Topic: [AMA] The Life of a Professional Gambler - page 5. (Read 2536 times)

The job you do should a) be some fun to you and b) give you enough money to pay for everything.

A job that gives you b) but not a) is doable and is what 80%+ of people are doing imo. A job that gives you a) but not b) is probably not worth doing.

[1] I definitely think that it's worth trying, but thats just me. You always only regret things you didn't do rather than the things you actually did. So, if you are considering to make a living out of gambling, just go for it and give it a try. You will dedicate a huge amount of your life-time to work, so better look for something that makes you happy.

[2] I think at the point, where you realize, that you are not able to make (enough) money (no more). For the start give yourself some time to figure everything out and don't give up after like 1 week. Expect to be losing for some time. If you are seeing no progress at all and are losing for months, you should stop. If you see some progress and are maybe able to break even instead of losing, you should look into improving more and give yourself some more time to turn things around. If after some months you are still not able to make money, you'd better stop.

I've gambled a couple of times in the past but I didn't put too much money on it, like a couple of dollars and that's it, I quit, I just tried it. So let me get straight to my question, this would probably help a lot of people who are trying to try gambling.

Before you enter this world (gambling) that became your profession, [1]Is this worth to try and push your limits until you got your winnings and decide whether it is for you or not? [2] How are you going to figure it out when to stop and realized that you're taking the wrong path?

It solely depends on the odds you play and the stakes you use. I stake more or less always flat (% of my bank). I like to play higher odds. Example:

Bet#1: Odds 5, stake 100,-, lost
Bet#2: Odds 5, stake 100,-, lost
Bet#3: Odds 5, stake 100,-, lost
Bet#4: Odds 5, stake 100,-, won

Net win for #4 is 400,-. net loss for #1, #2 and #3 is 300,-, so I have a net win of 100,- over all those bets, despite having only won 1 and losing 3.

And here comes a tricky question

You seem to state that you are making a living out of gambling (widely defined). Just in case, I'm totally cool with that. But since you lost more bets than you won, it basically means that the bets that you lost are smaller than the bets you won since otherwise you couldn't remain profitable for so long (let alone make a living out of it)

However, this instantly begs the question if you are in fact using some variety of martingale, i.e.doubling (tripling, etc) your bet size after a loss and letting the variance make its thing as you can't possibly predict that your smaller bets are going to lose more often than the bigger ones. So how come really?

Hmm, ok, I can maybe talk a bit about how a normal day (of betting) looks for me. Not all days are the same. Beginning of the week, there is not a lot to do for me normally or only in the evenings, when I can actually watch some sports. So lets take a Saturday maybe, which is always the most busy day. I am a night person, so would get up rather late without any alarm being set. I would have breakfast and some tea/coffee and go through my mornings internet routine. Like checking mails, checking some general news, this and that. At 1pm the games for second division football in Germany start, so I would watch the pre-coverage starting at 12:30pm and check the line-ups, check the latest odds. In my mind I already know, what I will look for in these games and what I will do if X or Y happens. So from 1pm I will be watching the matches and see, if there is some opportunity to get in. Games finish 2:45pm and I will switch to pre-coverage for Bundesliga then, check the line-ups etc. Those games start at 3:30pm and finish 5:15pm and I will look to get some food afterwards - waiting for 6:30pm game in Bundesliga. This late game in Bundesliga is often times not very interesting to me (Bayern, Leipzig, Dortmund playing some scrubs), so my attention turns more to german Basketball, where you have games at 6:30 and 8:30pm on Saturdays normally. Basketball I can only stream and not watch on TV. There is a ~30sec delay with this stream, so I have to adapt my trading accordingly. Trading german Basketball on Betfair is pretty pointless though, since there is next to no liquidity and I don't feel comfortable with this 30sec delay anyway. So I will wait for a time-out or half-time to take some action if any (this is more of a punt at a bookmaker then).

