Is it possible to "work" as a gambler and live off the profits?

[Kluge]

(non-sober disclaimer)

1)  "I make x amount per day doing x -EV gamble"  - no, you are not a pro and you will most certainly lose

2) "poker is unbeatable" - wrong, it is extremely beatable.  Just play the main event each year - massive edge, huge variance.  Just play drunk ppl at 1-2NL all over Vegas - extremely beatable, relatively boring & repetitive, beatable by a medium-skilled player for $10-$20/hr in 2013 playing at major casinos on "drunk nights" aka Thurs-Sun each week.

3)  Beating sports - it is done by very few - and I mean very fucking few.  Google Billy Walters.  Google Haralobos Voulgarious Proly gotta spellcheck those.   These 2 kill it.  A handful of others beat it.  Millions claim to know their shit and lose each week. 

4) "beating poker knowing something no one else knows"  see:  Ben Lamb, Chance Kornuth, Jared Bleznick in PLO.  See Shaun Deeb in Open Face. 

Micon's making some great points, and anyone who's played poker with a focus on earning consistent profits rather than as a hobby can tell you that to win poker, you grind. It's a nonstop grind. You don't make many "ballsy moves." You fold, you fold, you fold, you fold, you bet and win a little, you fold. Playing poker as a means of consistent income is work. I've played a few games "to win," but it's not much fun. I'd much rather have beer, smokes, and good friends, with poker there to keep our hands and brains occupied while we play. I'd imagine people probably roll their eyes and fall asleep playing Micon outside of major tournaments. When most people think of poker, I think they're thinking of that kind of "personality poker" where people are constantly bluffing and making relatively big wagers like... drunks!

If you enjoy company, alcohol, and relaxation while playing an engaging game, poker's got you. If you want to make a living out of it, you better fucking love repetition, studying the game, and have excellent self-discipline. You may actually be better off grinding video game items, currencies, and character levels (as a matter of fact, I made some tidy sums in high school!). MMORPGs, incidentally, have a lot of the same things going on as in poker, and a lot of the same costs/rewards depending on how seriously you take earning revenue from it. Earning the most valued stuff in MMORPGs is boring as ass. For example, in traditional MMORPGs, this is raiding -- for something like EVE, it's something horrible like corp. mining events, where you're expected to have a regular schedule including carting minerals back and forth between certain times the entire group agrees on - and if you're late, they may well kick you out (this occurs with "raiding" on traditional MMORPGs, too). OTOH, having fun, such as through PvP, where there's a dynamic challenge, is usually a low-to-no reward venture. It's a really fucking bizarre dynamic for games, but it helps stimulate the game-currency<->fiat/BTC exchange. It basically creates jobs. In cases where PvP can be high-reward, you end up with people taking it very seriously - like a job, and it ends up a grind like anywhere else. Even something like SC2 tournaments - you look at players, and they'll have the exact same face on as professional poker players in a tournament. Maybe a weak smile if they win, but otherwise without emotion, because they're being 100% logical, which is almost necessarily not fun.

[Dabs]

Mining. Some people think of that as gambling. Especially when you talk about brand new ASIC companies, or even old companies that had very difficult FPGA to ASIC transition.

MMORPGs = I used to play EQ1 (aka EverQuest, before EQ2)... on my non-PvP server, I was undefeated in duels. I'd accept challenges from almost anyone (except +/- 6 levels, for fairness). I made a lot of plat that way. Sold a few items for fiat, but never made it a serious income earning activity. I was in, mostly to kill other players. I know a few who made fiat selling plat, selling zenys, selling gold, selling swords of uber power, selling this or that item, in this or that game. Takes a lot of time too. Also people selling accounts or level-up services.

Starcraft = ? I used to play SC1. Would bet against people for fiat. Or for time (if this was in an internet cafe, loser pays the cashier.) I hardly paid. On unfair fights (3 vs 1) I'd lose occasionally, but only if someone had to make a sacrifice first. It's very hard on the fingers, (gotta master the keyboard short cuts, and use a decent mouse.) This is a game of almost pure skill, very little luck. And if people know you are good, won't accept a direct one-on-one challenge. I usually end up in a FFA, where 7 people gang up on me.

So I bet with someone else, that I will be the first to die. I lost the starcraft game. I won the bet. heheheh.

Dice = ? I'm a self-admitted victim of Gambler's Fallacy. Let's not go here. hehehe. It's fun to do a martingale, knowing that I will eventually lose. The gamble is at what point to stop, so here goes all sorts of voodoo and magic and maybe a little math. Kelly, Martin, Utility, whatever you call it. I say, it's just magic.

Have I won? The answer is, ... I'm still working on it.

