If you can make $500 a month playing poker, how would you do it?

Hello. I am very interested to see how folks would or do do it. What a sup to retirement that would be, huh? Thanks!

if you are already retired
500 bones aint bad.

but the best way to DO it.
.10/.25 cash game tables or .50-1.10$ buyin MTTs

dodge them bullets lol

danoscar said:

Hello. I am very interested to see how folks would or do do it. What a sup to retirement that would be, huh? Thanks!

Click to expand...

making 5 hundo is so easy and yet so difficult at the same time. That being said most ppl dont realize poker is an over time type of game. You can hope or expect to have good returns but the swings will drive you mad. Keep playing solid and look for the weakness to exploit and you will come out on top in the long run.

First of all you would need a decent bankroll so you'll survive the downswings.
I would focus what you're good at , CG or SNG/MTTs.

To earn $500 each month you need to be better than the average player and choose your games carefully.

Probably by playing all kind of things military style

I would be surprised if you could do it every month continually to be honest. You would also need a good roll to get you started.

The best way to make $500 a month is to put $20 in your gas tank and go to work I read that somewhere and totally agree.

You need to find your preferred game format, get good enough to beat low stakes games, and then put in a fairly significant volume. Low stakes is 25-50 NL cash and 5-19$ tournaments. Its not realistic to make 500$ per month playing the micros. Also you are not going to have consistent winnings from month to month. There will be some month, where you are up 1.500$ and others, where you are actually losing money.

I would play tournaments with an inexpensive entry of $ 5-10.

play mtt's with 150x buyins and u gonna reach it! Just make sure that u are fit with poker and what cards u play in which position etc good luck

Have to echo fundiver's post in as much as you'd want to be playing (and bankrolled for) stakes above micros in order to achieve $500+ per month.

That's not to say $500 profit in a month from micros is impossible, just that it would be extremely difficult to obtain consistently, unless you're Antonio Esfandiari or similar.

Similarly to ideally requiring a certain stake level, you'll also have to be a reasonably skilled and disciplined player to reach this profit monthly.

If you can avoid losing (more often than you win) in AIPF situations such as AA < 55, AA < TT and AKs < A5o it would probably go some way towards achieving such a goal also*.

Finally it's worth bearing in mind that you will never be able to bank on your $500 profit 100% before you have earned it because of variance, I.e. sometimes it doesn't matter how well you play- you're going to lose anyway.

*If you discover how to do this, please PM me as I've been trying to solve that problem for quite some time now.

It`s a difficult task.I have a positive balance, about 50$ per month playing in low money tournaments up to 2.20 and in freerolls, so I thing that to earn 500$ monthly tournaments of 10$ should be played.

I'm tempted to comment on some of the responses but as it appears you're either trolling the OP or you just really have no clue what you're talking about.

First off, danoscar...
You need to focus on ONE discipline (whether that be cash games , sng, or MTT). I'm guessing this would be difficult in SNG's these days as there's not many sites offering many games (Partypoker it's achievable at micro/low stakes but you'd need to play an IMMENSE volume... far more than I think you can imagine).

Once you've chosen which discipline, you'll need to study and put in some volume.. then study some more.. put in more volume etc.
The thing is, you'd already KNOW if you're able to win $500/mth. income from online poker prior to trying because a) you've managed to do this already or b) your winrate over a decent sample size, playing a game you know you can beat shows that it is more than possible for you (but also keep in mind if you're able to put that amount of TIME into it 'and' that you have a good mental game and are able to deal with variance)

My suggestion without even knowing what games you have experience in would be to play MTT's, start out at $1 to $3 buyins, play them til' you feel comfortable beating them. You'll find a larger % of bad players in micro/low stakes MTT's vs. cash games.

Study, play, study, play.
THen play some more! lol
You really want to be able to multi-table (8 tables minimum should be your target).

