Can You Make a Living as a 9 – 5 Gambler?

Being an innovative and forward thinking careers blog, we like to leave no stone unturned in our search for new, exciting and lucrative career paths for modern professionals to pursue. Gambling certainly fits the bill as an unusual and exciting career path, but it has not traditionally been considered lucrative, and is more often associated with being financially treacherous. However, there is plenty of commentary out there on the perils of gambling, and so I thought I’d flip this topic on its head and focus an article on whether one can make a living as a gambler, be that in sports, elections or using one of the best real money online casino sites.

Let’s be clear, when I talk about professional gambling, I don’t mean gambling for leisure or entertainment purposes, I mean day-day, 9 to 5 gambling in a considered way to gain profits, make a living and pay the bills. Clearly, it’s not easy making it as a professional gambler,  as the many losing gamblers will testify. Research suggests that about 1% of all gamblers are professional gamblers, who are actually making a living.

So, for most of us, the message is clear that gambling should be for fun and not a career, but for the elite 1% of gamblers who do it professionally, this needs to be run in a business-like way. Professional gamblers need to operate under a system (just like in a business), be highly disciplined, keep records, maintain a monthly profit and loss account with a view to driving month-on-month and year-on-year profits.

Beyond meticulous financial tracking and disciplined execution, a critical aspect of operating a gambling venture like a true business involves comprehensive risk management. This extends to carefully vetting the platforms and sites used for betting, ensuring their legitimacy and operational integrity. Just as any smart investor conducts due diligence on their assets, a professional gambler must confirm the reliability of their chosen online environments. This is precisely 먹튀검증이 필요한 이유 (food fraud verification), as safeguarding capital from fraudulent or unreliable operators is paramount to long-term profitability. Without such thorough verification, even the most sound strategies can be jeopardized by unforeseen platform issues or outright scams.

Does it sound kind of boring, and lacking the excitement of going to a casino or a day at the track? Does it sound a bit too much like running a mundane business? You bet it does, and that’s how it should be. It should feel exactly like you are meticulously running a business and accounting process. This is how real, professional gamblers operate. They do not fly by the seat of their pants or throw caution to the wind; they are disciplined investors with a game plan and strategy. In fact, experts say that it is this approach and mindset that separates professional gamblers from fun gamblers or even problem gamblers. Professional gamblers see betting as a job and not as fulfillment of an urge to have fun or even a fulfillment of an addiction.

So, it seem that a large part of being a professional is about adopting an unflinching business like, investment/return focussed attitude. And so what practical methods/hacks can you deploy to enable you to become a highly profitable, professional gambler?

According to Cristatos Aristad, a self styled, successful professional gambler who was interviewed on the artofmanliness.com’s, So Do You Want My Job Series, a prudent and recommended financial strategy for pro-gamblers is to ensure that you don’t gamble any more than 15% of your net disposable income for the month. That means the pot of money that is left after you have paid for the essentials of: mortgage, rent, bills, sustenance, etc…. For example, if you have £500 of disposable income left after paying all your bills, then he suggests gambling with no more than £75 a month. You don’t have to follow this system, it’s just one type of system; the important thing is that you have a systematic approach.

Matthew Benham is another successful professional gambler, featured here on the BBC, who runs a professional gambling business that employs 14 people. He believes that it is an  unemotional attitude towards gambling that enables him to be successful, and that if you are an emotional gambler you are likely to make bad decisions.

So, clearly, it is possible to make it as a professional 9-5 gambler, but it takes: dedication, financial discipline, clinical and not emotional approach, and an effective strategy and system, perhaps supported by statistical research. Interestingly, you can also advance your knowledge of professional gambling by doing a degree in business/economics and gambling at Nottingham Business School which houses the Betting Research unit.