This post answer three major questions.
1. What it takes to become a professional gambler?
2. Why you should not take up professional gambling if you can find an alternative source of money or income?
3. Why not take up professional gambling as a hobby as a compromise.

What is your response after reading Blackjack Hall of Fames Part 1 and 2, The Rise of Blackjack Professionals Part 1, 2 and 3 and Blackjack Team Play.

Gambling Laws in Canada. The nation of Canada is a unique blend of natural beauty and urban modernity. From the frozen tundra of Nunavut to the steel and glass skyscrapers of Toronto. The gambling industry is growing in the United Kingdom (UK). The goss gambling yield (GGY) in Great Britain increased from roughly 8.4 billion British pounds in 2011 to approximately 14.4 billion.

The idea is to let you have a glimpse of the lives of successful professional gamblers. In short, what it takes to become a professional gambler. The price you have to pay. The risks and obstacles you have to overcome. Gambling is a risky profession. Gambling is also an unstable profession. What about professional gambling. Professional gambling is a scary profession. How do you handle these three major problems?

Professional gambling is just like any other profession. It is a journey of a thousand miles that starts with a single step. A good way is to take up or learn professional gambling as a hobby. For the talented you can turn pro later . When you practise professional gambling as a hobby, you eliminate both the inherent risk, the unstable nature of gambling and the scare of professional gambling.

With your skill as a professional gambler, gambling becomes a wonderful recreation without risk and instablity but with ample entertainment rewards and satisfaction at the expense of the casinos.

How do you know whether you will do well in professional gambling. It takes many years of learning curve to master professional gambling. It is not easy to make a living in professional gambling. Very few make it. In my opinion, gambling is the worse profession to pursue. The traditional professions like doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects, teachers fared much better.

You may have come across many individuals who are sports professionals like football, basketball, baseball, boxing, crickets, rugby, golf and so on. Gambling can be considered as a special kind of sports. Within this category, gambling as a profession is possibly the most unrewarding profession. As a consolation, you can always plan an exit strategy in professional gambling just like the way capitalists plan their exit after selling off their business.

The only way to keep improving over long periods of time is to keep a log book just like the your lecture notes and exercise books during your college days. Go though your log results and find ways to improve them.If you have any flawed belief systems or any flawed behaviour, you must find ways to eliminate them. Seek help from your mastermind support group. If you do not have one you have to form one. In professional gambling, it is just not possible to do it alone.

The best way to handle your pride and ego is to learn the spirit of sportsmanships. My advice is to take baby steps. Keep improving on your baby steps until you see a sudden jump in standards. This is just the law of nature. When water reaches 100 degree centigrade, it has to turn into steam. You may have seen how pride, ego and chasing after instant gratification contribute to the downfall of many promising professional gamblers. When water get heated too fast it explodes. It would not turn into steam.

MASTERING TECHNICAL ISSUES

Emotional maturity is probably the most important quality of a professional gambler. It takes time to learn the technical issues in professional gambling.You have to learn how to handle variance. You must not deny, justify, lay blame, or give excuses. You admit your mistakes and learn from your mistakes. You admit your weaknesses and take steps to strengthen your weaknesses. Correction is the answer. You must not be jealous of the successes of your fellow professional gamblers. You respect them as master and learn from the masters.

HANDLING CASINO SCENES

You may have encountered some common casino scenes each and everyday. “I was influenced by the fellow player. This unlucky player brings bad luck. The stupid player judged the cards wrongly. Handphones keep ringing. Croupier irritates me, takes too long to exchange money and count chips”. If you want to become a professional gambler, you have to take steps to turn these casino scenes into your comfort zone.

In addition you must be able to handle bet spreads including some occasional big bets. You need to develop the guts to push out the bets. You need to be well financed. You can play at the level of professional gambling only if you have a sufficient bankroll.

More importantly, you need to have a flare for mathematics. This is probably the single most important factor. This will win you more money than any other factor. If you don’t know the mathematics, you have to learn it. If you don’t like mathematics, professional gambling is not right for you.

