One Year of Playing Poker for a Living
By The Maroon

I just realized that it has now been over a year since I quit my job to play poker for a living. I was working 25-30 hours a week at $11 per hour, for a net income of about $15,000 (pre tax) annually. I am not sure exactly how much I made because I didn’t keep records of my live play the first few months (which was most of my play) but I can estimate my expenditures and know about how much my bankroll grew during that time. So I am positive that the net sum was either 6 figures or very close to it, meaning that I made more in one year than I would have in 6-7 years of working my regular job.

When I first quit my job I had saved up a bankroll of about $5,000. I started playing live and immediately lost a few thousand, which forced me to move down to playing $5/$10 in real life. Then at some point I discovered Party Poker and began playing $3/$6 and $33 Single Tables on there. I played quite a few hours and over the first 2 months I covered my expenses and grew my bankroll to back over $5k. A few times during that period I would take a shot at playing a few $5/$10 games but each time I hit a bad streak and lost my way back down to $3/$6, at which point I promptly rebuilt my bankroll. This was trying to my confidence, but I knew that it was simply short term results working against me and I kept at it. Then came my lucky break...