Winners vs Losers

[fyodor]

There was at least one other thread about Jackpot Jay's latest article (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lovinger/050719&num=0) but I have a specific question related to one particular quote:

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Since there are very few, if any, reliable studies available that demonstrate the percentage of winners -- and big winners -- from among the tens of millions who play the game, you are probably wondering how I "know" this. Well, as it turns out, there is one group that can -- and does -- track this kind of stat, though they are not about to publicize the results. That group consists of online poker site management, two members of which revealed to me at the WSOP that what intuition suggests must be true -- only 8 and 7 percent, respectively, of all players on their sites finish the year in the black. And I'm not talking about deep in the black, either. The vast majority of those winners are not about to give up their day jobs.



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Anyone with a PT database will attest to the fact that in the Summary tab the Winners vs Losers usually breaks down about 40/60. I have no reason to doubt Jay or his sources re the the 8/92 number. If the online sites had any motive to lie you would think it would be in the other direction ie make out that there were more winners than there actually are.

I am guessing that the disparity in numbers from PT and Jay's sources has something to do with eventually having numbers on ALL the winners at whatever level (because they stick around and continue playing) but plenty of losers get missed because they bust out and never come back before you actually see them.

Is there perhaps another reason I am overlooking? Or are Jay's sources (or Jay himself) simply not telling the truth?

[Non_Comformist]

I think Jackpot Jay is a liar and crackpot would be a better title.

[Victor]

[ QUOTE ]
I am guessing that the disparity in numbers from PT and Jay's sources has something to do with eventually having numbers on ALL the winners at whatever level (because they stick around and continue playing) but plenty of losers get missed because they bust out and never come back before you actually see them.

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so, if we combine every single pt database in the world it should show the true number(8-10 winners)? but every database is around 60/40....

i never understood this the first time around.

[Recliner]

You're overlooking the sample size of the people in your database and their standard deviation. Loser can be short term winners. How many times have you played 100 hands with someone that had a 90% VP$IP and was killing the table? With a larger sample they would be a loser. If you could calculate everyone's EV, you'd most likely find that somewhere between 2-8% of players would have a positive EV.

I hope that makes sense, its been explained much better on here in the past.

[fyodor]

Sample size and standard deviation should cut both ways i.e. a lot of true winners could be listed as losers

[Sniper]

Here's a repost of my analysis of winning % numbers from another thread on this:

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If you examine all the factors, its fairly easy to see where all these numbers are coming from...


Rough expectation for long term players:
Ring Games - 40% win / 60% Lose
SNG - 20% win / 80% lose
MTT - 5% win / 95% lose


Other factors to account for...


The winning expectation numbers move up a bit when you account for extra $$$ from RB, Bonus, Point programs, Freerolls, etc.


The losing numbers move up alot when you account for the large number of players that try to play and lose their initial deposit and never return.


If you consider the relative number of people that play ring vs tournaments, its not to hard to understand how a casino mgr would be quoted as saying winners are less than 10%, but a ring players PT database shows 40% winners.


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Link to other thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=inet&Number=2909887&fpart= &PHPSESSID=

[fyodor]

Thanks for the link sniper. I didn't think to search back that far.

[jman220]

[ QUOTE ]
Sample size and standard deviation should cut both ways i.e. a lot of true winners could be listed as losers

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Thats the wrong way to look at it. Look at it this way. If you had only 1 hand, on every poker player in existence, at a certain point as your sample size, then your database would split almost exactly 50/50. This doesn't mean that half of those are winners, just that half won the hand and half lost, due to the fact that short term variance is much stronger than long term winners losers in this example. Now you don't have just one hand, but on average, you probably have less than 100. So you get closer to the real number, and you break down around 60/40, but you never have enough hands to hit that real targed of 92/8. I'd say that if you have 10k people in your database, on average you probalby have 50 hands or less on each of them, so short term variance says the amount of winners and losers will be a lot closer to 50/50 than as you get further into the long term. I hope this helps.