Minimum Limit You Can Play To Make A Living

If you wanna play 200nl you need at least $4000 in your bankroll (20 buyins).. but if your playing for a living its better if you have $6000 in your bankroll (30 buyins)

Honestly, I think someone could make a living playing 100 NL if they are showing a good winrate

BelgoSuisse said:

Fwiw, I've made about $2k/month in 2009, playing recreationally, i.e. a little less than 50 hours per month, a mix of 100nl and 200nl, averaging about 500 hands/hour, so about 300k hands over the year. If you play full time, it's obviously possible to live off poker at 100nl, provided you're good enough to beat it...

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Thats pretty good going.
What poker sites do you play at out of interest?

BelgoSuisse said:

5% is lol when you play seriously. 20 buy-ins downswings can happen several times per year. I personally don't play without at least 60 buy-ins for the stake, but i'd want at least 100 if this was actually my job and not a hobby.

Obviously applies for each table, not for all of them together. The goal is to protect against the variance of the cards, and cards dealt at different tables are independent variables, whether you play them simultaneously or at different times.

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Ah kkkk thanks for clarifying .

Xavier said:

Thats pretty good going.
What poker sites do you play at out of interest?

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mostly on FTP, a few hands - 50k at most - on PS.

Just my two cents..

If you have really good discipline and a knack for reading people, you can clean up the 1/2NL live games in AC. I know this is a really small sample pool, but over the past 31 hours in AC I've produced the following totals:

game 1: 6 hours, +$260 1-2NL Tropicana
game 2: 4 hours, -$240 1-3NL Ceasars
game 3: 9 hours, +$479 1-3NL Ballys
game 4: 6 hours, +$180

not sure how 18k a year is considered making a living. i guess you don't have bills to pay?

I know this threads real old but wanted to post in it.

I think its VERY possible to make good money playing 1-2 no limit. My personal problem is just gettin the money to get started. Gotta start from the lower .02/.05 stakes and work up cause im on limited bankroll. But should be better in longrun gives me the time and exp to improve skills and confidence. If it was easy to make a living playing poker everyone would be doing it. But the fact that its NOT easy is exactly why it works. Nothing good comes easy.

Im more interested right now in using poker as a means to supplement my income. In order to go fulltime you will need a substantial bankroll to account for variance and living expenses.

I dont know about some of you but ive always worked crap jobs making 8-9 an hour usually working waaay to hard for the pay. Im tired of it and have always wanted better. Id be MOOOREE than happy to make 300 a week sitting in front of a laptop for 5-6 hours a day.

Playing online you can easily play 100 hands an hour at some tables and if you play a few tables at a time your looking at 500 hands in only a few hours of play. So if your a decent player and make good decisions playing at a decent limit like 1/2 100 dollars a day shouldnt be hard at all. Thats assuming a decent player who makes good decisions.

Poker is definitely one of those things where the old saying holds true you need money to make money. But the hard road of building a bankroll from nothing is probably the best way. Allows you to slowly move up and develop your game. Having confidence as you move up and not being nervous improves play tremendously. At least it does for me.

pantin007 said:

if u play 600,000 hands a month, u can make a living at 10nl

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haha.

Well I'm seeing Ciren on pokerstars knock out 40k hands a day at 2nl.lol. He's made about $700 in the past week!

ive heard you need realistically a 70 k bankroll to consider making a living or turning pro in poker.

papatango123 said:

ive heard you need realistically a 70 k bankroll to consider making a living or turning pro in poker.

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Thats probably pretty high but true if you play really high stakes like 5/10 cash games.

for 1/2 to seriously give it a go full time id say 50 max buy ins PLUS at least 3 months of living expenses stashed away to live off while you get the ball rolling.

so typically max buyin at 1/2 is around 200 bucks 200x50=10000

then add your 3 months of living expenses which can vary heavily from person to person depending on lifestyle. For me personally that would come out to 3-4 grand. Most experts advise people who are considering to quit their job for anything to have 3 months living expenses or even up to a years living expenses.

once again this is assuming someone who has worked their way up and has shown they can consistently make a profit. Not just over a few hundred hands but over thousands of hands. A proven winning player.

not unrealistic at all and if it doesnt work hey we can always get REAL jobs lol.

Benefits are you can work from anywhere

you can work anytime

you can make as much or as little as you want. want more money? maybe play an extra day this week.

people are afraid to take the risk which is understandable and i would probably be like that too if i already had a career and made decent money. But im one of those people with not a whole lot to lose. If i made it to that point and it didnt work i can always go back to work ive never had an issue finding me a crappy job.

papatango123 said:

ive heard you need realistically a 70 k bankroll to consider making a living or turning pro in poker.

