How to Make $1,000,000 Playing Poker?

In this era of poker, it is getting harder to reach the magic $1,000,000 number, and even high-level players have trouble achieving that. In this article, we will try to break down types of poker and how efficient they are to find out which is the most efficient and easiest path to the poker dream, $1,000,000.

There are many different formats and approaches players take on their way to making money in poker. Some of these ways are related to volume, some are about bumhunting, and others are about skill and precision. Let's see how each of them works and what they produce:

Cash Volume Grind

We can see there are a lot of players who put their focus on volume and are trying to play a solid game while reaching the top spot in leaderboards and accumulating rakeback. These players must have endurance, mental strength, multi-tabling skills, and decent poker knowledge to beat high rake.

Let's take an example of an extreme volume grinder who plays 15,000 hands per day on average, grinding leaderboards, and let's say he takes 30 days off in a year, but grinds every other day. That player will play 5,025,000 hands in a year, and if he has 1bb/100 winrate, he will make $100,500 playing 200R&C before we even consider leaderboards or rakeback.

That player will pay $678,877.5 in rake, and if he has total rakeback after PVI and an affiliate deal of 20%, he will make an additional $135,775.5 from rakeback. Let's say that player is hunting for top leaderboard places. Over his 330 playing days a year, he places 4th on 200 R&C leaderboard, making $400 per day, which will bring him an additional $132,000 a year.

That would bring the total for that play to around $365,000, so for that player, it will take less than 3 years of hard, consistent work to get to $1,000,000. If we raise his winrate at the tables by 1bb/100, it's going to be close to 2 years of grinding.

Cash Game Bumhunting

This type of player will not play as much as the one previously mentioned, but will have a significantly higher winrate. The main goal for this player is to identify recreational players who lose the most money and mark them so they can play as many hands against them as possible.

The skills needed to play this type of grind are the ability to recognize the biggest fish and exploit them efficiently. It is also important to keep an eye on the lobby and see as soon as possible when the fish sits to have priority and position on the fish. Having decent poker skills allows one to hang on against other players and exploit fish for maximum value.

Let's say he can bumhunt and achieve a winrate of 10bb/100 on regular tables. If he puts one quarter of volume as the rakeback grinder type of player, he will make $250,000 over 1,250,000 hands played.

He will also make $33,775 with 20% rakeback, and if he plays 330 days a year but fewer hours and places 16th on the leaderboard on average, he will make an additional $10,000. We can round up his earnings to $300,000 per year, which will take him more than three years to reach $1,000,000.

Grinding MTTs (Tournaments)

MTT grinder that plays 30 MTTs per day over a period of 330 playing days will pay 9990 MTTs, and if we take his average buy-in is similar to previous examples of $200 with a ROI of 10% he will make $198,000 in a year by playing tournaments, and will play at least as much as cash game bumhunter or more hours per day. He will also make around $20,000 a year in rakeback, making his total earnings around $220,000 a year, putting him in third place, as he will need around 4.5 years to make $1,000,000.

This player will also need a completely different set of skills, such as playing well with different stack sizes, ICM knowledge, rigorous bankroll management, multi-tabling skills, endurance, and more.