Est-ce que le professionnalisme dans le monde du poker s'avère rentable ?

Abstract

In the 2010s, the poker popularity reached unprecedented heights thanks to the development of online gambling. However, the word "gambling" does not fit so well anymore since poker is considered by many people as a game where skills matter and to this day, it does not remain only their hobby but has become also their profession. Therefore, this thesis aims at defining the borders to become a professional poker player and then, at evaluating if that path of carrier is viable in the long run.

In the first part, after establishing the context of this research as well as some transversal theoretical principles, we bare the poker economical aspects and gather the minimum and necessary conditions to be entitled to a career of professional poker player. Moreover, these conditions allow to build the economical equation used by poker players to set up their strategy. In the second part, we appreciate the profitability of current professional players with statistical means using existing tournament data. Three methods are developed: a descriptive statistics summary, the ruin theory tailored in the remit of poker and scenarios.

Keeping in mind the structure of a business plan, we built this exploratory research in order to provide to poker players the main ingredients to write their own one.