[AMA] The Life of a Professional Gambler

[maxreish]

How do you manage to control gambling addiction?

You see, I started to feel that kind of attitude when I experienced to win huge at gambling and not contented with small profits. I have some reflections but it is hard for me to go back from being a small player which contented with small gains. How can you control yourself from greediness?

I am refraining from gambling slowly, which is not kinda effective.

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[tyKiwanuka]

Hi tyKi, thanks for sharing the story of this. I actually have only spoken in real life to professional esports players (very low level but they were still very knowledgeable) and I've always wanted to know how pro gamblers view their life and how they got into it!

Poker seems to me like the way to go to, but how do you play online when there are so many bots taking player places. Each game can last hours and hours, how do you keep all that while being sane?

I never was an ambitious poker player. I probably made some money with it, but not noteworthy. And I learned that poker just isn’t my game. I never had problems with tilting when betting, but on the poker tables I get into a rage quite easily, because I often feel treated unfair and you have someone to blame instantly – the donk that sucked you out. When you have AA and someone calls your all-in with 72o, your mind expects you to win this hand 100/100 times. But actually you only win that hand 87.4% of the time and this is a bit hard to grasp, because AA looks so superior. With poker your mindset has to be stronger than with betting imo.
So poker was always more annoying to me than actually being fun and I only play from time to time when I am bored nowadays (and quit after short time again, because of rage^^).

As to how I see my life. Well, I have a pretty normal life I think. I work full-time, but from home. I am kind of self-employed and responsible for what I am doing, without being held accountable for anything. But else than that, I am not having some kind of Jetset life, like maybe poker or esports pro’s have with travelling, staying in fancy hotels, attending parties with drugs, alcohol and whatever else. And I was never looking for that anyway. I don’t get easily impressed with material things either and I am not the envious type of person. I just like to live my life the way I want and betting gives me the opportunity to do just that to a good extent.

I explained in an earlier post how this all unfolded. I could maybe add, that I was first introduced to betting by a friend of mine. We were on our way to the pub and he told me, he would win hundreds of Euros, if Barca, team X, team Y etc. win. He played some parlay with our german state bookie and it kind of got me excited, so I decided to have a look what this is all about.
And for the record: His parlay lost of course

How do you manage to control gambling addiction?

You see, I started to feel that kind of attitude when I experienced to win huge at gambling and not contented with small profits. I have some reflections but it is hard for me to go back from being a small player which contented with small gains. How can you control yourself from greediness?

I am refraining from gambling slowly, which is not kinda effective.

I often asked myself the question, if am addicted to gambling. In the past I tended to say probably yes. But I never bothered with being addicted, since it was kind of good addiction to me – I was making money with it and didn’t feel like I ticked a lot of boxes that come with a gambling addiction.

Nowadays I can clearly say, that I am not addicted. I have no problem being without gambling for some time and I am not missing it in these times. I probably have already gambled too much in all those years, so there seems to be some saturation But I always get back to gambling, since I have to make some money as well of course.

Greediness is a bad thing, but all people suffer from it; not only gambling people.  And I have no recipe to stop it tbh. It’s just some natural human instinct I guess.
If you think gambling has a negative impact on your life and you are spending/losing too much money, I would just stop. This is of course easier said than done and I am no psychologist. But I would probably start with breaking my routines and look for other things to do during my spare time (sports, going for walks, going out, learn new things, read).
And if all that doesn’t help, I would seek for professional help. There is no reason to be ashamed to look for help, if you are sick and gambling addiction is a sickness.

[tyKiwanuka]

That was inspiring I guess making it simple and not complicated is fine. Anyways, what gambling sites are you into? sports betting sites? dice, poker, etc. Personally I have more success at sports bettings I don't know but in sports, you can pretty much predict who is winning if you know the team and sports of course but not at all time, In majority I have more wins than losses in those betting platforms.

Thank you. Doing my best to give some insights and background information.

I am only doing sportsbetting and some poker every now and then for fun.

