Prop Goes the Weasel

John Vorhaus

I recently got an email from a guy asking, What about online propping, JV? Do you think it's a career path or what? This brought to mind my own experience as a proposition player at the now defunct Regency Casino in good ol' Bell Gardens, California. I thought it was just super that they'd pay me eight bucks an hour to play poker, and figured that with that kind of cushion there was no way I could lose. Well, I lost $300 on day one, lost $500 on day two, called in sick on day three, and gave up the pretense on day four. With a win rate of minus $50 an hour, I decided that this was a job I could not afford to keep.

Online propping is a slightly different, well, proposition. For one thing, getting stuck in a short handed game is much less of a problem for online players than it is for realworld players, since short handed games in casinos are generally quite tough, but online even the short games tend to be filled with a homogenous mix of good, bad, and really bad players.

Also, we online players have much experience with and no particular fear of short handed play. Many of us prefer it. So getting stuck in a short, and therefore allegedly bad, game is not that big a burden for the online prop. You can work at home, so that's good. You don't have any of the attendant realworld prop expenses such as transportation, meals, tips (taxes -- did I say that out loud?) Granted, you still have the rake to deal with, though since the anchor of most prop deals is a rakeback scheme, this can be less of a problem for the online prop, too.

Still, to be a successful online proposition player, you have to be a winning online poker player, and many people are drawn to propping precisely because they can't show a profit on their own merit, and hope that the monetary support of their prop deal, whatever it may be, will push them from the red to the black. Maybe. But you still have to put in your hours -- lots of them if you intend to be the sort of prop who gets work. And if your game has leaks, even eensy-weensy tiny little ones, all those hours will drain your bankroll far faster than propping can prop it up. Not only that, if you lose your bankroll entirely, you can't quit. Not unless you want to stop being a prop altogether and, you know, go flip burgers or something. Bottom line, then: If playing poker is a hard way to make an easy living, then propping is a hard way to make a hard living. Should you be one of the few who can regularly and consistently (and demonstrably over a span of years) beat online poker for good money, then you might be able to show a profit as a prop. But I put it to you that if you're really that good to begin with, you don't need propping. You can probably make more money with canny site selection and game selection, thereby exploiting the sort of options and opportunities that being a prop precludes.

More in Card Rooms

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Some places cut the rake or reduce the time charge if the game is short handed. This is more significant when there is a rake... read more