As in any endeavour there are obstacles, lots of them. Mental preparation is the key. Stories from successful professional gamblers revealed that they are very often ridiculed, humiliated, suspended and even barred from casino play. If you are not aware of this, read my posts on The Rise of Blackjack Professionals

Matured personality and self-awareness go hand-in-hand. Take steps to eliminate your weaknesses and execute maximum restraint to engage in impulsive activities that are beyond your gambling plan. Going on gambling tilt, drug abuse, bad diet and any form of excessive indulgences will definitely affect your performance. Irrespective of which games you play, which system you use, your success invariably depends on the combination of these three variables – mental alertness, money management, and mathematics.

The gamblers Book Club in Las Vegas is a great place to start. Here, you can find all the books on the aspects of gambling that interest you. You should have proper learning plans in your pursuit of professional gambling. The internet now offers more opportunity for learning than anything you probably have ever seen in your life. Gambling conferences are another great place for learning but I don’t normally attend these functions. Las Vegas used to be the place where most professional gamblers were trained. It used to be the springboard for professional gambling but with the internet and opportunities in many other parts of United States and Internationally, this is no longer as exclusive but it is still a great place for new contacts and a place to learn and develop your professional skills.

You should have realistic expectations in the outcome. You should expect both positive and negative swings in your bankroll. If you decide to be a blackjack professional, you will at some point lose 60 top bets during your career. If you play long enough you will have a losing year. I repeat, “lose top 60 bets and one losing year.” You would see the upswing and downswing due to variance.

If you pass these series of tests, and emerge unscathed, then you have graduated and qualified as a professional gambler. Professional gambling has been known to be very demanding on your time as well. More than eighty hours per week of gambling research and gambling time is the norm. In addition, professional gambling is a profession that will take over many major aspects of your life.

If you have the ability to make more money doing something else you probably should return to where you belong. Professional gambling as a source of money can be very draining on your life. In the long run, it is difficult to justify professional gambling as a bona fide profession.

Professional Gambling as a Hobby

In professional gambling you are totally independent. The only person that you need to answer is yourself. Chiefly, the mold of a man’s fortune lies in his own hand. Besides the controversial “entertainment”, professional gambling contributes nothing to society.

As a compromise, why not just take up professional gambling as a hobby. If you decide to take up professional gambling why not just made it five to ten years. You can always return to where you belong.

I have taken you on a tour to have a glimpse of the lives of successful professional gamblers. In short, what it takes to become a professional gambler. The price you have to pay. The risk and obstacle you have to overcome. Most of you must be shocked to see the iceberg beyond its tip. It is no wonder that you are giving away so much money to the casinos.

It is the purpose of this blog to awaken the public to the reality of casino gambling. This blog hope to expose the illusion of gambling and that gambling truly brings out the worse in men. The financial dream of professional gambling is not only hazardous but also not worth pursuing. Gamblinghelp.biz hopes to improve the lives of people whether it is responsible gambling, recreational gambling, professional gambling, compulsive gambling or quit gambling.

KEYPOINTS

1. Profesional gambling is risky, unstable and scary profession.

2. A good alternative is to take up professional gambling as a hobby.

3. When played as a hobby, professional gambling allows you to enjoy gambling lifestyle as a winner while eliminating most of the problems faced by professional gamblers.

If you have any question, email me at soondr@gmail.com

REFERENCE: financial-spread-betting.com

Most people start their gambling hobby without a lot of forethought. I made the occasional sports bet with buddies before I ever visited Las Vegas for the first time. I even bought some lottery tickets here and there.

It didn’t really become a hobby until my first trip to Vegas, though. After that, I was hooked. I read every book I could find on every gambling subject I could think of.

But I still wish I’d done some more thinking about my gambling hobby before getting started.

In fact, if I could go back and do it all over again, I think I’d ask myself the 7 questions below:

1- Can You Afford to Be a Gambler?

I’ve written many times about the basics of bankroll management for gamblers. The first rule is to never gamble with money you can’t afford to lose. This means setting aside a certain amount of money exclusively for the purposes of gambling.

Not everyone can afford to set aside much money for gambling. If you’re living on minimum wage, you don’t have enough discretionary income to even buy occasional lottery tickets. You MIGHT be able to play some penny ante poker with some of your friends.

Even if you have a respectable middle-class income, it’s possible you can’t afford a gambling hobby.

How much money can you afford for entertainment? Are you willing to give up one form of entertainment for another? How much is that entertainment worth?

Let’s assume you live near a casino (driving distance). We’ll also assume that you spend $50 a month on cable TV, but you rarely watch it. It might make sense to cancel the cable and spend that money on gambling instead.

