the big move- attempting to become a professional- a few qustions

[Gonso]

Tate,

I understand your enthusiasm, but from reading your posts above it sounds like you might have a little ways to go before you take the plunge.

A lot of the questions you're asking indicate that you're not sure what your winrate is (and in turn whether you're actually a winning player at all), or what a typical winrate even looks like.

Put this in perspective: it's just taken you a year to make less than $5,000. You have to subtract whatever you started with as well.

In your first year as a pro you'll need to net at least 20k enough to eat and pay your bills, and frankly that's poverty level living. Beyond that, you also want to to gradually increase your bankroll to facilitate moving up in limits, so let's say you hope to add another 5k to your BR in the first 12 months. This means you'll have to net 25k total and lead a rediculously frugal life.

At 30 hours a week (which is generally more than most pros play but certainly manageable), you'll have to average about $16/hour, which of course is 16bb/hour at .50/$1. A good player can pull that off with enough tables running.

Now, we have no idea if you'll even be that successful in being able to do that (again, you could be a losing player running above expectation now for all you know). You yourself don't know your own winrate. What if you are a winner, but have a more modest winrate than you need? You still have to crank things out and pay the rent, so you may have to play longer hours (which, in turn, tends to have an adverse effect on your winrate so at some point you can expect diminishing marginal returns). Then there are issues like medical benefits that a regular job would provide and so on.

A professional poker player has to be able to support himself, or he's not really a professional. He's simply poker player with no job. There's a huge difference between the two.

[Gonso]

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What is the lowest limit OP or anybody should be considering playing at, to do it professionally?

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It depends on your winrate, how many tables you can play, how many hands you can get in, and your cost of living wherever you are. NL200 and up if you play online is generally doable. I wouldn't consider it below NL1000.

[machine]

i think you could live off NL 50 with a good winrate and rb. Mind you my rb is 65% so that did make it easier for me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[iB3TuCA11]

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i think you could live off NL 50 with a good winrate and rb. Mind you my rb is 65% so that did make it easier for me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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hey machine, how do you have 65% rakeback? where do I sign up