How Become To Professional Poker ? – If you’re reading this, it’s because there’s somebody inside of you that wants to learn how to become a profesional poker player.
Thankfully, you’ve come to the right place as Techopedia’s resident poker pro, fresh off winning his first WSOP Sirkuit ring, is here to give you all the best panduan in order to boost your chances.
We’re not going to lie to you: it’s not going to be easy.
There’s a lot of investment involved, both in time and money. You’ll have to go through a complete lifestyle change and dedicate yourself to the games.
But, if you have the spirit and you’re willing to put in the work, you can become one of the rare players on this earth that can play cards for a living and call themselves a profesional poker player.
Table of Contents
You’ve got to have a great poker face.
How Become To Professional Poker ?
My Story. My poker journey began when I was about 12 years old at a famili party, around 2001 before the Moneymaker poker boom.
There were two full ring tables and everyone was getting dealt two cards. I had never seen anything like this before and, as a keseluruhan math nerd, I was instantly intrigued.
For the next few months, I went to the library after school and read (currently outdated) books about Texas Hold’em and used their internet for my allotted 60 minutes a day to look into poker strategy and panduan.
I would participate in play money game back on the old pogo.com in order to get a perasaan for the games and to implement taktikes that I learned.
About three months later, I attended another one of these famili parties and was pleased to find out that they were going to run a turnamen that day. I was able to borrow $20 from someone and there I was, playing against fully-grown adults and older teenagers.
As a shy kid growing up, it was so cool just to perasaan included with the grup. What was even cooler is that I ended up winning the whole turnamen and pocketing 50% of the prize pool, which was something like $150, more money than I had ever had in my life up to that poin.
Over the next few years, I was able to grow my spirit for poker thanks to the old ESPN World Seri of Poker broadcasts, Pogo, and by playing freerolls on my preferred site: UltimateBet.
Momentually, I won a 4,000+ entry freeroll and got a cek mailed to me for $50. I was so proud at the time that I framed the voided cek after cashing it.
Around the same time, a month after I turned 18, I played in a $1/$2 kontan games at Turning Stone in Verona, NY while I was at the kasino for a konferensi with my community college.
After buying in for the minimal of $100, I still remember folding AK-suited with a flush draw on the flop and four players getting all in.
In retrospect, this is probably the stupidest thing I’ll ever do at a poker table. I would have made my flush and it’s a memori I still laugh about today.
Aside from a few backyard home game and one big (lucky) turnamen win, I really didn’t have any time or money for poker while I went to college studying mathematics and was fully focused on my soccer career.
After a few tryouts that didn’t work out, I grinded at a high-end restoran for six months and saved up a ton of kontan before going to grad school at St. John’s University to studi sports manajemen and sports analytics.
While my first year in grad school was fully dedicated to entry-level sports jobs and internships, I found myself free during my final semester and needing to scratch my competitive itch since I wasn’t playing sports for the first time in my life.
I started going to Atlantic City about 2-3 days a week to play $1/3 kontan game at Bally’s. Back then, you could get a free room ($22 resor fee) if you played for five hours.
And so, I started taking catatan, watching free Jonathan Little YouTube videos about small-stakes kontan game, and opened a couple online poker accounts with ACR and BetOnline.
While the live kontan game went well, I got absolutely COOKED online. I lost thousands of dollars, mostly because I didn’t know anything about ranges, ICM, bankroll manajemen, or how to play postflop.
I was essentially donating to the rest of the field, though this will be the case with almost every singgel poker player when they start playing.
After getting my Master’s, I didn’t play for another few years as I began my career in the sports industry and lived abroad in Latin America after landing a remote job. I was also broke!!! Sure enough, like many others, my poker career truly started during the pandemi.
Playing live poker in Mexico in 2022. Behind plexiglass.
At the beginning of the pandemi, I was trapped in Medellin, Colombia for seven months and legally wasn’t allowed to go outside for the first three or four months.
A few weeks in, I put up $1,000 and bought a RaiseYourEdge (RYE) course and put $1,000 into my ACR akun. Sure enough, less than six hours after my first studi sesi, I won around $900 in a $6 turnamen.
I studied way too much for the next few months, both on RYE and watching free YouTube videos.
