Poker

Poker is a huge world to dive into, and we can’t do it justice on just a segment of a page like this. I’m going to try to just give you a broad introduction to the ways in which you can make your living at it, and point you in the right directions for further reading.

You can break professional poker players down into three basic categories:

1) Players good enough to consistently beat most other players, to the point they can make a good living just going around winning games and tournaments
2) “Rakeback pros” who play competently enough online to at least break even over the long haul, then come out ahead overall due to rakeback bonuses
3) Poker grinders who play competently enough to break even or come out a little bit ahead each month, and supplement their income with casino comps earned through their volume of play

Category #1 is a relatively small number. Most of them get into the professional tournament scenes like the World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour since that’s where the biggest money is. If they win consistently enough at a high level, they often get bankrolled by someone as a form of investment (bankroller gives them X amount to play with and gets back Y % of their winnings over the course of a year or so in return).

Category #2 is mostly online-only because brick-and-mortar casinos generally don’t do rakeback bonuses. These players are looking to just make enough cash to make playing worth their time, and often have to play multiple games simultaneously to make it profitable.

Category #3 is mostly a brick-and-mortar thing, because online poker sites do rakeback bonuses instead of comps (they usually comp either poorly or not at all). I live in Vegas and I know a couple local poker grinders. They are a special breed. You have to really love hanging out in casinos and playing poker all day every day, or just really have no better options. I would say the average grinder makes the equivalent of $10-15 an hour altogether, but they often play six or seven days a week for at least a few hours a day. You also have to move to a place like Vegas where there are a lot of different games available at all times and a bunch of casinos you can live off of.

How to Get Started

Regardless of the path you want to go down, the first step is in mastering the basics of the game – learning the rules backward and forward, getting comfortable, and getting a good handle on what the mathematical best plays are in any given situation.

A good first step for very new players is to practice with an offline game or trainer against an AI. You’ll see all sorts of MFers jumping out the bushes telling you “DON’T DO THAT YOU’LL PICK UP BAD HABITS” but they’re thinking from too advanced of a perspective and not putting themselves in the shoes of a total newbie. Live games move too fast and tend to be too confusing/overwhelming just for learning the basics, plus you’re limited in terms of hands you can play (even free sites often give you limited chips to work with). So you want something that allows you to take as much time as you want, lets you play unlimited hands, and ideally gives you some helpful feedback to learn the ropes. That’s a game against an AI opponent.

I’m not a big poker player so I haven’t tried these myself, but I’ve seen good feedback on all of the following in multiple places:

PokerGenius (Windows, Mac; 72 hour free trial then one-time $69 payment)
Advanced Poker Training (Web Browser; $40/month subscription or one-time $500 payment)
Poker Fighter (Android, iOS; freemium)
PokerSnowie (Windows, iOS, Android; free 10 day trial then $99/year subscription)

It’s also a good idea to get familiar with poker tracking apps/software as early as possible. You won’t need these when playing the games against AI, but you’ll want to have them going as early as possible when you start playing actual games online against other people. Nearly every poker professional uses some kind of tracking software to manage their bankroll, log and analyze their past performance, keep notes on other players and get help from a HUD during online games.

Some examples:

Next up, you can hit up some social casinos. These are good because you can play against other people for free, and they often have some sort of rewards component. The only reason not to stop here first is that you’ll have a limited amount of free chips unless you want to pony up cash for more.

Social casinos that have poker tables include:

From here, it gets a little messy. The next big step is to play low-level (preferably microstakes) games to get practice in real money situations with actual people. There are tons of ways to learn and supplement your game alongside this, however. Some ideas include:

Reading books, articles and blog posts
Browsing and engaging with popular forums (like TwoPlusTwo and CardsChat)
Watching tutorial videos on YouTube, or streamer videos with commentary on Twitch
Private coaching