Gambling professionally probably has at least as much to do with what you don’t do as it does with what you do. The main thing to avoid is playing games where you don’t have an edge.

Aug 23, 2010 Best Answer: IF you can Hit 70% of your bets YES you can be on the fast track to a million dollars However sports betting depends on your starting bankroll - if your starting with 1,000 you cant roll it into a million in a year - unless you are betting 10 to 20% or more of your bankroll on a single game how to get.
Nov 16, 2018 Two men have been added to Nevada’s “black book” and are banned from entering casinos in the state after swindling the Bellagio on the Las Vegas Strip of more than $1 million in.

Feb 09, 2017 You can make a million in poker only, but poker is not a gambling games. Gambling = games of chance. In such games house always has edge and you will lose in the long run.

Some professional gamblers do play games where they don’t have an edge over the house, but they’re the exception to the rule. And even then, they stick with money that ISN’T part of their professional gambling bankroll.

In other words, if a professional gambler plays roulette, he does purely it for entertainment.

When I write a blog post, I usually try to assume that the reader knows little or nothing about the subject. So when I write a post about how professional gamblers only gamble with an edge, my first assumption is that the reader doesn’t know what a mathematical edge is.

That’s why the first point on this list explains the math behind gambling.

Psychology plays a big role in being a professional gambler, too. Depending on the nature of your gambling activities, you might only be making a moderate middle class income. In a lot of cases, professional gamblers sometimes go through dry spells and/or losing streaks. In those cases, they need to have money to live on.

Self-discipline and math skills are just for starters. Once you’ve developed those 2 skills, you still have to achieve a certain amount of proficiency in your chosen activity, regardless of what it is. Being a professional level poker or blackjack players requires skills. It takes a lot of effort to develop those skills.

In fact, most people aren’t cut out to be professional gamblers. For most people, the amount of effort required compared to the rewards aren’t worth it. It’s also hard for most people to divorce themselves from their emotions enough to make the kind of consistent, rational decisions necessary for success.

If you think you might have what it takes, this post provides as good of an introduction to the topic of gambling professionally as any you’ll find.

If you’re interested in learning more about making a living as a gambler, you might also check out the book How to Make $100,000 a Year Gambling.

1. Understand the Math

If you want to gamble professionally, you must have enough knowledge of math to understand some of the intricacies of probability. I can provide an introduction to the subject here, but you might consider buying a textbook or taking a class on the subject.

Probability is the branch of mathematics that deals with predicting the future. It examines in a black and white way the likelihood that certain events will occur. In fact, the word “probability” isn’t just a description of this kind of math. It’s also a description of the likelihood of an event.

The probability that something will happen can always be expressed as a number between 0 and 1. If something will NEVER happen, it has a probability of 0. If something will always happen, it has a probability of 1.

You can express a probability in the following ways:

As a fraction
As a decimal
As a percentage
As odds

Here’s an example of a probability expressed as a fraction:

You’re flipping a coin, and you want to express the probability that it will land on heads. You have 2 possible outcomes, each of which is equally as likely as the other. To express that as a fraction, you put the outcome that you’re looking at on top of the fraction (the numerator). You put the total number of possible outcomes on the bottom of the fraction (the denominator).

In this case, the probability is ½.

You have 2 possible outcomes, but only 1 of them is heads.

Here’s an example of that same probability expressed as a decimal:

By the way, this isn’t even a probability problem. It’s just an exercise in converting fractions to decimal. To convert a fraction into a decimal, you just divide the number by the denominator. 1 divided by 2 is 0.5.

You can also convert that into a percentage–which is easy for most people to understand:

To convert a decimal into a percentage, you multiply it by 100 and add the % symbol. 0.5 X 100 = 50%.

This is one of the most popular and easily understood way of expressing a probability. If you watch the weather on the news, you’re probably pretty familiar with this already. When the meteorologist says there’s a 50% chance of rain, you know what she means.

The words “per cent” mean “per 100”, so you can always think of a percentage as the number of times out of 100 that something will occur.

Expressing a probability as odds might be the least intuitive way to express this number, but it can be incredibly useful for gamblers. Instead of comparing the number of ways something can happen with the total number of outcomes, when you’re talking odds, you compare the number of ways something can happen with the number of ways it can’t happen.

In the coin toss example I’ve been using, the odds of getting heads is 1 to 1. You have 1 way to get a heads results, and you have 1 way to NOT get a heads result. This is called even odds.

In gambling situations, you risk money on certain outcomes. If the payoff odds for a bet are better than the odds of winning, you have a profitable situation. (Pros called that +EV, which stands for “positive expected value”.) If the payoff odds for a bet are lower than the odds of winning, you have a losing situation. (This is called -EV, or “negative expected value”.)

If you consistently put yourself in +EV situations, you can expect a profit when gambling. In fact, this is what casinos do all the time. It’s how they stay in business.

The rest of this post is filled with examples of +EV situations, but here’s an easy to understand example that continues from our coin toss discussions:

Suppose you’re convinced that you’re psychic, and you think you can predict with some degree of certainty which way the coin was going to land. In fact, you’re so convinced that you’re willing to bet $2 to win $1.

I’ll ignore any question of the likelihood that you’re really psychic, and I’ll just ask you the following question:

Who, mathematically, has the edge in this situation?

Obviously, it’s the other guy. He only stands to lose $1, and you stand to lose $2, and mathematically speaking, you both have a 50% chance of winning or losing every time.

If you assume 100 coin tosses, and you win 50 times, you’ve won $50. But you’ll also have lost 50 times, losing $100. Your net profit is -$50.

If you want to be a professional gambler, you want to be the guy on the other side of that bet. Pros don’t rely on psychic powers. They rely on math and the long run.

2. Develop Incredible Self-Discipline

Gambling is an emotional activity. All kinds of hormones and chemicals get pumped into your brain when you’re playing a game of chance for money. And once those get started, it’s easy to start making irrational decisions.

Professional gamblers can’t afford to be irrational. If and when they are irrational, they lose money. And losing money is not a way to make a living at any activity.

Here’s an example from the world of poker:

You’ve been playing solid poker for hours. You bet when you have a big hand, and you fold when you have lousy cards. You pay attention to position. You know what the other players’ tendencies are.

Over the last 6 hours, you’ve only had 6 hands worth playing, and you went into the pot of every one of them as the favorite to win.

And every single time, your opponent sucked out on you. He started with a worse hand, and then he got lucky.

So you start playing a little more emotionally. You start betting big when you don’t have the cards to justify it. You make raises when you know your opponent probably has a better hand.

This is called “tilt”.

It’s a great way to make a bad situation at the poker table worse.

And good poker players can smell when you’re on tilt. They’ll sit back and wait until they have great cards, then they’ll bust you.

Pro poker players don’t go on tilt. If and when they do, they quit playing until they have their emotions under control again.

Tilt can

How To Make A Million Dollars Gambling