What is an "everage" ppoker player?
Long time lurker, first time poster...
I have been reading many of the threads in here over the past week or so (great stuff btw!). I have a question regarding one of the threads I saw recently. GTA Poker had said that an "average" poker player could make $60,000USD per year. What would be considered an average poker player? I have been playing online for only 2 months (about 6000 hands) and am ahead $50 at the .05/.10 limit. I know this is a small sample size and that I probably have along way to go to be "average". Is there a way to know to measure when you become average? I have no intention of doing this full time, but I am lucky in that I am self employed and can devote 25 hours a week to this pursuit. I thoroughly enjoy the game and would play even if I broke even, but the thought of making even a few thousand a year is appealing.
Any thoughts, suggestions, input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
I have been reading many of the threads in here over the past week or so (great stuff btw!). I have a question regarding one of the threads I saw recently. GTA Poker had said that an "average" poker player could make $60,000USD per year. What would be considered an average poker player? I have been playing online for only 2 months (about 6000 hands) and am ahead $50 at the .05/.10 limit. I know this is a small sample size and that I probably have along way to go to be "average". Is there a way to know to measure when you become average? I have no intention of doing this full time, but I am lucky in that I am self employed and can devote 25 hours a week to this pursuit. I thoroughly enjoy the game and would play even if I broke even, but the thought of making even a few thousand a year is appealing.
Any thoughts, suggestions, input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Comments
Thats what I use as my tracking....300bb in profit and I move to the next level...
I think that any winning player, if he decided to play online full-time, could make 60k a year doing so.
Just look at the math, any winning player is making minimum 1bb/h/table. 40h/week with 52 weeks per year, that's roughly 2100hours give or take.
So, let's say you are playing just 2 tables of 10 20, that's 42k...minimum 20% rakeback on party or wherever so at least $1200 a month rakeback = another 14k.
There's 56k a year, and most full-time pros would be playing minimum 3-4 tables.
Of course, you'd have to kill me if I had to do this full-time, but there you are.
I think I took you on one hand. In such low limits I play anywhere between 5-7 tables at a time and pretty much bet straight forward. You got me on a couple of hands too (you have that brickwall avator...I noticed you were on a couple of tables too
Both sites have their :fish: I am slowly finding. But I think it is a trend in poker in general. Most people play too many hands or go in with the A-rag K-rag and when they hit their top pair they think they are huge. I have won most of my pots by picking off those opponents as well as those trying to bluff all together.
I think the 10% could be a lot higher but its greed that take people out most of the time, its not the game. I have had this month 24 winning session and 5 losing sessions.
But grinding is the key, right now at 10-20cents I am happy winning 5-10 bucks a night. On PP I was averaging 200-600 a night. Obviously I would swing that same way, but as soon as I drop more than half of my buy in a table I get out. The pattern I see on my game is if I play 5 tables I am usually up big at two...+50%-75% the other 2 I am at 10-20% up, and the last 1 or 2 tables I am down 10-50%
Diversify and conistency is the key to making it profitable. Full-time though, no way...I'll keep my day job.
I don't get the 1bb/h/table measure of winrate when it comes to online. I think 1BB/100 hands is a reasonable benchmark (for an average winning player), so it comes down to how many hands/hr you're playing (which will be a function of whether you're playing full or short, and how many tables). For example, I typically play no more than 4 tables (full ring usually). However, some % of time I'm waiting on good tables, or a table may collapse, so on average maybe I'm playing 3-3.5 tables per session. At 60h/hr * 3.5 tables that's about 210 hands/hr. For convenience sake, lets call it 200 hands/hr if you figure in washroom breaks, etc. This would correspond to 2BB/hr. I think this is a fairly conservative estimate in terms of both winrate/100 hands, and # of hands played. Obviously, good players can probably achieve both higher winrates, as well as playing more tables...
I don't think anyone in their right mind wants to work 52 weeks a year. Vacations are nice. So that can likely be cut down to 48 weeks/yr. Realistically though, I just couldn't see myself grinding out 40 hours a week online. I'd want my "work week" to be considerably less, say 30 hrs/week. So now we're down to 48 * 30 = 1440 hrs/yr. 60k is still barely doable at 10-20 quad tabling. Unfortunately, I'm not up to 10-20 online yet...so...
like i said, kill me first...i can't even play an hour of a cash game online, it just killse me...i can play 16 hour sessions live though and i love it.
infact, i have given up online poker all together and am only playing live these days for just that reason...i can't do something that i dislike just to make some money. For live play, I think I have to make it up to 30 60 or 40 80ish as a winning player to be happy with playing part-time for a living, maybe in a couple of years...slowly but surely...just starting at 20 40 these days and seeing how it goes. If only the GTA would open a casino, it would make my life easier, but I guess there's always 10 20 at the ex.
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