How much gambling can you get in for $50?

Let’s assume you’re a slot machine player. The average slots player makes 600 spins per hour. Let’s assume you’re playing for $1.25 per spin, which is a reasonable average for someone playing low stakes slots. This means you’re putting $750 per hour into action.

You’ll win back a percentage of that money. The average mathematically predicted amount that you’ll win back is the payback percentage for the game. You have no way of knowing what that percentage is, but we can make an educated guess. For purposes of this post, we’ll assume a payback percentage of 92%.

This means the house edge is 8%. That’s how much the casino expects to keep.

With $750 in action, an 8% house edge equates to an average hourly loss of $60.

Your $50 monthly bankroll, most of the time, won’t pay for more than an hour on the slot machines.

You might be better off as a low stakes blackjack player, though. Let’s assume you’re betting $5 per hand. At an average blackjack table, you’ll probably see about 60 hands per hour. That’s $300 per hour in action as contrasted with $750 per hour.

If you play with perfect basic strategy, you can expect to face a house edge of between 0.5% and 1%. We’ll call it 1% for the sake of simplicity.

Your hourly expected loss in this scenario is only $3/hour. You can get in an estimated 16 or 17 hours of play at the blackjack tables with a $50 budget.

But consider this, too:

The hourly expected loss figures are based on what you can expect in the long run. In the short term, anything can happen. 10 hands of blackjack at $5 each could easily result in a fast losing streak.

You can do calculations like these all day every day, but the point should be clear:

If you want to gamble for a hobby, you need to be able to afford it. That usually means having more money you can afford to lose than you think.

On the other hand, your goal might be to make it as an advantage gambler. In that case, you’ll still need to be able to afford a bankroll. In fact, you’ll need enough of a bankroll to last past the short run and get into the long run. That’s the only way you can be reasonably confident that you’ll see the mathematically predicted results you’re hoping for.

2- What Kind of Gambling Do You Think You Might Enjoy?

I’ve written in other blog posts about considering your personal temperament when deciding on a gambling activity. Most of that deserves to be repeated and expanded upon.

Here’s my first question for you:

Do you enjoy watching sports on television?

If so, betting on your sport of choice is the obvious place to start with a gambling hobby. You might be able to find plenty of small stakes action with your buddies at work. If you want to put more money into action, you might need to find a neighborhood bookmaker at your local bar. Some people open accounts with online sportsbooks. Still, others bet on sports at a local sportsbook in a major gambling destination like Las Vegas.

Anyone who loves sports betting will tell you that watching a game is always more exciting when there’s some money riding on the outcome.

Here’s another question:

Do you enjoy taking a long shot at a huge, potentially life-changing jackpot?

If so, the lottery might be an appropriate way for you to gamble. It can be a cheap option, too. After all, who doesn’t have $2 or $3 each week that they can spend on the Powerball?

I generally avoid the lottery because the odds are so lousy. I think casino gambling is more entertaining and offers better odds of winning. Personally, I also think the government shouldn’t be involved in the gambling business to that extent.

Another question:

Do you like to play cards?

Blackjack is a great option if you have a casino nearby that offers the game. In fact, blackjack offers the best odds in the casino. You’ll be hard-pressed to ever find a casino game with a house edge as low as 0.5%. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you can become an advantage blackjack player. Card counters can profit, but it takes a specific temperament to pull that off.

Poker is another great option for card players, and you don’t need to live near a casino to get into a game. In most places, you can find home poker games. In many of those games, you don’t even have to deal with the rake. (The rake is the small percentage of each pot that the casino collects in exchange for hosting the game.)

Casinos offer plenty of other card games you can gamble on. You can also find other card players who are willing to gamble on games like bridge, spades and the like.

Of course, the biggest and most popular type of casino gambling in the United States is the slot machine industry. Some people prefer not having to think or make decisions when they’re gambling, and most of us, whether we admit it or not, like flashing lights and cool sound effects.

The best move when playing slots, by the way, is to find a major casino destination and play there. The payback percentages are higher. At all costs, avoid playing slots in places like gas stations, bars and airports. The odds on those games are always lousy.

