Professional poker player! For many it’s a dream job. Traveling around the world, controlling your own working hours! To do a job that excites you! To prove your superior intellect, your more sophisticated strategy in a fight man vs. man! AND – ideally to earn a lot of money! That sounds really exciting.

When am I a poker pro? There is no poker university or poker organization that gives you this graduation. Professional poker player – each player awards this title by himself. Regardless he can make his living by playing poker or not. I’ve seen poker players who call themselves a pro, even though they’re constantly losing. Most poker players choose to become a poker pro for two reasons.

They believe they can make more money with poker than with a normal job. These players have played at least 500 hours of poker. They document their time and play and find that their winnings per hour are higher than the hourly wage of a regular job. I would like to emphasize once again how important it is to document and analyze as much information as possible about your game. In any case, you should record:

Date of the session

Beginning of session (time)

End of session (time)

Played limit / stakes

Bankroll at the beginning

Bankroll at the end

They enjoy the lifestyle of a professional poker player more than their usual working life and are willing to even loose income to gain freedom. Most professionals see their poker career as a temporary job they are practicing while they are changing jobs or looking for new career opportunities. Very few professionals plan to play professionally poker for the rest of their lives. As in any profession, a successful poker player is valuing his business as a serious business. He knows how to maximize his income. Since his income is very different and depends heavily on which variant he plays, he focuses on it – which game earns him the most profit per hour. The most important factors influencing the profit per hour are:

Number of hands played per hour

The rake or the time fees

The variance of the game

Because professionals are interested in generating money, they also need beginners with bad poker skills to play against them. They earn their money from them. If only experienced professionals played against each other, they would earned much less money, or lose more often. Your income depends on the skills of the other players. Successful professionals have developed their own poker skills as perfectly as possible, so only the ability of other poker players can influence their income. I neglect the luck factor that is too unstable to build a steady income on it. If there were not always new poker players, then many professionals would soon have to look for a new job.

The life of a professional poker player, of course, includes many negative sides. Exclusive thinking about money, permanent struggle, acceptance only in the scene – for this one must possess the psychic constitution. Especially if you play in online casino poker and only sitting alone in front of the PC. The biggest drawback of the professional poker player’s existence, however, is the strong variance of his income. These strong fluctuations give you the feeling of insecurity and make the professional poker player’s life very risky. The best professional poker players are so well secured financially that the gains or losses of a single day, week, or month have little impact on their total assets. They can play without fear and do not have to worry about how to survive the next month’s financial. A very important factor – to speak of quality of life. Casino Bonus Online