Turning Pro

Iggy announced yesterday that he has finally quit his job and is intending to turn pro. As in, pro poker player. At the top, I want to congratulate him and wish him all the best on this new direction in his life. I can only imagine the stones it takes to make such a choice, one that I know he did not arrive at lightly. With that out of the way, though, I also want to take a closer look at just what such a decision entails, beyond "Awesome! I get to play poker instead of going to work!"

Before I delve into this topic, I should say a few words about my own situation. I am currently unemployed. My primary source of income (meager as it is) is poker. For example, this month I am currently up about $3300. In effect, then, I am a "professional" poker player, if, by "professional", we use the generally accepted definition of participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs. Certainly, when attractive women that I meet in various random locales ask me what I do for a living, I tell them that I'm a professional gambler. (Side note: I'm still not sure if they find that attractive or if it causes them to run screaming in terror. What I do know is that it's a better alternative than saying I'm unemployed.) So for me to take any sort of stance against turning pro, which is exactly what I'm about to do, is hypocrisy to the extreme. So be it, Jedi. My conflicts on this matter are out there.

I also want to point out that I am not, in any way, trying to slam Iggy. Everything I know about him, his bankroll, and his style of play suggests that he has all of the necessary ingredients to be successful as a pro. His announcement just led me to reflect on the issue in a more general, abstract way.

Ok. Enough disclaiming. To the issue!

In order to be a successful poker pro, I believe you need four things: skill, discipline, a sufficient bankroll, and an understanding of just what it is you're about to do. Let's take each one of these items individually.

Skill -- This is the most obvious of the attributes necessary to become a poker professional. Frankly speaking, if you can't beat the 2/4 games on Party Poker or at your local card room with any degree of consistency, you probably do not possess anywhere near close to the level of skill necessary to have poker become your primary source of income. I do not mean to suggest that if you CAN beat the 2/4 games, you DO have the skill, because I don't think that 2/4 games are any sort of litmus as to success as a pro. They ARE a litmus as to failure, though, a sort of "laugh test" that you have to be able to pass to even consider turning pro. If you can't beat those games, you're in trouble.

Why even make this point? Because people often have illusions about just how good they are. These are the same type of people who don't track their progress, don't keep an accurate tally of their winning and losing sessions. Even if they do tally their wins and loses, some lower-limit players too often think they're better than they really are, and that the losses at low limits were because of "suckouts", and schooling by the fish, and whatever else. It is easy to have an inflated sense of skill. I certainly did when I first started playing on Party Poker about a year ago. I thought I knew what I was doing, but couldn't understand why I was unable to consistently beat the 3/6 game.

What is the litmus test for skill, then? I don't know. Consistently being able to beat a middle-limit game (10/20, 15/30, 20/40, $200NL) is probably a good place to start, though. Of course, on Party Poker, the 15/30 game isn't really all that much tougher than the 3/6 game, but that leads us into the next attribute -- bankroll.

Bankroll -- this is probably the most common area for failure as a pro. Simply put, if you're going to quit a job that was paying you $60,000 a year, you need to be able to replace that income with your net poker winnings. Basically, you need to net $5,000 a month playing poker. In order to do that, you have to play at a limit that will allow you to net $5,000 a month, which, in my mind, requires a bankroll of at least $10,000. In the grand scheme of things, $10,000 is both lots of money and not that much money, but I think that younger players considering turning pro often don't realize just what sort of upfront commitment they need to make in order to ensure that they handle the swings without going broke. If you can't comfortably pony up $10,000 to start your endeavor, you'll have the added pressure of not losing your stake. If you're going to seed yourself and turn pro, you'd better be able to lose every last penny of that $10,000.

[SirFWALGMan's post on his blog made me realize that I wasn't clear about one other issue regarding bankroll. When I suggest you need $10,000, I mean you need a poker bankroll of $10,000. You should also have money saved up in a non-poker bankroll besides that -- again, so that if you lose every last penny of the $10,000, you're not destitute. SirFWALGMan suggested one year's salary in the bank as an appropriate non-poker bankroll, and I think he's dead on.]

Discipline -- Discipline is one of those intangible qualities that winning poker players possess. It's what keeps you from tilting off half of your buy-in, it's what keeps you from adding those extra BBs to the pot even though you know your strong hand is beaten, and it's what keeps you playing your same A-game even though you have been bad beaten three times in the last fifteen minutes. In short, it's helps you to maximize your profit at the table and minimize your losses. It's something that can be learned, but I also think that it's something people naturally either are predisposed for or against. What I mean by that is that I think it's much more difficult for certain personality types to learn, and practice, discipline than it is for others. I know some really great players who can force themselves to be disciplined only through maximum effort of will. Otherwise, they're all over the map. It's one of those areas that requires an honest assessment by the player, because without discipline, you will have a much, MUCH harder time becoming a successful pro. There's also the discipline required to sit down at the table every day and play when you'd rather be doing something else, but that's a different sort of discipline.

Understanding -- By "understanding", I mean an understanding of what becoming a pro entails. For example:

* You will be playing cards for a living. Every day, every week, every month. After all those months, will it just feel like another job?

* You will not receive any benefits. All of those nice things that your salaried job might have provided -- health insurance, 401(k), vision/dental, whatever -- will need to be funded on your own.

* You're not really contributing anything of social worth to the world. Some people don't care, and that's fine, but to others this point may start gnawing at them the longer they shuffle chips back and forth across the felt.

* You will have days "at the office" when you lose money, rather than gain it. How will you be able to handle those days? Can you keep a proper long-term perspective?

* If you're an internet player, you will be severely reducing your day-to-day contact with living, breathing human beings by spending all of your time in your living room at your computer playing cards.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Turning pro is not an easy or simple decision. There are a host of factors and skills that need to be considered, and to often I think players -- especially younger player who have had some success with internet poker -- rush into it, having seen the lifestyle glamorized on (where else) television, or because they think it would be "cool".

Great. Wake up. Playing poker is a tough way to make an easy living. If you can't make some similarly tough, honest self-assessments as to some of the issues I've identified above, it's probably not for you.

[Note: after I finished this post, I found a few columns in the CardPlayer magazine archives by Roy West which also cover this topic. We share some points, he makes some additional ones, whatever. I'm including links in case anyone wants to do further reading:

You Probably Can't Be a Professional Poker Player
Maybe You can Be a Professional Poker Player
Answer a Few More Questions (Correctly) and Become a Pro]