While I had instan success, I would still be a losing player for the next couple of years, though my graph was getting closer and closer to breakeven after grinding online and underground live game in Peru and Mexico.
Over these few years, my kemampuan tingkat and comfort with the games went up dramatically. After saving up, I steadily moved up stakes from $6 to $11 to $16 to $22 to $33 max buy-in.
In 2022, I took my first trip to Las Vegas to play live turnamens and live kontan and left keuntunganable, making a pair of final tables and was awarded a win lewat 7-way ICM chop, giving me my first-ever entries on TheHendonMob site.
But while I was there, somebody recommended that I apply to be a live wartawan for PokerNews for the upcoming World Seri of Poker. I applied, was accepted, and took a massive pay cut from my reguler soccer journalism job to stay in Vegas all summer.
While I was in Vegas, I cashed the only two WSOP moments I played in, crushed the very soft kontan game, and made a ton of connections in the poker world.
I was able to chat and make friends with some of the best players in the world, pick their brains, and gain akses to poker theory that most people would have to pay several thousands of dollars to have.
After WSOP, I covered EPTs, WSOP Europe, PSPC, and other high-profile turnamens with PokerNews, WSOP, and Poker.org while playing some along the way.
I ended up quitting my soccer job after nearly five years and fully joining the poker industry.
My first entry on TheHendonMob was a win!
At the end of 2022, I moved to Brazil and fully dedicated myself to studying and grinding over 40 hours a week and started playing a lot more live poker. A LOT MORE LIVE POKER.
I became the only American player that regulerly played on the major Brazilian turnamen sirkuits and, luckily, became a beloved figur in the country.
I also started studying both with renowned pro Faraz Jaka lewat JakaCoaching and some high-profile Brazilian players, which completely changed my games and allowed me to become a much better and more aggressive player.
While I had some huge online scores that allowed me to not need a reguler job in 2023, my first live breakthrough came in Vegas while I was covering the WSOP for Poker.org.
On my second day in town, I won nearly $10,000 after winning a 289-entry $200 WSOP Daily Deepstacks turnamen.
$200 WSOP Deepstacks Champion… at 5:30am.
Despite the success, I had the worst tur setop of my life less than two months later, failing to kontan any of my 25 bullets and losing over $8,000.
Though it initially destroyed my confidence, it grounded me and I got back to studying.
In large part to the Dara O’Kearney seri of books and really working on plugging my leaks, I have won a keseluruhan of four trophies in the last six months or so, capped off last week my winning nearly $20,000 and my first-ever WSOP Sirkuit ring after shipping the WSOP Brazil PKO moment.
I currently play a minimal of one live seri a month and I play $109 max buy-in MTTs with an average buy in (ABI) of around $30-$35.
As far as live poker goes, I generally stick to having between $150 and $500 of my own money invested per turnamen. I sell full turnamen packages that I pasar on my media sosial kanals and sell staking to individu moments on StakeKings in order to responsibly play larger turnamens.
This allows me to tes myself in better competition, be in the games, and reduce the wild variasice that is involved in the games of poker.
Most of my buyers are my friends, so it’s always nice to be able to give your friends a fat wad of kontan after winning.
Example of a Staking Package that I sell.
This is my path, everyone’s path will be drastically different. There is no singular path to success and something that may work for one individu may not work for another.
Despite this, I will do my best to give you panduan that I wish I knew before I started my journey.
How to Become a Profesional Poker Player
Read on for my hebat five panduan for starting your journey to becoming a poker pro.
1. Treat Studying Poker Like a Job
When first starting out, you need to dedicate yourself to learning all aspects of the games.
You should be studying a minimal of 10 hours per week and/or one hour for every four hours of play time.
You shouldn’t quit your job to start playing poker right away, so this is going to be on hebat of your work skedul. Get ready to dedicate yourself to the games.
There are so many different aspects of poker, especially in turnamens, that need to be studied.
While kontan game are a bit more straightforward, you’ll need to learn baseline GTO taktikes at various stack depths.
You’ll also need to learn important concepts like preflop ranges, when to range-bet flops, how to adjust to your opponents, when to stray away from GTO, ICM, adjusting for PKO and Mystery Bounty turnamens, satellites, and much, much more.
