Most people who want to place bets on sports are fans to begin with. It isn’t unheard of for a gambler to place some sports bets, especially during big games like the Super Bowl or the NCAA basketball Final Four, but for the most part, sports bettors are sports fans looking to use their knowledge of a game or of a game’s players to earn a little extra cash. Being a fan of a particular sport, a team, a college or professional squad—these are all precursors to placing sports bet. Sports betting is also a way for a fan to get in on the action of the game, with something more than self-respect at stake.

All gambling is mathematics, even games of chance. If you understand the math behind the game, you understand the game and can give yourself an advantage. For many games, like penny slots or poorly placed roulette bets, are so bad that smart bettors earn their advantage by avoiding them altogether. In sports betting, the math is more complicated. Depending on your favorite sport, you may need to think about things like bye weeks, underdogs, quarterback ratings, and injuries with the same fervor other connoisseurs reserve for fancy winces.

Record Keeping: Show me someone who does not keep records and I will show you a loser. Ego: I've seen this be the downfall of what otherwise may have been a good professional gambler. Until you have won 10 million or more gambling, check the ego at the door. If you have reached this level of success than why the need for the ego. It was only a matter of time before Las Vegas - the gambling Mecca of the world - followed suit. On Wednesday night, Nevada governor Steve Sisolak announced that all non-essential businesses would be shutting down across the state for 30 days (more on that here). So that begs the question, what does a professional sports bettor do now?

So how difficult is sports betting math? The math behind placing a winning bet is fairly complicated, but the way to stay ahead of the bookmaker is rather straightforward. If you collect on 52.4% of your bets, you’ll break even. We’ll have more details on that number later, including why it takes more than 50% wins to break even, but first some general knowledge about sports gambling and the numbers behind it.

Sports Betting Basics

The easiest way to demonstrate the math behind a sports bet is to make up an example. Let’s say you and your buddy walk into a casino, each with $200 burning a hole in your pocket. There’s a big game on tonight, the Cowboys and the Redskins, so you wander into the sportsbook to check up on the latest news about the game. While you’re sitting there, you see the wagering board, with some funny numbers on it. It looks like this:

• 428 Cowboys +175
• 429 Redskins -4 -200 38

Some of this is easy enough to read. The Redskins -4 means the Redskins are favored to win and must do so by at least 5 points for a bet on the ‘Skins to pay out. The next number (-200) is the moneyline, in this case the Redskins are a 2/1 favorite. The last number (38) is the total, the over/under of the expected number of points scored in the game.

More on Placing Sports Bets

Look at that over/under number, in this case 38. If you or your buddy thinks this is going to be a particularly high or low scoring game, based on your knowledge of the team’s offenses and defenses, or information about a hurt player or bad playing conditions, you can place a wager on the total of points scored.

So how is a guy supposed to know how to literally lay down a sports bet? You need to know three things:

#1 – the type of bet you want to make
#2 – the number of the corresponding team you have chosen and
#3 – the amount you wish to wager

Knowing all that beforehand gives the ticket writer the details he needs to write the ticket without having to bend over backwards to process your bet.

Tipping and Sports Betting

We haven’t even gotten to the meat of the sports math yet, and we’re already talking about tipping the staff behind the window? Yep. Here’s why.

If you place two $100 bets, and you win, you’ll collect $440. You should consider leaving a tip around five percent of your winnings. Yes, that’s a $22 tip, but you just made a huge win, and surely you can spring for a twenty-spot for the guy who helped you win it. If you tip around the five percent mark regularly, when you win, you’re way more likely to get free drinks, which is about all you’re going to get comp-wise at the sportsbook.

So, back to the basic math of sports betting. You and your buddy, after much deliberation, decide to each place a $100 bet on your favorite team. What now?

