So, You Wanna Be a Poker Pro - Part II

by Lou Krieger | Published: Dec 03, 2004

This is the second installment of a two-part series about becoming a professional poker player. Last issue, I examined some of the pitfalls of becoming a tournament professional. Now, I'll examine some of the issues confronted by those who specialize in cash games.

Suppose that you don't care for the constant travel that comes with touring the world to play in poker tournaments, don't want the incredible variance that's part and parcel of playing tournament poker for a living, and aspire to play cash games instead. Can you make a living that way? Of course you can, but it's difficult, too. I've read estimates – and I'm assuming they are accurate, although neither I nor anyone else has any way of knowing for sure – that only about 10 percent of cash-game players beat the game in the long run.

That's not a big number when you think about it. It amounts to one player per table and relegates the rest of the field to the position of lifelong loser. Some lose a little and others lose a lot, but approximately nine out of 10 poker players lose money in the end. A similar kind of fluctuation affects winners, too. Some win plenty of money, while others are only marginally successful – and it's those subsistence winners who are far more prone to bankroll destruction than those who have the skill needed to beat the game steadily.

As is the case with tournament professionals, players with other sources of income, particularly those who are not rigorous about keeping records, might not even be aware of whether they are long-term winners or not.

There's a big disconnect about this issue, and lots of poker players bury their heads in the sand rather than examine the facts at hand. If you took a poll of players in any cardroom and asked if they consider themselves below average, average, or above average, and inquired about whether they are long-term winning players, most of your subjects would report that they are better than average and are long-term winning players. They're not necessarily lying to you, either; they actually believe it. However, the vast majority of any group can't be above average, otherwise what's "average" would actually be "below average," and that just can't be. Moreover, if only 10 percent of the poker-playing populace are long-term winners, there's a lot of self-deception when the majority of players lump themselves into this elite 10 percent.

As different as tournament poker and cash-game poker are, tournaments tend to pay 10 percent of the entrants, and approximately 10 percent of cash-game players are long-term money winners. So, it's a small portion of the universe of poker players who are really earning a living at the game.

Nevertheless, there's a difference between beating tournaments and cash games. To win regularly in big-money tournaments and make a living at it, you have to beat the best tournament players in the world. However, that's not the case with cash games. You don't have to be a worldbeater to make a living in cash games. You only have to be able to beat the majority of the players at your table. If you're playing in midlimit games such as $10-$20, $15-$30, $20-$40, and $30-$60, and trying to make a living at it, you can be certain that the players at your table will not necessarily be the top of the pecking order. Some may even be terrible players. Others will range anywhere from small losers to small winners, while a few might be exceptionally skilled at the game. But all you have to do is play better than most of your opponents – or find a game with a real fish or two in it – to eke out a profit.

Because the variance in cash games is less than what you'll encounter on the tournament circuit, it's a lot easier to assess whether you have the right stuff or not. After all, you can play extremely well and not cash in a tournament for a very long time, and if you're just starting out on the tournament circuit, you'll have no way of knowing whether that dry spell is just bad luck or poor play.

But in cash games, any rational, realistic player can easily assess his skill level without spending an overly long time at it. Just save up a playing bankroll, take a leave of absence from your job, and spend a month to six weeks playing poker in the locale in which you plan to play if you make the jump from dedicated amateur to full-time professional poker player. If you plan to play in Vegas, get yourself into an extended-stay hotel suite and play each and every day in the $15-$30 game at Bellagio, if that's where you think you'd like to ply your trade. After four to six weeks, you ought to have a darn good idea about how you stack up in comparison to your opponents.

Don't quit your day job just yet. Think of it as your first "Plan B." If all goes well, you can leave the workaday world behind for good, plow 10 percent of your winnings into mutual funds, and let compound interest go to work for you. If things don't work out as planned, return from that extended leave of absence and go back to work while you figure out what to do next.

Playing poker as a livelihood is not an easy life. You'll find yourself battered between pillar and post by the vicissitudes of the game. Going into a casino every day might seem like loads of fun at first, but after a while, it can become as big a grind as any other repetitive activity, and at least initially, you will lack a support system and have to go it alone. I recommend trying to find other players willing to discuss poker with you. Poker players are unique among competitors in that they are essentially self-contained entities. Practitioners of other sports and games all have coaches. We poker players coach ourselves, but being objective when you're the doctor as well as the patient is never easy. So, find someone you can trust, someone whose game you respect and who is willing to dissect your game, and his, with you. It will pay dividends like nothing else you can imagine, and give you some badly needed external support and objective advice.

If you've read this far and still aren't dissuaded about playing poker for a living, and if you are bound and determined to give it a go, by all means, have at it. But first examine the odds against you, so that you'll understand the nature of your struggle. If you don't, you'll never know the magnitude of the battles you'll have to overcome in order to succeed.

If you have the right stuff, if you are in the top 10 percent of the food chain, you can have the life you've dreamed of, although anything less will doom you to perpetual struggle and quite possibly failure. Always keep Plan B firmly in hand, too. Without a fallback position, the fall can be painful, costly, and potentially ruinous. But if you have something to fall back on just in case you don't succeed, you'll at least have given it a fair shot, and that's about all you can hope for at the outset. And while there's no shame in trying and failing, make sure you give yourself the best chance for success and you just might make it.