If you are or want to be a professional gambler this is going to happen everyday, SO FORGET ABOUT IT. If you can't handle it you have almost zero chance of success. Pull the Trigger: When you have the advantage you must be able to make the appropriate bet. If you look at money in terms of what it could buy you, you're in the wrong business.

• Professional Sports Gambler Salary
• Professional Sports Betting
• Professional Sports Gambling
• Become A Professional Sports Gambler
• How Do You Become A Professional Sports Gambler

• To be successful, sports bettors need to be flexible, adaptable, and resilient. A successful sports bettor will know that things change over time, and that in turn means that their plans and strategies must also change. Being flexible and adaptable is key. Those unwilling to change their ways are less likely to be successful over time.
• Become a Professional Sports Gambler. Successful gamblers know that they need as much control as possible. While there’s most definitely an element of chance in sports betting, you do have more control than you would when playing casino games for a living. Gambling on sports is.
• A $100 bankroll isn’t going to help you become a professional gambler. Even a $1,000 bankroll won’t do the trick. You need a sizable bankroll so that you can make large bets and survive potential losing streaks. The amount needed all varies based on how much.

Every gambler has thought about what it’d be like to earn a living through casino games. This spawns visions of making a 6-figure salary, feasting on comps, dressing like James Bond and traveling the world.

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But is being a professional gambler really this lucrative?

Let’s begin discussing the matter by defining what it means to be a pro. You and I will also cover the salaries that pro gamblers make in different games.

How Do We Define a Professional Gambler?

The term “professional gambler” is sometimes used interchangeably for both people who earn part-time and full-time income through gambling.

This makes sense because both groups have the skills to earn long-term profits. Therefore, you can technically be considered a pro gambler as long as you’re making profits of any kind throughout the year.

But I keep a much tighter definition of a professional gambler.

A true pro not only makes profits through gambling, but enough to pay all of their living expenses. This includes rent (house payment), utilities, car payment (transportation), insurance, meals, clothes and anything else deemed necessary.

A semi-professional is somebody who makes enough to supplement their income, but doesn’t earn full-time living through gambling. I’m only going to cover full-time professional gambler salaries in this post.

What Casino Games Offer the Chance to Make a Living?

The gambling world doesn’t offer an abundance of opportunities to make a living, but there are a few different games where you can earn some nice profits.

Here’s a list of the most common games that you can make long term profits with:

• Blackjack card counting
• Daily fantasy sports (DFS)
• Poker
• Sports betting
• Video poker

Blackjack and video poker both see you try to win money directly from the house.

Casinos do everything in their power to hinder successful card counters. This includes using continue shuffling machines, multi deck shoes and watching for counters.

Anybody who’s caught counting cards is often kicked out of the casino and banned. This is why it’s so important for card counters to blend in with normal players.

Casinos don’t usually worry about advantage video poker player. In fact, some games are set up to offer positive expected value (+EV) to players who use perfect strategy.

Another problem is that it’s now harder than ever before to find video poker games offering over 100% payback like Deuces Wild (100.76% payback), Double Bonus (100.17%) and Double-Double Bonus (100.07%).

DFS and poker both see you compete against human opponents. The house merely takes a small cut of tournament fees or cash game pots (poker).

Sportsbooks create lines in an effort to get equal betting action on both sides. The sportsbooks make their money by taking 10% vigorish (juice) from the losing group.

Every form of advantage betting has its pros and cons, but the key is that each of these activities offers the chance to make a full-time living.

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Salaries for Professional Gamblers in Different Games

Card Counting

People have been making a living through card counting since the early 1960s, and despite all the obstacles that casinos have put in players’ way, it’s still possible to earn profits with card counting today.

You need a sizable bankroll in order to properly spread your bets and survive variance. The bare minimum you should aim for is $20,000, but it’s better to have closer to $50,000.