To bet on the Redskins using the point spread, your bet is called “laying the points.” For your bet to pay off, the ‘Skins have to win by five or more to cover the spread. Remember, if the ‘Skins win by exactly four, the game is a push, and both sides recoup their bet. Another alternative is called “taking the points” with the Cowboys. That means the Cowboys have to lose by three or less for your bet to win, or if the Cowboys win outright. So you and your buddy go up to place your $100 bet, and you find out that the standard straight bet at any bookie pays 11/10. That means you have to bet $110 if you want to win $100. You and your buddy pay the bookie $110 and sit down with drinks to watch your bets come in.

These are deceptively simple bets. Deceptively because they make it look like the outcome of the football game is like the outcome of picking marbles out of a bag. Put one black marble and two white marbles in a bag, pull one out at random, and there’s your football game. After all, the odds are the same: 2/1 for white.

But we, as sports fans, know that the mathematics of a sporting event is much more complex. Sports bettors deeply involved in their hobby will subscribe to weather bulletins from major cities that take part in their sport, making huge wagering decisions based on a few mph of wind in one direction or another. Then there’s the unknown—does a player get hurt in the first quarter? Does weather become a factor? Is a particular player “in the zone?”

How Do Bookies Make a Profit?

Just as we finish ruminating on the concept of the difficult math at play in the background of major sporting events, we’re going to turn right back towards the simpler side of sports betting. Bookies make a profit because of vigorish. What’s vigorish?

Look at the above example again. You and your buddy each paid $10 to the bookie to place your bet. That’s what the standard 11/10 odds in sports betting are all about. You bet the Cowboys and your buddy bet the Redskins, a total of $220 bet. The sportsbook has to pay back $210 to the winner, leaving a nice $10 profit no matter what happens on the football field. That $10 built-in profit is called the vigorish, and it’s the final monkey wrench in the gears of sports betting.

Obviously, sportsbooks are going to take more than two bets on any game, but this example is for simplicity’s sake. Looking at the total number of bets on different games over the course of a week and adjusting the moneyline and other numbers is another way the bookie makes a profit. Adjusting the odds a tiny percentage point in either direction will affect the balance of beats and make the book more likely to turn a profit no matter what.

Essentially, a bookie is a person who holds on to money from bettors then pays them if they win and keeps their money if they don’t. That’s what the job is boiled down to its essence.

When a bookie sets odds for games, he will build what bookies call an “over round” into his set of odds. Another slang term used for this formula is “the juice.” For the sake of simplicity, let’s look at a boxing match where both contenders are equally talented, of equal stature, etc. Since they both have an equal chance of winning, a casual bet may be even money. You put $20 on one guy; your friend puts $20 on the other. Whichever fighter wins awards the bettor with the total of $40.

Bookies don’t offer even money like friends in a casual betting situation. In the above example, with two evenly matched boxers, a smart bookie will offer 5/6 odds for each. That way, a $10 winning bet would only return $8.30 plus your stake. What does this do for the bookmaker? He can float an equal amount of money on both fighters, winning no matter which fighter actually wins. If they take $1,000 worth of bets on one boxer and $1,000 on the other, the bookie would take in $1,000 but only have to pay out $830, for a guaranteed $170 profit regardless of the outcome.

Bookies look at the weight of their books all the time and adjust odds and other factors to make sure their books balance. Though it isn’t possible to completely balance a book, bookies that go too far out on one side run the risk of losing money, and losing money in gambling is the fastest way to find yourself in another industry. All of these factors are why bookies generally root for the underdog—too many favorites winning in a sport with a short season (such as the NFL) can cause a bookmaker to lose money, while a bunch of upsets (like you generally see in college football) is a guaranteed profit for the bookmaker.

The short answer here is that bookies making money has nothing at all to do with your betting. It is almost unheard of for a single customer to be allowed to place enough bets to sink a single book all on his own. High rollers in sports betting get special privileges in terms of their maximum bet size, but these privileges often change with the bettor’s luck—maximums get raised after the bettor sees big losses and decreased (sharply) when the bettor starts to get lucky.

