Our society is full of different occupations, some less prestigious than others but you could be considered a professional in any of them through enough of experience or qualifications. Nowadays, people are focused more on the gloom than the doom, especially, when talking about being a professional gambler. Many attempts and failures but some prevail. Personally, playing games of chance for a living is something that I wouldn't suggest to anyone. Now that your curiosity is peaked let's see what it takes to be a professional poker player in 2018.
Proper Bankroll Management The Foundation Of Success For A Professional Gambler
Oddly enough, opinions about gambling for a living fall into two main categories. A good majority will have it filtered as degeneration with rest seeing it as one of the easiest ways for generating revenue. What is the reality of this matter? Nothing is easy about playing cards for a living. Just like any business requires capital, then so does a professional poker player. The difference in a regular job or business and gambling for your income comes from the fact how the latter could send you home with less money after the day is over than when you started it. Poker players' success depends on winning quite a few small battles daily. What do we mean by this? You have to fight your opponents, discipline yourself, manage bankroll properly, table select and know when to quit! If you wish to become a professional poker player but have trouble managing your money in real life, we would advise you work on more profound self-discipline before you start investing money and time into playing for a living. Poker players are considered to be slaves to the variance. And your income is at the mercy of it! Next time that you hear someone stating how gambling for a living is easy then remind them that this occupation has no guaranteed returns. The only thing guaranteed is the house rake. You could find yourself at the bottom of the variance-swong losing for months straight! A professional poker player must set proper bankroll management rules for themselves or everything destined for failure. But setting the rules is just one of the steps. You must follow them daily, no matter the mood or weather.
Playing As A Profession Requires Lots Of Time
Finding enough money is one thing but if you don't have a flexible schedule then playing poker for a living might not be for you. Cash players have the biggest flexibility due to having the option of standing up from the table at any time. Even though, finding a good seat with whales at the table might take time in itself. Some of the larger poker tournaments with big guarantees take 15 hours plus to reach the final table. Sit and Go players have medium flexibility. One- or two-table tournaments take about 40 minutes to an hour to finish. But you have to play hundreds of them to overcome the variance and profit in the long run. As I am writing this, one of my good friends is first in volume for $5 - $15 games in 2018 and second in profit. How did he achieve this? By playing at least 300 sit and go games per day. He is multi-tabling with 9 to 12 tables at once and still spends over twelve hours a day playing. This schedule consists of a few eating breaks and naps. As you can see it takes a lot of time to be a professional poker player.
Professional Must Have Self-Discipline & Motivating Goals
Each one of us is going through something and dealing with these problems requires self-discipline. A poker player must discipline him- or herself every second at the table to make the right call, fold or cutting their session because of an unclear mind which could be a result of tilt. One of the biggest realizations that we can come to is that nobody is going to do anything for us. Set motivating goals and work towards them. Don't be afraid of the days when things aren't going your way because these are the ones that will build you the biggest character and discipline. It doesn't matter what we do when things are working out but what we do when they don't. Many poker players fail for not grasping this simple concept of mind over matter. All of us have heard this saying, but not too many of us realize that all it consists of is telling yourself that I CAN instead of I cannot. Remember that studying the game will benefit you in the future. Hopefully, this sheds a bit of light on what it takes to be a professional gambler these days. Good luck on your journey and remember to always play responsibly.