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Sep 20, 2015  Most of my posts are aimed at the recreational gambler. This one is too, but it’s aimed at the recreational gambler who has aspirations of becoming a professional gambler. Since it’s just a blog post, I can’t teach you everything you know about how to make a living gambling. But I can provide you with enough of an introduction to get started. No one can make a living by gambling (unless you set up a casino and weigh the odds in your favor). The people who make a living playing poker aren't gambling. Poker, although it could be classified by some as gambling, is really a competition.

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You can find stories about people gambling for a living. Many people play poker for a living, and it’s easy to see why. Poker doesn’t have a built in house edge; it has what amounts to a seat charge in the form of rake. Poker players aren’t trying to win the house money, they compete for other player’s money. This is different than most other forms of gambling.

You can also read about blackjack players that have learned how to count cards or find sloppy dealers that flash the value of down cards. Some of these players are able to play blackjack for a living. A small percentage of sports bettors, horse track bettors, and dog track bettors are also able to make enough money to gamble for a living.

But it’s rare to find people who can gamble for a living who play other casino games. Bob Dancer claims that he was able to play video poker for a living several years back, but even if his claim is true, many things have changed since then. It’s harder to find full pay video poker machines and casinos pay lower comp rates for video poker play.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that and I’m not trying to say that he didn’t make money playing. But I don’t know if anyone is making a living playing video poker today. It’s possible, but if there are players doing it, there aren’t very many.

A few authors claim to make money playing craps using dice control. This has always struck me as a way to sell books and training courses, but just like Dancer’s claim in video poker, I suppose a few people can use dice control. Also just like video poker, if people are successful at dice control, there aren’t very many of them.

Games like slots, roulette, baccarat, and other table games don’t have stories about gamblers playing them for a living. Does the lack of stories mean that these games are impossible to beat?

Slots are the most popular form of gambling in casinos. People love to play slots. This brings me to the reason for this article.

The Hard Truth

Before you continue, consider exactly what making a living means. Some people live on $25,000 a year, while others seem to need $50,000 or $100,000 a year. Many factors come into play when determining how much someone needs to live.

Some of the factors include:

• Where you live
• How many people you have to support, like a spouse and children
• How frugal your lifestyle is
• How much debt you have

For the purposes of this article I’m going to use $52,000 a year as the threshold for making a living. This works out to $1,000 a week. You can use any number that you want, but unless you live in an expensive area, most people can survive on this amount.

Another issue that must be considered when you think about playing slots for a living is the lack of health insurance and other benefits. Professional gamblers have to find health care and they don’t get paid time off. Health care is a serious expense for many people and it can be dangerous not to have some type of coverage.

Can You Make Money From Gambling

Many young people don’t worry about the lack of health care coverage, but as you get older it often becomes a real concern. If you have to pay for health insurance it can take a big chunk out of your income. Keep this in mind when you determine how much you need to make to play slots for a living.

The hard truth is playing slots for a living is almost impossible unless you’re already wealthy and have enough money that you can afford to lose in the long run. It’s much more likely that you’re going to lose $1,000 a week than win $1,000 week playing slots.

While most slots players lose in the long run, it’s not 100% impossible to play slots for a living. But such a small percentage of players make money that the truth is that you should probably forget the idea.

Each machine is programmed to pay back a certain percentage of every dollar wagers and keep the rest for the casino. These numbers are called different names, but I call them pay back percentage and the house edge.

A slot machine’s pay back percentage is the amount of all bets returned to the player through wins on the machine. If a slot machine has a 95% pay back percentage that means that on average it gives back $95 out of every $100 wagered to the player.

If you consider this from the other angle you get the house edge. When the slot machine pays back $95 out of $100, it keeps the other $5 for profit. In other words, a machine that pays back $95 out of every $100 wagered has a 5% house edge.

When you add the house edge percentage and the pay back percentage together, they always equal 100%. This means that if you know one number you can subtract it from 100 to get the other number.