Having more wins than losses in betting does not always mean you are a winning player. It depends of course on the stakes for each bet and the odds.
I can play 50 bets with odds of 1,01 and stake of 10,- and win them all. Then I lose one bet with stake 10,-. I’ll then have a W/L ratio of 50-1, but till sit at a loss.

For the questions about the sites I am using, see this:

The first bookie I ever registered with was Interwetten, an european soft book. During all the years I have registered with maybe 200+. Some of them still exist, others do not, but most of them I can't use anymore due to being limited to very low amounts or even having my account closed by them. I didn't play with all of those accounts frequently, often times they just had one good bet, so I registered, placed the bet and never went back there. I placed the majority of my bets with 15-20 bookmakers, but the portfolio always had some fluctuation due to various reasons (limits, geo restrictions, witched bookmakers, taxes, ceased operations, some smaller books were taken over by bigger ones etc.).

Nowadays I am placing my bets mostly on exchanges, agent accounts and two accounts that survived the years. I tried my luck with some crypto bookies, but they rarely have the best odds for my bets or don't offer what I want to bet on, so they are not that interesting to me. 

Ok, so on my side I'm just curious about the reaction of your family and friends
At the beginning were they afraid of your "job", because it is not a safe one and it's an addictive one ?
Are they still afraid ?

When you meet someone for the first time and they ask you about your work, what's your answer ?

It took a long time until I told my parents what exactly I am doing and that I wanted to do this longterm as a profession. You know parents are parents and they always want the best for their kids. This is my life and I am not trying to please people and fit into their schemes. I have to live this life and I have the right to shape it like I want and the way I think it is a good/fun life.
They were ok with it, since they saw it made me happy and that I could live from it. They always trusted me a lot, but deep inside I know, that they would have been happier seeing me working in some more fancy job, like in a bank for example. Parents always like to brag a bit with their offspring, but if your son is gambling for a living, this is a bit hard to do. Most people don’t understand what this is all about, don’t know that such jobs exist and in the end are not interested anyway.

From my friends I had at least no negative reactions. Most were like, yeah, just do what you’re doing. But my closer friends always found it pretty cool and showed interest, being curious, asking questions – and also wanted to give me money to bet with it for them and make them some money too. But I never took money from anyone. Putting your own money at stake is already enough pressure, so no need to put other peoples money at risk too.

Being asked what I am working, I either tell right away what I am doing or just say I am a freelancer. It depends a bit on who is in front of me. I was more cautious in the past with telling what I really do, but these days I don’t care that much no more.
Especially the older generation isn’t aware that there is lots of possibilities to work online/from home today. The internet opened up a lot of online jobs and this is a completely secret and mysterious world for older people. So with older people I tend to tell something they understand better just to not being forced to explain it all to them.

[dunfida]

Okay here some of my questions. 

What pushes you to go full time with gambling(poker)? Do you have a day stable job before that?

Have you considered first on playing dice games and other luck-based one before you do jump on poker?

If you do make consistent profits on daily or living basis then you are doing a good job and only a few who do able to
manage this one.

[DarkDays]

Is/was gambling your only profession, or did you have other jobs also?

I was a professional poker player for several years back when I lived in LA, but now I spend my time shorting derivatives. Seems like a lot of professional poker players end up as traders, since they've already learned to avoid the emotional part of dealing with money.

I'll bet you've tried your hand at trading too.

[sunsilk]

tyKi, thank you for answering those questions. You know what? while I'm reading the answers for my questions, I'm imagining the struggle you've been with your starting days. But that was a great experience you have, such a very good example as a gambler. Base on your answers, it shows how disciplined you are as a gambler.

I want to ask few more question/s but I guess it's going to be too much already. I appreciated your answers.

[tyKiwanuka]

What pushes you to go full time with gambling(poker)?

I went full-time with betting, not poker

It kind of fell into my lap as explained earlier. I was making good money with betting, more than a regular job in modern slavery would have given me at that time, so why work for less money and more importantly less fun.

Do you have a day stable job before that?

