The Average Salary of a Professional Pool Player

[buckshotshoey]

There is one more way to join the pros that hasn't been mentioned. Enter and win the
US Amateur Championship. Get free entry in pro tournament. What? No money in it? Damn.
Not worth doing then.

 

[scsuxci]

What Is the Average Salary of a Professional Pool Player?


If you really enjoy shooting pool and are considering becoming a professional pool player, you may be wondering what the average salary is for someone who wants to pursue this particular career path. Unlike other jobs that have a steady salary, a professional pool player's income will vary depending on how well they do in tournaments.

Making Money
Pool players earn their living by winning prize money and collecting money from sponsors. And since you are more likely to get lucrative sponsorships if you are winning tournaments, you need to be able to play pool very well and be able to handle pressure well. In order to determine if your skill level is good enough to become a pro, you need to start counting how many balls you can run.

Most pros can run a minimum of 150 balls in straight pool, and they also can consistently run at least 80 balls. If you have this kind of skill level, you need to be aware that you will earn very little money as a professional pool player, when compared to the pros in other sports.

Mid-level pool players usually make less than $50,000 per year, with the average earnings being closer to $30,000 annually. When compared with the average earnings of many Americans, it's not a bad living, because you will be working only for a few hours. However, if you compare it to a golf pro, for example, you will not be making in one year what they could potentially earn in one tournament.

Becoming A Pro
The process of becoming a professional pool player is quite easy. All you need to do is sign up with a few of the professional organizations like Billiard Congress of America (BCA), United States Professional Poolplayers Association (UPA) and World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA). Once you have paid your annual dues, you can start entering pool tournaments. Many times the entry fees for these tournaments ranges from $200-$400, but you will have to come up with the cash because doing well in these tournaments is really the only way to get your name known.

If you consistently have high rankings, you can become established and won't have to win qualifier events in order to play in certain tournaments; instead, you can be seeded in these tournaments without qualifying since you already have a solid reputation as a skillful player. Even in some so-called "opens" (open to anyone who is willing to pay the entry fee), you still may have to have specific credentials in order to play. You should become familiar with the various regional tours, like:

Fury
Joss
Midwest
NYC
Pechauer
Southeast
Viking

Tips
Pool players spend a great deal of time traveling from one tournament to the next. In addition, you can expect to incur lots of travel related expenses like the cost of hotels, transportation and eating out. In order to supplement your income, you can try to get endorsements, give pool lessons, hold exhibitions and even gamble at the local pool hall. Although the life of pool players is uncertain, if you are someone who really loves the game, it may just be the life of your dreams.

If your like Ralf and don't gamble, you could make a living if your on the highest
level.
If your tournament player but a Gambler as well then your financial status
may change day to day, hour to hour. Many live like a King for brief periods
then live in the car for the rest. Be smart with your money!!

 

[Masirib5]

Salary? I find that an interesting word to use. Are they hired by a pool room to teach, run the cash register. cook. clean the toilets etc.

If you are a tournament player and win, that is not a salary.

If you break into coin machines in car washes, that is not a salary.

If you gamble and win, well maybe you are paying yourself a salary. Don't forget to withhold for the IRS and state taxes.

--Jeff

a fixed regular payment, typically paid on a monthly or biweekly basis but often expressed as an annual sum, made by an employer to an employee, especially a professional or white-collar worker.

 

[Texas Carom Club]

nice sig^^^

 

[devorator]

And loading boxes is a lot more fun! Plus you get to work 8-10 hours a day in the Summer. Unlike Pool where you sleep till Noon, have a leisurely afternoon and go to work at 6. You may work three or four hours and earn a few hundred (at 50-100 a game). It's a tough job but someone has to do it!

Great post Jay!!!!!!. That is the God damn truth!!!!!
I would pay to see this "supermen" loading and unloading packages for a week in the sun at 85-95*. I rather play 3 sets of pool in 3h with the AC on and a glass of wine on my table, don't you..really??!! Than hanging out with my friends or having dinner with 300$ in my pocket.
Couch heroes are everywhere...
I know that gambling is hard this days but if you ask me, an average player (A-B) can make a living playing pool easier than a top player. Quantity over quality...you'll always find someone to play a couple of sets for 100$ each.
200$ a night>6000$ a month> 72k a year
How that sounds...?!

And don't come with "you won't get to shoot every night" Or "you can't win everyday". Keep in mind that only I said a Couple of sets and only 200$. It can be way more than that in 3h/ and it doesn't have to be everyday if you manage to control your winnings. Consider it an average.

You just have to go out and play...that's all!!!

