How to become a professional poker player

How to become a professional poker player

If you want become a professional poker player, first of all you should have gathered substantial experience in both cash games and tournaments. Your poker strategy knowledge must be good, and excellent hand reading skills are also very important for any player who wants to be a poker professional. Furthermore, you have to accept the fact that in the life of poker professional upswings and downswings are unavoidable, so you will need the mental strength to cope with both of them.
If you are sure that you have all that, then you might be ready to make that step and turn professional poker player.
The one thing that every professional poker player needs is a bankroll. That does not mean that your starting capital must be huge, because basically there are two ways to get started as a professional poker player.

Your first option is to try to make a living by beating cash games at a decent money level. If you are able to play multiple tables at the blinds level of 2/4$ for 4 to 5 hours every day and consistently beat this game, then you’re already making some money. Assuming that your win rate is 4 big blinds per hundred hands, you can calculate your daily profit as follows: 80 hands per hour x 5 hours x 4 tables played = 1600 hands per day. That  would give you 16 x 4 BB’s of 2 $ or 128$ per day. That does not seem to be all too much, but it is definitely a start. You have to take into consideration the fact that after a while, your bankroll will have grown to the point where you can play higher levels and thus increase your bankroll. To play at the $2/4 Fixed limit level, you should have a bankroll of app. $800 -$1000.
For this first type of approach, we recommend playing at a poker room where you find lots and lots of cash game tables with loose players. Your best choices here would be Bet365 Poker (sign up now and use bonus code COACH) and Party Poker (sign up now and use bonus code PKR100).

Your second option in trying to become a professional poker player would be to start playing tournaments, first online later off-line as well. Even with a very small starting bankroll of $100, you could choose to try and qualify for bigger online poker events through low buy-in online satellites. A bankroll of $100 allows you to play 20 online satellite tournaments with a buy-in of five dollars each, and playing 20 of those should put you in the main event at least 4 to 5 times. Getting in the money in those main events at least once, puts you in a position where you could use that prize money for further qualifications to other big poker events. The number one virtue you will need for this is patience, because in these cheap satellites, you will very often face a huge number of players. But then, patience combined with aggressivity in the right moment is the prime weapon of any professional poker player.
For this second type of approach to become a professional poker player, we highly recommend Pokerstars, because of their enormous tournament schedule and the great choice of low-level satellites and qualifiers for their big events. Download Pokerstars today using this link, and use marketing code PSA2049 for a $600 bonus.