Poker as a Business - The Strategy

First, you must pick your game: Hold'em, Stud, High - Low Split, Omaha. You don't play them all. Then you select the stakes you want to play. You should stay within your comfort level and size of your bankroll. You will find good and bad players in all levels.

Then you must choose the time of day to play. This may not be the time you prefer. It will depend on your area, how many casinos/card rooms you have, how many games and the type of games, etc. From information gathered from people who play poker for a living in Las Vegas, they have found the best times to play are:
1:00am - 4:00am: During this time you are looking for players who are dead tired and are "on tilt" and losing money. You also have casino workers who have just finished their shift and are tired. To play at this time, you really should sleep between 5:00 pm - 12:00 midnight -- so you are fresh and able to fully concentrate on the game.
6:00am - 11:00am: During this time you are looking for people who have been playing all night, lost money, and are trying to get their money back and are willing to gamble.
10:00pm - 2:00am, especially on weekends: You are looking for recreational players or tourists if you are in a tourist area. After a good dinner and a few drinks, they are ready to gamble. However, you do not gamble! You play superior cards only. When you do play, you want to have the "absolute nuts" - the best unbeatable hand.

It doesn't matter that you only play a few hands in a five hour session. You are there to make money, not enjoy the game by playing every hand. If you win, especially if you win big, you will definitely enjoy the game. One thing you must watch out for is that the longer you play, the greater risk you take that you will be chasing your money for too many hours. If you don't believe what we stated about the playing times and playing superior cards, go to any casino around midnight and you will see that the playing field will completely change by 2:00am. Between 12:00 midnight - 2:00am you will see tired casino workers entering the game. Watch the people who arrive around midnight: The men are freshly shaved, look fresh, and order coffee. This is your typical player who plays poker for a living.

In a Hold'em game, the professional player usually plays a pair of aces, kings, queens, high suited cards, and sometimes smaller pairs. They usually raise before the flop - depending on their position. They will play very carefully. If they think something else can beat them, most likely they will fold their hand. You cannot beat those players - at least you cannot beat them out of too much money. They are looking at making their hand on the flop and, in most cases, they are looking for the "absolute nuts." They will bet very slowly if their hand is questionable, and very aggressively if they know they are going to win. They have no mercy and they take no prisoners. Of course, you can decide how you are going to play, what limit, and how you are going to play.

We will be offering many gambling books, magazines, videos, and whatever can help your game. You should study as many as you can. You should learn percentages and outcomes for certain hands. You should learn all the "tells." Tells are signs that other players give away without realizing it to help you determine what kind of hand they have. There are numerous strategies and plays depending on position. There is a phenomenon called a "rush" when it doesn't matter what cards you have; you just keep winning - even with hands you would not normally play. The "rush" can last for a few hands, a half hour, or more. I, personally, won every hand from one dealer in his half hour shift at the table. (His name was Damien.) But I was also in games where I was dealt from one dealer a pair of aces four times, and twice a pair of kings and lost all of these hands in one half hour shift. (Her name was Sylvia.) Surely, every poker player can tell you similar stories.

To play poker as a business, you have to create your own niche. Pick a game and learn the most you can about it. Set your own rules: what you play; when, where, how, and how much you put on the table; decide when you will leave before you sit down to play.

One technique I have found to do well for me, is to change my style of play because I play in only certain casinos and frequently against the same players. Sometimes I decide to play very tight, sometimes very loose, check raise every hand, raise every hand I enter before the flop, and sometimes I don't raise at all. If you change your style of play all the time, it will be difficult for other players to figure out what you have and what you don't have.

In order to make huge money playing poker as a business, you will have to play higher limit games. Do it slowly. Tournament play will help you to prepare for higher limit live play. Even though tournaments have nothing to do with live play, tournaments will teach you to play with chips representing $25, $100, and $1,000 values - regardless they are not real chips.