The most important things you can studi immediately are preflop ranges at 30 big blinds and below and also playing BU versus BB (and vice-versa) as these will be the most common situations you will face in turnamen poker.
Studying poker is something that’s you’ll never setop doing, even after you become a keuntunganable player. If you setop, other players are going to get better and surpass you.
At some poin along your career, you will have to invest real money into your studying. I highly recommend courses like RaiseYourEdge, PokerCoaching, and JakaCoaching, all of which have personally helped take my games to a new tingkat.
You should also read all the Dara O’Kearney and Barry Sewa books and also take part in “poker Twitter.”
After you become keuntunganable, investing in occasional privat coaching is definitely the way to go, though it’ll run you three figures an hour.
This book changed my entire career.
I wouldn’t recommend watching live kontan streams but I would highly recommend watching turnamen streams as they are much more technical in nature.
Watching Day 1s and Day 2s of turnamens will help you much more than watching final table streams, as FTs are played in a much more tight and precise way than early turnamen poker.
Live poker kontan streams are often players playing an unprofitable model of poker in order to create a spectacle that’s akin to reality television. While it may entertain, it’s certainly not educational.
Finally, after you end up being at least a breakeven poker player, I highly recommend studying mixed game.
Not only will you pick up skills in other variasits of poker, these skills will help you gain an even bigger edge when you play Hold’em. You’ll better understand why you do certain things and that theory will help you make stronger decisions.
2. Prepare to Lose a LOT, Especially at First
In order to be a profesional poker player, you’re going to need to face reality: you’re almost always going to lose, only one player can win. At least in turnamens anyways.
In any given turnamen, usually between 10% and 17.5% of the turnamen field cashes and makes at least around 1.5-2x their buy-in.
Turnamens are very top-heavy, so you have to make final tables and make them pretty consistently.
You cannot bank on one huge skor in a turnamen with a crazy-big field, it’s almost certainly not going to happen. You need to play well and play well often in smaller fields (under 1,000 players).
Here is an example of a graph from one of the webs that I have recently started playing on. Notice how there aren’t many crazy-big spikes from one skor, it’s a significant, steady grind. There are still going to be times where you’ll lose money over hundreds or thousands of turnamens, no matter how good you are.
Blaise Bourgeois Poker Graph
Recent poker graph from one of my many sites.
While an estimated 30% of kontan games players are keuntunganable and a little less than 10% are good enough to make a living playing kontan game, the odds are significantly lower for turnamen players.
The best estimates say that roughly between 3% and 7% of all turnamen players turn a keuntungan in their life and around 1% or less of players are good enough to earn enough money consistently year-to-year to play turnamens and not have to work.
Therefore, I highly recommend having a base penghasilan so you don’t have added pressure to perform.
So when you first set off on your journey to being a profesional poker player, realize that it’s almost certain that you will lose a ton of money at first as you begin to get your reps in.
I personally lost thousands of dollars, maybe more than $10,000 before I began to turn a keuntungan.
This is why it’s important to practice sound bankroll manajemen so that you don’t go broke.
3. Practice Sound Bankroll Manajemen
In order to be a successful profesional poker player and not go broke, you’re going to need to set aside a poker bankroll.
A poker bankroll is money that’s used just for poker and completely separate from your day-to-day money.
It’s very important not to have the two mixed up, otherwise your individual life may be jeopardized by your poker game.
With this poker bankroll, you need to practice sound bankroll manajemen to prevent yourself from going broke. In essence, bankroll manajemen is limiting your risks in order to always be in the games.
For new kontan games players that have yet to prove they are keuntunganable, you’re going to need to have 50 buy-ins at your current buy-in tingkat in order to stay afloat, assuming you buy in at the highly-recommended tingkat of 100 big blinds.
Therefore, if you’re aiming to be a profesional poker player and want to play $1/$2 poker, you’re going to want to have a poker bankroll of at least $10,000.
It sounds like a lot and it is, you need money to play poker consistently. That’s why you should start out at lower stakes online.
