To many people, the image of Dan Bilzerian comes to mind when they try to visualize the life of a professional poker player. They’d see a gun wading mafia posing alongside with his bikini-clad ladies; a smoke-blazing cigar, Instagram-worthy parties, as an intricate part of the image.
In real life, however, a professional poker player lives a life that’s far removed from the glitz and glamor it has been painted to look. They probably even use the Betfred bonus when they want to place a bet. Joking aside, playing poker definitely requires some level of skills, perseverance, a fair amount of luck, and the unabashed use of guts to play it at the professional level.
Just as with everything else, however, the lifestyle of a professional poker player is attractive to certain kinds of person – an individual who isn’t ashamed to spend eight hours at the casino every single night while having as company people with shady characters. Some professional players got into poker not by design, but by accident, said Dave, a former player for Commsec, and he is a prime example of that. According to him, he had accumulated enough leave; and was looking forward to a fun-filled holiday. It was during this leave of absence he stumbled onto poker playing. He noted that he made $40,000 in the first two months of playing that he thought to himself “This is cool. Why work when I can have fun playing poker?
While one can say that luck is a significant factor, the truth is, skill equally takes a significant chunk of the credit. Part of the skill required to be successful in the game is the ability to look for and recognize both good and bad spots – this ability means, you’re able to spot the right table to place your money on. The income of professional poker players varies and can swing from tops as high as six figures to plummeting lows. And also, most poker players have horrible spending habits which compound everything.
Typically, the average day of a Pro poker player would always be a mix of losing and winning. A professional player could win or lose from $1500 to $2,00000 per day.
In poker, they say your profit for the month is your top 10% of your overall winnings for that month. The other 90% would cancel out your losses.
Unlike other types of gambling where the winner comes house by house, poker is a different game. In poker, the longer you play, the better your chances. And, the better your chances, the more likely you’ll make a profit. Professional poker players can play an average of 200 hours every month. This translates into 10 hours a day for 5 days a week. Using the top 10% rule, that is a profit of $13,000. Some players play more hours, others play even less. Some earn lesser than that. And, some professional poker players earn far more. Still, a lot depends on your style and your stakes.
One of the secrets young professionals do not recognize is that they don’t have to be the very best poker player in the world. All you need is to be better than the other nine players around your table. The significant difference between the good players and the bad pokers is that the good players would instead stick with it for years.
But, the bad players would come once a while. They’re always expecting luck so they could win, forgetting that poker is as much as having the right skills as it is about chance.