Is/was gambling your only profession, or did you have other jobs also?

I never had a regular job, but kept on working in my students job after finishing my studies (I already turned "pro" during my studies):

I used to have a little job, which gave me a small steady income and also paid for my health insurance and things like that. I liked that job, since it put me away from my screens for some hours every week and sort of refreshed my mind. I never liked to spend the whole day in front of the computer, I always looked for some variety, which that job gave me, but also doing some sports, going out, doing this and that. I don't have that job anymore, so I am relying solely on my bets now, which is putting some pressure on I must confess.

Have you considered first on playing dice games and other luck-based one before you do jump on poker?

No, I never was into things like dice games, lucky me I never had any contact with gambling until I was introduced to betting by a friend (see the story above somewhere, if you are interested).

Seems like a lot of professional poker players end up as traders, since they've already learned to avoid the emotional part of dealing with money.

I'll bet you've tried your hand at trading too.

Yes, good point with those poker pros. Once you understand how markets/tables work, get the dynamics behind it and also are not super dumb when it comes to maths, it's all pretty similar. You have the framework and already went through all the emotional hussle that comes with it. I have seen poker pros go betting pros and vice versa. I have yet to meet people that went from poker/betting pro to trading pro though, but they surely exist (like you).

Actually I only ever traded sports odds and nothing else.

I want to ask few more question/s but I guess it's going to be too much already. I appreciated your answers.

Just ask them. When I find the time, I will answer.

[Ailmand]

I was never the person to prepare a lot for my bets and do extensive research. what takes a lot of time is watching my sports and i watch them a lot ! this is my preparation and the best preparation imo. you can extract many useful information by just watching sports, observing things and building your own opinion by what is presented in front of you.

Thank you for answering. I would also like to ask are you following or have a set of principles or discipline that you stick with when you gamble, or do you sometimes or most of the times bet randomly on events or sports avalaible you are familiar with? Would you consider your self gambling addicted? No offense meant, I am just curious. 

[Genemind]

Did you ever try to quit and stop yourself from gambling because you have lost most of your capital and assets? How did you handle your downfalls in gambling? We all know that gambling isn't all about winning and sometimes, losing leads us to disappointments, how did you surpass those stages?

[Rosilito]

I never thought that someone would take gambling for a living. You're quite a different man. Well, living is a gamble in the first place, isn't it? Anyway, what made you decide to take gambling as a source of income? And do you let a day having no gain? Or you won't stand up unless you lose? Do you have any long term plan? Like conducting a small business for you to generate passive income? And what it takes to be a professional gambler? Sorry for loads of questions, man 'cause I find your life interesting, and I have more question I just can't say it right now. Thank you in advance, appreciated.

[Mahanton]

What situations you experienced that almost makes you quit on betting? Ex. Losing streak etc. and how you do overcome it?

[maxreish]

Aww, you made me realized one thing when I read your answer to my question.
Discipline
You have that and not every gamble has that attitude. I feels like there is something that is lacking ingredient as a gambler and that is what I do see now with myself. I still managed to stop when I do think I am depositing my own money already and then lose. Now the only one who can help me is myself. Thanks for the answers being my reflections. Highly appreciated, bro.

[tyKiwanuka]

Thank you for answering. I would also like to ask are you following or have a set of principles or discipline that you stick with when you gamble, or do you sometimes or most of the times bet randomly on events or sports avalaible you are familiar with? Would you consider your self gambling addicted? No offense meant, I am just curious. 

My main principles are sticking to my money management, focusing on single bets and staying with the sports/leagues where I have an edge; or think I have. This leads to discipline, if you follow those rules; which is probably hard for a lot of people, since no one monitors and you can just break the rules without any consequences but monetary ones. From time to time I do some fun bets in other sports, bigger parlays or system bets. I am just human and like to have some gambles as well - my normal/pro betting I would phrase investing (in good odds) rather than gambling.

