1. How To Make Money Gambling Casino Games
2. How To Make Money Gambling Casino Free
3. How To Make Money Gambling Casino Online
4. How To Make A Casino

How do Vegas Casinos Make Money? The answer seems obvious right? Hell, I just lost $200 at the craps table last week. Vegas casinos are ornate palaces. And those palaces are funded by people that get a kick out of feeding machines and chasing royal flushes. Online gambling has proved to be a legal and easy way to make money from home. Best online gambling sites contain enormous quantity of games for different tastes. This is a real chance of adding real money. If the game is run by a casino (live or online) and you are playing against the casino and not versus other players, this is a luck based game, and they are going to have a long run edge. Again, you can still make money playing these games (and lots of it), but in the long run over thousands and thousands of games, the casino will ultimately win.

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The dream of many gamblers is to be able to quit their boring regular job and gamble for a living. They know that some people do it, so why can't they do it to?

The truth is that many people try to make a living by gambling full-time, but only a small percentage of gamblers are able to do it. You'll face many challenges, but if you can take the pressure and learn how to make the correct wagers, the dream can be real.

I've put together a step-by-step plan of how to make $50,000 a year gambling. It includes everything you need know, including the good and the bad.

$50,000 isn't a random number. I chose it because it's $1,000 a week if you take two weeks off during the year. Some people would be happy gambling for a living and making $1,000 a week. Others might want or need to make more.

The key thing to understand is if you can build your skills to the point where you can make $50,000 a year you can probably keep working and increasing your bankroll so you can make more.

In 1997, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth of Two Plus Two Publishing, released a book titled How to Make $100,000 a Year Gambling for a Living. It isn't one of their most popular books, but it shows that there's a market of people who want to know more.

The good news for you is you can find out everything you need to know on this page for free, so you don't need to buy the book.

Bankroll

If you want to make a living gambling you have to have a bankroll. All forms of gambling have ups and downs, and nothing you do is going to cause you to win all of the time.

Your bankroll is the life blood of your gambling career. If you don't have any money to risk, you can't make any money.

It's important that you have enough money so you can ride out the winning and losing streaks and let the long-term edge work in your favor. The first mistake most would-be professional gamblers make is not having a large enough bankroll.

You need to have enough money in reserve to live on while you build your bankroll enough to ride the ups and downs, and eventually start taking profit from it.

In the case of making $50,000 a year, you need to be able to take $1,000 out of your bankroll every week. This means that your bankroll needs to be big enough to make bets large enough to make this much money with the edge you create.

The required bankroll depends somewhat on the variance in the gambling activity you choose. The three realistic gambling activities for professional gamblers, each with their own section below, include blackjack, poker, and sports betting.

The required bankroll for each varies, but you can follow some guidelines to help you get a good idea of how much you need. I cover these guidelines in each of the game sections below.

Finding an Edge

In order to make $50,000 a year gambling, you have to find situations where you can get a long-term edge. Casino and gambling games are designed to give the house an edge. So your choices are limited when it comes to finding an edge.

Blackjack is designed in a way where the house rules change the edge. It also is played with a specific set of cards. This gives you an opportunity to keep track of the ratio between high and low cards and vary your bet sizes so you can get a long-term edge. This is called card counting, and you're going to learn more about it in the blackjack section.

Poker is a unique game in gambling, because instead of playing against the house, you play against the other players and the house takes a small cut from each pot. This creates an opportunity where you can get a long-term edge if you can play better than most of your opponents.

Sports betting is the other area where a few people are able to create a long-term edge. The betting lines are set by the bookmakers and sometimes change based on the amount of money bet on the game.

This can create opportunities for smart sports bettors to find games that offer value on one side or the other. If you can identify enough games with value and can bet enough on each game you can turn a long-term profit.

Other possibilities to find an edge include a few video poker games and other advantage play opportunities like arbitrage, hole carding, shuffle tracking, and ace tracking. These are more difficult in many cases than the three gambling opportunities listed above.

