How Much Money Can I Earn Playing Online Poker Full Time?

 When you first fall for the allure of online poker it can be so engaging that it pushes all other aspects of life to one side. Do you really need that degree when you could grind your way to $100k+ per year? Could you be the next Durrrr or Phil Ivey? Could you escape the horror of your office job for an easy life of playing poker a few hours a day?

It all seems possible, though very few people make it. There are a ton of reasons for this… this article is not the right place to discuss losing players who thought they were winners due to running good or the game evolving and leaving you behind… I wanted to take this one from the perspective of the winning players and look at an ugly fact – most who go full time will not last the first year… even if they are big winners.

The reason is that professional grinding is not what people thought it was. Sure, the money will make up for the isolation in some ways, but after months of clicking on your own this is rarely the case. Sure, playing the game you love for money will make up  for this? Well, here is the crux, when you go pro poker is no longer the game you love, it is a job.

This is the key reason why people do not last.

They start their pro career loving poker, and within 6 months they HATE it. I have personally known people give up on $100k / year incomes and take jobs at less than half of this because they just could not stand it any longer.

This is not the minority, this is most people… I’ll make an educated guess here that only 20% of those who drop out to turn pro last the first year and more than half that do will drop out in their second…

Of course, those pro players all started somewhere, the big names who you see taking down millions at major televised events are ordinary people who learned the game good, got grinding, got a break and took things to the next level.

This post is not designed to shatter any ones dreams…. I simply wanted to add a small layer of real-life to those $$ per hour ‘going pro’ calculations. If you want to keep your recreational game profitable, that is another thing entirely… check out the Latest Poker Promotions over at Killer Holdem for more!

GL at the tables.