In short, a sportsbook’s profits aren’t necessarily impacted directly by the way an individual bet is called. Unlike casino games or slot machines, where it’s you against the house, sports bettors fuel the bookmaker’s business and only rarely is an individual bettor betting against the bookie.

Sports Betting Odds

Remember at the beginning when we talked about the magic number necessary to guarantee a break-even week in sports betting? If you read enough about sports betting, you’ll hear this number repeated often: 52.4%. If a bettor can win 52.4% of his bets, he’ll break even. Where does that number come from?

When betting the spread, you get odds of -110. Sometimes, sportsbooks will offer a -105 line as a promotion or to welcome new business. But for the most part, if you’re betting the spread, you’re getting -110.

We draw that 52.4% break even number right out of the odds. -110 is equivalent to 11/10. That means if you bet 21 games, you’d have to win eleven of them and lose ten of them to break completely even. Even at -105, you’d still have to win an astounding 51.2% of the time just to break even.

If you don’t trust the basic math behind this break-even principle, look at another real-world example. Let’s say you get really into sports betting after your Cowboys cream the Redskins and you go home with a nice fat wallet. You then bet on the next 10 Cowboys games, winning six times and losing four times.

That 60% betting record (with the odds of -110 that is traditional for against the spread bets in football) will leave you with a profit of $160. Think about it—your $600 profit from your 6 winning bets minus the $440 you lost on losing bets leaves $160. It took you $1,100 to win $160, meaning you have to bet $6.87 to win $1 on average. So you see the small differences between a 52.4% winning rate and a 60% winning rate—inside those 7.3 percentage points lies hundreds of dollars in profit.

Now imagine instead that you lost one of those six winning bets, leaving you with a 50% betting record. You spent a total of $1,100, won $500, and lost $550. That means overall your 50% record drained your wallet by $50. That’s where the vigorish will get you. Not even winning half the time is good enough to break even in sports betting.

Professional Sports Bettors

Believe it or not, some people really do bet on sports for a living. Maybe they work part time at a sportsbook or in some other marginal job in the casino industry, but there is a group of gamblers who bet on sports for their life’s work. With all the math swirling around in our heads after the last bit of the article, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to do this for a living.

If you know that a 52.4% record will mean you break even, the simplest way to turn sports betting into a career is to bet enough so that a 53% winning record will bring in the kind of money you want to make.

Another example. After your successful Cowboys experiment, you decide to invest $10,000 in sports gambling over the first four months of the following football season. That $10,000 is set aside to win or lose in sportsbooks.

You plan on betting on 160 games during your investment period. You dream of a 55% winning record because your win-loss with a 55% winning record would give you an 88-72 record. That’s an expected profit of +8.8 units. How did we get to that number? To calculate your units, subtract the total of your losses (multiplied by 1.1 to include the vig) from your wins and you’ll get your unit profit.

Placing $460 bets on each of these games, a number pulled from some quick and dirty math about how much you could afford to bet in a single week’s NFL play without blowing your bankroll, would result in a $4,048 profit if you maintain that 55% winning record. Turning $10,000 into $14,048 in just four months is an investment return of 40.48%. I dare you to ask your bank for that kind of return on your savings account.

But that’s all assuming you can pick the winner 55% of the time. Do your research, look into the records of professional sports gamblers. 55%, while not impossible, would place you among the elite sports bettors in the country, if not the world.

Professional sports bettors have to worry about variance more than any other type of gambler. Working against the forces of variance means managing your bankroll over the course of the season to avoid the negative possibilities that could totally empty your wagering account. Professional sports bettors have the time and resources necessary to calculate these variances, and there are even a few pieces of software out there that can help you figure out your ideal bet in the face of negative variance. But the bottom line is that professional sports bettors would dream of having a 55% winning record, simply because it guarantees you’re beating the house.

Pro bettors make their money on bets that sportsbooks offer that give them even the slightest betting advantage. The key to becoming a profitable sports bettor is being able to find advantages, opportunities where the line a book is offering is vulnerable.