Some gamblers are able to combine two or more opportunities to get an edge, but you should focus on mastering one area before looking to add a second and third option.

The Numbers

The numbers behind making $50,000 a year gambling are fairly simple, but they also show why most players fail to make a living.

If you learn how to count cards playing blackjack, you can usually achieve a long-term edge of between a half percent and one percent. Knowing this, we can determine how much you need to wager each week to reach your goal of $1,000 in profit.

If you want to make $1,000 a week in profit playing blackjack with a half percent edge, you have to make $200,000 worth of bets per week. This means that if your average bet is $100, you have to play 2,000 hands. At an average of 50 hands per hour, you need to play 40 hours per week.

This seems like a realistic number at first, but card counters have a hard time playing in the same game and at the same casino for too long. When the casino figures out that you're counting cards, they stop you from playing.

Also, blackjack players that average $100 per bet are watched closer than ones that make lower bets. But let's look at a few different situations.

If you can get a 1% edge, you can play 20 hours a week with an average bet of $100 and get the same outcome as playing 40 hours at a half percent. Or you can play 40 hours with an average bet of $50 with a 1% edge.

It's not easy, but with the proper bankroll and card counting skills, blackjack is a real possibility.

Poker gives you the opportunity to play as many hours per week as you want to, because the casino or poker room doesn't care if you win or lose. Good poker players can win one big bet per hour in limit games, so if you play 10 / 20 and play 50 hours per week you can grind out $1,000 in profit.

Good no-limit players can win more per hour in some situations, so you might be able to turn a $1,000 profit playing $500 buy-in no-limit Texas hold'em playing fewer hours. It's even easier for a good player to make $1,000 a week in $1,000 buy-in games.

For these reasons, poker is the best option for many players who want to make a living gambling.

In many ways, sports betting is the most challenging of the three possibilities for gambling for a living.

The profit margins for winning sports bettors are usually thin, and large amounts of money must be bet in order to show enough profit to make a living. As a sports bettor, it's almost impossible to win over 55% of the games you bet on in the long-run, and the vig takes a chunk of your profit.

In order to make $50,000 a year, you need to win $4,167 a month. If you can find 100 games a month that offer value and win 55 of them, here's how the numbers work out:

If you bet $1,100 on each of the 100 games for the opportunity to win $1,000, your total investment is $110,000. On the 55 bets you win, you get back your $1,100 and the $1,000 win. This means your total return is $115,500.

This creates a profit of $5,500 for the month. It sounds like a workable situation, but there are a few challenges. The first challenge is finding 100 games a month that offer value.

The second challenge is the short-term variance and how it can hurt your bankroll and profit. If you only win 50 to 52 out of 100 games, you lose money for the month. And if you only win 53 or 54 of the 100 games, you don't make much.

• If you win 50 games you lose $5,000.
• If you win 51 games you lose $2,900.
• If you win 52 games you lose $800.
• If you win 53 games you only make $1,300 for the month.
• If you win 54 games you make $3,400.

And when you have a month where you lose money or don't make enough to cover your bills, you still need to pay the bills. This money has to come out of your bankroll unless you have money put back for expenses.

Of course, if you're a good sports bettor, you're going to have months where you win more than 55 games, but don't count on this happening often.

If you can't find enough games to bet on each month, you need to bet more per game. This is usually a better strategy because it's easier to find games that offer value if you don't need to find so many of them. But it also means you need a bigger bankroll to safely make larger bets.

Playing Full Time and the Grind

It's fun to play blackjack or poker or bet on sports in your spare time. But it can quickly become a grind if you have to do it to pay the bills. Many players find that it's as bad as a job when they're forced to pay hour after hour to grind out a living.

Let's say you learn how to be a decent poker player but can only make $10 an hour. If you want to make $1,000 a week, you have to play 100 hours. It's possible to play 100 hours a week but it's hard on you mentally and physically and you're probably going to burn out quickly if you try to do it.

Card counters often need to spend as much time looking for games and moving from game to game as they do playing. So if you need to play 40 hours a week to make $50,000 you might spend another 40 hours finding games and keeping from being thrown out.

