. Play so many hours, hands or games per day, week and month. Set goals for yourself and try to put in more volume in the next month than you did the last. Just be sure not to sacrifice quality for quantity. Use your bankroll for poker related business only. There are a multitude of poker games, online and offline to choose from. The choice you make matters a lot because that choice is what you end up doing. This choice goes a long way in launch a successful career grinding poker for a living or playing poker live for a living, online. Tactics on How to Make a Living Playing At Online Poker. In the event that you like to play the online poker games like an ace and truly get by out of it, you should apply the correct attitude and organize some successful playing systems on your specific online poker games. Despite online or disconnected poker games, there are.

By Jay Lovinger
Page 2

How many people actually make a living -- even a modest one -- playing poker?

What percentage of 'serious' players show a profit -- even a minuscule one -- for their careers?

You'd think a guy (that would be moi) would ask himself those two questions before he embarked on a year-long odyssey as a 'high-stakes poker pro.' Well, what can I say ... sometimes, people are irrational.

But, as it turns out, it wouldn't have mattered if I had asked myself those questions, because there is no reliable research on either subject -- at least, nothing since the poker explosion of a few years ago, the one started by the Card Cam (the TV camera which allows audiences to see the players' hold cards during the hand), fueled by ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker and the Travel Channel's broadcasts of the World Poker Tour, and topped off by the $2.5 million lamb-defeats-wolf victory of online amateur Chris Moneymaker over cunning pro Sam Farha in the 2003 WSOP.

The only somewhat scholarly attempt to answer the second question that I've heard about is a piece by Nolan Dalla that appeared in Card Player magazine back in 1995, long before poker's big breakout. Dalla, a long-time writer/thinker about poker issues -- he's something of a specialist on questions of poker ethics -- teamed up with Jeff Goldberg, a math professor from Arizona State.

'We calculated that about 15,000-to-20,000 players were winners in any given year, U.S. cardroom figures only,' Dalla tells me. 'This amounted to about 10-to-12 percent of the U.S. poker base, estimated roughly at 200,000, which we defined as the number of players who play in a public cardroom two-plus times in a calendar year.'

However, as Dalla points out, 'these figures are grossly outdated' because this came before the expansion of gambling, the explosion of interest in poker, and, perhaps most importantly, the advent of online poker.

I also asked Dalla how many people he thinks make a 'decent living' from poker, which I define as $50,000-to-$100,000 per year, after deducting poker-playing expenses like the cost of traveling to and from casinos, food and lodging, dealers' tips, etc.

'Well, 'decent living' means something beyond those parameters,' Dalla says. 'I suggest you define a 'professional,' as opposed to a semi-professional or part-timer, as anyone who makes a subsistence income or more, as long as those winnings go for living expenses. For instance, there are quite a few semi-retired players who grind out $20,000-to-$30,000 a year playing in small limit games. Also, you can't include a person with a full-time job who gets lucky and wins $200,000 in a tournament somewhere, which might account for four times his regular salary. By my definition, I would estimate the number of semi-professionals in the U.S. to be in the 30,000 range, if you define a semi-professional as a part-timer who makes some money playing poker. The number of full-time professionals, I would estimate, is a small fraction of that -- about 3,000 or so. I think 60 percent of those are online players.'

Greg Raymer, the winner of last year's WSOP (and a life-changing $5 million which allowed him to quit his job as a patent attorney), pretty much agrees with Dalla's educated guesses, though his evidence is mostly anecdotal and personal.

'I've often heard people say that about 10 percent of poker players in any room are long-term winners,' he says. 'But many of those are not winning enough to support themselves. For example, I've never had a losing year; but until last year's WSOP, I also never had a year where I won anywhere near as much as my job paid, and there were only a couple of years where I won enough to call it 'a decent living'.'

As usual, Matt Matros, my fellow contrarian thinker and mentor/teacher (which means, like it or not, that he has to take some responsibility for my miserable performance of recent months), questions my questions themselves.

'If the question is, 'What percentage of people who play poker in casinos and/or online are winners?', then the answer is probably somewhere around 5 percent, or even lower,' he says. 'A lot of people will try poker once in a casino without knowing how to play, and the vast majority will go home broke. The same is true -- though to a lesser degree -- online.

'But if the question is, 'What percentage of people who take the game seriously are winners?', then that's tougher. Of course, we'd have to define what it means to take the game seriously. You could say, 'anybody who has read one poker book,' but that would exclude guys like Paul Darden, who has never read a poker book. So, leaving it as a subjective definition, I would guess 25-to-30 percent of people who take the game seriously are winners.