How much you make depends upon several factors, including the following:

• Skill level – Successful counters have between a 0.5% and 1.5% edge on casinos.
• Hands per hour – 50 to 200 depending upon dealer speed & table size.
• Bet spreading – Difference between your lowest and highest bet.
• Deck penetration – The further into the shoe you get, the more confidence you can bet with.
• Counting system – Some systems are more accurate than others.
• Game rules – You want the best rules possible in order to lower the standard house edge.
• Tips – $5 per hour for the dealer is standard.

Now, let’s set up an example by creating variables behind your counting session:

• You have a 1% edge based on the rules, your skill level and using the Hi-Lo counting system.
• The dealer is dealing 100 hands per hour.
• Your minimum bet is $25, and you spread up to $175 during favorable counts (i.e. 1 to 7 spread).
• You get 70% deck penetration before the shoe is reshuffled.
• You tip $5 per hour.

Here’s how this example would play out in terms of profits:

• Your average bet is worth $50 ($25 minimum; spread up to $175 for favorable counts).
• $50 average bet x 100 hands = $5,000 in hourly bets.
• 5,000 x 0.01 edge = $50 hourly win.
• $50 hourly win minus $5 tip = $45 hourly profit.

Some counters make $100 or more per hour by improving their edge up to 1.5% and/or increasing bets, but many players are happy with a $45 per hour rate to start with.

The final step is to figure out how many hours you’ll play and convert this into an annual salary. Here are a few different figures on how much you’d make per year:

• $45 x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks = $93,600 per year
• $45 x 30 hours per week x 52 weeks = $70,200 per year
• $45 x 20 hours per week x 52 weeks = $46,800 per year
• $100 x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks = $208,000 per year

The last figure shows what’s possible for a really good card counter who makes $100 per hour. The $45 calculations show that even decent counters can make good money.

The keys, though, include keeping an accurate count amidst casino distractions and blending in with normal players.

Daily Fantasy Sports

DFS is the newest game that offers skilled gamblers an opportunity to make money.

Daily fantasy sees you pay an entry fee to enter contests and compete against other players. The goal is to create lineups that score the most points and rank the highest in tournaments.

Daily fantasy sports experienced a big boom in 2015, thanks to clever marketing campaigns that make it seem like any sports fan can win.

The truth, though, is that only a small percentage of those who play actually win. A McKinsey study from 2015 showed that 1.3% of daily fantasy baseball players collect 91% of the winnings.

Despite these long odds, many people still enjoy trying to win in daily fantasy, but what exactly can you expect to win if you’re among the small percentage of DFS pros?

The potential for big winners is there for the most skilled daily fantasy players.

Saahil Sud, profiled in a WBUR piece, said he made over $3 million in profits in a single year. Former poker pro Aaron Jones switched over to DFS and won a DraftKings contest worth $5 million in early 2016.

Of course, the average professional DFS player doesn’t earn quite this much. To determine a standard DFS salary, let’s consider the following factors:

• Entries per day— Most DFS pros enter several hundred contests every day.
• Stakes – Typical entry fees range anywhere from $1 up to $1,000.
• Fees— DFS sites tack on a 10% fee to each buy in, which is where their profits come from.
• Skill level— Some pros have a bigger edge than others.

Now, let’s input variables to come up with an average daily profit:

• 300 entries per day
• $100 + $10 (fee) average buy in
• 300 x $110 = $3,300 daily fees
• You’re playing for $3,000 after subtracting fees
• Expected value based on skill is 115%
• $3,000 x 1.15 = $3,450 winnings
• $3,450 – $3,300 = $150 in daily profits

If we multiply $150 by 365 days, you’ll earn an annual salary worth $54,750.

Of course, DFS is filled with variance, and you won’t always feel like you’re on the path to a solid $55k per year. This is why it’s key to have a large enough bankroll to survive the ups and downs.

Poker

Poker has long been one of the most viable options for becoming a professional gambler. The reason why is because you’re competing against other opponents instead of the house.