This is why many long-term sports bettors are math freaks. Good sports bettors understand statistics, particularly what are called inferential statistics, though any higher math will help when it comes time to place a bet.

Here is what a professional baseball bettor might do in his head. After looking over statistics from MLB (kept religiously by all sorts of bloggers, data archives, and magazines) between the years 2000-2010, he notices a particular statistic pop out. For example: when the home team starts a left-handed pitcher the day after a loss, that team wins 59% of the time. Good sports bettors can do this sort of math in their head or very quickly on paper. From that bit of information comes a new betting theory—look for game situations that mirror the above example and bet on them. That means he’ll only bet games where the home team starts a left-handed pitcher the day after a loss. Does he just jump in and start betting based on this back of the napkin math? No way. More statistical analysis is required—he may find that this was a fluke for that particular decade and isn’t a trustworthy statistics, or he may find an even more advantageous bet based on his original theory.

Pro sports bettors also keep near-obsessive records of their bets. Obviously, no edge in sports betting lasts longer than a single game. Taking proper records will also help you test theories, like the above one about left-handed pitchers and losses. Without taking good records, no sports bettor’s bankroll will last very long.

What Is a Good Record for Sports Bettors

So, at the end of the day, what could you call a “good” record for a sports bettor? Most casual gamblers looking into sports betting see a pro advertising his 1100-900 record and shake their head a little. How could such an abysmal record be something to be proud of? That’s a 55% winning percentage, and it indicates to those in the know that this bettor is actually turning a profit placing bets on sports.

A good record for a sports bettor is any record equal to or larger than 52.4%, because that number or anything higher means you’re not losing money. A 53% winning record, while not impressive on paper, means you’re actually beating the sportsbook and putting money back in your pocket. Ask your friends that play the slots or play online poker how often they end up putting money back in their pocket.

A -110 wager, standard for spread bets in the NFL, gives the house a built-in advantage of 10%. It means that even if you do win, and you line up to collect your $100, some sucker behind you just spent $10 to hand the casino $100.

A good record for sports bettors is any record that ensures they at least break-even. If you bet 16 games this NFL season and you won 9 and lost 7, you probably made money. And taking money away from a casino is always something to be proud of.

Other Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles:
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy

Sports Betting Break Even Video:

In the video above I go over the break even % for sports betting, and we take a look at the difference between hitting 52% and 53%. I also quickly show the amounts of profits you can expect if you can hit 55% consistently.

Every gambler has thought about what it’d be like to earn a living through casino games. This spawns visions of making a 6-figure salary, feasting on comps, dressing like James Bond and traveling the world.

Looking to win money online? Check out one of the sites above!

But is being a professional gambler really this lucrative?

Let’s begin discussing the matter by defining what it means to be a pro. You and I will also cover the salaries that pro gamblers make in different games.

How Do We Define a Professional Gambler?

The term “professional gambler” is sometimes used interchangeably for both people who earn part-time and full-time income through gambling.

This makes sense because both groups have the skills to earn long-term profits. Therefore, you can technically be considered a pro gambler as long as you’re making profits of any kind throughout the year.

But I keep a much tighter definition of a professional gambler.

A true pro not only makes profits through gambling, but enough to pay all of their living expenses. This includes rent (house payment), utilities, car payment (transportation), insurance, meals, clothes and anything else deemed necessary.

A semi-professional is somebody who makes enough to supplement their income, but doesn’t earn full-time living through gambling. I’m only going to cover full-time professional gambler salaries in this post.

What Casino Games Offer the Chance to Make a Living?

The gambling world doesn’t offer an abundance of opportunities to make a living, but there are a few different games where you can earn some nice profits.

Here’s a list of the most common games that you can make long term profits with:

• Blackjack card counting
• Daily fantasy sports (DFS)
• Poker
• Sports betting
• Video poker

Blackjack and video poker both see you try to win money directly from the house.