To win $500/mth. and assuming you have lots of time on your hands (you're retired right? ... me too fwiw), you can achieve this by playing an avg. buyin of $5 as long as you're making sure to get into as many MTT's as possible that are smaller field tourneys (not ones with 5,000 entrants in them... although I'd play those as well if you're able to play many tables).

For those suggesting you'd need to play at higher buyins to profit $500/mth. is just not true.
And if cash game is your choice to play, you'll get CRUSHED at 50nl games so that suggestion is a really bad one imo. IF you're wanting to play cashgame you'll need to start off near the lowest (or theee lowest) stakes and put in TONS of hands, tons of studying and LOADS of volume! I'd suggest this is a slower way to get to earning $500/mth.

OP,
I am contemplating doing something similar in the not so distant future. I've been planning this for awhile though, lol... but life has thrown some curveballs my way (lots of death in the family this past couple years & my partner is very ill).
Once I get going, if I'm able to help you out in some way, just ask.

For clarification, my reply was in regards to MTTs, I almost never play cash games online and rarely play SNGs.

If you are asking what format you should play to give you the best chance of $500 profit monthly, I don't feel I can answer that for you as we are different people and what works for you might not work for me, and vice versa.

I stand by my comment that it would be extremely difficult to consistently earn $500 profit per month playing micro MTTs unless you are already a very proficient player or are able to multi-table all day every day.

If you are skillful enough to consistently profit $500 per month playing micro MTTs and have the time to multi-table 40-80 hours per week, then there is little reason in my mind for you not to be playing low stakes instead.

In my experience the skill difference between micros and low is marginal.

P.S. Don't feed the trolls.

Probably at cash table play 10$ per table 4max running at once and if you get around 30-40$ move to another table at start with 10$ again untill you reach your goal and go up from there eachtime and go down if you lose 4 buy-ins

I think you must be as lucky as it's possible. For example in PS playing S&G and win ranking with points.

hello

first having a decent bankroll and then investing in the appropriate levels to earn that amount and if it succeeded it would be a success !!! regards

10 table 10nl across two soft sites and it’s doable. Possibly even with 5nl including rake back.

Tracid said:

If you are asking what format you should play to give you the best chance of $500 profit monthly, I don't feel I can answer that for you as we are different people and what works for you might not work for me, and vice versa.

Click to expand...

Exactly. In my personal experience it is easier to make money in MTTs than in either SnGs or cash games, but there are also some major drawbacks of MTTs, which not everyone can live with.

MTTs require a lot of time committment, since they can last for up to 6-7 hours or sometimes even more. And while you are not always going to be there until the end, you cant just stop your session on short notice, if you get invited to a friends house or suddenly feel tired and prefer to not play.

The other major drawback of MTTs is, that variance is larger than in other formats. If you play low stakes MTTs, you are sometimes going to win 300$, 500$ or even 1.000$ in a single event, which is of course great. But you will also have far longer losing streaks than in the other formats. Which can make it mentally tough at times.

I had a great year in the MTTs on 888 Poker in 2020, but in 2021 so far I have been playing 930 events (although a small portion are SnGs) and have only been able to show a profit of 120$ and a 2% ROI for all this effort. So essentially I am no more than break even over this pretty large sample. And the point is, runs like these are completely normal and expected even for winning MTT players.

Tracid said:

If you are skillful enough to consistently profit $500 per month playing micro MTTs and have the time to multi-table 40-80 hours per week, then there is little reason in my mind for you not to be playing low stakes instead. In my experience the skill difference between micros and low is marginal.

Click to expand...

Once again I could not agree more. If you are going to take poker serious and put in many hours of work, it would be silly to limit yourself to MTTs with a buyin of less than 5$. MTTs with a buyin of 5-19$ are not that much tougher, and they can be played with a bankroll of 1.000 to 2.000$. Of course you can mix it up. There is nothing wrong with playing a 3,3$ and an 11$ MTT in the same session. But you should expect the bulk of your profit to come from low stakes (5-19$) games.

