Poker as a profession: whether to start playing in the current realities

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Hello everyone! In today's article, I will try to reveal the topic that, I am sure, interests many: whether it is worth starting to play poker in modern realities.

In order to achieve anything, you need only two things:

1. Prioritize your goal.
2. It is good to imagine a step-by-step implementation plan. 

So let's start with the first point. 

What does the task mean to you?
The more important it is for you to achieve your goal, the higher its priority will automatically be. It would seem simple. But in order to properly evaluate your goal, you must understand very well what it  can give in the future. 

First of all, you should understand what exactly drives you? 
This is either a love for the game or a desire to earn good money. From my own experience, I can say that in the first case it will be much easier to go through this difficult path than in the second. When I started learning the game, I was passionately in love with poker. I needed to learn how to make this game for a living just so I could play poker and not waste my time on something else. 

I also had certain ambitions, coupled with an intuitive understanding that the game would open to me and flicker with all its mysterious facets only if I learned how to make a profit. In the long run, if you play zero or minus, it only means that you have not studied the game well enough. So, poker didn't open for you either. That was my motivation, and I'm still convinced that it can't be the best! But what if you, dear reader, after reading these lines, attributed yourself to the second category? Then it will be much more difficult for you, since, in my opinion, making a profit cannot maintain internal combustion for too long. In addition, there are not so few alternative ways to make money working for yourself.

1. First steps in a professional career 

The best and most sensible thing to do is to choose a coach. Many novice players are very interested in the question: is it possible to save on training with a coach and do it on your own? I can give an answer based on my own experience.  Yes, it is possible.

But the following factors should be taken into account:

• You will spend much more time, because if you collect the necessary information, you will not be able to structure it quickly and correctly. That's what happened to me. I learned it myself, but I would have spent much less time if I had a coach initially.
• I also want to note that theory should be combined with practice, therefore, until you understand most of the nuances and bet your game, you will lose money at the tables. 

I've been through that too. Before I started making money in tournament poker, I lost $10,000. So without a coach, there will definitely be no savings. Well, finishing this section, I note that at the stage of formation, I still made investments in my development, gradually acquiring basic software and periodically buying courses from well-known professional players at that time. 

2. The Challenges of Modern Online Poker 

To date, I can emphasize three points:

1. Over the past few years, the fields have become much tougher. More and more information appears about poker, new progressive software is released, etc.
2. The location of the player began to matter more after many top rooms left Russia in early 2022 (Poker Stars, 888 and others).
3. To continue to progress in the game and be above the level of the field, you need to constantly work on your game, learn new strategies and lines.

There is not much to add about item 1, but it makes sense to talk about others in more detail. Indeed, where and what we play directly affects our expected value in the long run. By collecting a high-quality tournament grid, the player significantly improves his potential expected value. Continuing this idea, we inevitably come to the model of multi-rooming, that is, games in several rooms.

3. Why multirooming increases profit

Considering tournament poker as a profession, you must learn to think like a professional. A professional player strives to maximize the expected value in each tournament, as well as the number of tournaments.  Playing in any one room, you will have to load almost everything in a row, which somehow more or less fits under your current limit, just to get a full load on the session. Moreover, there are rooms in which it is simply impossible to do this. And if you play in 4-5 poker rooms, you will be able to collect a much better tournament grid.

For example, my workload is based on a combination of 5 poker rooms:

At the output, I get an excellent balance in terms of AFS structures, where:

1. GGPoker and Poker King are tournaments with high AFS (that is, a large number of participants, “kilopolyans”);
2. in other rooms I play tournaments with a small number of participants (200-500 players).

For me, the prevalence in the load of tournaments with low AFS is a very important aspect, since in tournaments with a relatively small number of entries, the probability of hitting the final table is several times higher than in the kilopole. Having a constant opportunity to train your game in the later stages of the tournament (pre-final and final table) is critical for the player.  I have repeatedly met this confirmation in my coaching practice, when I dismantled the game of students at the final tables in kilopol tournaments. A player who has no experience of playing in such conditions simply mentally could not withstand the pressure, which is why he took places much lower than the coveted TOP 3! Such problems very often disappear by themselves as soon as you have sufficient experience of playing at the final tables.

4. The main advantages of the profession about the player

1. You are completely working for yourself, there is no boss over you. This can only be attributed to those who play from themselves, since there is no absolute freedom in any backing fund.
2. Great career prospects This is an important factor. Not in any field of activity there is an opportunity for serious career and financial progress. There are many more opportunities in poker than it seems at first glance.
3. In fact, you are one of the people who receive a salary of $ (this is especially important for those who live in Russia).
4. You plan when you rest and when you work. However, there is an important nuance here: in order to maximize the profit, the tournament player starts from the schedule of his bracket. That is, in fact, even working for yourself and being independent of management, you are still not as free as it may seem  at first glance.

Here are just a few of them:

As we can see, the development horizons extend much further than just winning chips at the next table.

5. Cons of Poker Pro Life

1. Your earnings are not stable. It is possible to stop this when creating alternative sources of income, which are described above.
2. You do not have the usual privileges, such as an employer bonus or social benefits. This is also “treated” if you can get much higher than average income from poker activities.
3. An irregular working day, as you will not be able to predict in advance how long your next session will last. The latter refers exclusively to tournament poker and not to cash games.
4. Severe mental stress. Not all people have the same stress resistance and the ability to maintain maximum focus of attention for many hours.

6. Conclusion

It's up to each person to decide who they want to be and what they want to do. Once I made my choice. 
And what will you choose?