$$$ Per Hour Poll Results—Analysis

[grimel]

[ QUOTE ]
Conclusion: my unofficial and clearly unscientific poll is obviously, very seriously flawed. Way too many players win big, and far too few players lose at all. But let’s take a look at the argument that those who read and post at two plus two are an amalgam of winning players. After all winning players have to congregate somewhere, right? OK, in that case let’s assume my poll numbers are correct. If that’s true, then are the online players really losing enough money to make my poll results a fact? In other words, an enormous sum of money must be lost in order for there to be so many winning players

[/ QUOTE ]

This is what I responded too in the original post.

For online play the ability to get rakeback and bonus money makes it MUCH easier to hit $20/hr and do so at MUCH lower limits which SHOULD greatly reduce risk for a good player. Just clearing bonus alone at 1/2 is roughly $15 plus $2 rakeback makes getting $20/hr relatively easy even at 1/2 - just play 200 hands an hour of 1BB/100 poker. Shift to 2/4 and one need only play 0.5BB/100 to make over $20/hr.

That's one reason as it relates to your poll, I can't see how anyone playing .50/1 or better using 2+2 principles/methods isn't making SOME profit per hour. Thus I can't really see how ANYONE on THIS site is losing money IF they are getting rakeback and clearing bonuses. At the 1/2 level there is ALWAYS a bonus available somewhere to clear. Even if the rakeback at 1/2 isn't available for/while clearing bonus money, playing break even poker 3 tabling is at least $12/hr on all the major sites (even UB). At some of the sites it's close to $27 (per BW because it has "all" the major sites rated). Do note these rates are for full ring games. Even just playing ONE table at 1/2 someone would have to be playing -2.4BB/100 to just break even clearing bonus at the worst major site.

Yes, someone is losing a bunch of $$ playing each month, but I'd expect "everyone" at 2+2 to be making some small hourly profit even playing LOSING poker.

[grimel]

Based on my 100kish hands, I'd say the worse 2+2 players are better than the average player AND I'd expect all of them to be taking advantage of bonus money and rakeback to be making some (even if it is small) profit.

[grimel]

Maybe I give the 2+2'ers too much credit, but, even playing .50/1 at the worse sites which have bonus and NO rakeback, it's $3 per hour full ring (a little more than that, but a good conservative number). Say that's 100 hands per hour (30% raked). That player would have to be playing -3BB/100 to break even. They would have to be playing closer to -3.5BB/100 to NOT be making 0-$25 per hour. I'm not sure it is POSSIBLE to play Phil Hellmuth's limit beginner strategy at .50/1 and be a -3.5BB/100 loser consistantly much less play anything close to 2+2 ideas and concepts and lose that big.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
your calculations are even more flawed that the poll! the rake of 12,800$ is for the whole table, not for each person! that means, if you have 5 fish and 5 1 BB / hour winner, each loser has to lose 3200$ + 12,800$/5 = 5760$.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your elementary school math teacher is weeping right now, and she doesn't know why!

The 1BB/hour winners take that money off the table after having paid their rake.

He was right, and your critique was wrong.

[jjacky]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
your calculations are even more flawed that the poll! the rake of 12,800$ is for the whole table, not for each person! that means, if you have 5 fish and 5 1 BB / hour winner, each loser has to lose 3200$ + 12,800$/5 = 5760$.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your elementary school math teacher is weeping right now, and she doesn't know why!

The 1BB/hour winners take that money off the table after having paid their rake.

He was right, and your critique was wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

no, you didn't understand my post.

he calculated the TOTAL rake, paid by the ENTIRE table. if the entire table pays 12,800$ every fish has to pay only a part of this amount. even if there is only one fish at the table who has to pay the rake and loses money to the better players, he won't have to pay more than 12,800 in rake.

[Rudbaeck]

Ok. Ten people sit down with $1000 each at a 5/10 table. 5 of them are fish, 5 are winners. They play 1000 hands.

The house rakes $2000.

Each winner now has won 3BB/100, for a total of 30BB. So each winner has $1300 in his stack. In total the winners have won $1500.

The 5 fishes have lost $3500, or $700 each. So after those 1000 hands each fish has $300, and each winner has $1300.

His point was that the rake is paid with the money that originally belonged to the fish.

[jjacky]

we are on the same side here. but the original poster is not.

i calculated it exactly the same way.

the original poster made the following mistake:
he said (with other numbers, but the same formulas) if one shark wins 300 $, 2300 $ have to be lost by the rest of the table (300$ win for the shark and 2000$ for the house). so far so good.
but then he made a mistake: he argued that if there are 2 sharks and each wins 300$, the rest of the table has to lose 4600$ and that is obviously wrong.

[Rudbaeck]

You're right, he's wrong. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[Timer]

[ QUOTE ]
we are on the same side here. but the original poster is not.

i calculated it exactly the same way.

the original poster made the following mistake:
he said (with other numbers, but the same formulas) if one shark wins 300 $, 2300 $ have to be lost by the rest of the table (300$ win for the shark and 2000$ for the house). so far so good.
but then he made a mistake: he argued that if there are 2 sharks and each wins 300$, the rest of the table has to lose 4600$ and that is obviously wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good catch. I made an obvious mistake. I said:

[ QUOTE ]
Now just for fun, lets assume that in a nine-player game (most B&M games are nine-handed by the way) that on average, eight of these players are winners and only one is a loser. That’s 88% winners and 12% losers, more than twice as many losers than in my unscientific poll. In order for all eight of these players to earn their mythical $20 an hour, with a $2 average rake, $128,000 has to be lost in one month by our losing players! Does that seem possible—even online!?

[/ QUOTE ]

What I should have said is this:

If the same eight mythical poker players sit down every day to play 160 hours of poker (approximately one month) and seven of them win one bet per hour and there is only one loser, instead of the loser being down $128,000 (you're right, the rake is only paid once) that losing player will be down $38,400. But isn't that still a lot of money for one player to lose in a full month of playing--even for 10-20? I would argue that in all but the most extreme of cases it is impossible. It could happen, but it wouldn't exist for very long. How many 10-20 players could afford to lose that much--especially month in and month out?

If on the other hand, there were say, four winners and five losers. Then $25,600 would have to be lost, which would be divided up by the five losers. In this case the average loser would have to pony up $5120 each per month. A possibility, but still somewhat of a stretch month in and month out.

Now let's say there are two winners and seven losers. Now $19,200 is won and the average loss is $2742. We're getting closer to reality.

And finally if there is only one winner. $16,000 is lost and the average loss is $2000. This equates to 88% losers.

What happens in this last scenario is that there are actually five winners. One actual winner and four winners from the rake alone. The rake is the equivalent of four winning players!

I think this proves two things.

1. The rake is pretty hard to overcome.

2. There are far more losing poker players in the world than most people can imagine.

[grimel]

[ QUOTE ]

What happens in this last scenario is that there are actually five winners. One actual winner and four winners from the rake alone. The rake is the equivalent of four winning players!

I think this proves two things.

1. The rake is pretty hard to overcome.

2. There are far more losing poker players in the world than most people can imagine.

[/ QUOTE ]

You left out the third (and to me the most important thing)

3) Play online where you can use bonuses and rakeback to help overcome the rake! I know looking at PT stats it is amazing looking at how much I have won just to break even with the rake I've paid.