'This brings us to the question, 'How many players actually win enough every year to earn at least $50,000 per?' I would say, very few. There are a bunch of pros playing the Vegas $30-60 games and higher, and most of them probably qualify. Ditto for the scene in L.A. Then there are the online pros -- like me, sort of. Most of them are young guys who started playing online really young and became good enough so they didn't start looking for real jobs. I would guess that, all in all, there were probably 600 people who play poker for a living and who made $50,000 or more last year.

Video Poker For A Living

'But this is a highly unscientific guess. As you suggested, there really is no reliable 'information' on this, because this stuff obviously isn't documented anywhere.'

Well, this raises another question: Why not? How is it that, in an activity where every possible result is calibrated to an infinite number of decimal places, nobody can answer basic questions about how many poker players are 'successful' on any level?

Ask Jackpot Jay!
Got a poker problem or want more details about Jay's poker adventure? Send in your questions and comments.

Three simple little words:

Poker players lie.

(Though we insiders like to think of it as 'bluffing.')

As Ashley Adams, author of 'Winning 7-Card Stud' (Lyle Stuart/Kensington), points out, it comes with the territory. 'It's like driving,' he says. 'The AAA surveyed drivers, asking people to rate their own driving skills. Something like 90 percent said they were above average! Poker players are the same way. Most keep shoddy records, if any, and greatly overestimate how they have done. So even if someone took the time to do a thorough survey, the participants are apt to misrepresent their results.'

And this, says Adams, is a good thing. 'If bad players knew how much they lost each year to their favorite hobby, they'd probably stop playing.'

There are many reasons, beyond self-delusion, why poker players lie.

1.) To hide income from the IRS.

2.) To hide income/extravagant losses from their spouses/significant others.

3.) Table image. Losers don't scare anybody; big winners scare away the fish.

4.) Self-image. Some people can't play with confidence unless they feel like winners; others can't play their best unless driven by horrific visions of failure.

5.) Habit (see 'joke' about bluffing, above).

Similarly, there are many reasons why few casino and online players can win, long-term, and why even fewer can make a 'decent living' at the game.

1.) Lack of technical knowledge. Most players don't bother to learn how to play correctly in the first place. (To be fair, the real motivations for most players have little to do with making money. Most players are looking for one or more of the following: some fun, a distracting hobby, excitement, proof that God loves them.)

2.) Lack of self-knowledge. If you are unable to figure out, and accept, how good/not good you are, you will be unable to find the proper level of game in which to play (that is, a game you can regularly beat).

3.) Lack of discipline. Most players, even those who actually possess an 'A' game, cannot maintain their 'A' game when they are ...

... tired.

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... bored.

... drunk.

... sick.

... losing.

... on tilt.

4.) Major 'leaks.' To put it mildly, poker tends to attract people with addictive personalities. (Jackpot Jay reluctantly pleads guilty.) It is not uncommon, even at the Hall-of-Fame level, to find poker players who fritter away their bankrolls by indulging their addictive selves in loser gambling activities (sports betting, betting on horse racing, craps), alcoholic excess, cocaine, you name it. Most people are familiar with the story of how Stu Ungar, possibly the greatest poker player who ever lived, lost everything -- including his life -- to cocaine addiction. Even casual hangers-on can offer up a litany of many of the top players who are constantly in bankroll freefall thanks to their inability to resist the lure of bad bets, excessive drinking, unwise pharmaceutical indulgences, etc.

However, the main reason so few players will ever show a long-term profit -- minimal or enough to live on -- is ...

5.) The 'rake' casinos and online sites charge, which is the money they take out of each pot (or the hourly seat fee some charge for no-limit games) that allows them to stay in business most profitably.

Consider the following typical example, and the inevitability that follows:

Generally speaking, most casinos and online sites will take $4 out of any reasonably-sized pot. If you play, say, 60 hands per hour in a 10-handed $10-20 game online, the site will wind up taking about $240 out of the game. So, in theory, if you play with the same 10 players for 40 hours over a week, and all the players are fairly evenly matched in ability, and all have a similar amount of luck -- good and bad -- during that time, the casino/site will have taken about $10,000 out of the game by the end of the week. This means that if each player starts with a $1,000 bankroll -- which is a reasonable amount to take part in a $10-20 game -- by the end of the week, everybody would be completely broke. (And if you play in two or more games simultaneously -- especially of they are six-handed games or, worse, high-speed games -- it might not take anywhere near a week.)

