[Rudbaeck]

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I do have theories on this number. I think it is higher than the reported 8%. If an idiot like myself can be a winning player I dont see why only 8% of the people qualify.

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Because I know several geniuses who are serious losers at poker. They go totally berserk when the 'idiots' draw out and take tilt to an entirely new level.

You need a weird mix of skills to be a winning poker player over any length of time. You must be decently sharp, willing to seek out and internalize criticism, understand the motivation of people without becoming soft, have an ass of lead, controlled yet aggressive... The list just goes on, and some of these traits virtually never occur together naturally. (As Schoonmacher points out, almost no one is both tightly controlled and aggressive naturally, it's a well rehearsed behaviour.) The only naturally occuring group with characteristics like poker players that I can think of is highly functioning sociopaths.

The reason the number is so low, while it might seem higher, is that losers don't stick around while winners do. According to Roy Cooke if there are 2 million poker players online today, then something like a third of those will still be around in six months time. The rest will have quit.

When I play onlin there are generally 2-3 other people at the table who I am fairly sure are long term winners. This doesn't mean that 40% of all online players are winners, as the remaining six seats are over the course of the night shared by maybe as much as 30 different losers over 8 hours.