If you want to start out with a $500 bankroll, you can play 10NL (.05/.10) and multi-table. Some experts recommend having 100 buy-ins as a beginner player online, so be honest with yourself and your ability tingkat.
| BLINDS | MAX BUY-IN (100bbs) | PASSIVE (LIVE) GAMES | INTERMEDIATE | VOLATILE (ONLINE) GAMES |
| .01/.02 | $2 | N/A | $100 | $200 |
| .02/.05 | $5 | N/A | $250 | $500 |
| .05/.10 | $10 | N/A | $500 | $1,000 |
| .10/.25 | $25 | N/A | $1,250 | $2,500 |
| .25/.50 | $50 | N/A | $2,500 | $5,000 |
| .50/$1 | $100 | N/A | $5,000 | $10,000 |
| $1/$2 | $200 | $4,000 | $10,000 | $20,000 |
| $2/$5 | $500 | $10,000 | $25,000 | $50,000 |
| $5/$10 | $1,000 | $20,000 | $50,000 | $100,000 |
| $10/$20 | $2,000 | $40,000 | $100,000 | $200,000 |
| $25/$50 | $5,000 | $100,000 | $250,000 | $500,000 |
| $50/$100 | $10,000 | $200,000 | $500,000 | $1,000,000 |
When it comes to poker turnamens, you’re going to need to set aside 100-300 average buy-ins in order to keep your head above water.
This means if you want to play $5 average turnamens and you’re a new player, you should start off with around $1,500. The newer of a player you are, the more buy-ins you should have.
Luckily, there are plenty of online poker turnamens that start out at super-small buy-in levels, so you could legitimately start playing $1 turnamens regulerly with a conservative bankroll for just $300.
| BUY-IN | MINIMUM BANKROLL (100 BIs) | CONSERVATIVE BANKROLL (300 BIs) |
| $1 | $100 | $300 |
| $2 | $200 | $600 |
| $5 | $500 | $1,500 |
| $10 | $1,000 | $3,000 |
| $20 | $2,000 | $6,000 |
| $30 | $3,000 | $9,000 |
| $50 | $5,000 | $15,000 |
| $100 | $10,000 | $30,000 |
| $500 | $50,000 | $150,000 |
| $1,000 | $100,000 | $300,000 |
When you start making money or eksternally add more money into your poker bankroll, you can move up stakes as long as the 100-300 turnamen buy-in requirements are met.
However, if you start losing money, you need to suck it up, put your ego aside, and move down stakes.
You need to be very patient as it’s much better to have far more than you need at one buy-in tingkat rather than far less at a higher buy-in tingkat. You should up the biggest buffer you can and really try to grind it out.
We’re all human, so once in a great while, you should “shot take”, which is buying into a kontan games or turnamen at a higher buy-in than you’re used to playing.
This shouldn’t be done as a last-ditch usaha after a bunch of losing sessions. Instead, shot-taking should be done when you’re close to moving up to the next tingkat and you want to tes yourself.
While success could give you the boost you need to start with a buffer at the next tingkat, a loss could knock you back to the same stakes for a while.
The alternatif, for poker turnamen players, is to master satellites so that you get occasional opportunities to play in turnamens that your bankroll cannot afford.
I have personally become a self-proclaimed satellite wizard and satellites helped me have a $20,000 month in February even though I normally play online turnamens with an average buy-in (ABI) of around $30.
4. Play Online Before You Play Live
While live poker will generally offer softer game, there’s no doubt that live game simply biaya much more money to play than online.
Usually, in a brick and mortar kasino or your local poker room, the lowest kontan game on offer will be a $1/$2 games and the lowest price of a legitimate poker turnamen in the United States with 30-minute blinds will be $150 or $200, sometimes even $400.
This is obviously very expensive for a starter bankroll, making online the much better pilihan, with turnamens starting at well under $1 and kontan game starting at.01/.02.
While the affordability of game at the best online poker sites is one huge advantage, another big advantage is being able to multi-table.
Multi-tabling has a number of benefits, most notably being able to get many more reps in than you would playing live.
In a distinctive live games, you’ll be expected to see around 25-30 hands per hour while you could see around 75-90 hands per hour online.
If you’re playing four tables at the same time, you could see around 300-360 hands per hour, which means you’re getting anywhere from 10-15x the amount of pengalaman per hour than at a live table.
Being able to play hundreds of hands per hour on a reguler pangkalan will quicken your decision making and you’ll be able to generate an akirate sample size to precisely hone in on the leaks in your games.
Since variasice is such a faktor in poker, you need a sample of roughly 50,000 hands in order to be able to akirately analyze your games in full.