In other words, even if you are an average player in a game -- let alone a bad one -- you must lose money over a long period of time. The only way you can win any money at all is if you consistently play with people who are not as good as you are. And that is hard to do, because even if you can find such a game, and even if you are able to correctly evaluate your own talent level, and even if you are able to consistently play your patient 'A' game without getting bored or going on tilt over a bad run, or getting too tired, or drinking too much, or not getting enough sleep, or just plain freaking out, the likelihood is that the players you are so much better than eventually will quit the game or go broke or both.

Jackpot Jay's Poker Glossary
Confused by some of the terms Jay uses in his poker columns? Get their definitions right here.

And, realistically, the percentage of players who can consistently dominate a typical $10-20 limit hold 'em game is quite small, under the best of circumstances. So the number of players who can dominate a large-enough limit game -- for the sake of argument, let's use the $30-60 limit Matt Matros typically plays -- is geometrically smaller yet.

This explains why so few people can hope to support themselves playing poker -- let's say, somewhere between Nolan Dalla's guess of 3,000 and Matros' estimate of 600, which isn't many when you consider that approximately 50 million people in the U.S. alone play the game (that's the New York Times' best guess).

Bottom line: Maybe it's time to cut ol' Jackpot Jay a little slack. I am, after all, on the plus side to the tune of almost $15,000, and I'm more than halfway through my year-long poker odyssey.

Second-thought bottom line: On the other hand, those who expect ol' JJ to earn a 'decent living' playing poker -- including Mr. and Mrs. Jackpot Jay -- may be in for a bit of a disappointment.

NOTE TO THE READERS
If anyone knows of research pertinent to the chances of earning a living playing poker -- or even showing a small profit -- please let me know. I'd also like to hear from readers who want to make informed guesses on the correct percentages of real pros and in-the-black players (please include the whys and wherefores of your beliefs), and anybody who wants to describe the story of their own struggles in interesting and succinct ways.

NEXT WEEK'S COLUMN
A review of the poker soap opera 'Tilt,' which debuts Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET, on ESPN.

HEY, IRS: HOW JAY IS DOING IN HIS NEW CAREER
Last week: DNP

Career-to-date: plus $14,439

Jay Lovinger, a former managing editor of Life and a founding editor of Page 2, is writing on his poker adventures for ESPN.com and also writing a book for HarperCollins.

If you are interested to get the best rakeback deals and private promotions on poker sites head on to PokerPro website (PS: there are plenty of options to choose from also for the USA players).

Playing video poker can be a tremendous amount of fun. For many people, it’s a perfect balance between the regular card game and slot machines. But is it a viable way to earn money?

So, can you make a living playing video poker? Yes, you can make a living playing video poker. However, it’s not easy. A lot of practice and research is required. You also need to have a deep knowledge of which games payout a positive RTP (return to player), otherwise you’ll lose money.

In this article, we’ll discuss in-depth how you can turn yourself into a video poker pro.

Why video poker?

There are a few reasons why people love to play video poker. It’s a game that you can play on your own and looks like a slot but plays a lot differently. There are also some other important things to note about video poker.

Easy to play

Video poker is easy to play, and you’ll likely understand the basics soon after sitting down at a machine. It doesn’t have the same intricacies of traditional poker, and you don’t have to worry about what other players are doing. That simply means you have little outside noise and can play hands very quickly.

It’s based on skill

Any game that’s not based on a level of skill is a long-term loser; roulette is a great example. Games that involve skill and strategy give you a much better chance of earning money once you’ve learned how to play them.

There are awesome jackpots

People love playing non-skill slot machines because of the prospect of winning a jackpot. This is especially true of progressive jackpots that grow as you play.

You get these jackpots in video poker without getting the terrible RTP that you get with some slot machines. That gives you the potential for great returns.

You’re playing solo

With regular card games, you get pit bosses looming over you, pushy dealers, and other players affecting your concentration and etiquette rules. With video poker, it’s just you vs. the machine, which appeals to a lot of people who don’t like the business of regular card games.

Why don’t you lose money?

Just to be clear: if you’re a terrible video poker player, you will lose money.

There are some key reasons, however, that you can avoid losing money with video poker when compared to other machines.

It’s the ability to make decisions based on logic that sets video poker apart from other games. With most slot machines and casino games like roulette, you simply make decisions based on randomness rather than a logical thought process, as there is no long-term winning strategy.

