To the outside world, it looks like poker players live a great life. People think poker players are lazy, and can come and go as they please, doing anything they want at anytime they want. People think that poker players are all rich, or at least financially set to where they don’t have to worry about bills, food and shelter. They see poker players as living charmed carefree lives without being bothered by the mundane little things in life that most people fret over. If you told most poker players about this perception of them, they would probably shake their heads at you and laugh. Poker players do not live the life that most outsiders would have you believe. Poker players are not rich. At least most of them aren’t. The fact is that most poker players are losing players, and for those poker players who make a living off the game, income varies greatly. Even the majority grinding out a living playing ungodly amount of hours online, probably pull in less or about the same as most career professionals in the real world. A lot of winning poker players could be broke on any given day. This is especially true with poker players who rely on tournaments for their living. Buy ins for tournaments are so high, and variance plays such a huge role in those games, that many poker players rely on backing deals from people with more money, and can actually end up owing money, with no positive income at all by the end of the year. Odds are that one of those “rich successful” poker players you’ve seen on tv is either broke, or has been broke at some time during their poker career. While it’s true that maybe a very tiny percentage are truly set financially, winning tournaments and getting endorsement deals from sites like Pokerstars, it would be a huge mistake to think that all poker players are rich.