You can use these numbers to predict how much money you should win or lose over a set period of time, based on how much you bet per hour. Because the house edge is in the casino’s favor, it means that if you can’t figure out how to overcome the edge or get lucky, you’re going to lose in the long run.

Most slot machines have a payback percentage between 90 and 98%. This means the house edge is between 2 and 10%. With a house edge, it means that you lose between 2 and 10% of every dollar you run through the machine.

Here’s an example:

• You play on a slot machine that has a 98% pay back percentage, which means it has a 2% house edge. Your bet size is $2 per spin and you make 400 spins per hour. You can figure out your average loss rate, or what you can expect to lose on average per hour, by using this formula.
• Amount bet per spin times spins per hour times the house edge.
• $2 X 400 X 2% = $16

This means that if you play for 10 hours your expected loss is $160. You simply multiply the expected hourly loss times the number of hours you plan to play and you get the average expected loss.

Slots are run by computers, which use a program based on math. These programs, unless the programmers made a mistake, make sure that the underlying math principles always come true. It might take millions of spins, but the programs guarantees that the machine produces the programmed profit percentage for the casino.

The house edge and pay back percentage are long term things. This means that these percentages are realized over a long period of time. In the short term the house edge and pay back percentages vary, sometimes a great deal. But eventually the short term variance evens out and produces the correct results.

Most players can’t, and this is why it’s almost impossible to play slots for a living.

If you still want to try to play slots for a living, the following sections have additional information you need to know. Just keep in mind that even if you use every trick and strategy in your power, you still might lose money in the long run.

Finding the Pay Back Percentage of Slots

You just learned about pay back percentage and the house edge and how these things guarantee the casino a profit. So the next question is how do you find out the house edge and pay back for slot machines?

Most casino games are designed in a way that it’s fairly easy to determine the house edge and pay back percentage, or you can easily find the numbers with a quick internet search. But slots are different. The programs that run the machines have so many variables that unless you have access to the program it’s impossible to determine the house edge and pay back percentage.

Another problem is that some machines offer different pay back percentages from the manufacturer, so each casino can order their machines with the percentage they want. You can find out more about finding slot machine pay back percentages here, but the news isn’t good.

The following sections include everything I know that can help you improve your chances to win. Four of them are strategies that you can put into action yourself, and the other one is based on hope. Sadly, hope isn’t much of a strategy, but it fits in perfectly with how most people gamble. They put their money out and hope to win.

Online Bonuses

Online casinos often offer bonuses for slots players when they make a deposit. You can get 100% or more of your deposit matched with bonus money you can use to play slots. This sounds like a great way to overcome the house edge, and if the money was free it would be.

While bonus money looks like it’s free, when you read the conditions and terms associated with the bonus you find out that it’s not a simple as the casino giving you free money.

Every online slots bonus comes with rules and regulations about how you can use it, what you have to do before you can cash out your money, and if you get to keep any bonus amount when you meet the terms of the offer.

The terms vary from online casino to online casino, so it’s important to read them before you make your deposit. Some bonuses are deducted from your balance when you make a cash out request, while others can be cashed out eventually.

When you accept an online slots bonus you have to meet certain requirements. These are usually called play through requirements. A play through requirement means that you have to play the bonus amount, and sometimes the deposit amount as well, a certain number of times to clear the bonus. The requirement is usually shown as a multiple, like 25X or 50X. This means you have to make wagers totaling 25 times or 50 times the bonus, and sometimes the deposit amount.

Here’s an example:

• You sign up at an online casino that offers a 100% sign up bonus on deposits up to $250. You make a $250 deposit and get a $250 bonus. This gives you a total bankroll of $500. The terms and conditions state that you have to play the deposit and bonus amount 50 times before you can cash out.
• The total of the bonus and your deposit is $500, so you multiply this by 50 to find the total amount you have to bet. 50 X $500 = $25,000, so you have to make $25,000 worth of bets before cashing out. The best can be any size as long as the total amount reaches the limit.

You can use a trick at this point to get an idea of the possibility of clearing the bonus and having money left over. You can multiply the total amount you have to wager times the house edge to find the expected loss.