During american College Football season, I would have some game running on TV after the late Bundesliga game has finished and which is normally running muted on TV while I focus on Basketball. The Basketball matches finish at around 10:30pm. The last weekends I would then watch some NFL playoffs. I am not betting on NFL with the intention or the hope of making money, I just do it for fun to add some spice while watching. The NFL is my big love and I watch as many games as possible, but I am not able to bet on it profitably, so I see my bets on NFL games just as a hobby and don't care too much about winning or losing. Stakes are pretty low there too then.

During all the time, there is always some distraction with mails arriving, talking to my fellow punters, phone calls and whatever, so it can get quite chaotic and hectic. I should probably shut down all things that could get me distracted, but I never chose to do so. Watching a match of football can be very boring at times, so some distraction is maybe welcomed deep inside of me, I don't know.

After I finished betting for the day, I will eat something. Then go away from the computer and go to some supermarket, for a walk or just watch some TV (no sports then!), meet with friends or family (those that are maybe still awake^^) and do what other people do as well in their spare time and then go to bed.

On contrary on a day like today, there really isn't much to do for me betting wise. I am wating for the german second division football match today, which starts 8:30pm, where I will monitor what is happening and maybe do something inplay. Other than that, there is nothing to do today.

All of these questions have been answered already one way or the other and I don't like to repeat myself too much. So, if you are interested in the answers to your questions, make yourself a coffee or grab a beer and just read through this thread from the beginning.

I will already answer one question of you right here:


Yes. Without having any stats to back it up, I think I have lost more bets than I actually won

This thread has a lot of anecdotal information and you make many references to the world of gambling that a new person would find not identify. I get that someone will need to actually be immersed into it to get all the references. My question was aimed at getting a bird's eye view of what the "Gambling world" is like. How would you describe it to someone in a way that they can decide if it is for them or not, the triumphs and the tribulations?

I understand that it is a pretty open ended question and someone could probably write a book on that. Your experience is mostly in sports betting and you are doing a great job in eliciting interest. I think the line that best summarizes it for a newbie to the world are in just your last reply:

If you were telling the truth, I've never imagined meeting someone who gambles for 15 years and survives. I used to look for some since my family was victims of unwise gambling. I would love to hear your story by answering these questions I will address. In 15 years, I know when you were getting started of course you were a newbie.

Nevertheless, I have a few questions. How did you do it? How did you master gambling? Did you find a mentor who taught you how to play the games? Or did you learn your strategies all by yourself? How long did it take for you to be able to master the games you play? Did it take a short single year or it took you more than a year? Can you be specific? Did you ever lose? How often did you lose when you were getting started and still mastering your craft? Did you invest a massive amount of risk for you to attain your gambling skills?

I went pro, or tried to, after maybe half a year of losing and saying to myself I either up my game and start winning or quit. So I am betting for around 15,5 years.

If you are playing profitable for 2-3 years in a row, you are not lucky, but have developed some skill to beat the tables. You can't be just lucky for 2-3 years winning with poker. You know, the good thing in poker, and what is quite contrary to betting, is, that you don't always have to compete with the best of the best. In poker you can choose your limit that fits your skills and what you are comfortable with. You can play small stakes and take money from a lot of donks. When you rise up the limits, it will get harder to make some money and you are probably the donk then If you play high-stakes poker with small stakes skills, you will probably have to file for bankruptcy very soon.

In betting you will always have to compete with the best of the best. There are no markets for newbies or not so skilled people. You compete with all the sharks right from the get go.

With all those rich poker players losing millions or even going broke at some point, this is for various reasons I think. The playing style of Tom Dwan is pretty reckless to say the least. So some variance is very much expected with him. And poker players often go through rough stretches, where they are just not able to play their A game for a long time. But if you win $10m over a few years and then lose $3m in one year, it's not that bad of an average income I think And it's something you have to deal with mentally, work your way through this, maybe do some additional theory and not go on tilt. Believe in your abilities and always try to improve. Not improving is deadly.
These very good poker pros often earn lots of money at a very young age and this might be a bit overwhelming for them and not healthy. They never learned to value money and that it's hard work earning it for normal people. And they think that they can make millions playing poker forever. So they get a bit careless and cocky I think. Every good businessman went broke at least once earlier in his career they say