Craps and roulette are both worth thinking about, too. Craps is more exciting and complicated. It’s easy enough to learn, but it can be intimidating—especially if you’re prone to anxiety. Roulette, on the other hand, has a higher house edge. It’s a slow-paced, relaxed game that a lot of gamblers enjoy.

Social gamblers also enjoy bingo, too. Bingo halls seem to be available just about everywhere you can imagine.

3- How Likely Are You to Engage in Addictive Behavior?

I read an article about brainwashing techniques and cults not long ago. One of the things the author pointed out is that even if you’re familiar with brainwashing techniques, you’re not immune to them.

I’m convinced that this same line of thinking applies just as well to potentially addictive behaviors like drinking, drugs and gambling. Even if you realize ahead of time that they’re addictive, you’re not immune to becoming addicted to them.

If you already know that you have an addictive personality, you might think twice about starting a gambling hobby.

Is Gaming A Hobby

The psychology behind gambling games is insidious from the perspective of addiction research. It turns out that the human brain is more likely to be motivated by sporadic awards than by consistent awards.

Is Gambling Considered A Hobby

How does this apply to gambling?

It means that if you were playing a slot machine where you won on every spin, you’d be less likely to want to continue playing it than you would if you play a slot machine game that only paid out a win 50% of the time.

That’s just how the human brain works.

We live in the era of big data, too. Casinos and slot machine designers have untold amounts of information about our gambling habits. They know how much time we spend on machines. They can pinpoint with amazing accuracy what kind of hit ratio is most likely to stimulate the average gambler’s pleasure centers in the brain.

Gambling, like alcohol, can be a lot of fun. Adults should be allowed to gamble (or drink) if they want to.

But adults should also be vigilant that they’re able to stay sane and reasonable in their behavior.

Moderation is the key—if you’re capable of moderation.

4- What Kinds of Goals Do You Have?

It’s important to decide what you want to get out of a specific activity. For most people, gambling should be a form of entertainment.

You probably should maintain this line of thinking when starting any new hobby or entertainment activity.

Let’s look at some examples:

We already established that a blackjack hobby might only cost you $3/hour. That’s cheap entertainment.

A slot machine hobby, on the other hand, might cost more like $60/hour. That’s not cheap entertainment at all.

Compare these numbers with the costs of other forms of entertainment.

A movie ticket in my hometown during peak hours costs $10. For a 2-hour movie, that’s $5 per hour of entertainment.

I also live in a town with a great bookstore, and I enjoy reading. I can find used paperbacks there for $3 easily. Most of these books take at least 3 hours to read, so we’re looking at $1/hour for that brand of entertainment. (I can sell these books back to the bookstore for about a dollar when I’m done, too—making used books an even cheaper form of entertainment.)

On the other hand, you might have different goals. Maybe you want to make gambling your profession. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

If that’s the case, you need to pick a gambling activity where you can get an edge. Sports bettors are sometimes able to profit consistently. Poker players can play professionally, too. Casino gamblers can get an edge at blackjack by counting cards.

In all these activities, you’re counting on a tiny edge over your opponent to make you a profit in the long run. You need a large enough bankroll to get to the long run.

Here’s why:

Your edge at blackjack might be 1%, but it’s unlikely that in the short run you’ll win 1% of every bet you place at blackjack. In fact, if you have a small enough sample set, it’s impossible.

When you bet $100 on a hand of blackjack, you usually either win $100 or lose $100. Sometimes you might win $150—if you get a blackjack. You might also lose or win $200 if you split your hand or double down.

But winning just a dollar on a single hand is impossible. This is the kind of average that’s only possible over the course of a lot of hands.

The long run means thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of bets.

Even then, you need to be confident that you’ve mastered the type of gambling you want to do professionally. Most people overestimate how good they are. Countless poker players are convinced they are winners, but they don’t keep records. They don’t know if they’re net winners or not.

Most people suffer from confirmation bias. They remember the wins better than they remember the losses.

5- Will Your Family Support Your New Hobby?

Even if your goals are reasonable and your strategy is effective, your husband or wife might be opposed to this new hobby. Maybe one of their relatives lost a fortune gambling.

On the other hand, gambling can bring some families closer together. I was adopted. In 2000, I went to Reno, Nevada to visit my birth family.

Guess what we had in common.

I spent a week there, gambling with my aunts, uncles and cousins that I’d never met before. I’m sure I’d be welcome to visit again anytime. We didn’t lack for things to talk about.

