YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THE GAME AND YOUR STATISTICAL CHANCES OF WINNING HANDS

Still, playing poker for a living is completely different from playing against your kids on Saturday night, or playing

online poker games that don’t require any cash bets. Is it really possible to make a living playing poker? Do you

darequit your day job to try it? As with many questions, the answer is a qualified yes.

Many professional poker players make a decent living—some even make a luxurious one, enough to pay the rent,

buy a sports car, fly to Monte Carlo once a year to play. But before you can reap the reward, you have to be ready for

some hard work. What makes a great poker player?

1. You have to understand the game. This goes beyond just knowing the rules of the game. Mostly, this is a matter

of being able to assess your hand compared to what you can see of the other players’ hands, to make an informed

judgment about what to keep and what to throw away, and then to decide how likely you are to win with the cards

you’ve got. This means you’ll have to take the time to learn not just which hands are winners, but what the statistical

likelihood is that the players, including yourself, will have winning hands. This may seem way too much like going

back to school, but for a winning poker player, this knowledge underpins everything else.

YOU MUST BE WILLING TO PUT IN A LOT OF TIME SITTING IN FRONT OF YOUR COMPUTER

2. You have to be able think on your feet. You don’t have time during a poker game to count the number of kings and

aces showing on your fingers and toes. You have to be able to take in the available information very quickly and

figure out whether the odds are in your favor.

3. You have to be willing to put in the time. Great poker players don’t just win big occasionally—they win more often,

and lose less often, than their opponents. They come out in the black more often than not by playing smart and

playing a lot of poker. They win consistently and they diminish their losses. If you play poker in casinos, you’ll have

to be on the road or in the air quite a bit to get to the games. If you play online, you have to be prepared to spend a

lot of time in front of your computer. Since you don’t know online who the other players are, this adds an element of

risk and danger—for all you know, you could be playing against the winner of the last World Series of Poker.

YOU NEED TO HAVE THE MONEY TO BET WITH AND THE NERVE TO HANDLE YOUR EMOTIONS

4. You have to have a stake. You can’t play poker for money if you don’t have money to buy into the game and more

to bet as the game progresses. Your local casino may sponsor poker games that you can get into for £20 and a £2

bet thereafter, but if you’re going for the big time, you have to bring big money to the table.

5. You have to have the nerve. The big factor in playing poker for cash is just that—the cash. Anytime money comes

into play, emotions come with it. A good poker player understands this and learns to handle his/her emotions. A

great poker player learns to read his/her opponents’ body language for emotional tells, and factors that information

into his/her decisions about how to play the game.