Your second quesiton was already answere here:

I often asked myself the question, if am addicted to gambling. In the past I tended to say probably yes. But I never bothered with being addicted, since it was kind of good addiction to me – I was making money with it and didn’t feel like I ticked a lot of boxes that come with a gambling addiction.

Nowadays I can clearly say, that I am not addicted. I have no problem being without gambling for some time and I am not missing it in these times. I probably have already gambled too much in all those years, so there seems to be some saturation But I always get back to gambling, since I have to make some money as well of course.

Did you ever try to quit and stop yourself from gambling because you have lost most of your capital and assets? How did you handle your downfalls in gambling? We all know that gambling isn't all about winning and sometimes, losing leads us to disappointments, how did you surpass those stages?

Why should I stop with something that brings me joy and money ?

There were losing stretches, but you should always think longterm, variance happens. My first losing month came after 3.5 years of betting and it even was two losing months in a row with quite some losses. Was hard to digest at first, but I looked at the big picture. I had won amount X during all those years and now I have lost 10% of that, no big deal and it was expected to happen at some point.  I was still confident with my abilities and trusted my system. Took my foot off the gas a bit, lowered the stakes and tried to forget about what happened and have a fresh start. It worked and it took a long time for the next losing month to appear on my spreadsheet again.

I never thought that someone would take gambling for a living. You're quite a different man. Well, living is a gamble in the first place, isn't it? Anyway, what made you decide to take gambling as a source of income? And do you let a day having no gain? Or you won't stand up unless you lose? Do you have any long term plan? Like conducting a small business for you to generate passive income? And what it takes to be a professional gambler? Sorry for loads of questions, man 'cause I find your life interesting, and I have more question I just can't say it right now. Thank you in advance, appreciated.

That are indeed a lot of questions

Some of them I already answered more or less earlier, let me get some quotes for you:

It kind of fell into my lap as explained earlier. I was making good money with betting, more than a regular job in modern slavery would have given me at that time, so why work for less money and more importantly less fun.

I started betting for fun in first place. By the time I learned that I can actually make money with this and now the fun and making money aspect have merged.

I don't set myself any targets or limits. I play bets whenever I see value (well, sometimes the recreational gambler in me also places some fun bets ). This can be 10 bets a day or no bets at all for several days. I don't stop for the day after I have won amount X nor do I stop, when I have lost amount Y. I stop, when there is no bets with value left. So the discipline is to not gamble when there is nothing worth to gamble on.

And I am not thinking in days, but rather in months. Every single betting person, pro or not, will have losing days, losing weeks and losing months. I have had a few losing months, but never a losing year. I was never the person to chase losses or go on tilt, I just tried to keep going and do solid work (yes, this is hard work). So discipline has never been an issue for me, but it is for many people. If you lack discipline and lose your mind easily, you will have a hard time in this business.

I don't have any long term plans betting wise. It's a very fast business and what works today might not work tomorrow anymore. During recent years it already has become harder and harder to survive in the betting markets and regulatory issues are not helping this case as well. So I don't bank on doing this for eternity, I take it day by day and don't think too much on what will be in 1 year.

I do of course have a private plan or a plan for my life in the future, but this is not something I would want to discuss in public, sorry Generating passive income is always welcomed, but I don't think I will (have to) start a small business for that. There is lots of possibilites to invest your money and generate some income from it.

Let me do some brainstorming for what it takes to be a professional gambler and put it here without any particular order:

Discipline, money management, dedication, cold-bloodedness, some maths, willing to learn, be content with spending a lot of time in front of the computer, mentally stable, accepting losses, working hard and for long hours, being able to adapt, good observer, lots of reading/watching, gut feeling, motivation, don't be greedy and start small.

You don't have to have that all I am lacking in some of those as well, but if you lack the majority, you should better not think about going pro. Being a pro isn't always fun and also has quite some disadvantages, but no one asked so far about that, so no need to post it just yet^^

What situations you experienced that almost makes you quit on betting? Ex. Losing streak etc. and how you do overcome it?

Longer losing streaks of course always make you kind of think of that. See the second question in this post and how to overcome it or how I do it normally.