P.S. Don't gamble what you can't afford to lose.

[Financisto]

Its easy with skill based games to feel like you're always making money, but you always lose eventually

Variance plays a big role on that kind of events...

3)  Beating sports - it is done by very few - and I mean very fucking few.  Google Billy Walters.  Google Haralobos Voulgarious Proly gotta spellcheck those.   These 2 kill it.  A handful of others beat it.  Millions claim to know their shit and lose each week.  

Just to complement your post, that guy is known as Haralobos Voulgarious Proly. He's just as a legend as Billy Walters himself. They're that tough elite gentlemen on the top 1% sportsbettors.

Damn way to get there IMHO... 

[coinprize]

Oh.
Forget about the profits.
Even the miners can't find their profits.

You should be happy if your BTC keep the same value as you purchased.

[Financisto]

Developing even further some theoric possibilities, there goes some quotes in order to add more alternatives for "gambling for a living" lifestyle...

P.s. Hey! Don't complain! I've just said it is just THEORY!  

Topic: PROGRESSIVE JACKPOT

Break-even point

In some games such as video poker, it is possible to compute an optimal playing strategy based on the frequency for each payoff versus the odds of hitting that payoff. Since the jackpot of a progressive video poker game is constantly growing, it eventually can reach a break-even point where the machine becomes a positive expectation bet for the player.

When the progressive jackpot is less than the break-even point, there is a negative expected value (house edge) for all players.

In the long run, with optimal strategy, a video poker player can make a profit, although the "long run" is generally longer than most people think. (Several tens of thousands of plays.)

It is worthwhile to note that a break-even point cannot be easily calculated on a slot machine game, because the payback percentage for the game is normally unknown to the player. The break-even point in video poker can be calculated because the payback percentage for the game is a function of the paybacks and odds of the poker hands, which is based on a standard 52 card deck. The return of a slot machine is based on the published paytable, but also on the normally unpublished reels. For a five reel slot machine, the player would need to know each symbol on each of the slot machine's five reels, in order to calculate the odds. For a three reel slot, the reels are normally weighted, and this would not be possible. However, in some circumstances the manufacturer may publish the payout of their machines.

Advantage play

Advantage players who only play when the progressive jackpot provides them with a positive expectation situation still generate revenue for the casino. This is a unique situation where the player has an advantage over the house, yet the casino is still making a profit from the player. This situation occurs because the bulk of the progressive jackpot has been bought and paid for by the other players' contributions to the jackpot.

Savvy gamblers sometimes organize teams of players to play machines where the progressive jackpots generate a positive expectation situation. Such teams often displace ordinary players, making the machines unavailable just when they are at their most interesting. Team members will often have cell phones and work in shifts, calling another teammate to replace them when they're ready for a break. Some casinos have a policy of "no team play", and will eject players suspected of playing in such teams.

That comes right from our ultimate source of "ready-to-implement" knowledge: the almighty Wikipedia.

As already said before: do not gamble what you can't afford to lose!

Best of luck in all your gambling endeavors!

[darkmule]

Micon's making some great points, and anyone who's played poker with a focus on earning consistent profits rather than as a hobby can tell you that to win poker, you grind. It's a nonstop grind. You don't make many "ballsy moves." You fold, you fold, you fold, you fold, you bet and win a little, you fold. Playing poker as a means of consistent income is work.

My favorite analogy explaining this is if you have seen the movie Rounders, the Matt Damon character is absolutely not who you want to emulate.  The true professional is the character Joey Knish played by John Turturro.  There are a lot of good scenes in this movie, with Ed Norton being a total degenerate and John Malkovic being a villain, but this is the best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7NxEj4A1Cg

It's Joey Knish's advice.  He has previously discussed one of the main rules:  don't lend money to degenerates.  And then he follows his own advice.  This being a Hollywood movie, Matt Damon's character completely ignores it and somehow survives this bullshit.

[cp1]

Anyone who really wants to learn about bankroll management, Kelly betting, and making a living at poker should head over to 2+2. These have all been answered over and over there.

[marhjan]

Short answer - yes it's possible - but generally only in paramutual or skill based gambling/wagering.  There are certainly professional poker players and horseplayers - but any talk of 'winning systems' for roulette and other pure luck based games are nonsense.

The other reality is - generally anyone who has both the intelligence and mentality to be a successful longterm gambler could earn substantially more and safer in a routine job or other sort of investment.  I personally scraped out about $15,000USD profit a year in the late 90s playing the horses before I realized that I was making about $0.75 an hour when all the work I was putting in was considered.  It was fun and educational, but ultimately I decided I could have fun playing horses but not reasonably support myself.  I still play the horses and am pretty much a breakeven player with just a cursory glance at the form which is fine with me.

