What It Takes to Become a Professional Gambler
Thinking of a life as a professional gambler? The glitz and glam is enticing, and people make money gambling every day. If you’re serious about this, you have to know what traits to have and what really wins money.
And the road ahead is going to be hard. Professional gambling takes a lot of time, patience and the will to get better.
If you’re going to pursue gambling for a living, these traits can help you.
How to be a Professional Gambler: 7 Must-Have Traits
Gambling “jobs,” or professional betting, is an art. Some people are born with natural traits that help them excel in this industry, while others have to hone their skills. The traits that help you make safe bets or gambles are:
Money Management: Managing your bankroll is a trait that you can learn today. If you want to know how to win at gambling, you must hedge your bets. Money management allows you to place smart bets and also know when to walk away from the table. You should have a win and loss limit to keep money in your bankroll for your next gambling session.
- Time Management: A professional, at anything, must know how to manage their time properly. You’ll be playing, learning and traveling a lot. It’s not uncommon for gambling to become your entire life. If you want to have a relationship or family, you must learn the art of time management.
- Decision Making: The decisions you make, the gambling strategies that you deploy and the game you play are all going to pave your way to winning or losing. Decisions may mean going all in, or they may mean that you know when to walk away from the table. You need to make fast decisions and be sure of the choices that you make.
- Dedication: What are you willing to sacrifice to go pro? You have to be willing to give up your free time, read, learn and practice. You have to be willing to lose money, win money and be humbled by the expert player that will come along and make you question your choice by decisively beating you at a game or winning a bet.
- Persistence: Don’t like losing? Want to quit? Guess what? Becoming a professional gambler demands persistence. You need to be willing to lose, learn and get over your fear to truly become a professional at anything. If you can’t handle a lot of work and persistence, you’re not going to make it as a professional gambler.
- Control: Betting for a living is an emotional rollercoaster. You’ll need to learn how to make money betting or gambling. You’ll also have to stay calm and composed when losing or holding a less-than-ideal hand and have to put on your poker face. Emotional control is something all professional gamblers must have to avoid careless mistakes.
- Patience: Watch any pro gambler and you’ll find that they all have patience. You have to learn gambling systems and spend a lot of time learning new games. Practice makes perfect, so you’ll need patience to go from one day to the next winning, losing and finding your groove in the betting world.
If you have these traits, you’ll need to learn how to make money gambling. There are a lot of ways to make money, but successful gamblers will tell you that you have to find the way that works best for you.
5 Best Ways to Win Money as a Professional Gambler
If you want to know how to gamble and win, you need to know what others are doing. You can count cards or cheat in some games, but this isn’t a long-term strategy. Over your career, you have to learn how to make money from betting using tactics that work for you.
A few professional gambler tips to making cash as a pro are:
- Sports bets: A professional sports gambler will bet on sports. Choose a sport that you know about, and use your skills to choose the team that you think is more likely to win the game.
- Count cards: Some gamblers choose to count cards, and while it’s been a popular option since the 80s, casinos are still trying to stop the practice. The issue is that you need a large bankroll, $20,000 or more, to really gain an edge on the casino.
- Fantasy sports: Did you know that daily fantasy sports can make people a lot of money? One study showed that 91% of daily winnings went to just 1.3% of players. These players are professional gamblers that have found a way to leverage daily fantasy sports.
- Poker: If you learn how to master poker, you can earn some real money. This is how to get money back from gambling sites or from casinos. Pros can earn $40,000 to $100,000+ a year playing in tournaments online.
- Arbitrager: An expensive strategy, arbitragers will try and find the differences between odds and place bets across multiple bookmakers. The goal is to bet on all the outcomes in such a way that the wins far outpace the losses.
Of course, one of the steps on how to become a professional gambler is to select your game of choice and consider your risk tolerance. How much risk are you willing to take? If a game isn’t going in your favor, is it better to walk away or risk more money?
You can make money gambling online, but you need to choose a game that you have more control in. Slots, for example, are purely random, while poker or blackjack have a certain amount of skill that increases your chances of winning.
And how do you become a professional? Play a lot. You can become a pro at anything, but you’ll need to make a sacrifice and earn money. Spend time studying your game of choice, read up on strategies and tactics and be willing to lose a lot before seeing some progress.
About author
Harry is a long-time member of our team and has been working with CasinoHEX UK for a number of years.
