Doug Polk's 10 Steps to Make $1 Million Playing Poker

How to Make $1,000,000 Playing Poker

Doug Polk here, and today we’re going to talk about what it takes to win your first million dollars playing poker.

And look, I’m not just some guy on the internet telling you what to do. I actually lived this. I started poker with a ten or twenty-dollar online deposit and turned that into everything I have today. So I feel well qualified to explain what goes into trying to become a great player, because that is exactly what it takes nowadays.

As poker evolves, it gets tougher to be great. It gets tougher to make money. The tools available to improve at the game are stronger than ever, and people work harder than ever. It is simply not as easy today as it was back in the early days to make a lot of money playing poker. That is a reality you have to accept.

I know it looks easy when you see someone win a tournament, play high stakes, make a big hero call, or run a massive bluff. But the truth is that those players almost certainly worked extremely hard to get there. And if they didn’t, the road would be much tougher for you today than it was when they came up.

I was looking through my YouTube channel recently and realized it was nine years ago that I started my one hundred dollar bankroll challenge, where I tried to show you could turn $100 into $10,000 on WSOP.com. Ultimately, I did make it, although it took a while.

The point is that the dream was very much alive back then. Today, though, it is even harder. With the prevalence of solvers, training tools, and advanced study methods, the landscape is far more competitive. But I’m not going to leave you hanging. I’m going to walk you through exactly what it would take to win one million dollars playing poker if you were starting from scratch today.

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Step #1: Pick a Game Type

Before you play a single hand or study anything, you need to decide what game you are going to focus on. Historically, I always recommended people pursue the game they were most passionate about, because enjoyment fuels improvement. But today, realism matters more.

That’s why I would generally prioritize online poker over live poker for this journey. Online allows you to play much smaller stakes, get far more volume, and learn in a better environment at a lower cost. Live poker may be softer if you have the bankroll, but we’re talking about becoming great and winning a lot of money over time.

I would also recommend leaning toward cash games over tournaments. You can go either way, but if you zoom out long term, tournament poker involves constant travel. Flights, hotels, food, and transportation add up fast. There’s also a lifestyle element. In tournaments, you’re tied to the event schedule. In cash games, you control when you play.

You can still play tournaments, but you need to visualize what that life looks like. Constant movement and expenses make it much harder to scale sustainably. Realistically, your best option is 6-max, 8-max, or full-ring online cash games, focusing on No-Limit Texas Hold’em.

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Step #2: Learn How the Game is Played

Before you play a single hand or open a solver, start by watching top players. I cannot stress this enough. It has never been easier to observe elite play. You can watch online games, streams, YouTube videos, and training content constantly.

Watch players who specialize in the format you want to play. Pay attention to what they do.

• What sizes do they raise?
• How do they size bets on different boards?
• How often do they bet?
• When do they overbet?

These patterns will start to become intuitive before you ever sit down at a table.

Understanding how the game functions at a high level will guide your entire learning process later.

Step #3: Practice & Study

If you want to win one million dollars playing poker today, you have to be truly excellent. That does not come from “learning on the fly.” You must understand how to play your entire range across a wide variety of situations and execute that with high accuracy.

The lessons you learn early stay with you forever. Fixing a fundamental mistake before you ever play real money is incredibly valuable. Skipping that step puts you at a permanent disadvantage.

There are many software tools available to help you learn. Obviously, I recommend Lucid Poker, since I’m one of the owners, but there are plenty of excellent options out there.

You need somewhere to study, practice, and understand how solvers approach spots. I’m not going to spend a lot of time debating GTO versus exploitative play, because that discussion has been beaten to death. But I’ll touch on it briefly.

Even if you think you’re going to deviate from a theoretical baseline quite often, you still need that baseline to know what you’re deviating from. You need to know, “What am I supposed to do here?” and then ask, “Given what I think about my opponent, how should I adjust?”

If you don’t have that solid baseline, you’re not really adjusting correctly anyway. So, whether you want to play highly exploitative or highly theoretical, having a strong fundamental ability to play at a high level will be extremely useful in either approach.

Step #4: Use Poker Training Tools

Now we’re going to use training tools to slowly improve over time by tracking our accuracy. As you use these tools, they’ll tell you how accurate you were, how close your answer was, or you can manually check solutions yourself. You’re essentially pop-quizzing yourself over and over, training toward higher and higher accuracy.

As that accuracy increases, you know you’re getting better. There’s mathematical evidence that your improvement is real, and you know that what you’re learning is actually being put into practice.

When I prepared for my first high-stakes match on The Grudge several years ago, I spent an absurd number of hours grinding the same situations over and over and over. I wanted my accuracy to be extremely high across all possible hands so I could execute at a high level in real time.

Because it’s one thing to know concepts, and it’s another thing to apply them when you’re playing for meaningful stakes under pressure. Knowledge that you can’t execute doesn’t really help you. You have to be able to use what you’ve learned in real time.

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Step #5: Play Very Short Poker Sessions

Now, you’re finally going to start playing poker, but you’re going to play very short sessions.