Using this example, if you play on a slot machine with a 5% house edge, your expected loss is $1,250. This means that usually you’re going to run out of money before you clear the bonus. The only ways to change this are to play on a machine with a lower house edge, or find bonuses that have lower play through requirements.

You also need to make sure you understand the difference between cashable bonuses and the ones that are deducted from your balance. A bonus that can’t be cashed out when you meet the playing requirements makes it unlikely you can beat the house edge.

Here’s an example if you play a slot machine with a 2% house edge, using the same bonus numbers in the last example.

$25,000 X 2% = $500. This means that your expected loss is the same as your total bankroll of $500. Even if you get lucky and don’t lose all $500, the odds of you having more than your deposit of $250 left after clearing the bonus is slim.

You should defiantly use online slots bonuses if you want to play slots. Even a bonus that’s not cashable gives you extra money to gamble with. It also gives you extra chances to hit a big jackpot, which is the only way most slots players have of getting ahead.

Slots Tournaments

Slots tournaments aren’t run at all casinos, but some casino run them from time to time, and a few run them on a regular basis. A slots tournament offers a minimum amount of play for a set entry fee and awards prizes for the top finishers.

Some casinos offer slots tournaments as a reward for a set amount of play and/or connected to their slots club program. If you can earn a free entry into a slots tournament, anything you win helps overcome the house edge on your normal slots play.

When you’re looking for a slots tournament that has an entry fee, you should look for ones that have a guaranteed prize pool. If you can find tournaments that don’t get enough entrants to cover the prize pool you can play with an edge. It won’t greatly improve your chances of finishing in the money, but when the entry fees don’t cover the prize pool it’s profitable to play.

Here’s an example:

• The casino offers a slots tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $1,000. The entry fee is $10 and they only get 80 people to sign up. If you divide the prize pool by the number of entrants you get the average value of playing.
• In this case, the average is $12.50. Any time the average return for playing is higher than the entry fee you’re playing with an edge.

You still have to finish in the money to win some money, but if you play in enough of these types of situations you come out ahead eventually.

Playing Slots for Comps and Promotions

Every time you play slots you should be earning comps. Sign up for the slots club at your local casino and look for online casinos that have a rewards program. The casinos don’t give back enough in comps to overcome the normal house edge, but every penny you get back in comps helps lower your cost to play.

Casinos also run promotions from time to time. You might be able to find free slots play vouchers and match play coupons in the local paper or on the web site of the casino where you’re planning to ply. Promotions and coupons are a great way offset the built in house edge of the slot machines.

Getting Lucky

I hate to say it, but the only way most people can play slots for a living is to get lucky. If you’re lucky enough to hit a big jackpot sometime in your life, and are smart with the money, you can afford to play slots full time.

The only slot machines I play are the ones that offer either a progressive jackpot or ones that have a set top jackpot prize of $100,000 or higher. I know I can’t overcome the long term house edge without a big win, so I don’t waste my time on machines that can’t make a big deposit into my bank.

Getting lucky isn’t a strategy, but if you don’t put yourself in position where you have the chance to be lucky you don’t even have reason to hope. If you want to play slots for a living focus on slots with big jackpot possibilities.

Progressive Jackpots

The only way to truly play slots with an edge over the house is to play a progressive jackpot slot machine where the top prize has grown so high that it overcomes the edge. The problem with this is the same as I discussed earlier. If you don’t know the house edge you can’t determine how high the progressive jackpot has to climb before it makes the play profitable.

If you don’t know the house edge, simply play the slots that have the highest jackpots. Most casinos, both online and off, have at least one slots game with a jackpot over $1,000,000.

If you can’t find one with a jackpot over $1 million, look for the highest one you can find. A $500,000 jackpot win might not set you up financially for life, but it’s enough to help out quite a bit.

Conclusion

Playing slots for a living is a dream of many gamblers. But the truth is that it’s almost impossible to succeed. The house edge locks in a long term profit for the casinos, so very few people win.