You would also need an infinite bank to be on the safe side of things. Sure, Martingale works to a certain extent, but for it to be a sure thing to make money without any risk involved, you would have to have infinite money and no one has that. And even if you had, you would have to find a casino/bookmaker that lets you stake infinite money on a single dice/bet. And to my knowledge such casino/bookmaker doesn't exist.
The problem with Martingale is, that it might work very well for some time and smallish-profits. But sooner or later, you will get to the point, where you would have to invest a huge amount of money - just to get all your losses back and make like 1 cent profit. This is not good for your health



First of all I would consider trading a discipline in this whole realm of gambling/investing. So I am having trouble to compare trading and gambling, as trading is part of gambling in my view.

To stay on topic to your question, I would maybe consider comparing trading and punting (placing a bet pre-match and just waiting for the outcome). Punting takes place in a more or less fixed/set market with most circumstances and parameters standing still. There is not much happening pre-match. The stats are known, the news are known, injured players are known, all those things. And the bookmakers/markets have learned a lot and not much value can be found in this situation.

Now with the match starting and the markets going inplay, things get dynamic and the fixed setting from pre-match is broken up. Things happen very fast and there is a lot of imperfections in the market. There is not enough time to take all the different parameters into account, so it's easier to find valuable spots trading inplay - or lets say there is more value to be found, to actually spot it, is quite difficult.

In regards to crypto trading, you could think about a market moving sideways for very long, like we often saw in recent months. Not much value to be found (short-term), no big gains to be expected from trading. Now imagine a sudden jump of +10%, things are getting crazy then and there is lots of good trading options opening up. But you have to be fast and have no time to calculate and weigh for ages. You have to prepare beforehand. Like a sniper. He lies there for hours and hours and is well prepared. He knows he will have to pull the trigger, but he does not know when and always has to remain alert. Once the opportunity arises, he has to act fast. There is probably only a short time window.

Trading/gambling/punting all have their own, but pretty similar, psychological demands, so I wouldn't claim trading to be less demanding in that regard and people turning to trading because of that. With trading it's a bit easier to make money, if you are good in doing it. But you will also lose a lot more, if you are bad at it

You are saying in the OP, "I am doing this since around 15 years", but since I don't know your age, I can't determine for how long you've been in this business actually.

The thing is that I'm a poker player myself, not professional, but I love Texas Hold'em, and I play this game a lot(I'm in total profit of about 0.15 BTC from 3 years of playing). And I have a theory, that anyone who knows the rules of the game and also has the knowledge of the basic concepts of probability, can be in profit for 2-3 years in a row just because of luck. I came up with this theory not because of my personal experience, but rather after reading and watching videos about famous poker players. Tom Dwan, for example, was losing millions of USD within a particular year, and not just once.

What are your thoughts on that?

Generally speaking I wouldn't care about what other people expect from you. This is your life, so you should do with it whatever you like - it can be over any day. Don't please expectations of others, because you have to live this life, not the others. Now this is often not as easy as it sounds. I am living in a country, where culture (which often stems from religious stuff) isn't really an issue. So I have never experienced rejection for cultural reasons and can't really judge what it means, how it feels and what are the consequences of being a sinner

With gambling not being legal, this is another issue. You would have to weigh, what there is to gain and what there is to lose/risk. Nowadays you can find workarounds for a lot of legal domestic issues, when it comes to gambling. So, if there is not much punishment, if/when they catch you, why not give it a try, if you would like to do that and earn some money from it. Gambling is officially forbidden in China as well (or controlled by CPC), but my chinese friend is still doing his betting more or less freely. There is always a way, if you are really dedicated.


