5 Tips for becoming a Professional Poker Player
If you have any sense you’ll skip to the fifth tip of my 5 tips on becoming a poker pro list straight away, it’s the best one by far and you probably already know the other four anyway! If you don’t know anything about becoming a poker pro then you will find the fist four tips useful.
1) Money Matters
If you are planning on becoming a poker pro then money matters, big time. Quite simply you need money. You need a bankroll which can sustain your living expenses as well as your play at the tables for a good 6 months before you turn pro. Financial pressure is the single biggest reason why people fail at becoming a poker pro, they quit their job, have no income, run bad for a couple of months and then are forced to go crawling back to their boss begging for their old job back. If you are thinking about becoming a poker pro start thinking about how much money you need to sustain yourself in the world for 6 months of living once you’ve got that much money then give it a shot!
2) Deal With It
Before you become a poker pro you need to learn to deal with it and when I say it I mean variance and when I say deal with it I don’t mean moan your face off about it I mean shrug it off and forget about it as quickly as five seconds after you start ranting ‘oh man I run soooo bad’ ‘I just can’t win’ ‘They always get there..’. If you can’t detach yourself from bad beats and bad runs then you are destined to fail, you’ll get frustrated, you’ll tilt and you’ll lose money. Develop an effective way to emotionally control yourself on and off the tables before becoming a pro poker player!
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3) Back To School
Studying the game is just as important as actually playing the game. If you don’t study you won’t get any better and you won’t make more money than you are currently making. There are literally hundreds of ways you can study poker; join a poker forum (and not just to browse the BBV section), discuss hands with friends, watch training videos on poker training sites, and use internet poker tools such as Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker to analyze your game for cash games, or tournament shark if you mainly play SNG’s and MTT’s. If you are really struggling you could even consider getting a dedicated poker coach. Find a way to study the game which you enjoy and schedule time into your day just for studying poker.
4) The Games Aren’t Going Anywhere
Yes you can play internet poker 24/7 but that doesn’t mean you have to nor should you. You need to develop a schedule which involves you playing when the games are good. I can tell you now that during any week day the games aren’t that good. After about 5pm they get significantly better and stay good from about 5pm – 3am. Grinders grind during the day, it’s pretty much average regs swapping money with each other until a good reg comes along and takes it all. Put yourself in the most profitable situations possible.
5) One Magic Word – RAKEBACK
The single most important thing you need to become a successful online poker professional is rakeback. If you get a rakeback deal then you’ll get a percentage of your rake paid back to you automatically at the end of every month. If you are playing professionally then you’ll be playing a lot of hands and paying a lot of rake as a result. When I turned pro I got a 27% rakeback deal with Full Tilt and at 100nl ($0.5/$1) I was earning $1,000 in rakeback plus profit. If you want to succeed as a pro poker player then my god do you need a rakeback deal.
You can turn losing months into winning months with rakeback, it will release you from financial pressure, allow you to play your A and give you peace of mind. It’s a no brainer folks.