The thing that always makes the think about quitting and what will probably make me quit one day, is the "logistics". German government is coming up with some pretty crazy shit all the time to bully gambling people. As a result I am pretty tight on betting accounts nowadays. And without a good and somewhat big bookmaker portfolio, things are getting complicated. I am running out of accounts because the german government wants to get their share of taxes from the bookmakers smokescreening it with "player protection". So lots of geo restrictions are in place, some bookmakers tax me as a resident of Germany and I am blocked by a lot of bookmakers.

That is why I was shifting my focus more on Betfair trading in recent times, as Betfair is a place where you can do your business without too many inconveniences. But I can't access Betfair (Exchange) from Germany, so had to go via an agents account. Betfair decided to close those agent accounts in December, and as a result I don't have a Betfair account now no more. Only have this white-label Orbit account. They have no API and thus no betting software can be used. Trading without software on a pretty laggy site like Orbit is kind of weary.

These surrounding logistics are really a nightmare and annoying

[pleasureteam]

As I see the most of your winnings come from tracking value from the market. Do you manually search for valuebets or do you use some special software to do so?
As you also mentioned currently your mostly are betting on exchanges. Do you really bet (gamble) on the exchange or do you rather trade on those exchanges?

[tyKiwanuka]

As I see the most of your winnings come from tracking value from the market. Do you manually search for valuebets or do you use some special software to do so?
As you also mentioned currently your mostly are betting on exchanges. Do you really bet (gamble) on the exchange or do you rather trade on those exchanges?

I know my leagues/sports I am covering so have "my" odds in mind for the matches. When the first odds come out, I will have a look and can compare, where I have a different opinion and what probably has some value. And everybody can do it more or less, the good punters/traders just can do it better.

Lets say we have Liverpool playing Watford at home and you get these odds: 8,71 - 5,62 - 1,33 (1X2). Anyone can see that the odds for Liverpool are insane and most likely have some value. Now this example is of course exaggerated, normally you have smaller "margins" (not sure, if that is the correct word).

In my mind I maybe have odds of 2,0 as a fair price for a certain team. Odds come out and I could get 2,50 for that team. I would place a pre-match bet here then. If the odds were only 2,20, I probably wouldn't place a bet, since I can get better odds inplay. If the odds were 2,0, I would just wait for inplay and see if some opportunities arise. If not, then not, there is enough other matches to bet on.

So, in general, I spot value by just following my sports/leagues, keeping myself informed, think about winning probabilities, make up my own odds and things like that. You can also spot value with doing statistical analyses of course, but this requires some expertise in coding etc and was never my way (apart from the fact that I am not able to code such things ). You are most likely working with a lower yield then, but will have huge turnover of course, since your computer just tells you what to do and you can calculate the fair odds for tons of matches and place your bets accordingly. This is a bit bot-ish then and would take lots of fun out for me. But to each his own, as I said there is lots of ways to make money with betting - but the concept of value always applies.

-

Really pure punting I rarely do on the exchange, so my answer would be trading. But what is trading in the end ? It's a pretty wide field. If I place a pre-match bet on Liverpool to win and hedge it after they scored the lead - is that considered trading ? A trade can be backing something and laying it after the odds moved in your favour and never come back. Or I can do gazillion of backs and lays during a tennis match for example. I am not a high frequenzy trader, so I would normally back and lay a bit, wait for higher inplay odds or just react to what is happening in front of me.

I only play pre-match bets, when I see very good value and think that I won't get to see these/higher odds inplay (these bets are often not found on Betfair, but are early odds with bookmakers). But even with these pre-match bets, that were supposed to be a classical punt, I may be  tempted to lay off some liability inplay, if things go my way. I often hedge punts, which is a flaw in my "system". Cut your losses short and let your winners run they say, but I always struggled a bit with that tbh.

