Making money playing poker

Many people wonder if it is possible to actually make money simply by playing poker online. I’m sure it must look like a dream job to some people. Sit at your PC for a few hours and make a wage. Sounds nice. But is it possible?

The short answer is – Yes, it is possible. Many thousands of players make a living from playing poker online and have no other job or source of income. There are players that have been doing just that for years, many of whom are young, and started playing poker in college, so that when they left they didn’t even try to get a real job but continued to play poker for a living.

This could be an ideal way of making a living, provided that a couple of things are guaranteed. The first thing of course is that you can continue to play online – that no outside event will occur that will make it, say, illegal to play poker if you are American …

The long answer to this question is that while many players do make a nice living simply by playing their favorite game, it is as difficult a job as many others, and it is in most respects a real job too. At least, to ensure some level of success you must approach it as a real job. That means that you must have discipline and a large degree of responsibility, just like being self-employed in any area of business.

Further to that, and again similar to most professions, you will need to continue to work on your game, to study changes in the poker world, keep up to date with various software that becomes available, even though you may not use it, you should know that your opponents probably are using it.

So, basically, you can make a living from playing poker online, but it is just as hard as any other worthwhile job.
 
Playing poker online just got a lot harder

After the recent action by the US Department of Justice and the FBI it got a lot harder for American players to play poker online.

There are still some sites that will allow US players to play, but so far it seems that many US players are choosing not to play online right now.

You can’t blame them really. Of course, a lot of them probably have their whole bankrolls tied up in either Stars or Tilt, or both, and so they will have to wait to get that money back before they can go to another site.

The whole situation is still up in the air, and it remains to be seen what the end result will be. Those poker sites that are still accepting Americans could change that decision at any time, or they could be the target of an action by the US Government.

The knock on effect of this is that there are thousands of players not playing online now, so for non-American professionals there is a much smaller pool of players to grind a living from.
 
Playing free poker online

Some players like to play the free poker version of online poker. There is not much different between playing this kind of poker and playing for cash.

Of course, the obvious difference is that you don’t have to make a deposit to play for free. But you will need to open an account with the poker room, just not give them any credit card details. They still need your personal details for your account.

Other than that, it’s pretty much the same thing; same poker room, same kind of tables, same run of cards. Some people believe that there is a different random number generator used for the play money tables. I’m pretty sure this is not the case. Some casinos do use a different software to run their free play games, presumably to make it easier to win for the player so that they will go on and deposit to play for real. But poker rooms don’t do this. Why would they?

The type of game you get at the free play tables can be a bit wild too. As the chips are free a lot of players don’t mind losing them and so they play wild. The whole reason behind poker is that you can lose something of value (your money) and personally it is not the same game if you have nothing to lose. Nothing to lose, nothing to win.

But the free tables can be a good way for new players to get to grips with how online poker works. They can get used to the layout of the tables, and the action of the game. They can become familiar with the different buttons they need to click in order to play a hand, and the order of what to do and when to do it.

Plus it can be a good bit of cheap fun.
 
Playing poker at Bodog Poker

Bodog Poker is currently one of the top destinations for American players that found themselves without a poker site after Stars and Tilt abruptly exited the US market.

Bodog Poker

Bodog Poker

But by all accounts the number of players rushing to Bodog is only in the low hundreds. That means that thousands of poker players could still find their way there after the recent events have sunk in. Give it a couple of weeks and there will be a whole lot of players in need of a game.

Assuming that Bodog does indeed continue to accept players from America, it would seem to be a logical choice. The tables are fairly loose, which is good for pros and grinders, and the room is long established and well backed by the internationally known Bodog brand.

There is every reason to expect that this poker room is rock solid.

On top of all that they have changed their initial deposit bonus to a more industry standard amount of $1000, and have none of that casino rollover stuff that once held them back.

All in all, they are a pretty good alternative for homeless players from the USA, and if yo’d like to check them out you can do that here.
 

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