I found myself constantly wanting to take days off or cut sessions short because I simply didn’t enjoy sitting at the table for that many hours.
First, no one wants to play 40 hours per week. There are a few problems with this nice $96,000 per year salary. So, if you play 40 hours per week, you will make around $8,000 per month, which sounds great. Since $2-$5 is half the size of $5-$10, we can assume $50 per hour is a decent, sustainable win rate (although it could be less in today’s environment). When I played $5-$10 at Bellagio five years ago, over the course of a summer playing about 50 hours per week, I made around $100 per hour.
The reason this is the general stake is because it’s the highest level played at most local card rooms and most players who can beat this game feel like they are decently good at poker. Let’s assume you play $2-$5 no-limit hold’em at a local card room, which is about the stakes most people play who ask the question. Every time I do a webinar where members of my training site,, can log in and ask me questions, I find myself answering one specific question: “When should I become a professional poker player?” To hopefully avoid re-answering the same question again in the future, here are my thoughts on the subject.