Me and my family fortunately won't get into (legal) trouble for what I am doing. Betting is considered a game of luck in Germany and thus is no taxable income - looks like I have a lot of luck with my bets Betting is not legal nor illegal here, it's still a grey area. I spoke about the other question here:

Well, I'm not going to prove you wrong

Moreover, I have always been saying something to that tune myself, that even with dice where you have to play against the house edge (read, you are more or less set to lose in the end), you can build pretty safe or even fail-safe strategies that allow you play indefinitely long without busting (for the inquiring minds, see here), though your profits will be tiny compared to the capital required to implement these strategies in practice (read, it may simply be not worth it)

But that's not why I'm posting here. Apart from sports betting, you seem to refer to trading as an activity you are currently involved in. So I'm interested in your honest reply, i.e. do you consider trading (whatever variety you stick to) as more profitable than gambling in the long run? I don't mean sudden bursts of luck but more like a regular source of income over years? Isn't trading less heavy on you personally given you have been in the game for so long?

Me, I consider trading (I mean cryptocurrency trading first and foremost) a type of gambling in its own right, even with a house edge of sorts (more specifically, the advantage that exchanges, insiders, arbitrageurs and their likes have before regular traders). However, it seems like many people are turning to trading eventually as they come to see it less psychologically demanding than gambling (stress and all that stuff)

Interesting to read some of these. My question for you is, how do you suggest a person approaches gambling when it is culturally frowned upon and also not legal in their country. Should they just do it in silence? How do you explain to people what you do? Knowing it can get you or even your family in trouble.

And no this is not a question for me even though the situation is true where I am.

People always wonder, how to make a living out of betting/poker and think of a well kept secret in a taciturn community, but it's not like that. The answer is always value (or EV+ for the poker players). When I get asked, what is the secret, what is your system, how do you do that and I then tell them it's just the value aspect, they are always kind of disappointed They often expect to be given a very precise answer, like do this and that and then you'll be successful, but I can only can give the very unspecific answer of value and I can just guide them on how to maybe find value and give them some tools. But they have to go their own way and take a path they are comfortable with. And if they just want to be given a money printing recipe on a silver platter, they are likely kind of lazy (or naive for that matter) and it doesn't work like that. You experienced yourself how much work, dedication, effort it takes to get things going. If you are not willing to learn and put in all the hours, you are doomed to fail. But we all fail - often and a lot and it's a good thing.

I am always willing to share my knowledge and experiences - and I really like to talk about betting - if I feel a genuine interest and people always seem fascinated by a, what it looks for them, shiny world. But it’s hard work and a pretty normal job in the end. It’s just a rather rare job, which most people fail to do, but would like to do. And as stated in the OP, there is lots of myths and misconceptions. Being a poker/betting pro is pretty similar to be being a stockbrocker for example and even insurance companies just do betting in the end; they calculate the probability of a claim and put their premiums accordingly. They just bet how likely it will be you dying, having a car accident or your house catching fire. And they are pretty good bettors considering how filthy rich all these insurance companies are.


My cycling niche I "found" on my own, since I was always interested in it even when I didn't know betting yet. A pro friend of mine, who I got to know in the beginning of my "career", then introduced me to winter sports and taught me a lot of things about the dynamics in the different winter sport competitions.
Finding new niches is not really about actively looking for it, they are often found by coincidence. You read something, which gets you interested, you watch some sports you have never really cared about and find some angle, you are given a bet by a fellow punter and get interested in the sports while following the bet, things like that. But you have to like your niche and have some joy following it. For example a lot of pros are involved with horse racing and a lot of money can be made there. I had a look, invested a bit of time, even tried a bit, but it's not mine, because I don't like horse racing. No need to force things that just aren't there.

For the moment I don't really have a niche. When saying niche, I am refering to some smallish and/or non-mainstream sport/league. The last years, I was always kind of searching for a new niche I could cover, but as explained above, it doesn't really work like that (maybe only for me, not sure). You could consider german Basketball as kind of a niche, but it's a pretty mature and well compiled market these days too. And you only have a few games on the weekends always.

The reason why I am not desperately looking for a niche now, is the issues with my betting accounts. For a niche, you need some non-limited, non-taxed accounts with soft books and I don't have those no more. So even if I found a niche again, I probably couldn't bet on it properly. That is why I shifted my focus more on trading and getting my feet wet in the bigger markets with it. This is a longterm decision, since I don't see any future for me in the niche markets. Niches only last so long and there isn't infinite sports/leagues to regularly have niches open up. The markets mature pretty fast these days.

