[UMTerp]

The guy I'm having a conversation with on another board is a bright guy, but for some reason, he's not grasping this. How can I explain it more clearly? I'm trying to tell him that the overall percentage of online players that are longterm winners is in the neighborhood of 10%. Whether you agree with that statement or not, assume it's true. Can someone explain this more clearly than me (I'm in red, he's in blue). And FWIW, he is a profitable player:

<font color="blue">umterp knows i think it's much higher than 10% or whatever. i've had two poker tracker databases in the past, and both show 40% winners 60% losers. that makes sense to me with the 10% difference (off of 50%) being people that would be net profitable but for the rake. yes it's not a complete sample size, but it's better tha random guesses. if someone has a theory as to why that 40% is so much higher than 10%, i'm open.

the other reason i think it's higher than 10% is simply by observation - i don't think i'm among the top 10% of people i play with and am a profitable player.</font>

<font color="red">It's because you have such a small sample size (relatively speaking) of your opponents. If you have ten losing players sitting together at a table (which is probably typical at some tables, though not necessarily yours), somebody's going to win money in that particular session. I'm guessing the vast majority (98%+) of the opponents in your database had less than 5K or so hands played against you. Over a few hundred hands or whatever, sure, many losers will show a profit.</font>

<font color="blue">that's actually another way to think about it, so you think only 1 person at a 10 person table is ahead? i would say 3-4 is more accurate. we can go down the list of tables right now and figure out how many are up. it's definitely more than 1 at each table.

since i play shorthanded NL, there are always 2-3 people that are ahead and 3-4 that are losing. almost never is there one person beating everyone.

and sample size or not, that's two different databases as well as what other people's extensive databases on two plus two look like, all showing the exact same figure - 40%. put them all together and that's a large enough sample size. just because we don't have every hand played on line doesn't mean it's not representative once you get to a certain level of hands. and it certainly wouldn't show 40% over that many hands if it were truly 10%. that's too big a difference.</font>

<font color="red">I'd agree with you regarding the bolded sentence, BUT...

...winners are more likely to play more (and keep playing) though - the losers keep revolving. I bet a lot of the "winning" players with a small number of hands in your pokertracker have gone bust, which is why you show them as winners and don't get any more data on them, don't you agree?</font>

<font color="blue">the point is every single person's database all shows the same thing - 40%. wouldn't some show 1% or even 10% if the latter number is the correct figure? combine all of our databases if you want to think of it that way, and that's a huge sample size.

you really think you're in the top 10% of players. i don't think i am and i could prolly pull 6 figures a year if i put in the time.

and that's not short term, that's consistently, every single day, it never changes always right around 40%. and i'm not talking about 5k hands. i played a lot over the last 3 years.

i'm not surprised by the results of this poll at all. i bet some of these are net losers but it doesn't seem like it cuz they aren't losing much, and you'd have a number pretty close to 40% if they really got their accurate numbers.</font>

He makes his living with stocks. so I tried to go this route:

<font color="red">No, not at all. I don't understand why you're not grasping this concept... argh - I know you have a good analytical mind too, I'm just trying to think how to explain it to you... ummm...

I'm totally unfamiliar with the relative success of stocks, but I'll try to equate it to that... Question - is there some sample section that has like a 10% success (or failure) rate or something?

If there is, look at that sample group and see how they perform in any one given week? 40%ish? Look at any other given week - probably right around 40%. Those are like individual player's pokertracker databases. Every week, 40% will be up/down, even though longterm only 10% will be. Same principle.</font>

<font color="blue">yes, i even took several semesters of statistics. they don't tell you in statistics that you need every hand to come up with a good guess. and if the number were truly 10%, then my databases would've showed a gradual drop to the true number. so if you saw a database with 10 million hands, which we could prolly get by combining everyone's databases, it would show 40%. there is no sample size big enough for you. you don't need every hand ever played to get statistically valid result. i have yet to see a database that is anywhere close to the number you are thinking and they all include the rake.

everytime i sit at a table at NL1000, i know for a fact that at least 2 are profitable players, at a least a third of the table, and usually half. i know from playing them. </font>

HELP!!