[White Christmas]

Actually I can share a story on how and what is the life of a professional gambler. If you are usually going to a casino, definitely you can see a people who are just playing and gambling but definitely it is not hid/her own money, in which there are a manager that is giving him a money or stakes in order to gamble it and play. Most likely I can saw those person who has a lot of debts and his manager is giving him a money in order to play and pay for their debts. And the percent of the player and the financer will be divided in terms and agreement with the both parties. What I am trying to say is, there are still some professional gamblers that still not rich but able to play at it's fullest.

[rhomelmabini]

I just read poker in the OP I guess I'll ask things in regards to it.

1. Do you believe that your hands are just pure luck or it really has to do with strategy or involving math skills?
2. Which one you make money a lot easier is it from poker or from trading (feels like I'll include this to make some comparison)?

[amishmanish]

Great thread to read as my first one coming into the Gambling section. Being a professional gambler yourself, I am sure you have dipped hands into almost everything from dice games, poker to slots, maybe in both the online as well as real-world casino format. So here is my question.

How would you describe to someone about the world of gambling including its value as entertainment as well as a source of income, like in your case.

PS: You described the sports betting and your strategy towards it in one of the answers. It seems a big part of it is actually watching a lot of sports. So, Watching sports and then earning money off of it, you have done quite well..

[tyKiwanuka]

I just read poker in the OP I guess I'll ask things in regards to it.

1. Do you believe that your hands are just pure luck or it really has to do with strategy or involving math skills?
2. Which one you make money a lot easier is it from poker or from trading (feels like I'll include this to make some comparison)?

I don't play poker for a living and never did, but I thought about it. I said in the OP, that poker is the only gambling game apart from betting, where you can make money longterm. So to answer your question, I make more money with betting/trading In general, you can make good money with both, it depends a bit on your personal preferences and abilites, which one fits you better.

Your poker hands are just pure luck short-term of course. But over a big enough sample size you should be dealt the exact same cards as all your fellow players, so we have a level playing field. The question is, what you do with your hands and how you play them. That is where the math comes in play and the ability to read your opponent.

Great thread to read as my first one coming into the Gambling section. Being a professional gambler yourself, I am sure you have dipped hands into almost everything from dice games, poker to slots, maybe in both the online as well as real-world casino format. So here is my question.

How would you describe to someone about the world of gambling including its value as entertainment as well as a source of income, like in your case.

PS: You described the sports betting and your strategy towards it in one of the answers. It seems a big part of it is actually watching a lot of sports. So, Watching sports and then earning money off of it, you have done quite well..

Actually I only ever invested lots of time in betting. For poker I read some books and played a bit with small-ish stakes, but not my game in the end. Never played dice, and slots only, when I got some free spins from bookmakers. I was in a real life Casino only once and don't think I will go there very often in the future.

Your second question is a bit unspecific, so I am having trouble to understand what you would like to hear. I already wrote a lot about intentions, how it all started, about the fun/money relation and all those things. Maybe scroll a bit through this thread and see if that answers your question. If not, just come back


This is a bit off-topic, but everyone who is fascinated by the "world of betting" and likes to read a bit, should have a look at "Game, Set, Cash!: Inside the Secret World of International Tennis Trading" from Brad Hutchinson. It's about courtsiding in Tennis and taking advantage of time delays in TV broadcasts. It's an easy to read and understand book with a lot of fun stories of a young man getting paid to travel the world and working for a gambling syndicate.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22226468-game-set-cash

I am not earning any money by mentioning this book here nor do I know Brad. I just recommend it here for interested people, since I have had so much fun reading it (and did so already thrice).

[sunsilk]

I want to ask few more question/s but I guess it's going to be too much already. I appreciated your answers.

Just ask them. When I find the time, I will answer.

I forgot the question that I'm about to ask you yesterday but it goes something like this. What can you say about those paid tipsters? those gamblers that are asking for payment with their insights and insiders?

I think it's a good question because we've been seeing those kind of tipsters here in the forum before and probably in the future, more of them will come. Do you have anything to say for those people that wants to avail it or try it? honestly, I'm not asking this for myself but in general because it is what I see.