Casinos do everything in their power to hinder successful card counters. This includes using continue shuffling machines, multi deck shoes and watching for counters.

Anybody who’s caught counting cards is often kicked out of the casino and banned. This is why it’s so important for card counters to blend in with normal players.

Casinos don’t usually worry about advantage video poker player. In fact, some games are set up to offer positive expected value (+EV) to players who use perfect strategy.

Another problem is that it’s now harder than ever before to find video poker games offering over 100% payback like Deuces Wild (100.76% payback), Double Bonus (100.17%) and Double-Double Bonus (100.07%).

DFS and poker both see you compete against human opponents. The house merely takes a small cut of tournament fees or cash game pots (poker).

Sportsbooks create lines in an effort to get equal betting action on both sides. The sportsbooks make their money by taking 10% vigorish (juice) from the losing group.

Every form of advantage betting has its pros and cons, but the key is that each of these activities offers the chance to make a full-time living.

Think you have what it takes to make it as a proffesional gambler? Test your skills at some of the best sites in the game.

Salaries for Professional Gamblers in Different Games

Card Counting

People have been making a living through card counting since the early 1960s, and despite all the obstacles that casinos have put in players’ way, it’s still possible to earn profits with card counting today.

You need a sizable bankroll in order to properly spread your bets and survive variance. The bare minimum you should aim for is $20,000, but it’s better to have closer to $50,000.

How much you make depends upon several factors, including the following:

• Skill level – Successful counters have between a 0.5% and 1.5% edge on casinos.
• Hands per hour – 50 to 200 depending upon dealer speed & table size.
• Bet spreading – Difference between your lowest and highest bet.
• Deck penetration – The further into the shoe you get, the more confidence you can bet with.
• Counting system – Some systems are more accurate than others.
• Game rules – You want the best rules possible in order to lower the standard house edge.
• Tips – $5 per hour for the dealer is standard.

Now, let’s set up an example by creating variables behind your counting session:

• You have a 1% edge based on the rules, your skill level and using the Hi-Lo counting system.
• The dealer is dealing 100 hands per hour.
• Your minimum bet is $25, and you spread up to $175 during favorable counts (i.e. 1 to 7 spread).
• You get 70% deck penetration before the shoe is reshuffled.
• You tip $5 per hour.

Here’s how this example would play out in terms of profits:

• Your average bet is worth $50 ($25 minimum; spread up to $175 for favorable counts).
• $50 average bet x 100 hands = $5,000 in hourly bets.
• 5,000 x 0.01 edge = $50 hourly win.
• $50 hourly win minus $5 tip = $45 hourly profit.

Some counters make $100 or more per hour by improving their edge up to 1.5% and/or increasing bets, but many players are happy with a $45 per hour rate to start with.

The final step is to figure out how many hours you’ll play and convert this into an annual salary. Here are a few different figures on how much you’d make per year:

• $45 x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks = $93,600 per year
• $45 x 30 hours per week x 52 weeks = $70,200 per year
• $45 x 20 hours per week x 52 weeks = $46,800 per year
• $100 x 40 hours per week x 52 weeks = $208,000 per year

The last figure shows what’s possible for a really good card counter who makes $100 per hour. The $45 calculations show that even decent counters can make good money.

The keys, though, include keeping an accurate count amidst casino distractions and blending in with normal players.

Daily Fantasy Sports

DFS is the newest game that offers skilled gamblers an opportunity to make money.

Daily fantasy sees you pay an entry fee to enter contests and compete against other players. The goal is to create lineups that score the most points and rank the highest in tournaments.

Daily fantasy sports experienced a big boom in 2015, thanks to clever marketing campaigns that make it seem like any sports fan can win.

The truth, though, is that only a small percentage of those who play actually win. A McKinsey study from 2015 showed that 1.3% of daily fantasy baseball players collect 91% of the winnings.

Despite these long odds, many people still enjoy trying to win in daily fantasy, but what exactly can you expect to win if you’re among the small percentage of DFS pros?