A few years ago, I read a great book by Bob Dancer called Million Dollar Video Poker. In it, he describes how he and his wife launched a video poker adventure that resulted in $1 million in winnings over the course of six months.

Another video poker guru, Jean Scott, is famously known as “The Frugal Gambler”. She and her husband enjoy their lives taking advantage of casino comps and playing video poker with a low house edge.

You may or may not have a family. If your family enjoys gambling, it might be more fun for all of you to participate. On the other hand, if you have no family, you can do what you want.

But if your family is opposed to your gambling hobby, reconsider.

Nothing is more important than family.

6- Can You Manage a Gambling Bankroll?

Managing a gambling bankroll varies based on your goals. If you’re a recreational gambler like most of my readers, my advice is simple:

Only gamble with money you can afford to lose. This means making sure all your bills are paid. Scared money always loses. It’s a saying because it’s true.

Set aside a specific amount for your gambling trip. If you gamble from home or bet on sports, this might mean setting a budget for the week. The first step in managing your bankroll is determining its size.

Decide how many gambling sessions you want to have during your trip. If you’re going to a casino for 3 days, you might decide you want to gamble every day for a few hours. If you have $300 set aside for the trip, this means you divide your bankroll into 3 session bankrolls of $100 each.

If you’re gambling on sports at home, the number of games you want to bet on each week is the corresponding decision.

Set win goals and loss limits. The thing about negative expectation games is that you’ll lose all your money if you play them long enough. Most casino gamblers put their winnings back into the game and lose it all as a result.

Having a win goal ensures that you’ll walk away a winner at least some of the time.

A win goal is an amount that indicates when you’re ready to quit. If you have a session bankroll of $100, you might set a win goal of $50 or $100. You’ll quit gambling when you’re up that much, regardless of how much time you’ve spent playing.

A loss limit is an amount that you’ve lost which indicates that it’s time to quit. For some gamblers, that might be your entire session bankroll. For others, it might be a percentage of that bankroll.

In either case, remember that managing your bankroll doesn’t mean you’re improving your odds of winning these games. The house edge is a force of nature like compound interest. In the short run, though, these kinds of arbitrary decisions can help you get more out of your casino vacation.

On the other hand, if you’re an advantage gambler, your bankroll has an entirely different meaning:

It’s the rocket fuel that will propel you to profits, and you need enough rocket fuel to get out of the gravitational pull of the short run.

This usually means having enough money to cover 400 bets or more. This number is flexible and varies according to the game. A poker player might only need 200 bets.

The idea behind having a large bankroll is to minimize your risk of ruin.

Since you’re dealing with random events, it’s possible that you’ll see results different from the mathematical expectation. In fact, it’s likely that this will happen.

The bigger your bankroll is in comparison to these bets, the less likely it is that you’ll go broke while getting closer to the long run.

7- When Will You Know It’s Time to Quit?

I talked about quitting when you hit your win goal or your loss limit in the section about bankroll management.

But how do you know when to hang up your gambling spurs for good?

Gamblers Anonymous offers a 20 question assessment you can use to help you decide. The more of these questions you answer yes to, the more likely it is that you should give up gambling for good.

Some examples of these questions include:

• Did you ever lose time from work or school from gambling?
• Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy?
• Did gambling affect your reputation?

Another way to decide when you want to give up gambling is to set a lifetime win goal and a lifetime loss limit. This requires keeping records.

I’m a big fan of keeping written records of everything. It’s a way to force yourself to be mindful. Since we’re only here for a short while, it’s important to pay attention. Writing down your results provides you with clarity about your gambling results.

I know dozens of gamblers who are convinced that they’re net winners playing slots. Some of them are more modest. They claim that they’re break-even players.

I suspect that most of them are lying to themselves—and to me.

Don’t be like those guys. If you’re losing money, that’s okay. Gambling is almost always a negative expectation activity. The math guarantees that you’ll lose if you play long enough.

Conclusion

If you’re already a gambler, it won’t hurt you to think through the 7 questions in this post. If you’re thinking about becoming a gambler, you’ll be better off thinking through these questions before you start.

The most important advice I can offer is to be realistic and accurate about your results. Keep records. Pay attention. You might discover that gambling isn’t entertaining enough to justify the cost. You might decide you’re an addict.

Or you might decide to go pro.