Chris@2015



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Nostroke]

Great post Jay!!!!!!. That is the God damn truth!!!!!
I would pay to see this "supermen" loading and unloading packages for a week in the sun at 85-95*. I rather play 3 sets of pool in 3h with the AC on and a glass of wine on my table, don't you..really??!! Than hanging out with my friends or having dinner with 300$ in my pocket.
Couch heroes are everywhere...
I know that gambling is hard this days but if you ask me, an average player (A-B) can make a living playing pool easier than a top player. Quantity over quality...you'll always find someone to play a couple of sets for 100$ each.
200$ a night>6000$ a month> 72k a year
How that sounds...?!

And don't come with "you won't get to shoot every night" Or "you can't win everyday". Keep in mind that only I said a Couple of sets and only 200$. It can be way more than that in 3h/ and it doesn't have to be everyday if you manage to control your winnings. Consider it an average.

You just have to go out and play...that's all!!!

Chris@2015



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Can you do this in the same pool room every night or do you have to keep moving?

 

[Atlatlien]

The original post came from this site: http://www.cvtips.com/career-choice/what-is-the-average-salary-of-a-professional-pool-player.html

Literally a word-for-word copy/paste.

I would say she should have cited the author, but whoever wrote that nonsense didn't even want to put their own name on it...

 

[Rhea]

Literally a word-for-word copy/paste.

I would say she should have cited the author, but whoever wrote that nonsense didn't even want to put their own name on it...

Perhaps the figures are a bit of an overstatement or the anonymous author felt that you couldn't simply be a pro by self proclaimation and that you had to be in the top 50 worldwide. In either case I would say 30k avg for the top 50 in the world is pretty close to accurate considering on the higher end top 2 is around 200k+.

 

[West Point 1987]

Can you do this in the same pool room every night or do you have to keep moving?

IMHO (having tried this for a while back in the '90s) you have to keep moving. You can fish the hole for a couple of nights, but you need to let it fallow out for a week before you hit it again. College towns/bars are great, so are military towns. The "regular" crowd is smaller, but the majority of the fish are transient, never visiting the same bar twice in a month. So you can fish those holes longer. Pretty soon the action dies out for you around town and it's time to move a few exits down the road...you can come back later. That's how a C or B player can make decent coin gambling...and frankly, that action is as strong as it ever was. Everybody talks about the big scores, trying to match up with a spot the better player can't outrun, but $200 or $300 four or five nights a week playing nickel/dime games against bangers add up to more in the long run, and you don't have risk four digit sums to beat a AA/AAA player to cash...

 

[Bob Jewett]

... I know that gambling is hard this days but if you ask me, an average player (A-B) can make a living playing pool easier than a top player. Quantity over quality...you'll always find someone to play a couple of sets for 100$ each.
200$ a night>6000$ a month> 72k a year
How that sounds...?!
..

I think it sounds like a fantasy. How much do you make per year playing pool, Chris? Does anyone you know earn a living by playing pool (not counting the top 10 on the money list)?

I knew someone in the early 1980s in this area who supported himself for maybe 5 years doing nothing but playing pool. He looked terrible at the table but he made all the shots. He spent a lot of time in bars. He was known to dump when needed. He was known to threaten when needed. And that was a time when it was much easier to find money games than it is now.

If you want a steady income from pool these days, learn how to teach, learn how to fix tables or learn how to run a league.

 

[Jaden]

People are wrong on both sides here.

The estimates that you can't make decent money playing pool I think is a little off.

You can play dive bar and local pool room tourneys basically every night of the week. Place 3rd or better in them and that's better than 2500-3500 a month alone. throw in an occasional win in a monthly tourney and an average winnings of 300 a week matching up and your talking $50K a year.

Now there are other costs like travel and such but that's mostly factored in to the above.

Now this is taking into consideration having the skill set to compete at a pro level.

Now that being said...I probably have the skill set... would I give up my higher 5 figure salary to do it....hell no...I've got a family to support...a mortgage to pay....a car payment to make...

If I can get to a point where I'm guaranteed income and can devote the time really necessary, I may reconsider...We'll see what happens.

Jaden

 

[Cardigan Kid]

I really don't see poker dying. The casinos will continue to prop it up because it is still a big draw and you can edit a 12 hour final table into a dozen exiting hands, which you cant do with pool. Plus the skill in cards is less obvious and luck is still part of the game. Kids today love the idea of a pile of money waiting for them on the table like a lottery ticket. In pool, the better player usually wins. To the uneducated eye, the difference between the 1st and 100th best pool player is imperceptible but that uneducated person realizes that they wouldn't stand a chance in a single set of 9 ball with either one.