In the last section, you learned how many games you need to bet on each month as a sports bettor, so it can be a full-time job evaluating and betting on games.

I'm not telling you to forget your dream of gambling for a living, but you need to be aware of what you're getting into. If you don't have a large bankroll that lets you make larger bets, you're forced to spend more time gambling.

A good poker player playing $1,000 or higher buy-in no-limit games will be able to make $1,000 a week faster than one playing $200 or $500 buy-in games. And a sports bettor who can bet $5,000 a game or more doesn't need to find as many games offering value as one betting $500 a game.

The constant stress of playing with an edge and needing to make a certain amount of money each week can take a toll on you. Make sure you're mentally and physically prepared for the grind before you start. Gambling for a living isn't for everyone, even if you have the skills to do it.

Blackjack

If you want to make a living as a blackjack player, you need to learn how to count cards. It's not as difficult as many people think, but you also need to be able to do it in a way that keeps the casinos from figuring out what you're doing and have a large enough bankroll to survive the downswings.

Even the best card counters have losing days and weeks. The edge is so small that short-term variance can and will go against you often. This means that you need to be able to keep playing the way that gives you a long-term edge no matter what happens.

The amount of money you need in your bankroll to make $1,000 a week in profit involves many variables. This isn't an exact estimate, but I wouldn't try to do it with less than $20,000 if the average bet is $100. $50,000 is even better.

The mechanics and how-to of card counting are deep subjects. Dozens of books have been written covering the subject, and thousands of pages of information are available. I suggest learning about the Hi Lo counting system or one of the unbalanced systems like the K O or Red 7.

The basics behind every card counting system are tracking the ratio of high and low cards remaining in the shoe or deck. You raise your bets when the ratio is rich in high cards and lower your bet when more low cards remain than high cards.

This is done by adding and subtracting a small number, usually one, from a running count. Just about anyone can learn to be a card counter with a little effort, so don't be afraid to look into it.

You also need to learn about camouflage, which helps you learn how to count without getting caught.

Poker

Just like blackjack, you can find a wide range of books that can help you play winning poker. It also is a game that lets you get started with a smaller bankroll than blackjack or sports betting. For these reasons I always suggest poker to anyone who thinks they want to try making a living gambling.

To be a winning poker player you simply need to learn how to play better than most of your opponents. Realize that this means that you can try to find worse players while improving your game at the same time.

Here are some rough bankroll guidelines for poker players. You need to understand that until you learn how to be a winning player, no bankroll is large enough.

For limit poker you should have 200 to 300 times the big bet. For no-limit ring games you need 20 to 30 times the buy in amount for the normal game you play.

This means that if you play 10 / 20 limit Texas hold'em or Omaha you should have between $4,000 and $6,000. $10,000 is even better.

If you play $500 buy-in no-limit games you should have between $10,000 and $15,000. Once again, more is better, so $20,000 is even safer.

You can also specialize in tournament poker, but the ups and downs tend to be bigger in tournaments. I suggest having a big enough bankroll to buy into at least 20 tournaments at the average buy-in you play.

I suggest learning how to play winning limit Texas hold'em or Omaha first. Mistakes cost less in limit play, and as your skills progress, you can start consistently winning a percentage or multiple of the big bet every hour on average.

Once you master limit play you can consider playing no-limit or pot-limit, but you might find it more profitable to play higher limits and stick with limit play.

Sports Betting

You've already learned why sports betting can be beat, and the challenges that sports bettors face in finding enough games that offer value, as well as why you need a big bankroll. In this section, I'm going to get into more details about the size of your bankroll.

Most recreational sports bettors place bets of $100 or less per game. But it's almost impossible to make a living with small bets, even if you can evaluate games and find value.

I don't recommend trying to make a living as a sports bettor until you can afford to make $500 or $1,000 bets per game. I also recommend betting a maximum of 1% of your total bankroll per game. This is a conservative suggestion. But remember that your bankroll is the life of your career as a professional gambler.