The reason for short sessions is simple. You want to take notes, write hands down, close the client, leave the table, and then study those hands. Ask yourself:

• What did I do right here?
• What did I do wrong?
• Was my sizing correct?
• Was I supposed to check more? Bet more? Raise more?

Play brief stints, document interesting hands, and then cross-check them against solutions. You’re now learning how the same concepts from the trainer apply in real games.

Here’s an extremely important note: your goal is not to win money.

Of course, you’re playing poker, and you should try to win. But whether you win or lose during this phase doesn’t matter. What matters is building disciplined habits around learning and improvement. That discipline is what carries forward as you move up in stakes and into tougher environments.

You’re trying to execute correctly and identify flaws, not pad your bankroll. It will likely take years before you reach a level where you’re making the kind of money you’re envisioning.

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Step #6: Track Sessions (All of Them)

This seems obvious, but it’s amazing how many people don’t do it. People will say, “I think I’m winning,” and then you ask if they track results, and the answer is no.

You really don’t know unless you track everything. Track every session, every hour. Know your hourly rate, your big blind win rate, your swings, your variance. This data lets you measure progress accurately.

No serious poker player fails to track results. It’s essential, not only for taxes, but for understanding how good you actually are.

Step #7: Find a Group of Like-Minded Players

This could be a large community like Upswing Lab or a small group of friends. What matters is having people you can exchange hands with and learn from.

When you ask for feedback, don’t just look for answers. Ask questions you’re genuinely trying to solve. When you hear a response, think critically. Imagine you didn’t play the hand. Imagine someone else did. What should that player do?

Remove personal bias. Judge the logic of the explanation, not who said it. Sometimes weaker players give great insights, and sometimes strong players say things that are wrong.

Don’t dismiss people, but internally evaluate whether the logic makes sense. Good players think in clean chains: if this, then this, then this. Hand ranges, frequencies, counters, adjustments. You want that process to become automatic.

Consistency is what makes players great. A simple strategy executed consistently is far better than a beautiful, complex strategy you constantly misplay.

Find people you respect, bounce ideas back and forth, and try to build a positive environment. Poker has no shortage of toxic personalities, so choose carefully.

Step #8: Play More & Move Up in the Stakes

At this point, you’re playing more poker. You’re playing more frequently, logging sessions, discussing hands, and reviewing results. Now you need to start evaluating whether you’re ready to move up in stakes.

Of course, you need to make sure it’s financially appropriate, but you also need a track record that shows you deserve to be there. This part is tricky. Personally, I made mistakes in both directions. When I was playing heads up, I moved up extremely aggressively. Later, when I was playing full ring, I probably stayed too low for too long.

How aggressive you are is ultimately up to you, but you should be looking for opportunities to take shots when you have the bankroll to do so.

The long-term goal is not grinding NL10 or NL20 for $15 an hour. The goal is to eventually play higher stakes where your hourly is much stronger and you can balance studying, playing, and life in a sustainable way.

When you move up, it’s critical that you don’t abandon the framework that got you there. Even if you’re moving from NL10 to NL20, it’s still the same game. You get the same number of cards. Everything is measured in big blinds. The logic does not change.

Bring the same thinking, the same discipline, and the same study habits with you into higher stakes games. Take notes. Review hands. Study afterward exactly the same way you would at lower stakes.

Step #9: Keep Your Study to Play Ratio Up

A lot of players study more when they’re losing and stop studying when they’re winning. That might feel fine in the short term, but it often leads to problems later.

When you’re winning, it’s easy to think everything is working and you’re doing great. But the reality is that every day you’re not studying, you’re slowly falling behind someone else who is. When results turn, they often turn harder because you weren’t putting in the work during the good times.

I would recommend maintaining at least a 1:1 or even a 1:2 study-to-play ratio whenever possible. I recognize that this isn’t always realistic, especially if poker is your primary income, but even then, 30% to 50% of your time should still be spent studying, reviewing, and learning.

That dedication to improvement is what makes you difficult to play against. You don’t stay the same. You keep evolving.

We’ve all played against guys where you think, “I’ve been playing this guy for years. I know exactly what he’s going to do.” Now imagine instead that guy is constantly changing, learning, and improving. That’s much scarier, and that’s the player you want to become.

Step #10: Don't Fear the Time This Will Take

No matter how hard you work, it’s going to take time. Even if you study constantly and play well, moving up, gaining experience, and earning real money in poker is a long process.

Yes, sometimes people run hot and win a big score early, but that’s not something you can rely on. For me, it took years to reach my first million. I started playing poker around 2006 or 2007, and I didn’t hit that milestone until around 2010 or 2011. That was five to seven years, and poker was easier back then.

Today, it might take 10 years. It might take 15.

The exact number doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding that process plus time equals results.

You can’t force it. You can’t rush it. Putting pressure on yourself to succeed immediately will only make you play worse.

So there you have it. My ten steps to winning your first $1 million playing poker.