Poker as a job

When internet poker was new, back in the early days of this century, a growing number of online players began to consider the possibility of playing poker for a full time income.

The idea was certainly an attractive one. What could be better than doing what you loved to do all day long, or all night long, and make more money from it than you had been making at your real job.

The idea was so attractive to some players that they actually did chuck their real jobs in and give playing online poker a go as an alternative.

For some it worked out better than they could ever have hoped.

For many others though the dream turned into a nightmare.

Not every one is cut out to be their own boss. This is evidenced by the number of small business ventures that fail within their first few years. Being an online poker play full time is the same as having your own business. And the learning curve can be steep for people who have always been employed by others.

Other big difficulties with both running a business and being a professional online poker player are the lack of paid holidays (who’s going to pay you?). If you are not working, or playing poker, you are not earning. If you are employed and have a bad day you will still get your wages at the end of the week. A bad day in poker could finish you entirely. That’s a lot of pressure.

There is more to it than that. Working online in any capacity can be very difficult if you were used to going to a workplace and interacting with other people. Online work can be very antisocial. You may end up spending time on forums and developing virtual relationships which can help with the loneliness, but those sites can also be a time sink if you are not wary.

Getting over all of that, you still need to play and win consistently.

And the game keeps changing. Just like the real world, the market matures. Players who were dominating their game a couple of years ago and now floundering as the game changed around them but they didn’t, or couldn’t keep up.

But for those that did make it you couldn’t ask for a better lifestyle. But those players are few and far between, regardless of what you might be told on various poker forums.