First of all, you need to realize that the dream of making money with online poker can quickly fade. Only after you’ve been a successful amateur player for several months or even years and have been able to gain experience is it worth putting all your eggs in one basket and taking the plunge into becoming an online poker professional. Almost all players who can make a living from their poker winnings are former amateur players who have already earned a decent bankroll and could therefore venture into a poker career with relative safety. We recommend taking the risk only if you are financially secure and have funds that will allow you to cope with setbacks and overcome a lean period of a week without any problems.
Below, we’ve listed the most important tips from real, experienced professional players that you should definitely consider before taking the plunge and becoming a poker pro.
Poker Tip 1: Don’t Quit a Good Job to Become a Poker Pro
Although the life of an online poker pro sounds like a fun-filled, boredom-free life at first, there’s also a flip side to this. Even as a professional poker player, you don’t enjoy more free time than you would with a regular job—quite the opposite, in fact—and it takes a lot of self-discipline to stay organized and focused even when you don’t feel like it. If you have a good job that’s sometimes difficult for you, but you can still make a good living from it, we generally recommend not leaving it with the goal of becoming a poker pro.
Poker Tip 2: Gain Enough Experience
Only if you have enough experience in online poker rooms is your poker career on a lucky star. You should have played at least 200,000 hands and made a decent profit before you can consider becoming a poker professional. A few successful weeks or months doesn’t mean you’re an exceptionally gifted player who can handle life as a professional poker ace with ease. Only when you’ve made enough profit over a period of at least 10 to 12 months of daily play to make a living, can you consider making poker your profession.
Poker Tip 3: Build up a buffer for bad runs
Even the best players suffer losing streaks that can last for weeks or even months. Ask yourself: Can I save myself several months without income in an emergency? Only if you can answer yes to this question will you be ready for a career in online poker.
Poker Tip 4: Calculate if you can finance your living expenses
Before you begin your professional career, you should calculate exactly how high your living expenses are. Add up food, insurance, rent, utilities, and any other expenses you have each month, and add another 15 to 20% to that amount to calculate how much money you need to make from online poker to live well. If you’ve already been active as a regular amateur player, you can roughly calculate whether your poker career has a future or not.
Poker Tip 5: Match Your Bets to Your Bankroll
Bankroll management is the most important aspect of managing your finances and making money playing online poker. It’s not necessarily the size of your bankroll that matters, but choosing your bets to match your bankroll. As a cash game player, the buy-in for a table should generally not exceed 1% of your total budget. Only after you’ve built up your bankroll following several successful weeks can you venture onto tables with higher blinds. So, for example, if you buy in with €10 at 0.05/0.10 tables, your bankroll should be at least €1,000.
Poker Tip 6 – The Rakeback Factor: Choose a Generous Poker Room
Poker rooms fund themselves through rakes, which can typically range from 5% per pot to 10% of a tournament’s buy-in. Players who play a lot of hands receive rakeback offers from poker rooms, which can reach up to 30% of the rake paid. So, once a month, you’ll receive a refund of a portion of the rake you paid to the poker site. Choose a site that offers a good rakeback program. You can read more about this in our online poker reviews. Additionally, you can secure additional money for your bankroll at the best poker rooms through generous VIP offers.
Poker Tip #7: Treat Your Poker Like a Business
As a professional poker player, you’re not just someone who plays a card game for money to earn a living. Realize that you’re running a small, one-person business. This means you have to organize your own work schedule, carefully plan your free time and vacation time, and have a lot of self-discipline to make your small business a success. It’s not enough to have a lucky break and then go to bed. Only if you consistently improve, stay disciplined, and generate long-term profits does your business, and therefore your project as a poker professional, have a future. A good guide for this is the book “Treat Your Poker Like a Business” by Dusty Schmidt.