New Age of Professional Poker

Money. Some people have it, everyone wants it, and a few people even gamble to get it. Profession on-line poker players are a few of these people.

“It’s not gambling. Well it can be gambling if you’re not good, but poker is a skill sport like baseball, or football. It is an acquired skill you develop through practice and hard work,” said Kush Patel, a professional poker player.

Patel is just one of an entire labor force playing poker on-line to support them. He plays poker (mostly Texas holdem) as a full time job, and makes money like any other full time job. “I play on-line for at least eight hours a day six or seven days a week. While I play, I play sixteen cash games at a time on my double to triple monitor set up,” Said Patel.

At first it seems like an easy job. Get to stay at home; choose your own hours, and you get to play poker. “I hate it” said Patel “its grueling work. Staring at two screens while constantly needing to be aware of ever hand at every table gets exhausting. One mis-click could cost me hundreds of dollars”.

That’s right, a “mis-click”. Which means folding on accident or raising on accident. Basically clicking the wrong button is all it takes to turn a winning day into a losing day.

If that doesn’t sound stressful enough sometimes a forty hour week can turn no profit what so ever. “It’s tough and even if you are the best other people will get lucky. You play the odds, and sometimes the wrong cards just seemed to find their way onto the table,” Said Patel.

Patel learned that first hand just one year ago while playing in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. “I played for three days and lost with pocket kings to ace king; it was the first time in my life I was upset with the game”.

As I sat in on one of Patel’s poker sessions I found out firsthand how hard managing the tables really are. I wasn’t even able to focus on four tables at a time let alone the sixteen Kush sits in front of every day of his life.

Patel is just the tip of the ice berg. There are literally millions of people that log onto these poker sites everyday to try and win money. However, most just end up giving all their money to players like Kush who do it for a living.

“I’ve been playing online for about five years. I’ve never really won; just throw thirty bucks or so in every once in a while, and it’s usually gone in a week or so,” said Tim Baroni. Baroni is the perfect example of how people like Kush make their money; they beat people who are worse than them, amateurs.

“Usually people win when the first start playing; they get lucky make bad decisions, and end up winning 100 bucks or so”. “Over time they end up giving me the money or someone else because their luck runs out. Those are the targets, we call them fish,” said Patel.

A Fish is an amateur player who basically loses their money time and time again, and doesn’t understand why. These are the players who fund the professional players allowing the pros to feed themselves and live pretty well.

“I work hard, but yes I also do pretty well for myself,” said Patel. Patel would not go into how much he actually pulls in a year due to certain reasons, but he did divulge it was upwards of six figures a year.

Playing poker is not the only thing these online gurus do; there is a much larger market for good poker players then most people know about.

“I also work for a staking company based out of Seattle Washington which stakes new players in tournaments. If the players win we get half” said Patel. “I also coach players for about 200 dollars an hour”. So, not all the money comes from just playing poker, but more often than not playing the actual game is where these entrepreneurs make most of their money.

At first the word entrepreneur seems a little out of place but after seeing the market that has been created one cannot argue against it. They have taken something that was once only done at casinos and backroom games to the internet.

Entire companies have been started just to tend to the needs of these professionals. Computers have been developed to meet their specific needs, and countless programs which analyze every hand have been developed to show what hands hit more often than others.

Since the new card cameras came to be about six years ago, Texas Hold Em has become a household game. The cameras immediately turned poker into one of the best TV sports to watch; allowing people such as Patel to see how the game is played.

“I got into poker the first year the whole card cameras came out. My poker career kicked off the same as most people; I put some money in online and lost it all immediately”. Said Patel

As the truth with everything else in the world, before one can be good at something you generally start off bad at it. “Yeah it was pretty bad I lost 500 dollars in a matter of minutes. A lot more than watching the pros on TV goes into becoming a good poker player,” said Patel.

Patel like most players dove into the sport before he was ready, and it almost convinced him to never play again. “After I lost my first deposit I figured the game was all luck, and quit for about a year. Then a found a website called 2plus2.com, which is a poker forum where players post about their hands. That website is why I am where I am today.”

Patel then went on to read more poker books and do more research on the sport. He quickly learned of a thing called variance, and how it applies to poker. “Basically, variance is why I win and why I lose. It is my 1 percent advantage in a game with average players. That overtime adds up but in the short run is the reason why I lose,” said Patel.

When Patel sits at a poker table he has a competitive advantage over the other players because he knows the game better. This advantage is small “maybe one or two percent,” said Patel. Over time the one percent advantage adds up, and is the reason Patel is able to make money in the long term.

However in the short term the variance can be quite painful. “Sometimes I will work a 40 hour week and lose three or four thousand dollars. However, if there was no variance then the fish would never win. If the fish never won they wouldn’t play, and I would be out of business,” said Patel.

ME: So what your saying is sometimes losing is a good thing? Patel: No losing is never I good thing I hate losing. Hahaha. It’s just a part of the game that I have to deal with.

Patel has made a great living playing poker, but doesn’t see himself playing for the rest of his life. “I got into it just to make some money and it pretty much took over my life. Unless I make it big I plan on quitting in a year or so and getting back into school,” said Patel.

The on-line poker community continues to grow, and is showing no signs of slowing down. According to Patel almost all professional players get started just as he did, through reading and studying the game. Patel insists he is not some super poker genius, and that anyone who puts the work in could do what he’s doing.

“I’m not saying you’ll get all the breaks all the time, but if you’re willing to do the work that money is out there to be won,” said Patel.

As the industry grows more and more people are looking to get their share of the money. However, becoming a fish and feeding money into the system is a very real outcome. So, before you decide to go all in just remember the player across the table may just have you beat; even if only by one percent.

A Profile of Kush Patel's path