Is Poker Player a Good Profession?
Poker is one of, if not the most popular gambling game out there and if you have a passion for the thrills of betting and risking a lot of money, it is only natural that you are attracted to the game yourself. Can you turn the passion into a business though and should you? Some get inspired by their initial triumphs and get so madly in love with it that they try to pursue professional careers. The biggest bummer on such an exciting journey is basically the very same element that will provide you with the thrills of success and that is luck. You never know for sure if it's going to ally with your goals or work against them. However, apart from luck, there is one more thing that really counts and that is the mixture of strategy and learning the game the whole way through-only through those two additional ingredients will a player be able to maintain a winning streak that will eventually overshadow the occasional but guaranteed losses.
Turning poker-playing into business requires hard work or otherwise said-boasting your knowledge of the game and with it-your skills. Of course, it is possible to enter an impressive winning streak and if that happens, it is bound to increase your confidence but if you are seriously considering to put the time, effort and money into it, you have to be aware of the statistics, which proves that very few players actually remain successful for a long period of time and if they are, it is the result of their greatly superior skills. So there are a couple of questions you need to answer before attempting to utilize poker playing as a full-time job.
The Three Factors
First off, in order to venture into something as ambitious as playing poker for a living, you have to have enough experience to feel confident about it. You need to have a proper winning rate: a positive one is the minimum requirement. You should take into consideration both the wins and the losses over a specified period of time. There are different ways of calculating your win rate. It is estimated in different ways in tournaments, in cash games, etc. The measuring unit for cash games Is called big blinds. When it comes down to games where the betting has a fixed limit, the rate is calculated through big bets. In tournaments, the rate is determined by the return on investment, which is calculated by dividing your earnings by your losses and then multiplying the result by 100. If you are not having a positive ROI, then playing poker long-term is definitely not a good idea for your wallet. If you are not winning enough, you will have to apply more knowledge and strategy.Secondly, whether you believe it increases the risk or not, you have to play a lot: there is no shying away from it, if you want to be a consistent player and do it permanently. You might be worried that a lot of losses will follow but here Is the interesting part-even the best of players are likely to suffer more losses than wins in a normal day-the thing is that when they win, they win so big that the effect of the losses is neutralized. So you have to analyze your winning rate and make a decision just how many games you need to play in order to be successful or otherwise said-make up for the lost hands.
Lastly, you always have to pay attention to your bets. Your ability to recognize which game is likely to give you a winning chance and which one won't is crucial to the outcome of your attempted poker career. The best tip you can receive is to start off with and aim at games which involve lower stakes. It is widely believed that greater earnings will be acquired through greater bets and while that is theoretically correct, the practice will always prove this belief wrong. The higher the stakes are, the better the players become and if you are not very experienced, chances are you will lose a high stakes game and the fall will be hard. Be realistic about your game and remember that experience, persistence and restraint at the right moments are much better weapons than unjustified ambition.