You can use the tips and strategies on this page to give yourself the best chance to overcome the house edge, but if you want to gamble for a living your best bet is to stop playing slots and pick a different game.

Online gaming is commonly praised for its convenience. You can enjoy online gambling virtually anywhere through a smartphone or tablet.

Now, imagine if you were also able to make a living through this convenient form of gaming. Some people actually have the skills and know how to pull this feat off.

Part of their knowhow includes choosing the most-profitable forms of online gambling. After all, only certain types of gaming offer a long-term edge.

What can you play to emulate professional online gamblers and earn big profits? Here are the types of online gaming that can actually lead to profits.

Online Sports Betting

Sports betting sees you wager on outcomes involving sporting events. The most-common bet is a moneyline, which is a straight-up wager on which side will win a contest.

You can see that the odds attached with these bets aren’t even. You stand to win $100 for every $185 wagered on the Seahawks. Meanwhile, you’d earn $155 for every $100 bet on the underdog 49ers.

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Unbalanced odds give sportsbooks a profit margin (a.k.a. juice). As long as they don’t consistently lose big money to pros, they’re virtually guaranteed to make money thanks to the juice.

This profit margin might seem like a house edge, which guarantees that the average gambler will lose over time. But sports betting works differently.

You can still earn long-term profits by wagering on sports. You just have to win at a high enough rate to beat both the odds and juice

If you’re wagering on a team with -135 odds, then you’d need to win 57.4% of the time to break even. Assuming you betting on a team with +120 odds, you’d have to win 45.5% of your wagers.

The exciting thing about sports betting is that you don’t really have to win frequently to make profits. At 10% juice, the average professional only wins at a 53% to 55% rate.

The problem, though, is that sportsbooks have sharp enough lines to where it’s difficult to win over half the time. You’ll need to put in plenty of work to become a strong bettor.

Handicapping is the best place to start. This process involves looking at multiple variables involved with a match, then determining which side offers the best value.

Some of the variables that you want to consider include a team’s past performance, injuries, weather, statistics, and lineup changes. These aspects only cover the surface, but they provide a nice starting point with regard to learning handicapping.

You might also consider investing in a sports betting software program. They offer a number of helpful statistics that help you spot profitable betting opportunities.

Here are some of the situations that you can spot with these programs:

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• Arbitrage opportunity – A difference in odds at multiple sportsbooks that helps you make a guaranteed profit by wagering on both sides.
• Public betting percentage – Shows what percentage of betting slips are on each side of a wager.
• Odds change – Tracks every time that major online sportsbooks shift odds for various games.
• Reverse line movement – When a line changes differently than expected, thus indicating which side the “sharp money” is on.
• Steam move – When bookmakers change a line in near unison to counteract sharp money.

One more thing to realize is that being a successful sports gambler isn’t anything like people expect it to be. You don’t just get to sit around watching games and making money. Instead, you need to constantly analyze the action from a gambling perspective.

This process certainly doesn’t sound as exciting as merely being a fan. But sports betting is still a more-entertaining job than most.

Esports Betting

Online sportsbooks completely ignored esports a decade ago. After all, competitive gaming was confined to a very nice audience back then.

But Esports have rapidly gained popularity within the past several years. As a result, most online sportsbooks now see the value in covering this industry.

Esports gambling isn’t anywhere near as big as traditional sports betting yet. But it’s definitely picking up steam and is projected to be worth tens of billions of dollars in the coming years.

Betting on esports can earn you a decent living now. Of course, you definitely have to know competitive gaming in order to earn serious profits by betting on it.

The easiest path towards big esports winnings include popular markets like Dota 2, League of Legends (LoL), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), and Overwatch. These games have enough liquidity and different bet types to where you can earn significant money with them.

The secondary markets are a bit lacking in esports gambling. Too much is focused on the major games at this point.

Nevertheless, esports bookmakers don’t have the sharpest lines on games like World of Tanks, Street Fighter II, and SMITE. You can gain some additional value by betting on these games.

Overall, esports wagering is a good form of gambling to jump into now. It only looks to grow in popularity in the future, meaning you can be on the ground floor and develop your skills now before the industry explodes.