Friend of mine is doing Chinese basketball as a niche. When betting was available for this league, it was pretty easy for him to make money there. It wasn't very well covered internationally and he is Chinese, so no language barrier. He was able to collect lots of valuable information and knew things only a few people knew. The CBA wants to become the NBA of Asia and they have lots of money available for that. They have a NBA-like schedule and some really good and famous import players, so there is way more coverage now. Today my friend is struggling a lot more in extracting value there. There is now a lot of stats available, lots of news to be found and even all those strange extra rules they have for CBA (foreign players are not allowed to play all the time etc.) are publicly known now. His edge is way lower now. And if the CBA gets really big, he might lose his edge completely and the niche stops being a niche to him. He would have to look for a new niche then. But the possiblities are endless in China as we all know


I am pretty well educated, at least on paper , so that was kind of a fallback plan and my ticket into the regular labour market. Before I went to university I completed an apprenticeship and was offered a job to work for that company. But I declined that offer, since during this apprenticeship I felt that this isn't what I wanted to do in life - a 9-5 job. So I decided to go studying to buy some time and think a bit more what I wanted to do in life and what are the options. Well, I just drifted with my studying and wasn't really interested in all this theoretical stuff and listening to 90min monologues. So I mainly skipped my classes and decided that all this could be learned from home as well. And then somewhere during that time I got to know the betting world and found something that I really liked to do and where I could earn good money with. I was about to cancel my studies just 1 year before I would have gotten my diploma, but decided to go through with it and get this piece of paper for my CV. Funnily I managed to get my diploma with a rather good grade, regarding the effort (read: non-effort) I put in. So my apprenticeship and diploma were my fallback plans, without me really wanting to get such a regular job ever. By now, I would guess that these pieces of paper are not useful anymore, since I am too long "without a job", so if I fail with my betting, I would probably have to work in some low paying and pretty basic job (or open a paid tipster service^^).


I am not getting paid for wearing the sig

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@sunsilk
Thank you, my pleasure.

Amazing. Thank you for sharing your about those paid tipsters so out of many that asks for payment, there's few of them that are actually real and offers the service for real with their valuable bets.

I'm shock with the guy that you have shared his journey about many tipsters and then in the end, he stayed to one. I'll check in to that blog and will read the story. I guess I'm done asking questions and you have shared more than what I have asked. Thank you very much tyKi.

Hey great thread. You fall into a rare bread of pro/semi pro gambler, that are willing to share their story, advice and general tips honestly and without the expectation of earning from it - I don't consider the Sig campaign to fall into that category.
I've recently met a few people such as yourself from the Poker community and must say it's been eye opening to say the least. On top of that I followed a youtuber for a few months and just the free information he put out in the world through his content motivated me to buy some of his training materials. I realized that he was giving away a good portion of it for free, if you put in hours of watching and focusing on his channel, but went much more in-depth and in a focused manner through the paid material. Though it was well worth it to support his business after the freebies I got, and couldn't be happier.
I've also been getting an absurd amount of personal reviews done by a few individuals which is huge. Most people out there want a cut or a piece of everything you make for anything they share with you. I can understand it to some point but as someone who personally likes helping people with my knowledge when I can, it's nice to receive that same assistance from others.

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I was reading on your evolution from cycling and winter sports due to the action not being as good. How heavily do you rely on your friends/common interest gamblers to find the next niche you want to focus on?
Seeing as you started out while being a student, did you/do you have a decent fallback plan if your gambling career is no longer profitable?

Yes, it's a good question and I actually can share a bit of my own experience as I was subscribed to two of them as well once. That was in maybe 2007/2008 and I didn't monitor the paid tipster market afterwards, so my own experiences are probably a bit outdated.

Generally speaking I wouldn't advise against subscribing, but you have to be careful. There surely are some scammers amongst them and from my experience these services are doing good for some time and then fade. The services I used were quite successful for maybe 3-4 months (I joined relatively early after they started) and after that they barely managed to get break even and then went on tilt and were chasing losses. Subsequently they ceased operations then.

