Playing Texas Hold’em poker for a living sounds great to me as I sit at my desk. In fact, it has sounded great to me ever since I realised that playing a lot of hands at modest stakes can yield excellent profits from playing poker from home via internet poker. But as we are prone to assess things with rose tinted spectacles there are both positive and negative aspects of the debates. This article will update these debates to issues relevant to us in 2010.
Standard of Games
I read many contradictions on the standard of poker now and in the past. Most poker articles in 2007 discussed a massive change happening in the games where they went from super-soft (apparently) to games where a solid grasp of Poker strategy was necessary. Even at the micro stakes you were urged to get poker training and learn the fundamentals. But surely you needed to do this anyway otherwise you are simply one of the many fish. I am unconvinced that the games are much more difficult now than they were at the micro-limits and I am equally unconvinced they were ever as soft as everyone says. If you are a great player you will win and if you are a weak player you will lose. There were just more weak players in the past that’s all.
To be a professional you must show a good win rate at levels where this win rate equates to over around £15,000 per year or $25,000. Any less and I think you will struggle to maintain even a reasonable standard of living including when downswings occur and money is tighter.
Life Considerations for a Pro
Getting a mortgage in the UK is going to be very difficult for a single professional poker player. In the current economic climate I would suggest that right now (March 2010) unless you can buy a property outright then you will not get borrowing on the back of insecure income streams like Poker. Whilst we know a good win rate is possible and you may well have the graphs to support your skill projections, we all know that in any gambling enterprise “current success is not a guarantee of future performance”. Even if you are fairly sure you will continue to win, other people and in particular money lenders, will not be.
Solutions for 2010 Onwards
Income you make from Poker is currently tax free in the UK and there are no Political plans to have that reviewed in the near future as far as we know. This means that you only need to earn what you want in your hand rather than account for a loss of 10% – 20% in taxes. This makes life a little easier and also increases the monetary value in real terms of anything you win at the poker table. Developing a share fund or other investments is easier to build without the burden of losing income to tax and due to the insecurity of poker as a main income stream this is highly recommended.
Other Opportunities
I advocate players consider other ways than poker to secure their income. Property investment, although not a massive opportunity right now, is a great way to potentially earn money in a buoyant market and Poker players often have spare cash lying around that usually just gets gambled and played with. Why not use that money to generate a business of some sort whether shares, investments like property or buying a small business already trading to manage.
Playing poker professionally is tough but if managed correctly could give you a much better quality of life due to its fundamental freedom. I would take whatever measures I could if I was a pro to secure my income as far as I can to allow me to keep that freedom that Poker affords its professionals.
Having a secure financial future can be achieved through poker but also a combination of all the financial things at a person disposal with cash to invest. If you earn it, invest it. But keep some of it to play poker at great rooms like bwin.com who are constantly improving their delivery of online poker to players from all around the world.
By Malcolm Clarke