Did you know you could make a living playing online poker simply by being a break-even player?

Many online poker players dream of one day being able to tell their boss to shove off and sitting at home and making a comfortable living.  But then they look at their results and reality sets in.  Unless  you’re playing nosebleed limits earning a few BB per 100 hands simply isn’t enough money to live off of.

But what if there was a way to earn thousands of extra dollars every month while you were playing online poker?

Let’s say that you’re a winning $1/$2, 6-max limit player with a win rate of about 2BB every 100 hands (2BB/100).  Maybe you can handle 2, 3, even 4 tables and still pull off a win rate of 1BB/100.  So, let’s say in a 6-max game you’re seeing about 75 hands an hour per table.  That’s a little low but we should err on the side of being conservative if we’re talking about someone’s livelihood.

So at a 1BB/100 win rate your earning $2 every hundred hands.  On four tables that’s about 300 hands an hour.  So, $2 every hundred hands multiplied by 300 hands per hour and we’re looking at a whopping $6 an hour.  You might as well flip burgers for that kind of money.  But let’s just keep doing the math and assume you play 6 hours a day (you’re a pro now) which results in $1,080 a month in revenue.  Yikes!  Not every impressive at all unless you sleep in your car and like dog food.

Even if you moved up to $2/$4 and could keep your 1BB/100 win rate on four tables, that’s still only $2,160.  Obviously better but not quite what we had in mind when we decided to go pro for a living.

But what if you were receiving rakeback?

Well, at $1/$2 6-max using the same 4 tables and 6 hours of daily play, on a 27% rakeback deal (which is very conservative considering we have rakeback deals as high as 50% with the average rakeback deal being around 33%) that’s an additional $1,755 a month (rake / rakeback calculations are approximated and will vary on your actual play).  Now your $1080 combined with the $1755 in rakeback becomes a somewhat respectable $2835 or roughly $17.72 an hour if you were working a 40 hour work week.

And what happens if you are able to move up to $2/$4 and maintain a 1BB/100 win rate?  Well, you can add approx $4,291 in rakeback to your $2,160 in winnings and now we have a very respectable $6,451 a month in income coming in.

Didn’t you say something about being a break-even player?

Well, let’s say you notch things up a bit and start playng $3/$6 limit, 6-max.  Assuming the same four tables and the same six hours a day grinding it out, that’s $5,656 a month.  That’s all rackback!!!

But I play NL

Oh, well things even look better for you.  If you’re playing $1/$2 NL, 6-max, four tabling, six hours a day, then even if you only broke even on your playing you could still be making $5,202 a month just in rakeback.  Throw in a decent win rate and you’re earning well over the national average salary sitting at home playing poker!

So it’s not as dire as it first appears if you would like to make a go at making a living playing online poker.  Sure, there is no medical coverage, retirement plan, and you’re going to expereince up and down swings in your earnings but if the thing was holding you back was the low winnings at lower limit poker give it a new look with rakeback factored in.

And remember, we did all of this at one of the lower rakeback levels of only 27%.  Some sites pay as much as 50% rakeback.