If you want to know how to become a professional poker player, you’ve probably just got started with the game and think it will be something fun to learn. If you’ve spent a little time at the tables, you already know how fun it can be to win money. As Fast Eddie Felson once said, “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”

You’ll find plenty of pages about playing Texas Holdem and other games as a pro that offer lame advice like, “practice, practice.”

I hope to offer you 7 steps to becoming a professional that will take you from talented amateur to professional poker player without too much nonsense.

Here are the 7 steps I suggest you start with, in order:

Play tight but aggressive. Many amateur players make a huge mistake of playing too wide and opening too many Texas Holdem hands. The key when you are starting out is to play only your strongest hands to keep your VPIP poker stat at a lower side and avoid many tough decisions post-flop. Live poker is considered a type of sport, while online poker is, for the most part, like a video game. One is real, and the other one is virtual. In the past, the contrast between online poker players and live poker players was quite clear. Most professional poker players belonged to one specific group and completely ignored the other. In my experience a lot of people say they want to be a 'poker pro' but when the first big downswing hits or that new show comes out on Netflix all of the sudden they find excuses not to play. As the old saying goes, being a poker pro is a hard way to make an easy living. Every professional poker player has a friend who won big money in a large tournament, then proceeded to blow their winnings in cash games or by registering tournaments at stakes way higher than their usual. It’s important to remember that poker is a game of peaks and troughs. To survive the troughs, you need to act responsibly during the peaks.

1- Read The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky

You can (and should) read multiple books about poker if you want to be a pro.

But the first and most important book on poker you should read is The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky.

The Theory of Poker is so important because you need to understand the concepts and theories behind every version of the game, and Sklansky’s book is the most readable and comprehensive guide to those ideas you’ll find.

The Fundamental Theorem of Poker, for example, is one of the critical concepts that every professional player must know to win consistently. Here it is, in brief:

“Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.”

But just reading that isn’t enough, you also need the analysis provided in this book.

Deception is another big topic, of which bluffing and semi-bluffing are only subtopics. For example, bluffing is necessary, but semi-bluffing is better. It’s also a concept I’ve never seen covered this well anywhere else.

You also need to understand the concepts of position, free cards, and pot odds. All of these are important topics if you want to profit consistently.

The Theory of Poker is so good that if you’re smart and dedicated, you can read no other poker book and probably become a pro player on the strength of these ideas alone.

2- Build Your Bankroll

Trying to be a professional poker player without a sufficient bankroll is like being a soldier trying to go to war without enough bullets for their gun.

No matter how good you are, you’re not good enough to overcome the vagaries of luck in the short run. Short term variance has broken many a skilled poker player.

How much of a bankroll do you need?

That depends, in large part, to how good you are at the game.

For example, if you’re a losing player, you need an infinite bankroll to stay in the game. Also, you’ll lose consistently, which means you’ll never achieve your goal of being a professional poker player. (Pros win.)

If you’re a winning player, you should have 20X the size of your buy-in for any game you play in. If you’re new to the game and less confident, you might even double that amount.

This means that if you’re playing in games where the minimum buy-in is $100, you need a bankroll of $2000 to play. If you’re cautious, try to start with a bankroll of $4000.

When your bankroll gets bigger, you can play in bigger games.

But keep up with your records, because if you start losing in the higher stakes games, you might need to go back down in stakes and face weaker opponents before trying again at the higher stakes.

How you build that bankroll is up to you, but it’s important that it be money you don’t need for any other purposes. If you’re gambling with money you need for rent or a car payment, you’ll make less-than-optimal decisions.

You can’t be a professional poker player unless you’re going to make optimal decisions almost 100% of the time.

You can, of course, start with a much smaller bankroll and “take a shot.”

In other words, it’s okay to play in a $100 buy-in tournament if you can afford it, even if your bankroll isn’t big enough to support that buy-in.

You just need to stay with your day job until your bankroll is big enough to play professionally.

You’ll find some great stories on the internet about Chris (Jesus) Ferguson starting with absolutely nothing and working his bankroll up to $10,000.

He started out by playing in freerolls, then gradually moved up in stakes over the course of several months. This means a lot of time spent playing penny poker.

There’s nothing wrong with that if you have the time and are patient.

Another option to get into bigger games is to sell some of your action. I have a buddy who was selling part of his World Series of Poker action at $125 for 1%.

The buy-in was $10,000, so he made his expectation more valuable just by what he was charging to get a piece of his action.

You can do the same thing. You can even find sites where poker players regularly sell pieces of their action.

3- You Need a Mission

Daniel Negreanu is one of the best poker pros I know, and he suggests that one of the first steps a pro poker player should take is to treat his poker career like a small business.

And every small business needs a mission statement or a vision statement.

In other words, you need a clear, overarching goal for what you want to create with your poker career.

Your goals are subtopics, if you will, of your mission statement.

For example, your vision statement might be to retire with $2 million in the bank at the age of 50.

You can set goals for how much you need to earn each year, each month, each week, each day, and each hour based on that overarching vision.

I had a boss who insisted that you can’t hit a target you cannot see.

I loved that.

Imagine being a marksman or an archer who had to shoot blindfolded.

Don’t intentionally blindfold yourself by not setting goals.

4- Start Tracking Your Results

Can you imagine trying to run a business without doing any kind of accounting work?

Bookkeeping might not be your favorite activity, but it’s impossible to run a business without it.

How you track your results is up to you. I’m not a professional poker player – not even close – but I keep up with my results in an Excel spreadsheet. I used to track my results in a spiral notebook.

Not only must you keep track of what you’re playing, for how long, and how much you’ve won and/or lost, you need lots of data.

You can’t assume that after 10 hours of winning poker that you’re good enough to be a professional.

After all, poker’s a game of luck, and in the short run, anything can happen.

In fact, even after

1- Read The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky

2- Build Your Bankroll

3- You Need a Mission

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4- Start Tracking Your Results