Introduction
Many people are making a living as a professional poker player, online or in cash tables--not necessarily big poker tournaments.

Step 1: Basic Requirements
* First, you should have two piles of money saved up if you are thinking of taking this leap; your expense money, which can never be touched except to pay expenses, and your stack, which is used for playing and entering tournaments. You should have at least a year's worth of expenses saved up before taking the leap. If your expenses get down to 3-4 months worth left, it's time to head back to your job.
* To be a professional poker player you have to put in the time. Generally a player has logged around 500 hours of poker play before deciding to become a professional. Many professionals track their statistics of how much they make per hour when playing in cash games or online.
* Think long and hard before you give up your day job.
* There are some universal legal regulations that a person must meet.
1. Age: You must be at least 18 years old to paly.
2. Education: 500 hours of poker play

Step 2: Gather Information
* Study - You’ll need to read some poker books. There are a lot of books out there, but what you’re looking for is any book by any player that you’ve seen on T.V. A good one to start with is Phil Hellmuth’s Play Poker Like the Pros.
*T.V. - Watch all of the WPT events on the Travel Channel and be well versed in High Stakes Poker on GSN. And of course you should Tivo all of the World Series events on ESPN.
*Interview a player
- One of the best ways to gain insight into the world of pro poker is to speak to a pro player.
* Thanks to modern technology, a prospective pro poker player can look for tips via the Internet.

Conclusion
* Money management is the key to turning pro. You need to be able to set limits for yourself every single time you sit down at the table. Being smart with your money is the key. Set up two limits for yourself. Set an amount of money that you are willing to lose, and either the amount you want to leave with if you're up, or a time limit you're going to sit down for. Both are strong moves strategically, especially when you have the will power to get up from the table when you're winning a bunch, or the will power to stop throwing money at the rest of the table when you're playing bad or having a terrible run of cards.
*Location is also a huge part of becoming a professional. If you've decided to become a professional online poker player, then you can find a game going literally anywhere at anytime of day. This is convenient, but the fact remains that online poker requires less skill, and much more luck
than playing in a live poker game. You need to be able to make the trip to work everyday efficiently. If you are spending a substantial amount of money on gas, or even a hotel room every night, then it just wont be worth playing. Essentially if this is happening, you are sitting down at the table already down money.
*Becoming a professional poker player is a huge step in any persons life. The life of a professional poker player is a one way ticket to a therapy session, but if you think you're game is good enough to win consistently, then there is really no other choice in life. Every American would absolutely love to play a game for a living. It is without a doubt a coveted occupation, and not many people can actually pull it off. If you decide to make the leap of faith, I strongly encourage you to make sure you weigh the good that comes with the life, and weigh the bad. It is a decision that could literally effect the rest of your life.

Keep your job, and play at night, at a place like Party Poker. Read as much as you can about the game of poker. The idea is to build up enough of a stack from playing so that you could stop working, but have enough money to fall back on if things went awry.

The best way is to read GOOD poker books - there is a bunch of terrible poker books on the market, here are a few good books:

Small Stakes Hold'em by Ed Miller and David Sklansky - this is THE book for small limit hold'em games. period.

Harrington on Hold'em volumes 1-3 - No limit tournament strategies

Professional No-limit Hold'em by Matt Flynn and Ed Miller - great book on No-limit cash games.

Before you embark, you will also need to accumulate a bankroll, something on the order of 500-1000 big bets. So if you wanted to multi-table $2-4 online you would need about $5000. If you wanted to play one table of $3-6, you would need roughly the same.

Also - if you are going to be playing online, it would be a great idea to set up a new account where you recieve rake-back. This can be done at http://www.raketracker.com/

Also - it would be a good idea to download a program that records your desktop. Record your online sessions and have a friend (a professional, or very good player) review your play.

Finally - You NEED TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE BAD RUNS OF CARDS!!! This is HUGE! Downswings occur all the time, you need to be able to isolate yourself from the money, and realize that the games will still be there tomorrow. You don't always have to try and win your money back - some days you're just gonna lose. Typical down swings are in the 50-100 big bet range, but can go as deep as 500 big bets. That can be brutal.

