How Many Real "Pros" Are There?
How big a bankroll do you need to go pro? A huge amount in my opinion. I think there are lots of young guys who set themselves up as professionals with bankrolls that are about 10% of the size required. I played with a 22 year old at the Irish Open last year who had “turned pro” after coming 10th in the Pokerstars Sunday Million one week. He wasn’t particularly strong either, splashing around in the cash game losing about 2k while I was there. In my opinion, he’s not a pro, just someone who won a bit of money online and has a lot of spare time due to the fact he doesn’t have a job. I imagine he won’t be in Dublin 12 months down the line. So, let’s consider the factors if I were to turn professional:
1) Duration
I’d need a bankroll deep enough to give me a 3 year shot at the big time. If I am not winning after 3 years, then it’s probably not going to happen. If I only have the bankroll for 1 or 2 years, then I don’t think I will truely know if I could have cracked it - tournament poker variance is just too high. I am sure there are plenty of top rank pros who have had significant losing years.
2) High Buy-in Tournaments
I’d need to play a lot of these. One good finish would set me up for the year (potentially for the decade) and this is where the true exposure is, if I want to secure other income sources like sponsorship. I’ve created a USD 261,000 a year schedule which would put me on the road for 27 weeks of the year on the tour.
In Europe, EPTs in Barcelona, Baden, Prague, Dortmond and Warsaw. Add the Irish Open, EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, 5 UK Poker Tour Events and the UKPT Grand Final. And of course the WSOP Europe in London.
In America Borgata, Foxwoods, Niagara Falls and Los Angeles. I’d also want to play the Bellagio 5 diamond.
WSOP - of course the main event, and I’d also want a USD 60,000 budget each year to play the bracelet events, including the 10k heads up and 10k Omaha championship events.
From the rest of the world I’d also want entries for Aussie Millions, China Open and the EPT Carribean Adventure.
3) Salary
I’d need to draw a guaranteed salary, to pay mortgages, bills, maintenance, school fees etc. Let’s say 100k-120k USD a year. This is important, as you can leave your bankroll exclusively for poker - you should be able to make better playing decisions without worrying if you can pay the next bill.
4) Travel/Hotels
These are clearly going to be significant over the year. I’ve budgeted for USD 40,000 a year, but even this might not be enough.
5) Alternative Poker Bankroll
On top of the high buy-in tournaments, I’d also need funds to play cash, online, side events and local tournaments. I’d perhaps give myself a 2,000 USD weekly budget for cash on the weeks when I am not on the road, so 46,000 USD a year. A relatively small online budget of 24,000 USD a year should suffice. I’d also want to play side games at the large tournaments - for example the LA Classic is underway at the moment and they had a huge range of warm up tournaments. Some tournaments have no warm ups however (like some of the EPT) so the average might be 2,000 USD for every major tournament played, so 54,000 USD a year. Finally, I’d want a budget of 9,200 USD to play local London tournaments while I am not away, to enable me to keep in touch with the good folks of the Loose Cannon.
6) Exit Strategy
If it all goes belly up, I’d need to get my career back on track, so I’d need a buffer fund for the end of the 3 year period to make sure I wasn’t rushed into taking a job that didn’t suit me. Call this 48,000 USD.
So what does this add up to for a 3 year shot at
it?…USD 1,638,000. You can probably reduce this slightly due the interest I’d recieve on the capital, particularly in the first year. Let’s call it 1.5million USD, so 750k GBP.
Is it acheivable? Well, unlikely, it has to be said. 3 options I guess:
A) Win it
Ah-ha the easy option! Win the Irish Open or go deep in 2 WSOP events and its done. I’ll be playing some more big tournaments in 2009, so you never know - a series of decent cash finishes over a 2/3 year period could do the trick.
B) Save it
A no-go really. By the time I could put this money together (if at all) I’d be well into my 40’s and a punishing schedule full of trips abroad needs to be done by someone in their 30s or younger in my opinion. The older you are, the more experienced you get, but fatigue is going to become too much of a factor. Add the fact that if it went wrong, it would be much easier to get back into work at the age of 38 than at 48 due to the ageist society we live in.
C) Get Backers
An interesting one. I have a modest amount of backing for 2008 (I’m giving up about 25% of my equity in all tournaments), but it’s one thing asking someone to put in 5k for a year and quite another tieing them in for 3 years and in such a big project. After all, an investment of 15,000 USD would only get them 1% of the action.
I’ve been thinking about whether it’s possible to use the hedge fund model for poker. In this case investors could come and go (within reason) and be paid a return on performance in the period less a performace fee of 20% for the “investment advisor”. This is an interesting concept because at any given time, the 15k USD investor might have perhaps 30% of my equity for a given tournament period (eg WSOP), but they are free to withdraw with a 3 month notice period. I’d always want to make sure that I had 50% of my own equity at any one time. There are also huge issues of trust here as well, because how would someone know whether I’d won 10k in a cash game in Vegas and not pocketed it. I don’t think “poker funds” would fall under the umrella of FSA regulation!
Is it all a pipe dream? Probably, but I’ll be interested to see how thing develop over the next two years.
In terms of last night, it was very uneventful. I was card dead all tournament (league night) and had to push with 9 players left with 8 2. Got called by A 7 so it wasn’t a disaster but I missed anyway. The legendary retired pro Sonny brushed off the cobwebs and won his first tournament since New Labour came to power. (Only joking Sonny - I know you do well at the Vic and Luton when you play your A-Game)
We had a very entertaining Omaha cash game afterwards with Honest Dave, myself, Volcano, Sir Mike and Hugh all in action. I picked up £60 on that so nearly flat for the night.
Next week it’s Gutshot and Loose Cannon on Monday and Tuesday, and then a break for a few days.