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Thats probably pretty high but true if you play really high stakes like 5/10 cash games.

for 1/2 to seriously give it a go full time id say 50 max buy ins PLUS at least 3 months of living expenses stashed away to live off while you get the ball rolling.

so typically max buyin at 1/2 is around 200 bucks 200x50=10000

then add your 3 months of living expenses which can vary heavily from person to person depending on lifestyle. For me personally that would come out to 3-4 grand. Most experts advise people who are considering to quit their job for anything to have 3 months living expenses or even up to a years living expenses.

once again this is assuming someone who has worked their way up and has shown they can consistently make a profit. Not just over a few hundred hands but over thousands of hands. A proven winning player.

not unrealistic at all and if it doesnt work hey we can always get REAL jobs lol.

Benefits are you can work from anywhere

you can work anytime

you can make as much or as little as you want. want more money? maybe play an extra day this week.

people are afraid to take the risk which is understandable and i would probably be like that too if i already had a career and made decent money. But im one of those people with not a whole lot to lose. If i made it to that point and it didnt work i can always go back to work ive never had an issue finding me a crappy job.

The point of all this is that you start at 1-2 and build your bank roll slowly until you can play at higher limits.

dontshiveagit said:

not sure how 18k a year is considered making a living. i guess you don't have bills to pay?

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£18k in the UK is actually an average wage per year. I'm assuming it's around the $40k mark in the states?

So urfm, I'm not sure what you consider as a wage? Like I say, that is the average wage, most people can live of that amount.

BelgoSuisse said:

You can't be an online poker pro without multitabling.

And the threshold between casual play and tables where most of the regs are pros is 200nl. You can make a very decent living at that level if you're good.

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Hmm, how do you work that out? Just because it's online poker doesn't mean you "must" multi table to make a living at poker. There are people who play high stakes, one table at a time who make a living of it. If you're referring to playing 2nl, then yeah I'd agree you couldn't.

There are many many people who make a living from live cash games and you can't exactly multi table live games can you? Think about it

why is this thread alive?

And randeebam, the reason people can be live pros without multitabling is that the average live players are sooooo lol-bad that the edge you have against them is enormous and ridiculously high win rates compensate for the low volume. That's just not possible online where most of the players at any given table are other regulars.

ramdeebam said:

There are people who play high stakes, one table at a time who make a living of it. If you're referring to playing 2nl, then yeah I'd agree you couldn't.

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How would you get to the high stakes without multitabling?

Stu_Ungar said:

How would you get to the high stakes without multitabling?

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Well there are many of these sorts of players, ither very wealthy from whatever source prior to playing. Could be poker earned, I dunno.

There are some high stake players who can afford to just deposit 10k for example and start playing at those stakes I'd imagine. There are plenty on fulltilt who jump in at the highest stakes and basically come from no where. No history of any low stake grind and most of the time will just be playing one or two tables turning over some impressive profits. I'd imagine a lot are live high stake players.

ramdeebam said:

Well there are many of these sorts of players, ither very wealthy from whatever source prior to playing. Could be poker earned, I dunno.

There are some high stake players who can afford to just deposit 10k for example and start playing at those stakes I'd imagine. There are plenty on fulltilt who jump in at the highest stakes and basically come from no where. No history of any low stake grind and most of the time will just be playing one or two tables turning over some impressive profits. I'd imagine a lot are live high stake players.

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Do you think many players start at the high stakes?

Can you name a few?

10K isnt anywhere enough money to be BRd for the high stakes.

Depends on your standard of living

I know a college student that is funding his education by playing live 1/2 nlhe. he is very aggresive in style and spends all his free time at the table.

For me personally, I retired to play for a living in 2005. I can only keep up with my household expences by playing 5/10 nlhe, 15/30 lo, this is live cash game play. I go to the casino and play as long as it takes to cover 3 month worth of bills and I always stay 3 month ahead. So when I get down to 3 month worth of cash available for monthly expenses, it's off to the casino, and play until I have a total of 6 months income. my last trip took a week to make my income and cover my expenses. It's a very hard way to make an easy living.

Stu_Ungar said:

Do you think many players start at the high stakes?

Can you name a few?

10K isnt anywhere enough money to be BRd for the high stakes.

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There are a fair few yeah I'm reckoning.

The obvious ones that pop into my head are the likes of Phil Ivey, Patrick Antnious, Gus Hansen and so on. Nether of these multi table and if they do it's like 2 tables which you can't really class as multi tabling. Phil Ivey has earned over 19million online and the majority of the time he is just playing the one table.

