I like to daydream. I think everyone does. I was walking to class from my house and i began to wonder how much poker i would have to play to make a comfortable living at it. Right now i am gearing up to play the 100NL on FullTilt(just dropped a couple buyins at 100NL (See: BB Forum ), and am comfortably at 100NL on Pokerstars. I knew that with my winrate of 3.17 BB/100 i would only make a small salary if i were to consistently play at that level for a year full time(~$20k). So i decided to see how much i would make if i were to somehow keep a similar winrate at 400NL.

If you were to play 350 hands an hour while running 6 tables for 8 hours a day with a win rate of 1 buy in per day at 400NL, you would make 98k in a year.

400 x 5 x 49 = $98,000

In order to do this, you would play poker for a total of 40 hours a week for 49 weeks. This would total 1960 hours in a year.

40 x 49 = 1960 hours

1960 hours is a lot, and you would have to multiply that by 350 to get 686,000 hands.

1960 x 350 = 686,000 hands

You win rate of $400 every 2800 hands would be (1BB = $4.00)

3.57BB/100 or
($14.85/100) x3.5 = $44.55/hr.

This seems close to an optimal winrate at 400NL
(I'm not a 400NL regular, just my best guess)

Certainly you could live on less than 98k a year, and you could probably play more than 1960 hours in a year if you love poker like me .

+

This isn't accounting for moving up in stakes.

+

This also isn't accounting for a conceivably higher winrate (if you were a very strong player or continued to improve)

But

Such a winrate (>3.00BB/100) seems as though it would be very difficult to maintain above 400NL (if it is even possible there).

I would be interested in hearing what others think about playing poker professionally (from a financial standpoint). I am also interested in hearing about my hypothetical winrate at 400NL, especially from those who play there regularly.

A Side Note: I am not myself planning on quitting my job today and playing professional poker, but i am thinking about what such a life would be like and deciding whether to postpone finishing college, since poker as a career seems fun right now and i don't see why i couldn't go back to school if playing poker no longer was enjoyable or was entirely removed from the U.S.















[/b]