It’s tougher to make a living in poker these days because strategy is more prevalent. Online poker gives players a chance to rapidly accelerate their learning curve by seeing more hands per hour.

You can still become a profitable player with enough hard work and experience though. In fact, some pros still make six or seven figure annual incomes with the game.

However, the vast majority of pros these days earn between $40,000 and $100,000 per year.

Poker is unique in that there are essentially two types of professionals: tournament and cash game pros.

Most rounders mix up their play between both platforms. However, the majority of poker pros also specialize in either tourneys or cash games.

Let’s look at the different considerations for cash vs. tournament play:

Cash Games

• Profit measured in big blinds (BB) made per hour.
• House takes 5% rake from cash game pots for running games.
• More control over annual salary than tournaments.

Tournaments

• Profit measured by rate of return (ROI) on buy ins.
• House adds 10% fee to buy ins (e.g. $10 + $1 fee).
• Only top 10 15% of field makes money.
• Tournaments have more variance than cash games.

Professional Sports Gambler Salary

A cash grinder needs to figure out what stakes they must play to make a comfortable living based on BB earned per hour.

An example is if you played $10/$20 no limit Texas hold ‘em and made 1.5 BB per hour. This equates to $30 per hour, $1,200 per week for a 40-hour workweek and $62,400 for a full year.

A tournament pro must decide what buy-in level they must choose to make a high enough ROI to live comfortably.

If you spend $20,000 on tourney buy-ins in a week and make $22,000, then your RIO is 10% ([22,000 20,000 / 20,000). This means that you’ll earn a $10 profit for every $100 you spend on tournament buy-ins.

One more consideration here is whether you’ll dedicate the bulk of your time towards live or online poker.

Online cash games and tourneys offer more volume because you can play multiple tables. Plus hands and tournaments go much faster, giving you an opportunity to boost your hourly wages.

Another Internet poker advantage is that you cut out extra expenses like traveling, hotel stays, meals and dealer/waitress tips.

Nevertheless, many players find that their win rate is higher in live games. The most lucrative tournaments are found in land-based casinos, too, such as the World Series of Poker events.

Sports Betting

The good thing about sports betting is that you don’t need to have a massive win rate just to book profits.

Sportsbooks only take 10% juice from the losing side. This differs from DFS and poker tournaments where you must pay an extra 10% fee regardless of whether you’re a winner or loser.

The juice can be lowered or adjusted based on where the sportsbook is trying to push action, but 10% is generally the amount you’ll see taken from the losing side.

The end result is that you need to win 52.38% of your bets to break even. How do we arrive at this number?

You need to bet $11 to win $10 when the juice is 10%. You must win 11 out of every 21 bets to break even at this rate, which is a 52.38% winning percentage (11/21).

This doesn’t sound intimidating when compared to how good you must be at poker or DFS to win long term, but it’s also really tough to continually find value because sportsbooks are so good at setting lines.

Professional sports bettors usually win anywhere from 53.5% to 55.0% of the time.

Some handicappers brag about higher win rates ranging from 58.0% to 60.0%, but these figures are almost impossible to sustain long term.

Pro sports bettors must be very adept at handling their bankroll since they’re dealing with such a small profit margin. They also need to make larger wagers than the average bettor to increase potential profits.

The general rule of thumb is to never bet more than 1% to 2% of your bankroll on any given contest. If you have a $100,000 bankroll, you’d never put more than $2,000 of this on any single event.

Some sports bettors like Billy Walters and Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris have made millions of dollars with this model. But the average bettors are looking at more modest salaries ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 annually.

The key to figuring out how much you can make involves determining your ROI just like a poker pro. For example, if you make $10,000 worth of bets during a week and earn back $10,500, then you have a 5% ROI for the week ([10,500 10,000 / 10,000).

You then need to expand this to cover an entire year. Let’s look at an example below:

• You place $1,000,000 worth of bets during the year.
• You win $1,060,000.
• Your profit is $60,000 for the year (1,060,000 1,000,000).
• Your ROI is 6% ([1,060,000 1,000,000] / 1,000,000).