That need for logical decisions also makes video poker more stimulating, and you won’t ever fall into that zombie state of just putting coin after coin in a slot machine.

Video poker machines generally have a very high RTP or payback percentage. If a slot machine has an RTP of 95%, then that means over time a player will be expected only ever to win back 95 cents for every dollar they play – and that’s if it’s played perfectly.

That figure is crucial, as even a video poker machine with an RTP of 99.9% isn’t going to be profitable in the long term. You need to find machines that have an RTP of over 100% if you want to earn a living playing video poker.

Knowing the RTP

The biggest issue with slot machines is that you don’t know the odds of getting a particular symbol or combination of symbols. A cherry could come up once every 20 spins, whereas grapes would come up every 6 spins.

However, in poker, you already know the chances of any given card coming up, as there are only 52 cards in a deck. You also know the chance of getting a particular number or suit. The random number generators on video poker machines have to act as though they are using a real deck of cards.

The result of this is that you’re able to calculate your odds of winning on any given hand. You can then use this knowledge to see which machines pay a good RTP and ones which don’t. This means that if the RTP is 103%, then you’re guaranteed to win money in the long-term if you play a perfect game.

Knowing the math

Knowing math might not be all that exciting, but it’s crucial if you want to make a living playing video poker. You need to be able to know the RTP of a machine, and you also need to know the probability of the hand you’re playing if you want to make the right decision.

If you’re willing to put in the hours of research required, there are plenty of helpful resources out there for you to peruse. There are plenty of books on the subject, and also there are software programs where you will learn all about RTP and strategy. Here are a few of the best examples:

Best books for learning video poker

Best software programs for learning video poker

You don’t have to be some sort of genius to do this; you just have to invest some time in learning probabilities. The math isn’t complicated, but you need to know how to do it well and how to do it quickly.

Get ready to lose

If you want to get into a winning video poker mindset, you need to prepare yourself to lose.

What? That doesn’t make sense… right?

Actually, it does. Here’s why:

Say a friend makes a bet with you over the toss of a coin. You give him $1 if it’s head, and he gives you $10 if it’s tails. It’s a no-brainer bet. You’re getting 10X the potential winnings for a 50% probability.

However, your friend tosses 10 heads in a row, and you end up giving him $10 and walking away with nothing.

That’s an extreme example, but I think you get the point; as long as the odds are in your favor, you need to be willing to lose before you win.

The margins in video poker are much tighter than the above example. It’s just a reminder that even with the best odds and the best system, a lot of it will still come down to luck, and professional video poker players will have days where they make a loss.

The guaranteed winning isn’t over an hour, a week or a day; it’s over a long period of time.

This is why you need to stay calm if you’re losing money as you need to know that it’s not going to last forever. You’ll be winning eventually.

Walk before you can run

If you’ve not played much video poker before then, it’s time to put in the training and get comfortable with the math.

Jacks or Better is the simplest version of video poker and is a good introduction to it. I recommend playing that style before you move up to the more complicated games. Once you master that, then the more complicated video poker games will come easier.

With the margins being so tight, you need to be an expert before you can even think about making a living from playing video poker. Good Jacks or Better games will offer 9 to 1 payout on a full house with a 6 to 1 for a flush. These odds are often shortened to 9/6.

These machines often don’t have a positive RTP, but they are often close to 100%, making them a great training ground due to their simplicity. You also need to consider the volatility of the machine, which is very low in Jacks or Better.

A game with high volatility means that you’re waiting on low percentage hands for your winnings, and, therefore, most of the time, you are either winning small amounts or losing. If you don’t have enough bankroll, this can leave you without any money.

Simplify your strategy

Most video poker books will start you off with a fairly simple strategy that is quite easy to follow. You can get a list of hands that you’ll be able to reference and find out the correct decision to make. These often aren’t entirely accurate, but that’s because it’s simplified and easy to follow when you’re starting.

Want to jump straight into a complicated strategy? Don’t.

If you’re not confident with what you’re doing, then it’s going to be easy to make mistakes. As you build up your knowledge, you’re going to get better and be able to earn more.

Knowing the odds

Imagine this:

You press deal on the machine, and you find that it lands on all spades of 4, 10, jack, queen, and king. You’ve got a flush!

This is called a ‘pat hand,’ which refers to anytime you’re dealt a hand that would be able to pay out straight away.