And yes sorry bad example, I mean't to put 100k or 200k or whatever they might have made during their poker career on the live circuit playing the one table

Of course some people are just wealthy and decide to deposit an obscene amount of money to play poker as money is irrelevant to them.

Of course there are the likes of Randy Lew (nanonko) who has literally grinded up from micro stakes to the biggest games on pokerstars today but people like him are very few and far between. I'm sure there are more people who have just deposited a lot of money and played the high stakes successfully as opposed to people trying it the Randy Lew way.

Don't get me wrong, anyone who can mass multi table and go from micros to the high stakes I have more respect for. I was just pointing out to the guy who said you need to multi table to make a living of poker. So I was pointing out there are many people who can just 1 table and make a good living from it playing high stakes. Jason Mercier is another one I just thought of, I often see him playing 8ball $400/$800 and he makes a rather good amount of profit from these games alone, along with massive scores from his tournament scores..

ALSALEFTY said:

I know a college student that is funding his education by playing live 1/2 nlhe. he is very aggresive in style and spends all his free time at the table.

For me personally, I retired to play for a living in 2005. I can only keep up with my household expences by playing 5/10 nlhe, 15/30 lo, this is live cash game play. I go to the casino and play as long as it takes to cover 3 month worth of bills and I always stay 3 month ahead. So when I get down to 3 month worth of cash available for monthly expenses, it's off to the casino, and play until I have a total of 6 months income. my last trip took a week to make my income and cover my expenses. It's a very hard way to make an easy living.

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That makes no sense. Why would you only go once in a blue moon to get months worth of expenses and just stop playing till your money runs out? Why not continue playing full-time and earning (by the sounds of it) several hundreds of thousands if you played full time? This makes more sense and surely be a nice living if you actually can do it..

I'd of thought you would of had to keep on top of your game aswell and getting better and better. How on earth do you not play for months on end and still manage to go back to the casino and earn 3 months worth of expenses? I smell something...

I'm not being funny when I say this and hats of to you if you actually do, do that but for someone to start playing for a living to just play maybe 4 weeks in a year and those limits seems a bit ridiculous. Anyone who can beat such limits would be playing most weeks in my opinion.

ps: Why not go online and play some? Or just play for one year everyday, you could make even more and be a millionaire within a year, get interest on your millions in the bank which would cover all your expenses and you would never have to do it again!
You could then warrant just playing 4 times a year for "fun" and an extra bit of cash to your big stack of millions.

Stu_Ungar said:

How would you get to the high stakes without multitabling?

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Like most people, win a donkament.

ramdeebam said:

That makes no sense. Why would you only go once in a blue moon to get months worth of expenses and just stop playing till your money runs out? Why not continue playing full-time and earning (by the sounds of it) several hundreds of thousands if you played full time? This makes more sense and surely be a nice living if you actually can do it..

I'd of thought you would of had to keep on top of your game aswell and getting better and better. How on earth do you not play for months on end and still manage to go back to the casino and earn 3 months worth of expenses? I smell something...

I'm not being funny when I say this and hats of to you if you actually do, do that but for someone to start playing for a living to just play maybe 4 weeks in a year and those limits seems a bit ridiculous. Anyone who can beat such limits would be playing most weeks in my opinion.

ps: Why not go online and play some? Or just play for one year everyday, you could make even more and be a millionaire within a year, get interest on your millions in the bank which would cover all your expenses and you would never have to do it again!
You could then warrant just playing 4 times a year for "fun" and an extra bit of cash to your big stack of millions.

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I personally havent played live yet but ive read live games are easier. Usually weaker players than online. I read that if you can win at pokerstars and full tilt you should easily win live cash games at the local casino. I would like to go play live just cause it seems like itd be fun. FTP and poker stars are loaded with regulars at almost every table. Still have your weak players but the competition is stiff at both sites. Especially poker stars you can find strong players at any stake. They have a pro playing at .01/.02 lol. So id imagine playing live is probably more profitable than online.

But i agree i would at least play a few times a week to keep bringing in consistent income.

I think that everyone looks at the high side of playing ie consistently winning. Everyone has downswings and if you are constantly cashing out for living expenses you will be destroying your bankroll. I think you need a huge bankroll which can not be used for anything other than playing. Your profits above your bankroll can be cashed out, but if you go on a losing streak you won't be cashing out much. That is why it is so difficult to live off of poker.

depends of course on the cost of living where you reside... i'm sure some places you could live on a hundred dollars a month although i wonder how good the connection would be there...