A 6% ROI is extremely high for sports betting, but this is just a simple way to show how to calculate your ROI and salary.

Video Poker

Video poker has good and bad things going for it these days.

The good news is that you can virtually guarantee yourself profits if you become a skilled enough player. The downside is that there are fewer and fewer +EV machines in casinos today.

Your best bet is to find a full-pay Deuces Wild machine, which pays back 100.76%. You also need to take advantage of as many double and triple comp point promotions as you can.

You can find which land based casinos offer full pay Deuces Wild by visiting the site vpFREE2.com.

Once here, navigate to the “Casinos” tab and look in the Las Vegas section. I see 13 different casinos that offer full pay Deuces Wild at the time of this post.

Unfortunately, the highest coin denomination for these machines is only $0.25. In past decades, you could find $1 denomination machines that quadrupled your potential profits.

Even under the right conditions, the odds of you making a good living with video poker are slim. Let’s run the math on what you can expect:

• You play full pay Deuces Wild (100.76% payback).
• You bet 5 coins per hand on a quarter denomination machine ($1.25 per hand).
• You play 1,000 hands per hour, which is extremely fast.
• The casino is running a triple loyalty point promotion.
• The casino comps 0.1% of your total bets, or 0.3% for triple points.
• 1,000 x 1.25 x 0.0076 = $9.50 regular hourly winnings.
• $1,200 total bets x 0.003 = $3.60 in comps
• You earn $13.10 per hour.

Even if you spend 50 hours in the casino, this only works out to $655 per week, and you’d earn $34,060 when we stretch this out for an entire year.

Professional Sports Betting

Most people can get by on this salary, but it’s far from what anybody envisions when becoming a professional gambler.

Conclusion

Being a pro gambler has some obvious benefits, including flexible hours, being your own boss and the ability to increase your income.

Some gamblers, such as Saahil Sud and Bob Voulgaris, have even gotten rich with their skills. Of course, you may be perfectly happy making mid 5-figures, as long as you get to enjoy the aforementioned benefits, but there are also some downsides to be aware of. These include risk, highs and lows, no sick days and the potential to lose everything.

It’s up to you to weigh the good and bad before ultimately deciding to pursue a professional gambling career.

The potential rewards can be great in the case of card counting, DFS, poker and sports betting, but you also have to be disciplined and good at handling risk.

How To Become a Professional Sports Bettor
by Dave Busk - 05/06/2009

Many articles have been written over the years about being a professional gambler. In this article, however, I will touch on some of my views on what it takes to make a living betting on sports.

How could I give you advice if you don't know a little about me? I'm 33 years young but in terms of a gambling age I feel like 60. Gamblers are like dogs in that they age several years during a calendar year once they start applying their trade. My road in gambling started long ago as I am the son of a former bookmaker and a very successful blackjack player that still to this day is banned from many casinos because of his winning ways. I choose not to bet in casinos and after a short stint going to the track around 18 and 19 years old I quit betting horse for two reasons: 1.) at 18 you think you know everything but in reality you know nothing and 2.) I noticed nobody had nice shoes at the track, so that was it for me.

At 21 I was in the Caribbean working in a sports book and this is where I started the learning curve that for me took about six year's to start to really understand what I was doing. I have read numerous articles and books and heard many different opinions along the way -- some make sense some don't, but hopefully you can't take something from this article to help you get better.

Discipline

Professional Sports Gambling

Discipline is one of the keys to being successful at this, and probably the main thing I tell people who ask how to become a professional sports bettor. Discipline can range anywhere from staying within in your limits, to not letting your emotions take over after a tough day. Winning at betting on sports is a 'mindset' and to be a successful gambler you need to be good in other areas besides just picking winners and discipline is key. You need to be able to handle winning just as much as you need to manage when you go on a losing streak. Remember, when you have a tough day no matter if you were way off or you lost a game that you should have won, let it go and don't chase your losses. This is easier said then done but you need to 'maximize your wins and minimize you losses'. Remember, our National Anthem plays multiple times every day in ballparks and arenas across the country - there's always' tomorrow.

