80% losers at poker.....what if there was no rake ?

[playerfl]

long term 80% of casino poker players will have a net loss.

What if there was no rake, no tipping, no costs of playing at all, and no cheating of any kind....

What percentage of players would be profitable long term ?

[Ray Zee]

i would say over 90% show a net loss. without any expenses 70% would win.

[cardcounter0]

I think it is more like 90% of poker players are losers long term.

Although the percentages would change a little bit if expenses and rake were eliminated, it probably wouldn't be anything dramatic.

It seems you have players that play badly or depend on luck, and are losers -- and players that play well, and win the money.

I don't think elimination of the rake will change anything. Bad players will continue to play bad and lose. Good players will continue to win. There is just a small group that play well enough to squeek ahead but are currently losers because of rake that you will be effecting.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
long term 80% of casino poker players will have a net loss.

What if there was no rake, no tipping, no costs of playing at all, and no cheating of any kind....

What percentage of players would be profitable long term ?

[/ QUOTE ]

with rake and tips i'd guesstimate 98% of players at very low limits (4/8 and below) lose, especially in places such as los angeles where the drop/rake is front loaded (full drop taken on any flop). there are fewer players losing as the limits go up since the tips and rake are proportionally less.

when i say 98% i don't mean 98% at any given time sitting in an ocean of casino or card club tables - the players who do better tend to play more so there are more winning or at least break even players sitting at any one time.

with no rake/tipping i agree with ray zee that about 70% (or more) would win (especially at mid limits). no matter how poorly (within reason) your opponents play, it is hard to win more than about two big bets per hour in a full game. losing players can easily approach a loss rate of ten big bets per hour, but players who play that poorly usually don't play often.

~ rick

[TomCollins]

You are a bit off here. Suppose you are only in a time charge game. So lets say you can make $10/hr in a game. You are a winning player in the long run as long as the time charge is less than $10. But on the spectrum, some people will make $9/hr, some will lose $9/hr. So adding the time charge has to change how many players win. Rake is just a more complicated equation, but in essence, you will pay $x/hr in rake in the long run, and it can be computed to affect how a rake free game affects who wins.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
i would say over 90% show a net loss. without any expenses 70% would win.

[/ QUOTE ]

At the limits I play (5/10 right now) I think this is too high. A plorarity of the players I see at 5/10 short handed are loose passive, and I can't see them being long term winners even in an expense free game. I think I would put the mark at about 50%, give or take.

[playerfl]

when I was thinking about this, my first thought is that the winners/losers would be about 50%, but that would require a lot of unrealistic assumptions.

[dogmeat]

Ah, Ray, are you saying in home games that 70% of the players win at the expense of the losing 30%?

Dogmeat /images/graemlins/spade.gif

[MicroBob]

i'll estimate a 3/6 B&M game drops $60 an hour (for simplicity sake....30 hds X $2/hd).
that's $6 of rake per person at a 10 player table.

so, very basically, any player who loses >1BB/hr should then become a winning player rake-free.
i don't know what percentage of players this applies to.

it would be much easier to figure out for online with someone who has a large p-tracker database.

also - i feel it is inaccurate to assume that all players are contributing the same amount of rake.
when i play, i am contributing less to the pots on average simply because i am playing fewer hands than most players. thus, i might be contributing enough money to the pot that i am responsible for $4/hr while the LAG next to me is contributing enough money to account for $6/hr worth of rake.

not too sure on this though...since i am also more likely to raise than the other passive players perhaps it balances out (or swings it the other way).


anyway....in my old p-tracker database (before it got erased) i think 40% of the players were long-term winners...although many were up by only a fraction and some of my opponents only had a handful of hands against me.

[MikeGuz]

Hey Rick,

Is that post poker explosion % include the masses of new young players playing 10-20 20-40 and NL games without a clue. LOL - had a guy in a 20-40 game ask me what was a corrrect tip. He had never played in a live game. Of course he was calling raises in mid position with K6o.

How the hell are you. Do you still have a "student" who regurally out plays the teacher. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Mike "Rounder" Guzaldo

[Rick Nebiolo]

I just finished using "Search" to look up your new incarnation as "MikeGuz". We read most of the posts and got a lot of kicks. Welcome back!

The forum is different. It's huge, us old guys get lost in the forest. Some of these young guys with 3000 plus posts amaze me. The content is still great - it's an ocean though, not a pond. We are small fish in the ocean.

"Student" became "Hero" and after a huge run in limit for a couple years mostly plays the restricted buy in no limit games which she loves and does pretty good at (but not as good as limit). Like you, she needs to work on poker math and theory /images/graemlins/grin.gif.

Anyway, we get twenty to thirty $100 or $200 restricted buy in games going every night in Los Angeles along with more unrestricted buy in NL and PL games. Tonight the Bike alone (when I left around 9:00 pm) had seven games, including a $500 unrestricted buy in game. I host no limit Monday and Tuesday days and Saturday evening. Hero comes by on Saturday evenings. Tomorrow should be out of control with the medium buy in no limit tournament during Legends of Poker.

Regards,

Rick and Hero

PS Most of the new young players play no limit but plenty play yellow chip limit. Some are good on their way to great players. The others are well, you know /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[MikeGuz]

Poker math - what's that. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

As for theory I'll leave that to you brainyacks. I just play my semi tight semi agressive game as usual and take what comes.

Hope to see you guys again some day.

Mike

[Dov]

[ QUOTE ]
so, very basically, any player who loses >1BB/hr should then become a winning player rake-free.

[/ QUOTE ]

Correction:

so, very basically, any player who loses <1BB/hr should then become a winning player rake-free.

[Ray Zee]

no, because in many home games you have two decent players and the rest about even. so maybe only two would win. but across the spectrum most games have about equal players as a whole and two bad ones who provide most of the money. in rake games most all at those tables lose as not enough stand out against the field.
each game is different this just is a guess about the whole poker world and how rake takes all the money.