Best of luck!

http://www.tourneyblog.com/images/TNTN3274_negreanu6pl.jpg

Im not a Poker player - pro or otherwise, so I have to get my info from somewhere in order to answer your question. As I believe there's no magic step-by-step guide for Poker, I'll paraphrase and lead you to a Pro Poker players mindset, which should be the most important point, with regards to being a Pro.

I do have friends who are Poker players though, and I know the nuances of the game (if you like to call it that). I am adding an edited version of info that I had sent to a friend who wanted to turn Pro recently.

The info is from 'aokrongly', who is a community member on an online Poker forum. If you want to take your game to the next level you'll want to take his advice into consideration. It's just his opinion, others may have differing opinions. But here it is:

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Professional poker is not about any single hand, session, MTT, week or even month of play. Poker is a game of "incomplete information" and widely varying conditions. You can play any single hand perfectly
and lose - and you will. You can play an entire session perfectly and lose - and you will. You will catch bad beats, play against players who overpay for flush draws and make bets into your near nut hand only to get lucky. It happens. And at times it happens repeatedly. Over an extended period of time it will happen fairly regularly.

Professional poker play requires skill, but you can be skillful and very unprofessional. Professional poker play requires courage, but you can be courageous and very unprofessional. Professional poker play requires proper bankroll, but you can play very unprofessionally with a huge bankroll. The list goes on and on. All of which are important aspects of managing your game and career. However there is one over-riding value that you must develop for long-term, consistent, "professional" success. That value is DISCIPLINE.

With proper poker discipline no short term losses will stop you, and without it no short term wins will overcome the lack. And by "short term" I'm talking as much as a year!

The foundation of professional discipline is understanding that the process is more important than the results, ALWAYS. You have to "know your game" and execute it to the best of your ability every hand, every session, every week. That's the process. Now, if you do that and lose (the result), then you have been successful. If you DON'T DO THAT, you have been unsuccessful, EVEN IF YOU WIN!

The professional player KNOWS (I mean absolutely knows) that each hand is played in a vacuum. The entire universe resets with each deal of the cards. Nothing that happened before affects what is happening now, from an "odds" standpoint. They play optimal play over and over. And if that doesn't give them the result they expected FOR THAT SESSION, then they go to bed without a second thought. They get up the next day and play exactly the same way. If they don't get the RESULTS they expected, then they do it again the next day. (This assumes you know how to play poker, by the way, and you're playing correctly.)

The amateur changes their game based on the last hand's results, or the last session's. They spend as much time thinking about what happened before that it overwhelms their decision making right now. And if they get good results then they do that again! They let previous results dictate current play, even when their previous actions were Poor Poker.

The professional definition of tilt (at least mine) is this: Playing ANY hand of poker where ANY thoughts or emotions about previous hands cause you to make sub-optimal decisions.

Professional poker players who can get up from a table after 30 minutes and losing 1/2 their table stake to bad beats or whatever, will ALWAYS WIN LONG TERM. (Assuming they they left because they knew they were on tilt.)They have the discipline to KNOW that this one session is less important that playing on tilt. Why? They could win it back if they kept playing that session!!! (right?) Let's say they have 100% chance of winning the money back now plus more, but to do so they have to play on tilt. What was the results? They made money! But what was the long-term consequence?

They have reinforced in their own mind that they can "play on tilt", be undisciplined, and come out ahead. That works a few times. Until it doesn't and they lose their entire bankroll in one night. Then proceed to try to rebuild too quickly and lose the money they borrowed for their next bankroll... etc. because they trained their brain to react poorly in adverse conditions.

That's the summary of how a poker pro thinks... this is a start at least on this very complicated and important subject for those who want to play professional level poker - whether full time or once a week. Professional poker doesn't mean you have to play poker exclusively. It's a "state of game"!

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Hope this helps... Do also check out this online resource for more on the same. Good Luck :)

http://www.pokertips.org/strategy/going-pro.php