The people that offer these services often have a good (publicly trackable) stretch and then decide to milk some money out of it by opening a service. It's nothing to condemn, but you have to be aware of that. It's something you can jump on while it lasts, but with the first signs of things going the wrong way, I would exit.

The main point from people against these services is always: "Why would you sell a working system, this must be scam." But these paid tipsters don't sell a system, they sell their value bets and there is no system behind it. If you are able to find valuable bets in liquid markets, it's fine to sell them as you will make some additional money with it. Selling your bets from small markets is something you shouldn't do though. You will a) destroy those markets that make you money and b) nearly none of your subscribers will be able to follow your bets with the same odds and thus will lose money.

There is/was a user in a german-austrian betting forum, that used to be the best punter I ever saw publishing his bets. He was mainly playing Basketball bets from smaller markets. The moment he published his bets in the forum, you could see the odds drop real-time. He maybe recommended a bet on team A for 2,20 odds and in a heartbeat, those odds were brought down to like 1,50. All those guys being able to catch that bet above 2,00 are probably fine, but if you follow a 2,20 bet with 1,60, you will lose longterm - no matter how good that punter is.

If someone has a proven record over a good amount of time (several months and frequent bets), there is nothing bad in subscribing to such a service, if it's not too expensive and breaks your bank just for the fee

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There is an Australian guy who started a journey to make money with just following tipsters. He had no real idea about betting and/or wasn't a succesful punter, but had some money available. So he subscribed to some services and placed shitloads of bets every day, with the goal to make $25 a day. He used to be subscribed to like 10 services iirc., but nowadays he only keeps on following the bets from one of them. The other ~9 weren't successfull anymore after some time/years. He is transparent like no one else with his finances and bets, his wins and losses (and his weight )



He is also doing lots of other things too that give him passive income, and he is a pretty funny and smart guy.

You can check out his blog here, if you are interested: https://www.daily25.com/ (again I am not making any money by mentioning his blog here)

I forgot the question that I'm about to ask you yesterday but it goes something like this. What can you say about those paid tipsters? those gamblers that are asking for payment with their insights and insiders?

I think it's a good question because we've been seeing those kind of tipsters here in the forum before and probably in the future, more of them will come. Do you have anything to say for those people that wants to avail it or try it? honestly, I'm not asking this for myself but in general because it is what I see.

I don't play poker for a living and never did, but I thought about it. I said in the OP, that poker is the only gambling game apart from betting, where you can make money longterm. So to answer your question, I make more money with betting/trading In general, you can make good money with both, it depends a bit on your personal preferences and abilites, which one fits you better.

Your poker hands are just pure luck short-term of course. But over a big enough sample size you should be dealt the exact same cards as all your fellow players, so we have a level playing field. The question is, what you do with your hands and how you play them. That is where the math comes in play and the ability to read your opponent.


Actually I only ever invested lots of time in betting. For poker I read some books and played a bit with small-ish stakes, but not my game in the end. Never played dice, and slots only, when I got some free spins from bookmakers. I was in a real life Casino only once and don't think I will go there very often in the future.

Your second question is a bit unspecific, so I am having trouble to understand what you would like to hear. I already wrote a lot about intentions, how it all started, about the fun/money relation and all those things. Maybe scroll a bit through this thread and see if that answers your question. If not, just come back

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This is a bit off-topic, but everyone who is fascinated by the "world of betting" and likes to read a bit, should have a look at "Game, Set, Cash!: Inside the Secret World of International Tennis Trading" from Brad Hutchinson. It's about courtsiding in Tennis and taking advantage of time delays in TV broadcasts. It's an easy to read and understand book with a lot of fun stories of a young man getting paid to travel the world and working for a gambling syndicate.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22226468-game-set-cash

I am not earning any money by mentioning this book here nor do I know Brad. I just recommend it here for interested people, since I have had so much fun reading it (and did so already thrice).