The potential for big winners is there for the most skilled daily fantasy players.

Saahil Sud, profiled in a WBUR piece, said he made over $3 million in profits in a single year. Former poker pro Aaron Jones switched over to DFS and won a DraftKings contest worth $5 million in early 2016.

Of course, the average professional DFS player doesn’t earn quite this much. To determine a standard DFS salary, let’s consider the following factors:

• Entries per day— Most DFS pros enter several hundred contests every day.
• Stakes – Typical entry fees range anywhere from $1 up to $1,000.
• Fees— DFS sites tack on a 10% fee to each buy in, which is where their profits come from.
• Skill level— Some pros have a bigger edge than others.

Now, let’s input variables to come up with an average daily profit:

• 300 entries per day
• $100 + $10 (fee) average buy in
• 300 x $110 = $3,300 daily fees
• You’re playing for $3,000 after subtracting fees
• Expected value based on skill is 115%
• $3,000 x 1.15 = $3,450 winnings
• $3,450 – $3,300 = $150 in daily profits

If we multiply $150 by 365 days, you’ll earn an annual salary worth $54,750.

Of course, DFS is filled with variance, and you won’t always feel like you’re on the path to a solid $55k per year. This is why it’s key to have a large enough bankroll to survive the ups and downs.

Poker

Poker has long been one of the most viable options for becoming a professional gambler. The reason why is because you’re competing against other opponents instead of the house.

It’s tougher to make a living in poker these days because strategy is more prevalent. Online poker gives players a chance to rapidly accelerate their learning curve by seeing more hands per hour.

You can still become a profitable player with enough hard work and experience though. In fact, some pros still make six or seven figure annual incomes with the game.

However, the vast majority of pros these days earn between $40,000 and $100,000 per year.

Poker is unique in that there are essentially two types of professionals: tournament and cash game pros.

Fox Sports The Gambler

Most rounders mix up their play between both platforms. However, the majority of poker pros also specialize in either tourneys or cash games.

Let’s look at the different considerations for cash vs. tournament play:

Cash Games

• Profit measured in big blinds (BB) made per hour.
• House takes 5% rake from cash game pots for running games.
• More control over annual salary than tournaments.

Tournaments

• Profit measured by rate of return (ROI) on buy ins.
• House adds 10% fee to buy ins (e.g. $10 + $1 fee).
• Only top 10 15% of field makes money.
• Tournaments have more variance than cash games.

A cash grinder needs to figure out what stakes they must play to make a comfortable living based on BB earned per hour.

An example is if you played $10/$20 no limit Texas hold ‘em and made 1.5 BB per hour. This equates to $30 per hour, $1,200 per week for a 40-hour workweek and $62,400 for a full year.

A tournament pro must decide what buy-in level they must choose to make a high enough ROI to live comfortably.

If you spend $20,000 on tourney buy-ins in a week and make $22,000, then your RIO is 10% ([22,000 20,000 / 20,000). This means that you’ll earn a $10 profit for every $100 you spend on tournament buy-ins.

One more consideration here is whether you’ll dedicate the bulk of your time towards live or online poker.

What Does A Professional Sports Gambler Do

Online cash games and tourneys offer more volume because you can play multiple tables. Plus hands and tournaments go much faster, giving you an opportunity to boost your hourly wages.

Another Internet poker advantage is that you cut out extra expenses like traveling, hotel stays, meals and dealer/waitress tips.

Nevertheless, many players find that their win rate is higher in live games. The most lucrative tournaments are found in land-based casinos, too, such as the World Series of Poker events.

Sports Betting

The good thing about sports betting is that you don’t need to have a massive win rate just to book profits.

Sportsbooks only take 10% juice from the losing side. This differs from DFS and poker tournaments where you must pay an extra 10% fee regardless of whether you’re a winner or loser.

The juice can be lowered or adjusted based on where the sportsbook is trying to push action, but 10% is generally the amount you’ll see taken from the losing side.