This means that you need a $50,000 bankroll to make $500 bets and $100,000 to make $1,000 bets. Some bettors are good enough to stretch their bets to 2% of their bankroll, but I don't recommend trying it until you have a long track record of successful results.

Health Care and Benefits

When you gamble for a living, it's just like when you own your own business. You don't have health care and other benefits that some jobs offer.

This means that you're either going to need to have health care provided by your spouse or purchase it. This can be a large expense, and if you need to buy health care, you might need to be able to win more than your original goal.

Before you start your professional gambling career, consider your options and find out how much things are going to cost. If you're young, you might be tempted to go without health insurance, but this can be a costly gamble.

The other thing you need to think about is that if you don't play, you don't get paid. You can take time off whenever you want, but the bills don't go away and you don't have any income when you take a break.

You also don't have retirement benefits that many jobs offer. You need to put some money away for your retirement as you earn.

Can you make a living as a full-time professional gambler? Many players can. But the real question is should you try to do it? Only you can answer this question, and it's not simple.

After reading this page about how to make $50,000 a year gambling, you know how to get started and the many challenges you face. You can use what you just learned to decide if you have what it takes to be a professional gambler.

So, what exactly is a professional gambler?

A professional gambler is a person who lives from gambling and spends most of his time at the casinos. Professional gamblers are actually earning their paychecks by making the right bets when they play at the live casino tables.

In this article, I will go over some general misconceptions about casino gaming as well as go over a few real-world examples, gathered from several friends of mine who are professional Advantage Players. We won’t give out real names or when these “adventures” occurred, but rest assured this is about as truthful as an accounting of what real-world play is like.

The gambler lifestyle has been portrayed by Hollywood, and more so, by commercials for casinos, to be a glamorous one. Men are always dressed sharply and women are in their best gowns and, both seem to be having a wonderful time. They are winning money, eating at 5-star restaurants and drinking the best champagne.

This is all done to entice the average person to come to the casinos and gamble, but more importantly to lose the maximum amount of money they can. The reality of the casino gaming world is very different.

What Makes a Pro

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

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

Real pros not only make a profit through gambling, but enough to pay all of their living expenses. This includes housing, utilities, car payment, insurance, food, clothing and anything else deemed necessary.

A semi-pro is somebody who makes enough to supplement their income but doesn’t earn a full-time living through gambling.

But, when you are on the positive side of the spectrum it’s like taking candy from a jar labeled “free candy”. The hard truth is that the mentality of a professional casino player is equal to a manic depressive.

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. If you play smart and stick to the plan.

Game On

Let’s take a brief look at the most common games that you can make long term profits with and I’ll then go into each with more detail:

• Blackjack
• Daily fantasy sports (DFS)
• Poker
• Sports betting

Blackjack sees you try to win money directly from the house.

Casinos do everything in their power to hinder successful card counters. This includes using continuously shuffling machines, multi-deck shoes, and vigilant security measures.

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.

DFS and poker both see you compete against your fellow man. The house merely takes a small cut of tournament fees or cash game pots for poker.

Sportsbooks create lines in an effort to get equal betting action on both sides. The sportsbooks make their money by taking 10% 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 healthy income.

Counting on It

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 remains possible to earn a living with card counting today.

You need a sizable bankroll in order to properly spread your bets and survive variance. The recommended minimum you should aim for is $20,000, but it’s better to have closer to $40,000.

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.

The final step is to figure out how many hours you’ll play and convert this into an annual salary.

The key is keeping an accurate count amidst casino distractions and blending in with normal players.

Fantasy

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.

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

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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.

Of course, DFS is filled with variables, which 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 the strategy is more prevalent. Real money 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.

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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 the top 10-15% of the field makes money.
• Tournaments have more variance than cash games.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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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.

Pro sports bettors must be very keen at handling their bankroll since they’re dealing with such small profit margins. They also need to make larger wagers than “Gary the CPA from Ohio” to increase potential profits.

Some sports bettors 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.

Conclusion

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

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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.

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.