Online Poker

In the mid-2000s, online poker experienced a boom unlike any other form of gambling has ever seen before. It went from something that was typically played by hardcore poker enthusiasts to becoming a global phenomenon.

Many pros have since become multi-millionaires through this game. Di Dang, Hac Dang, Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, Phil Ivey, and Ilari Sahamies are just some of those who made a fortune with online poker.

Unfortunately, the online game has lost some of its luster due to various factors, including laws, regulation, and bots.

Many countries have segregated their player pools after regulating online poker. These actions have reduced online poker’s liquidity and made it harder for sites to offer high stakes and huge tournaments.

Bots are AI that are designed to play poker. Some of the best bots can consistently beat low and middle stakes, making them quite dangerous to the average recreational player.

Despite the drawbacks, online poker is still one of the most-viable ways to earn a living through. It offers the opportunity to earn serious profits through cash games and/or tournaments.

The catch, though, is that you must dedicate a lot of time to improving your skills. Both amateurs and pros have improved significantly over the years.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to become a highly profitable player. If you’re motivated to log numerous hands and learn enough strategy, then you have a chance of being successful at this game.

You should also pay special attention to bankroll management. You need enough money to survive any major downswings so that you can stay in the game.

Cash players should have enough to cover at least 20 full buy-ins (100 big blinds) for their desired stakes. Multi-table tournament players should aim for 75-100 buy-ins.

Daily Fantasy Sports

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Daily fantasy Sports (DFS) are much like online poker in that they also saw a big boom. DraftKings and FanDuel pushed this industry to new heights by running countless advertisements in the mid-2010s.

The result is that the public quickly became aware that they could gamble on fantasy sports. Industry growth has slowed down since then due to regulation. But DFS is yet another avenue for earning a living with online gambling.

DFS involves filling out fantasy sports lineups while staying under a salary cap. For example, you might have to choose 10 NFL players without going over a salary cap of $100,000.

The skill is choosing players that’ll outperform their given salaries. The better you are at doing this on a consistent basis, the stronger your chances of winning money.

DFS is similar to online poker tournaments with regard to prize pool structures and fees. These tourneys require you to pay a buy-in, which contributes to both the prize pool and house fees (usually 10%).

Your goal is to win enough money to cover your buy-ins and also book profits. Of course, accomplishing this feat is easier said than done.

DFS prize money is heavily weighted towards the top, with only around 10% to 15% of the field cashing. This structure creates plenty of volatility, where you’ll often go for a long time without cashing.

I suggest having a sizable bankroll before getting started with DFS. After all, you need enough money to handle the variance.

If you’ve play online poker, then you may already be familiar with this level of volatility. As covered before, a poker tournament player should have anywhere from 75-100 buy-ins.

The same holds true when playing DFS. You need enough money to survive the dry spells in between your tournament cashes.

Daily fantasy Isn’t the easiest route towards making online gambling profits. But the opportunity is here if you thoroughly understand sports/athletes and put the hours into learning specific DFS strategy.

Conclusion

Is It Worth Trying to Make a Living through Online Gambling?

You have to take multiple factors into account before deciding if an online gaming career is right for you. The first of which is if you truly love any of the forms of gambling covered above.

You must spend lots of time honing your skills for whatever path you choose. If you’re not passionate about a certain game, then there’s no way you can stand spending hours learning it.

Another consideration is if you have the time to take online gambling seriously. You can’t realistically expect to become a pro if you only have 3-5 hours to spend on it each week.

You’ll of course need to figure out which kind of gambling you want to pursue. As discussed above, DFS, esports betting, online poker, and sports betting can all be beaten.

Bankroll management is yet another aspect to consider. You want a large enough bankroll to help you get past any low points so that you’ll eventually get back to profitability.

Bankroll requirements vary based on the specific stakes and game you’re playing. It’s up to you to figure out exactly how much money you’ll need.

Professional online gambling can be a great career that allows you to make your own hours and earn big profits. But like anything else, you’ll get out of it what you put in.