Money Management

Money management is another strong suit of a successful gambler -- some guys go with the logic that a play is a play meaning every bet is worth the same. For me this is a grind but I do think some games stand out more then others and the value just shines. I think there are certain situations where you need to step out and play a little more. However, staying inside the limits that your bankroll allows is crucial. I highly suggest that you separate you living money from your betting bankroll. If you have a good week or month take a higher percentage and add it too your bankroll and then pay yourself. Don't forget that in between watching, rooting and handicapping games that this is a business.

Mentality

One mistake I made when I was younger was I never took a break, it was always go, go, go. And while taking a break doesn't need to mean a week or month, it could just mean doing something else for an hour or two. I put a tremendous amount of time into thinking about what millionaires or future millionaires are going to do while playing a kid's game and to be successful at this you need to put time into it, but there comes a point where doing too much will burn you out and that leads to bad decisions. No matter if things are going good or bad, take a step back and retool your thought process. Remember, there is a lot that you can't control. The things you can control are hard work, discipline, money management and getting the best of the number. Don't be afraid to make adjustments to how you handicap over the course of a season -- the season is long and many teams go through situations over the course of time that change a team's overall mental state. Every year is a new year and you have to keep re-educating yourself on the leagues -- don't ever kid yourself and think you know it all.

Market

Like any other business, sports betting is part of a market and one good asset that a gambler can posses is understanding the movement of the market. The line will move for many reasons - it could be sharp money, it could be the public or it could be an overreaction to a noted injury or weather situation. This is where I feel you need to know and understand how to make a solid number. If the number you wanted moves before you get down your wager there comes a point where your play loses value and you must stay disciplined and simply pass. Remember, that value is in the number, not just the team. Understand when it's time to bet early in the market and when it is better to bet late in the market. This comes with time and by watching the line movement and developing a good understanding of where a number should be you can make the market work for you.

Understand the oddsmaker's weaknesses and while they have many edges he does have to hang a number on every game while we can pick and choose our investments. On a weekend in the fall we have multiple sports going on with baseball, college football, NFL and in October and November NBA and NHL. The oddsmaker is going to focus on the NFL with that being their biggest handle and with 70-plus college football games plus other sports going on Saturday they will be more likely to make some mistakes. The key their is knowing where the market is weak and how to handicap and capitalize on their mistakes. This is easier said then done.

Become A Professional Sports Gambler

While people handicap and look at games with different styles, I would suggest you do what works for you. I don't handicap every sport the same -- the only aspect I have that is the same for each sport is that I make my own number and use as a guide against the line the oddsmaker hangs. I re-educate myself on these teams every day by reading newspapers across the country. I don't follow trends or have a system. The problem I have with a trend or a system is it takes the emotion out of sports and sports is all emotion. Understand that no matter how much you think you know about the players you still don't know if that pitcher or quarterback is having problems at home or in his daily life to take their focus away from their jobs. These are still people, not robots -- none of us are at our best every single day it is just the real talent that shows at a high percentage of the time. This is a market, always' get the best value for your dollar. There is a learning curve to this and it can be expensive. Some people get it and some never will. While everybody has their different views on how to handicap games, the best advice I could give you is to learn how to be a good oddsmaker and pair that with some of the things mentioned above and this will make you a good gambler. Betting on sports for a living could become like walking through a minefield if you don't have a clue, it takes so much to win and so little to lose. However, if you work hard and show some discipline with some good money management and if you can keep your emotions in check, you will make it through the minefield and pay the bills.

How Do You Become A Professional Sports Gambler

For more information on Busk's baseball picks and for daily free picks, check out his Insider's Page here.

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