Can You Make a Living Playing Online?

Its definitely possible, but all depends on what you would call a living!

Casino bonuses are less generous than they used to be a few years ago, and low risk games are often banned on the bonus, or have wagering requirements set very high. So its increasingly difficult to rely on juicy casino bonuses to give you an edge in the long term.

Poker and sports betting however are different because both can be played against other people and not the house (albeit you pay a commission). There are plenty of professional gamblers in both scenes. Its not easy and requires plenty of practice and dedication but poker is probably the one most people would be most likely to succeed at. I am sure you could make a living off playing mid stakes games if you developed the required skill, but remember its only a tiny fraction who are flying around the world playing tournaments on tv.

But for me I don't think I would want to make a living purely gambling. It would take away a lot of the fun, and playing poker hours and hours every single day would get soul-crushingly boring after a while. Its like the guys who work in a chocolate factory and are allowed to eat any of the chocolate they want. It doesn't take long before most of them never want to touch another chocolate again.

I think many people do try to make a living on gambling whether online or in the land casinos. There are people who "need" to win so in a sense they are gambling for a living.

Definitely a tough business.

Definitely the latter. I play less than I used to before I started working on it all the time. But I must admit I used to be a first class bonus whore so the juicy bonuses have well and truly dried up for me now! Now its far more casual for me, I play a bit on most weekends and whenever I get offered a good special bonus.

Also after playing at and evaluating so many casinos I am far more conscious of where I play now. I can't believe some of the dodgy places I have deposited my money at in my time (and yes I've had my share of rip offs). I am far more selective these days.

After playing in free tournaments at WinPalace and SlotsJungle where you start out with 5,000 credits and bet 100 at a time, I am certain I could never make a living gambling on slot machines. I routinely end a tournament with 1,500 to 3,500 credits. Rarely I have doubled the 5,000 I start out with or tripled it. Other casino tournaments with more modest banks - I usually lose the bank eventually. I'm not as lucky as I thought I was when I stop to think about it.

Yea, the slots tournaments are rough. You are playing something purely based on chance. There is no way you could realistically earn a living playing those, unless you are the luckiest person in the world. Poker, blackjack, or other table games I could see as you could devise a basic strategy, but it would still be a very hard haul for you to pull off consistently.

I would love to make a living playing online doing casino gambling or sport betting, but the reality isn't here for me. I had a dream last night that I bet on the PGA tour this weekend and walked away with $500,000, but I think that is as close as I will ever come to eeking out a living off online gambling.

Slot tournaments ... hmm. Ok I will tell this story that I have kept to myself for a long time but no names shall be revealed! There was a bug in a casino's tournaments a few years ago that I discovered. The rebuy button was never disabled, allowing you to hit it over and again and add to your chip stack, and every rebuy added a bit to the pot (although not as much as you put in, so you didn't want to overdo it). So to win the tournaments all you had to do was keep rebuying until you hit the lead. The thing that made it even more devious was that every time you made a rebuy you were required to make another 5 or 10 spins until your score was counted. And while your score didn't count you weren't included on the leaderboard. So you basically rebuyed until you had enough chips to be in the lead then left yourself with 1 spin to go to remain hidden until there was only 10 seconds left on the clock, then spun and dropped out of nowhere into first place.

I milked that for a few weeks until other players worked it out and started doing it. But it actually became funny and even more exciting because when you knew other players were doing it there was a mystery factor of not knowing exactly how many rebuys you needed to make sure you would win. I even made a spreadsheet that helped me calculate roughly how much of the pot money was hidden to allow me to estimate what I needed to beat. And every so often someone would make a mistake and do too many spins and reveal themselves on the leaderboard, which sometimes resulted in a race where you were frantically rebuying trying to beat their score to get a bigger prize. Eventually the casino worked it out and fixed the problem, over a month later mind you, where they must have been scratching their heads trying to work out what was going on. But it was good while it lasted, and certainly enough to make a living off - I'm talking several hundreds, sometimes 4 figure profits every single day. And the casino paid every cent.

Holy bajeezus Ed. I am pretty sure i know who youre talking about there as i used to whore out tournaments a lot back in the day. I used to see that happen all the tiem - players jump out of nowhere into first spot. I used to think the casino was just slow to update their leaderboard or something! You sly dog you!

That sounds like my dream machine Usne!

I used to make a living off casino bonuses while I was a poor unemployed student. It beat getting a real job and paid better too! but sooner or later you run out of bonuses and the value isnt there any more.

I know a few people whose only job is playing online poker. I would believe that would be the best place to go if you wanted to make a living playing online. I read an article, a while back, in Minnesota Monthly about a guy who did this. He and a small group of friends. He had several computer monitors and he would play five to six games at a time.

I knew a guy and his brother who played online FT, too. One got tired of it after about a year. Isolating and he actually got bored. His brother ended up winning one of those tournaments to go and enter the big tournaments in Vegas, and he did quite well.

You really have to study and know your "stuff." Even then, it is still gambling. And we all hear those stories where someone started with a small bankroll and ended up winning into the big tournaments, like Chris Moneymaker who turned $40.00 into 2.5 million. Has to be some luck involved there, too. 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Moneymaker

Chris Moneymaker .. what a legend. And appropriately named too! A lot of people think he is one of the big reasons behind the poker boom in the last decade because he has shown that anyone could do it. Definitely some luck involved but you don't turn $40 into a WSOP win without a hell of a lot of skill.

