Hello there

I've just been told I'm about to be made redundant (no great loss, rubbish job and underpaid anyway) and while this is a bit of a pipedream I thought I'd put it to the board what would be the best way to cash out roughly $1000 a week from online poker.

Can it be done at relatively low stakes, I mainly play low stakes cash and speed STT's and feel I'm a bit weak at tournies. I've tried multitabling 2 tables at various points and find I'm not so hot at this either. Been playing a couple of years now and feel I'm an ok to decent player, do tend to tilt sometimes and my worse vice is getting to arrogant while playing when I've had a drink.

Like I said just a speculative dream but thought I'd give it a semi-go while on gardening leave at least. For those doing this in the UK, what do you do about tax etc. I was thinking on getting a menial part-time job for a bit of minor security but thought this will keep me sweet with the taxman, NI etc

After the hassles, pettyness and politics of an office job, 16 hours a week driving/gardening etc and the rest from poker sounds like a pretty idilic life indeed but am aware I'm dreaming too.

Cheers

if you're going to play one table and make $1000 per week, you'll need to average about $40 per hundred hands assuming around 60 hands per hour and 40 hours per week. so you'll need the following winrates at ring games:

NL
2 ptbb/100 at $1000 tables
5 ptbb/100 at $400 tables
10 ptbb/100 at $200 tables (i.e., as good or better than KennyG)

Limit
1.33 bb/100 at 15/30
2 bb/100 at 10/20
4 bb/100 at 5/10 (i.e. best player at 5/10)

assuming you can control your tilt perfectly and not play your regular stakes when drinking, you'll at least probably need to play and be pretty good at $400 NL or $10/$20 limit or higher. do you consider this low stakes? do you have the BR to weather the variance?

let me add that 40 hours per week is optimistic for most people.

anyway, you can adjust the calculations for hours, hands per hour, winrate, etc. and figure out what it takes. i would say that it's really not that easy to make $1000 a week at what most people call low stakes if you don't multitable.

The quick answer is NO. It's not possible to make that much at low stakes unless you're putting in lots and lots of hands/week. You need about 9k hands/week at 100NL to make 1k/week...which is basically impossible for 1-2 tables...I play 10 to get that many hands. You have to play 3/6NL+ or 10/20 limit+ to reliably make that much...and even then, being a pro isn't all that fun unless you LOVE poker. I don't suggest that you try to go pro.

Let me just add that I grind like few others can...and 20hrs/week is HARD...it rarely ever happens. 40hrs/week is godlike for online poker...in B&M rooms it's not nearly as hard...but online is king for making better hourly rates.

When I was flat-out playing at my peak I got in maybe 35hours a week, and that lasted for about a month. Now i'm lucky to put in 25 hours. It really is flat out wrong to calculate your hourly rate and multiply by 40 to discover your projected weekly earnings, because in practice it never turns out like that. You get sick, you get tired, you have no desire to play, you spend time on other things.