TL;dr - professional gambling is either very difficult at best or just a fool's errand at worst

[darkmule]

TL;dr - professional gambling is either very difficult at best or just a fool's errand at worst

Anyone who actually recommends gambling as a profession is selling some scam system.

Even those who sell something like the essential book on professional gambling, Gambling for a Living by Sklansky and Malmuth, I strongly suspect are earning more now selling books through Two Plus Two than they ever did gambling.  Neither of those two have, so far as I know, ever been seen at the Big Game in Bobby's Room.  That book is definitely essential if someone is insane or stupid enough actually to want to be a professional gambler.

There are, indeed, a few people who make a lot of money doing this stuff.  Emphasis on few.  But if you walk down the Las Vegas Strip and look at those buildings, they didn't build themselves.  They don't call it "Lost Wages" for nothing.  It is also the suicide capital of the United States, by far.  I don't think anyone sane would claim the fact that it is also the gambling capital of the United States is a coincidence.

To anyone considering gambling as a profession, even someone with the skills and talent actually to do it, consider, if you have a job, how disappointed you are to see your paycheck every week, or at least look it up online with your bank (hey I grew up when you actually got a check on paper).  Now, imagine that you didn't work 40 or even 60 but instead 80 hours, and not only don't you have a check, but you actually lost money.  Imagine this going on for weeks or months. 

Now, there's certainly fun parts, such as when you go on a hot streak and every single bet goes right, and you make more in a week than you ever made in a year, and this also goes on for weeks or months.

But no.  Seriously (to answer again the question of the OP), while it IS possible to gamble for a living, EVEN if you have the skill to do it (and you probably don't), DON'T do it.  Unless you really, really want to.

I think a better question is, "is it possible to gamble profitably?"  The answer to that is definitely yes, and if you aren't depending on it for a living, and finding edges and beating other people and beating your OWN mental weaknesses is fun to you, do it.  Poker especially has a lot of lessons to teach about how other people think and how their actions connect to how they think, and to your own mental weaknesses, and if you learn those lessons, you get paid!  Poker, while it contains life lessons, as a life is a black hole as life itself is concerned.  Stay away from the event horizon.

[alice76]

It's about as possible as working as a professional chess player or golf player and living off the profits -- possible, but not easy. But make no mistake: poker is a game of skill, easy to learn but difficult to master.

[darkmule]

It's about as possible as working as a professional chess player or golf player and living off the profits -- possible, but not easy. But make no mistake: poker is a game of skill, easy to learn but difficult to master.

I actually recently discovered that there are even professional Scrabble players who make a living doing it.  Yes, there are tournaments that pay money.  And yes, there are even cheating scandals.

[Mooshire]

I want to play scrabble now.

[Financisto]

I guess this thread is a candidate to become a sticky topic if we go further discussing it...

[Dabs]

Are table top collectible card games considered gambling? There are tournaments for Mech Warrior, Pokemon, Justice League or Marvel or DC comic characters, and of course, Magic The Gathering. Prize money involved.

[Mooshire]

Are table top collectible card games considered gambling? There are tournaments for Mech Warrior, Pokemon, Justice League or Marvel or DC comic characters, and of course, Magic The Gathering. Prize money involved.

Let us not forget MtGox's past.

[darkmule]

Are table top collectible card games considered gambling? There are tournaments for Mech Warrior, Pokemon, Justice League or Marvel or DC comic characters, and of course, Magic The Gathering. Prize money involved.

I see no discernible difference between them and other card games played for money, at least in terms of the legal analysis, but I have never heard of law enforcement actually prosecuting them as gambling.

[Energizer]

If you gamble, be sure you will end up being a loser one day. Winning today just means that you will be a bigger loser tomorrow. My advice to you try not to gamble much, and its better to stay totally away from gambling! why? Cause its not really about money, its not even about winning or losing, its all about psychology and persisly brain chemistry, that would keep pulling you back to continue gambling, and your brain will become more addicted to it the more you win or even the more you lose.

[Luciddd]

Poker is a gamble on your mentality.

[s.roulette]

you should always gamble for fun and not to survive! We offer an Affiliate Program at www.satoshisroulette.com in which you can make some extra money beside playing! 

[mises]

I would say no, in almost every case. Gamers who appear to be successful- flashy players or those that win big tournaments occasionally- often have big bankrolls behind them and actually lose a lot more than they win. I've known a few such players, and the reality is sometimes quite sad. It seems the media is partly responsible for creating this image of the "successful gambler", since they show us the 0.0001% of players who win big tournaments consistently. I'm talking about poker of course.

Gaming should be for entertainment only.