.
When you combine all of these different things, you can see that there is a lot of money that will need to be made. A specific percentage should be put back into your bankroll. Another percentage should be put into savings. Then the rest should be chalked up as profit. Of course, all of that can be profit – but that last percentage could be looked at as your “paycheck”. Combining all of those figures, you are looking at quite a bit of money. As mentioned before, the higher your expenses the more you must make. That just means you have to work harder at building your bankroll to the point that you can play higher limits.
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