How Much Money Live Poker Pros Make

I said we’d talk about win-rates, so let’s talk about win-rates! Meet me at the Christmas tree!” says poker vlogger Andrew Neeme, glass of festive eggnog in hand as he shares his insights into how much money a poker grinder should be looking to make at the live tables.

That, he says, is something about which “there really isn’t that much information out there”, as anyone who has wondered whether he is making enough or doing enough to turn their hobby into a legitimate job will know only too well. BB/100, BB/hour, buy-ins and cashouts? What do we need to know?

Neeme, one of the new generation of ‘social media poker pros’ who share their thoughts and lives with fans on a daily basis through YouTube vlogs (video blogs), Twitch streams and various other online sharing media, explains that online graphs and win-rates are readily available for the most part – but live games not so much, especially cash games.

Stakes from $1/2 up to $5/10 are what Neeme wants to tell us about, which should cover about 95+% of us – so well worth listening to.

"So, what is considered a good win-rate in those low-to mid-stakes NLHE games?” he asks rhetorically. “The number I always kept in mind as my goal…was the number 10!”

Why 10? That’s the number of big blinds per hour Neeme set himself as a “long-term” target for his win-rate. So, playing $2/5 that would be a $50 per hour win-rate, at $1/2 that’s $20 p/h, although Neeme admits that some friends and other players disagree with number; 5bb/hour being closer to the true win-rate of a decent pro. But how easy is it to achieve either of those numbers?

How many hours do you need to put in?

To see if this is your true win-rate, Neeme says anything from 500-1000 hours was the ‘normal, old-school’ thought, but now he admits the number is close to …never! Rake, changing games, location, hopefully improving and adjusting your play as you play more. He explains:

"That’s why you need to have a large sample size.”

What do I have to do?

Neeme’s honesty shines through his vlog, admitting he’d made the 10bb/hr at every level except in live $5/10 games, and his exploration as to why gives us some answers for our own attempts to make it as poker pros or regular winners.

"Poor game selection and not taking enough time to go over the spots that I run into against people better than me… You’ve got to take time away from the poker table to look at the lines that you’re taking, the plays that you’re making and all that stuff."

To see the breakdown of earnings, and you’ve read this far, skip the first half of the video and go straight to his ‘calculator section’ – illuminating to say the least, especially for “most normal human beings” and exactly what makes vlogs like Neeme’s so very entertaining and informative!