From my point of view, at first I thought playing poker for a living would be nice. Over the long term I have been a winning player at the (very low) stakes I play at now and then. And it would take a lot of practice and dedication to do the same at bigger stakes against better players. But the idea of just sitting there day after day multi-tabling to grind out money to live on sounds so boring and ultimately a bit pointless. I mean what exactly are you contributing to in society while doing that? Only if I had no job and no other choice and was desperate would I turn to that!

With discipline, faith, expert knowledge of the game, a hefty set of brass balls and a good sense of humour yes it is possible. But I entirely agree with what Ed says. The line between doing it as a living and feeding a gambling habit is fine and risky. This risk is not just financial it is also to do with the way you live your life as you would all too soon be playing too much, too long which makes the whole process soul destroying.

For diehards though I would say you need to find a way of playing that allows you to increase the odds that you get paid out on when a winner does come up (- I am talking about table games here, for slots I guess that would be impossible). This makes the risk to reward workable but it is extremely hard to find the right maths and bets to make this kind of strategy rock, although it is possible.

The best approach is to set a precise goal and go for it. Car, holiday, whatever. Allow a reasonable amount of time to achieve this (not just 3 hours, perhaps months - playing an hour or so a day). In this way the whole thing stays fun ! Playing for the gas bill every month is just not the way to approach the challenge! 🙂

i believe you can but you've got to stay away from the bonuses according to my experience.

CL-Ed wrote:

Its definitely possible, but all depends on what you would call a living!

Quite agree :\ I guess the most reliable game for making living would be one of the skill games, that depend on you, not the luck. Anyway, I guess it's better to find another source for earning...

Just make your life fully depend on gambling is not sensible, in my opinion. You can't trust casinos and their honesty. You may be lucky for some period, but sometimes it may mislead you. Also, skill games may not be trustful, as sometimes other players or casinos are dishonest and you may end up without having money or staying up without any profession or jobs that is more stable

I quite agree, one should never do that... Making your life completely dependent on gambling is the most foolish thing to do. But there are some cases that people do so, and while writing the last post, I meant such people. When you still decide to earn from gambling, I think the wise choice (if one can make such) is to try and master some games of skill and not play slots instead.

yeah, slots are just addictive and than you may say that you are doing this to earn for living and this is your chosen way for it, but I think that you are just addicted to it and can't do anything else.

I still hardly believe there's anyone counting on slots for life 😂

Incisive comments all round crew!

.

Hi yellowboots, I agree the comments are incisive, as the topic is incisive itself... I feel very sorry for all the people who have ruined their lives with gambling. This is the common misunderstanding of the topic, in my opinion. I gamble to get pleasure, and if I win, I am pleased, But if I lose, I'm never broke. because I never bet more than I can afford to lose. This is the idea, and the risk involved makes the playing process more involving and thrilling... but not scaring, dangerous and nervous .. Only positive emotions for me, please 🙂

I love playing slots and it would be amazing if I could live off gambling but I don't think I'd make enough for it to be worthwhile, plus in the end I might get boring and I prefer to keep this things I live to leisure time, than all the time!

Yes not for nothing did someone once coin the phrase, 'the only way to make a small fortune by gambling is to start off with a big one".... 🙂

Ha, that reminds me of one of my favourites.. "What's the quickest way to become a millionaire? Start as a billionaire and buy a football team."

LOL this has become one of my favorites as well. To definitely become a millionaire when you're a billionaire, you should buy Georgian football team:D They know how to make you even bankrupt 😂

It was about Abramovitch? good one 😀

Georgian Football team was so poor after that match with Spain 😢 bad 😢 but actually in other sports the country is quite OK 🙂 you should buy a basketball or rugby team in Georgia

Haha - yup I think at the moment that Lady Whatwashername who sold her shares in Arsenal not so long ago must be laughing all the way to her bank in Monte Carlo... but talking soccer maybe we should all club together our CL chips buy the country of Spain in her entirety (going cheap right now) and then sell it again after Euro 2012 when national pride might be restored and government bonds actually worth something because its all most Spaniards care about? A quick hedge on Germany getting to the semis and we should be in business. Can you fix this for us Ed? 🙂

I love the IDEA of making a living playing online, and I know a few people who DO make a living playing multiple games of Texas Holdem, on several screens, every day of their lives. I also know a guy who only held out doing that for one year. He became bored and isolated. So....I always say the reason I enjoy gambling is because I don't do it all the time. If I played every single day, I MIGHT get bored, but who knows? lol

I agree Hope, I think that gambling is quite fun as we do t rarely, relatively to other activities, such as going at work. As for the source of income, I think that gambling is impossible to be one! It's rather a source of going bankrupt, than a way to earn.

yellowboots wrote:

Haha - yup I think at the moment that Lady Whatwashername who sold her shares in Arsenal not so long ago must be laughing all the way to her bank in Monte Carlo... but talking soccer maybe we should all club together our CL chips buy the country of Spain in her entirety (going cheap right now) and then sell it again after Euro 2012 when national pride might be restored and government bonds actually worth something because its all most Spaniards care about? A quick hedge on Germany getting to the semis and we should be in business. Can you fix this for us Ed? 🙂

Thats not as preposterous as it sounds. After all a complete conman somehow bought the Racing Santander club in Spain earlier this year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/apr/27/racing-santander-la-...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1367286/Racing-Santand...

Excellent then we are on Ed 🙂 Maybe Tevez can be got cheap too, no way will he want to go to ireland... 🙂