Of course if things go well, you might eventually try to make it into mid stakes (20-99$) games, and then the profit target is no longer just 500$ per month. But from my still somewhat limited experience, even the low end of mid stakes like 22-33$ games do tend to be significantly tougher. You still see a recreational player now and then, but there is a far higher percentage of solid regulars, and they also tend to be better and more aggressive in general.

Poker Orifice said:

You need to focus on ONE discipline (whether that be cash games , sng, or MTT).

Click to expand...

I agree, that its best to focus on either cash games or tournaments, but I dont consider MTTs and SnGs to be completely different disciplines. After all a SnG is just a tournament with a small field, and some of them are actually MTTs as well. PokerStars for instance have several 18 man, 45 man, 90 man and 180 man SnGs running.

And regardless of the number of people playing the tournament you still have blinds, that go up, you still have antes (at least on most sites these days), and the goal is still to outlast the other players rather than to win chips.

Sure there are some things, that are special for SnGs, like the rather extreme nature of the bubble in a 6-man or 9-man. But if this is enough to say, that we should select to either play SnGs or MTTs, then we should also not play satellites, since they have an even more extreme bubble, and we should not mix up games with or without bounties either.

What I am trying to say is just, that while its good to specialise and focus, to much specialisation can also be a problem, since it will artificially limit our game selection. And it might also lead to boredom and a lack of motivation. If OP is going to spend some of his retirement playing poker, it surely needs to provide fun and not only a 500$ monthly profit. And for most people its more fun to try something different rather than grind the exact same games day in and day out.

Poker Orifice said:

I'm guessing this would be difficult in SNG's these days as there's not many sites offering many games (Partypoker it's achievable at micro/low stakes but you'd need to play an IMMENSE volume... far more than I think you can imagine).

Click to expand...

I think, PokerStars is the most realistic site to make 500$ per month playing only SnGs, simply because they have more games running than other sites. I have never done this myself, but I think, it should be possible to achieve this kind of profit by grinding 7-15$ SnGs on Stars, if you get really good at these games.

It is possible to win 500 dollars a month, I have sometimes done it, playing only freerolls, now there are many channels of twtich that give out bankrolls and tickets in raffles.

But if you want to play for real money and win $ 500 a month, it is more difficult, because in poker you are not always going to win money.

To win money in poker you have to have bank control, it is useless if you win a tournament of 1000 dollars, but to win that tournament you spent 1000 dollars or more.

I have seen many micro limit players lose 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 dollars , then they blame Pokerstars, that the site is rigged, but you see them play and they play crazy, they don't take the time to review their game, and see if they are playing bad, instead of thinking that a poker site is rigged.

fundiver199 said:

You need to find your preferred game format, get good enough to beat low stakes games, and then put in a fairly significant volume. Low stakes is 25-50 NL cash and 5-19$ tournaments. Its not realistic to make 500$ per month playing the micros. Also you are not going to have consistent winnings from month to month. There will be some month, where you are up 1.500$ and others, where you are actually losing money.

Click to expand...

Good answer. You can add that you need a bankroll of at least $ 1000.

I would be very happy even more, the dollar in Brazil is quoted at 5x1, that is, I would earn r$ 2,500.00 reais per month and that would be wonderful.

jfofla said:

I would be very happy even more, the dollar in Brazil is quoted at 5x1, that is, I would earn r$ 2,500.00 reais per month and that would be wonderful.

Click to expand...

For starters, you probably need to think about how you can build a $ 500 bankroll without investing your own money. I have the answer to this question. You need to become a member of our freeroll club and play in our daily freerolls.

black and said:

For starters, you probably need to think about how you can build a $ 500 bankroll without investing your own money. I have the answer to this question. You need to become a member of our freeroll club and play in our daily freerolls.

Click to expand...

jfofla has been in da club for ages! :wink:

It has been done several times on poker stars and on american and gg poker , a 500 dollar month balance was very good. several tables open and playing hard every day.