The end result is that you need to win 52.38% of your bets to break even. How do we arrive at this number?

You need to bet $11 to win $10 when the juice is 10%. You must win 11 out of every 21 bets to break even at this rate, which is a 52.38% winning percentage (11/21).

This doesn’t sound intimidating when compared to how good you must be at poker or DFS to win long term, but it’s also really tough to continually find value because sportsbooks are so good at setting lines.

Professional sports bettors usually win anywhere from 53.5% to 55.0% of the time.

Some handicappers brag about higher win rates ranging from 58.0% to 60.0%, but these figures are almost impossible to sustain long term.

Pro sports bettors must be very adept at handling their bankroll since they’re dealing with such a small profit margin. They also need to make larger wagers than the average bettor to increase potential profits.

The general rule of thumb is to never bet more than 1% to 2% of your bankroll on any given contest. If you have a $100,000 bankroll, you’d never put more than $2,000 of this on any single event.

Some sports bettors like Billy Walters and Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris have made millions of dollars with this model. But the average bettors are looking at more modest salaries ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 annually.

The key to figuring out how much you can make involves determining your ROI just like a poker pro. For example, if you make $10,000 worth of bets during a week and earn back $10,500, then you have a 5% ROI for the week ([10,500 10,000 / 10,000).

You then need to expand this to cover an entire year. Let’s look at an example below:

• You place $1,000,000 worth of bets during the year.
• You win $1,060,000.
• Your profit is $60,000 for the year (1,060,000 1,000,000).
• Your ROI is 6% ([1,060,000 1,000,000] / 1,000,000).

Sports Gamblers Forum

A 6% ROI is extremely high for sports betting, but this is just a simple way to show how to calculate your ROI and salary.

Video Poker

Video poker has good and bad things going for it these days.

The good news is that you can virtually guarantee yourself profits if you become a skilled enough player. The downside is that there are fewer and fewer +EV machines in casinos today.

Your best bet is to find a full-pay Deuces Wild machine, which pays back 100.76%. You also need to take advantage of as many double and triple comp point promotions as you can.

You can find which land based casinos offer full pay Deuces Wild by visiting the site vpFREE2.com.

Once here, navigate to the “Casinos” tab and look in the Las Vegas section. I see 13 different casinos that offer full pay Deuces Wild at the time of this post.

Unfortunately, the highest coin denomination for these machines is only $0.25. In past decades, you could find $1 denomination machines that quadrupled your potential profits.

Even under the right conditions, the odds of you making a good living with video poker are slim. Let’s run the math on what you can expect:

• You play full pay Deuces Wild (100.76% payback).
• You bet 5 coins per hand on a quarter denomination machine ($1.25 per hand).
• You play 1,000 hands per hour, which is extremely fast.
• The casino is running a triple loyalty point promotion.
• The casino comps 0.1% of your total bets, or 0.3% for triple points.
• 1,000 x 1.25 x 0.0076 = $9.50 regular hourly winnings.
• $1,200 total bets x 0.003 = $3.60 in comps
• You earn $13.10 per hour.

Even if you spend 50 hours in the casino, this only works out to $655 per week, and you’d earn $34,060 when we stretch this out for an entire year.

Most people can get by on this salary, but it’s far from what anybody envisions when becoming a professional gambler.

Conclusion

Being a pro gambler has some obvious benefits, including flexible hours, being your own boss and the ability to increase your income.

Some gamblers, such as Saahil Sud and Bob Voulgaris, have even gotten rich with their skills. Of course, you may be perfectly happy making mid 5-figures, as long as you get to enjoy the aforementioned benefits, but there are also some downsides to be aware of. These include risk, highs and lows, no sick days and the potential to lose everything.

It’s up to you to weigh the good and bad before ultimately deciding to pursue a professional gambling career.

The potential rewards can be great in the case of card counting, DFS, poker and sports betting, but you also have to be disciplined and good at handling risk.