Most people would thank their lucky stars and hold all the cards for the win, as you have a 100% chance of the 6 to 1 payout, which is what you’ll typically find on most machines.

While that would be great, you are just one card away from getting a royal flush but with a chance of around 2%.

Faced with a choice of a 100% chance or a 2% chance, most people would opt for the former. That’s the right call… right?

Actually, no. Although the 2% chance of landing the royal flush is quite small, the payout for a royal flush is often 800 to 1. If you’re in it for the long haul, the odds would tell you to go for the 2% chance and try for the royal flush.

If it was for a dollar bet and you took the flush 100 times out of 100, you’d receive a payout of $600. (100 x $6 payout) but if you played for the royal flush, it’s a different story.

If you won the expected 2% of the time, you’d receive $1,600 (2 x $800 payout). Over the long run, you’d walk away with an extra $1,000, or triple the money you would have made otherwise.

It’s extremely important that you understand this. Even though you’d throw away a flush 98% of the time, your expected value is much higher by playing for the royal flush. By playing for the expected value here, you’d be losing a lot more often but winning nearly 3x as much when the cards finally come in.

The importance of bankroll

It’s time to focus on the importance of bankroll and volatility.

You have to have enough money to lose often and wait for the big wins. If you’re playing $5 bets and don’t hit it big 100 hands in a row, then you’re losing a lot of money pretty quickly. Professional video poker players play 1000’s of hands in a day, and you’ll have long losing streaks from time to time.

Due to this, a lot of players avoid placing large bets, preferring to play with bets as small as a quarter. This provides a lot less risk as if you have a losing streak; it’s a lot easier to cover. At the start, it’s a lot better to bet small.

The max bet on video poker machines with high RTP usually only goes as high as $2. Thi s is fine, as the daily rewards can still be quite good with a $2 max bet if you use the right strategy.

Different games = different strategy

Once you’ve mastered Jacks or Better, it would still be a mistake to think that you’re then set when it comes to strategy.

Each style of video poker will require its own strategy, and you’ll need to understand the complexities of the other versions before you start playing regularly. Even for the same game, there can be different strategies, such as the same game being ‘full pay’ or not.

The reality of video poker

If you think that mastering video poker is a great way to make your millions, then you’d be very wrong. The margins are far too slim to make a huge amount of money.

However, if you’re currently earning $25k a year and are looking for something better, video poker can a great way to earn more money.

How To Play Poker For A Living Reddit

With quarter bets (a safe amount until you have a high bankroll), you can expect to earn, on average, around 3.5 cents per hand.

If that sounds terrible, then you need to realize that a video poker master can play 1,000 hands per hour. That 3 cents then turns into $35 per hour, and if you play for 8 hours a day, that turns into $280 per day. Not too shabby for a day at the casino.

Say you play for 40 hours a week, which is the same as a standard job; you’d then be receiving $1,400 per week, which equates to $72,800 per year. The key here is that you have to play a lot to turn those small margins into significant revenue.

Finding the right machines

It can also be hard to find the right machines to play. Because it’s so easy with strategy and software now common, RTP-positive machines are rarer then they were during the 1990s when players had to work it all out themselves.

A video poker machine with a 99.9% RTP may sound great when compared to a slot machine, but it’s going to lose money in the long-term. You have to find machines with a positive RTP of around 102% or higher to make enough profit to earn a living off of.

All the figures above are very rough estimates. If you find a machine with a 100.7% return, then the returns are still going to be too low to make it worth your time. If you don’t live near an area that has sufficient machines, then you’re not going to be able to swing it.

These machines can also be very changeable. If a casino sees that they are losing money on a particular machine, they are going to be swapped out very quickly. There have to be enough losing players to disguise the winnings that professional players will get from the RTP-positive machines.

Conclusion

As we mentioned at the top of the page, you can make a living playing video poker.

However, you have to go into it with an open mind. If it were easy, then everyone would be doing it. You have to treat it like a real job, have enough bankroll, and become an expert in strategy.

In addition to this, you also need to research which machines will give you a positive RTP and where to find them. Professional players know this information like the back of their hand, but it can take years to develop that level of knowledge.

If you’d like to try earning a living with video poker, I recommend reading some of the books mentioned earlier in the article and beginning your training with an online Jacks or Better simulator.

Poker For A Living Forum

Once you feel confident in your abilities to calculate odds, you can move up to the more complex versions of video poker. After you master those, you can start trying to locate RTP-positive video poker machines and placing small bets on your way to earning a living with video poker.