Basically, we have all hitched our wagon to an obscure sport/hobby that is viewed as shady and lower rent, which is also probably why we like it so much. In reality, our pro's don't sweat and bleed like the other sports mentioned and they already knew going into it that we weren't going to have a big payday. If there was one, the talent pool would be even deeper and you would see some scary good "athletes" playing the game.

There are so many good points in this post, I don't know where to begin. Absolutely correct in that if pool was paying out like golf, then scary talent would emerge to take the sport by storm. We would have thirty Shane's playing.

But the obscure oddity of the sport is what draws us to it. The tragic hero complex, where you have someone who dedicates their life to becoming the best in the world, but yet can't get recognized by even the amateur players of the sport.

It's quite possible that pool is the only sport/game where the amateur players of that sport, for the most part (APA players), don't care to watch or even know who the professional players of that sport are.

Even amateur poker players know who Chris Moneymaker or Daniel Negreanu is.

 

[Bob Jewett]

Perhaps the figures are a bit of an overstatement or the anonymous author felt that you couldn't simply be a pro by self proclaimation and that you had to be in the top 50 worldwide. In either case I would say 30k avg for the top 50 in the world is pretty close to accurate considering on the higher end top 2 is around 200k+.

I don't think the author said anything too clearly. As for the numbers, I think it's a little unfair to include international players but if you do they look like this for 2014:

The top 20 averaged about $65k
The next 20 averaged about $22k
The next 20 averaged about $13k

So the answer is that being in the top 60 players in the world doesn't guarantee that you can eat all the time if tournaments are your only source of income.

 

[devorator]

Can you do this in the same pool room every night or do you have to keep moving?

Was this rhetorical? If not..
Depends on the pool room. Bigger ones have players coming and going every hour. If the room is not so populated maybe you can find another one. I found good action everywhere. As long as you work for your meal and not looking to steal I bet you'll get at least one game per night.

Chris@2015


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pookster]

I don't think the author said anything too clearly. As for the numbers, I think it's a little unfair to include international players but if you do they look like this for 2014:

The top 20 averaged about $65k
The next 20 averaged about $22k
The next 20 averaged about $13k

So the answer is that being in the top 60 players in the world doesn't guarantee that you can eat all the time if tournaments are your only source of income.

Exactly and I rather work as a valet boy than play pool for a living and I've been there and done that already

 

[devorator]

I think it sounds like a fantasy. How much do you make per year playing pool, Chris? Does anyone you know earn a living by playing pool (not counting the top 10 on the money list)?



I knew someone in the early 1980s in this area who supported himself for maybe 5 years doing nothing but playing pool. He looked terrible at the table but he made all the shots. He spent a lot of time in bars. He was known to dump when needed. He was known to threaten when needed. And that was a time when it was much easier to find money games than it is now.



If you want a steady income from pool these days, learn how to teach, learn how to fix tables or learn how to run a league.

I agree Bob, but Like I said I am not talking about stealing here. I am talking about fair games, earn the meal not leave your cues and run because you got a huge spot from a C player and robbed him good.
That's why we see a lot of whining on Fb and here, because fair games are long gone sir.
When you work 9-5 you are not allowed to cheat and still get you salary. You either do your job or leave...same thing applies to gambling...or it should....
Chris@2015


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[galipeau]

It's called "plagiarism".

Thank you. I will remember that now.

 

[skip100]

the funny part is that was plagiarized from a content farm...probably written by the same non-expert people who wrote about salaries for OB GYNs, forensic anthropologists, makeup artists, etc...

 

[Bob Jewett]

... I am talking about fair games ...

If you play fair games your expected average take-home is negative due to table time. In a pool hall full of fair gamblers only the house wins. Unless, of course, you start cutting up the stake horses. Or is that steak horses?

 

[DJ14.1]

If you play fair games your expected average take-home is negative due to table time. In a pool hall full of fair gamblers only the house wins. Unless, of course, you start cutting up the stake horses. Or is that steak horses?

This is exactly right. There's no fighting the math. When it comes to money-talk, pool is a strong-prey-on-the-weak game similar to poker. You either make an unfair game to your advantage, sit with inferior competition, or eventually you'll be broke, just like every table game in the casino except positive-expectation poker. I think the devil is in the details in pool (try to make a game where you have a slight edge but no so much to ruin your reputation as a lock-artist).

I'd estimate at least half the field in typical tournaments both pro and amateur have no business in the tournament if money is their only goal. Thankfully there are many more rewarding reasons than just money to play pool.