Playing poker for a living is becoming almost too realistic. As the popularity of poker gets stronger, the possibility of someone calling it his or her profession is also stronger.
There are many more card rooms, tournaments and house games to attend in your quest for a decent return on your money and time spent.
If you are a tournament player, there are too many tournaments to even begin listing and your choices are unbelievable.
In Atlantic City, there are well over 100 tournaments played during the course of one week, fifty two weeks a year.
Most, if not all are No-Limit Texas Hold'em. In addition to the weekly events, casinos like the Borgata, Showboat, Taj Mahal, Harrah's and Caesars are involved with either their own major events or hosting the WPT or World Series of Poker Circuit events.
The Taj Mahal is also home of the ESPN United States Poker Championship. If you're not a tournament player, the selection of live cash games are astounding, especially for No-Limit Hold'em players.
The ultimate tournament event is naturally the World Series of Poker being held right now in Las Vegas. This event is a poker players paradise. All the tournament and live cash action a poker player could wish for.
With the exception of the Casino Employee event at $500, there are fifty three other Gold Bracelet events with the buy-in ranging from $1,000 to $50,000. The money amounts for prize money are once again staggering.
At the end of forty events the total amount awarded was $74,331,792. This does not include the World Championship No-Limit Texas Hold'em Event which is expected to draw over 8,500 players at $10,000, each for the buy-in.
A total of 34,637 players have bought in at the first forty events, many who do play for a profession and many more who have dreams of turning professional.
The largest single money amount won so far was by Freddy Deeb in the H.O.R.S.E. event. Deeb won $2,276,832.
There will be many people who turn professional after this event. Some will make it and those who don't can at least say they tried.
At the conclusion of Event forty over 200 players have cashed out for over $50,000 in a single event. The World Series of Poker helps people decide on just how far they would like to go in the poker world.
So if you are thinking about making that career change, visit Las Vegas in June and July, or spend a month in Atlantic City. After doing this you will know if you are ready for that big change....good luck. |