If you start off playing live, 50,000 hands could take up to 2,000 hours of poker to achieve and you won’t have any way of treking data unless you take akirate catatan of every singgel hand that you play.
50,000 hands online playing four tables could take less than 140 hours of playing to akimulate, and treking software like PokerTracker4 captures data from every hand.
PokerTracker4 has leak finders and is able to graphically show you where you’re strong and where you’re weak. You could determine your leaks yourself or send your data to a poker coach to analyze and give you things to work on.
This treking software will also give insights on specific opponents. It’s best to also take catatan on your opponents to observe their tendencies so that you can make better decisions in future hands against them.
This literal note-taking kemampuan will terjemahkan into psikis note-taking skills when you momentually do get to play live.
5. Take Peduli of Your “Soft Skills”
There are a ton of players out there who I personally know who are really good at poker but end up going broke because they don’t manage their “soft skills”.
Some of them go on tilt, they mismanage their bankroll, they play too long in the pits, or they end up spending too much while they’re drunk.
One night of bad decision-making can make a huge dent on your bankroll, so it’s important to stay alert and not go off the rails.
In order to do so and maximize your chances of becoming a profesional poker player, you’re going to have to reduce the amount of kasual fun you’ll have, at least in the short-term.
You need to make great decisions both on and off the felt in order to bertahan in the long-term and make it in this games. Some of my best advice includes:
- Get enough sleep.
- Exercise regulerly.
- Eat a generally healthy diet.
- Studi regulerly.
- Remove distractions when playing.
- Observe all available information.
- Know when it’s time to quit playing.
Pros dan Cons of Being a Profesional Poker Player1. Money
Obviously, making more money is generally a good thing. Being able to santai a better life and play for bigger stakes is a huge advantage.
Sometimes you go on crazy upswings and suddenly make thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in a very short period of time. Not having to setuju with financial stress is, of course, a giant plus.
Our famili grew up with money issues, so I do not need very many luxuries in my life in order to perasaan fulfilled. I also have lived in Latin America for nearly five years, so I do not have much in terms of bills and am able to save a lot more than if I still lived in the United States.
2. Freedom
I’m somebody that will only do what they love and don’t like to be bossed around. Poker allows me to do something I want to do and nobody tells me what to do. It’s a dream for a competitive math nerd.
3. Traveling
Although most of your time is going to be spent in your hotel room and on the kasino floor, being able to travel the world and potentially leave with more money than you came with is an insane luxury.
4. Glory
Winning trophies, rings, and online titles is certainly fun. As a lifelong athlete and being as competitive as I am, winning poker turnamens is something that keeps me going and gives my life much more purpose.
5. Friends
While it’s true that it’s much more difficult to make friends as you get older, poker is a rare exception. I have made so many friends in the poker world, even though I’m already in my mid-30s. Online poker, live poker, and poker Twitter have all contributed positively to my social life.
While being in the poker industry and being somewhat of a poker celebrity in Brazil certainly has helped, the friendships I’ve made playing this games will last until my dying days.
My individual trofi collection.
Cons
1. Long Hours
Playing and studying poker, especially if you work, is going to take away the majority of your free time. You’re going to miss nights out, occasional important moments, and your social life is going to go way down.
2. Exhaustion
Poker is both physically and mentally draining. You’re sitting in a chair for several hours a day, multiple days a week using most of your psikis capacity.
On hebat of that, you’re traveling, making reservations, buying/selling action, making turnamen schedules, constantly talking about hands, and your bodi will momentually get weak and/or be in pain from sitting for so long.
You also have to stay positive through tough times when you’re losing money day-in and day-out.
3. Expensive
Poker is not cheap. While it’s a very fun games to play, it is an expensive hobi that can make the undisciplined, unstudied, and/or lazy player go broke and stay broke.
You constantly have hundreds or thousands of dollars on the table and can go through downswings that can seem mathematically impossible that can last for weeks or even several months, even if you’re a consistent winning player.
4. Stigma
While I personally haven’t had to setuju with any negative stigma, those from conservative households may have to setuju with shame associated with being a “gambler.”
Hopefully this guide to becoming a profesional poker player will have given you a good idea of what to expect if you decide to go down this career path. Good luck!