Real Money Poker. How to Make Money Playing Online Poker?
Ah, the burning question on all new player’s minds: how much money can you possibly rack up playing poker on the internet?
It’s a good question. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy one to answer. Before we get to discussing how much money you can make playing online poker, I want to emphasize the word YOU in the question; because all things considered, YOU are truly the all-important factor in the equation.
How much money you can make playing online poker all depends on YOU:
• What’s your skill level?
• How is your emotional control?
• What stakes are you comfortable playing?
• How many hours are you willing to put in?
Only once you’ve answered all of these questions can you figure out how much money you’ll be able to make playing online poker.
What’s Your Skill Level?
Are you a beginner? An expert? Somewhere in between? Do you know the difference between a full house and three of a kind, or do you still get them confused? Are you positionally aware?
Answer honestly. If you’re a beginner, that’s okay — you can still make money at online poker. But you’ll need to play against opponents who are worse than you; all while improving your game through study off the tables.
If you’re an expert, you should consider playing medium to high-stakes games. You want to maximize your hourly rate, so it makes sense that you should jump into the highest stakes games you know you can beat.
How Is Your Emotional Control?
Are you bad at taking losses? Do bad beats tilt you to no end? Do you tend to lose 2-3 buy-ins in rapid succession after taking a ridiculous beat against a fish?
If so, you might want to work on your emotional control before you sit down at any online poker table. The online games are fast and furious — hands come quickly, and the decisions you make will add up. So if you make poor decisions thanks to cloudy judgement, you’ll lose a lot of money very quickly in poker. There’s no buffer room in between hands like you’d have in a casino when you’re playing on the internet. It’s the real deal online.
No matter how skilled you are, you won’t win if you constantly tilt. So any prediction we make of how much money you can win will assume you’ve got impeccable emotional control.
Choose Your Stakes
Are you comfortable keeping large amounts of money online? Are you comfortable betting a lot of money in a game of poker? Are you conservative with your bankroll, or are you okay with aggressive bankroll management tactics?
Take these things into consideration in order to determine the stakes you should play. If you’re a conservative player, you’ll want to play a stake for which you’ve got a lot of buy-ins. If you’re an aggressive player, you can take shots at higher stakes with fewer buy-ins.
It’s really a matter of personal preference. But in order to calculate how much money you can win playing online poker, you’ll need to figure out what stakes you’re comfortable playing.
Set Your Schedule
Do you have the stamina to grind 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Or are you more of a casual player, sitting in for sessions for a couple hours a day?
How often and long you can grind will be a function of your ability to focus and your desire to grind. Figure out how long you can keep up your A game at the tables, and play within that figure as you please.
If you’ve got your eye on a particular hourly rate, you can go about earning it in one of two ways: grind smaller stakes for longer hours, or play higher stakes for shorter sessions. How you earn is up to you.
Put It All Together for A Taste of Your Future Winnings
Put all the above factors together, and you’ll be able to figure out how much you can make playing online poker. As an example, let’s assume the following:
• You are a decent player with a 2 big bet per 100 hands win rate (not too hard to achieve).
• You play 4 hours per day.
• You begin with a bankroll of $2000, and play your bankroll aggressively. Your game is $1/2 NL Holdem.
• You’ve got solid emotional control, knowing when to quit and when to keep on keepin’ on.
Given that each table you play sees an average of 75 hands per hour, you’re seeing (75 * 4) = 300 hands per hour. That’s (300 * 4) = 1200 hands per day.
At a winrate of 2 big bets per 100 hands, you’re raking in 24 big bets per session; which translates to (4 * 24) = $96 per day.
So by playing a marginally winning game at 200NL, you’re looking at a 5-day weekly income of $480.
That’s $25,000 per year in your bank account all for grinding 20 hours per week of small-stakes poker. Imagine how high that rate could increase if you jumped stakes, or put in more hours!
As long as you’ve got what it takes, the potential to make a great income at online poker is pretty huge! Evaluate your abilities honestly, and you’ll be well on the way to a solid income through online poker.
Great poker rooms to practice your skills: Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars.
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