10% of poker players are winners???

[scrapperdog]

10 people sit at a 10+1 sng.

One person is horrible with almost no chance to place. Three people are not horrible but still kind of bad, pretty new or prone to tilt or whatever. Three people are average. Two people are good players, they read the books, know the odds, and are solid players. One person is a wizard who knows all the odds but also is a great reader of hands. The horrible person busts thus contributing 10 dollars to the table. This also happens to be the amount of total rake payed by the players. Why the Hell can only 1 of the other players make money when the rake is paid for? Some of the players have clear advantages over the remaining players. Please dont answer with standard deviations or bell curves, answer the question. Again, I am not saying a ton of people win, just that more than 10% do.

Do this 100 times with the same table makeup. The wizard is a clear winner, one of the solid players is a clear winner, the other solid player had a little bad luck and broke even, and the rest have lost. Two clear winners does not = 10% thank you very much.

[Rudbaeck]

I should have been more clear. If there are 8-10% long term winners in texas hold'em limit ring games then you are forever going to see 40% reported winners due to the variance over short periods. (Most people in your database you have 100 or fewer hands on.)

[Synergistic Explosions]

For the sake of argument consider that most online players play at low limit tables. Rake has a far wider impact on this large player base.

For example, at the .50/1.00 Party tables. Say ten players sat down with 25 bucks each. Assume $30 per hour is being raked at this table. The ten players play for 8 hours without moving. At the end of their 8 hours 240 in rake was taken out. The ten players bought in for a total of 250 dollars at the beginning. So theres 10 bucks left for the 'winner' when it's all said and done.

Ouch. Rake grinds and wears down the low limit players eventually is my point. The longer you play, the harder it is to leave a winner. It's simple math. It's not complicated.

[Timer]

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This 10% number is made up to make the people that loose feel better about themselves and to make the winners feel superior. It is more than 10%.

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If you play at a table with 1 bad person the bad person takes care of the rake. That leaves the rest of the players to fight for the rest. And it is pretty rare to play at a table with only 1 bad person. Mt guess would be 75% lose and 25% win.

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The 10% is a myth that is created to make people that win feel like they are superior to 90% and people that lose feel like hey at least no one wins.

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The bad player that will lose their stack is giving away to the table an amount that is equal to the rake. This in effect nullifies the cost of the rake even if the person is not putting it directly into the rake collection. This is why I dont post on this site very often.. too many people that cant use common sense and try and make up for it with secret reports and such. I am not saying tons of people make money. Just that is it more than 10%

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Ah, where to begin. First of all, it doesn't make any difference if you're a bad player or a good player EVERYONE contributes to the rake.

Of course, I understand the point you're trying to make, but it's flawed. I have proven before that it takes more than one player (good, bad or indifferent) to make up for the rake, and I'll attempt to do it again here.

You see the rake is cumulative. It's impossible for too many people to win. In my opinion the correct number is actually closer to 5%, but that's neither here nor there. The main problem is to try and correct your thinking. I'll give it one shot.

Take a hypothetical 10-20 hold'em game. In one month at $3 rake per hand in 160 hours of play (a 40 hour week) at 40 hands per hour (B&M style) $19,200 is raked off the table. Now you and I are winning players and we each make one big bet per hour. So in this 10-20 game we each make $3200 per month. This means a total of $25,600 has to be lost in one month by the other 8 losing players (10 handed game) to cover the rake and our profit. So the other eight players each lose $3200 a month apiece. How long can this go on? In order for there to be four winning players the six losing players have to lose $5333 each per month. Do you see where this is going?

When $19,200 is raked off the table in one month that is the equivalent of SIX winning players! This money never returns to poker economy. It doesn't make any difference how many people come and go over a period of time, because the rake never stops. Eventually the games will dry up and become populated by a group of very tough players.

In fact, it's possible for there to be one VERY bad player in the game and everyone can still be a loser! Let's say that there is one horrible player in the game who loses $10,000 per month. That's a lot for a 10-20 game wouldn't you admit? All of the other nine players are tough winning players. Regardless of who wins and who loses $19,200 is still raked off the table. It takes one month of time for that bad player to lose his $10,000 and for the good players to chop it up. But since $19,200 was removed from the table in the form of rake, $9,200 was lost by the tough players trying to get it. Yes, the bad player ended up paying for more than half the rake but it wasn't enough to cover the deficit, and the good players end up paying for the other half.

So here is a situation where everyone lost at the end of the month even with a really bad player in the game! The good players chopped up $10,000 and the rake gobbled up $19,200 for a total of $9,200 missing from the table. That $9,200 has to come from somewhere. $10,000 gets put back in play but that $19,200 is never seen again. Without a rake that $19,200 would be money still in action, and everybody but the bad player would figure to make about $1100 for the month, but because of the rake the good players lost an average of $1022 for the month even though a moron blew 10K!

The rake is insidious, and most people don't have a clue how insidious it really is.

[FlyWf]

Dude, math isn't scary. Your response to concepts like standard deviation are frightening if you've graduated high school. Common sense? What does that even mean? This is a mathematical problem.

There aren't players who will never win in your SNG example. But the rake isn't as egregious in sitngos. The winner of a $10+1 makes 39, the site makes 10, etc. Takes around an hour. In a .5/1 ring game the poker site is making $30 every hour. There is a 30bb/hr player sitting at every table you cannot get away from.

[BigF]

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Let me put it to you like this.

You are sitting at a 10 person table with 1 really bad player. This is fairly rare because usually there is more than 1 bad player but in this case lets say 1. The rake is at most 10%. On most sites it is half that or less but lets say 10%. One bad player who is gonna end up losing their money = 10% of the money going in on the table. Actually because they are bad they will put in more than their share but for arguments sake say exactly 10%.

So we have a 10% rake with a player at the table who will end up losing their money. They are putting in 10% of the money at the table. How can you say one bad player at the table does not pay for the rake?

The reality is that the rake is gonna be 5% not 10%. And there will be at leat 2 bad players at the table that are destined to loose their money. How is it that only 1 of the people that are left are going to be able to make money? Please, dont talk about bell curves and such, answer my question. The 10% is a myth that is created to make people that win feel like they are superior to 90% and people that lose feel like hey at least no one wins.

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What? Are you serious man?

10% rake means 10% is taken out of every POT.

That there's 1 fish at a full ring table who's destined to lose his buy-in means 10% of total buy-ins at the table is guaranteed to go to the other nine players and rake, assuming nobody rebuys.

total buy-ins != total pots (between the fish starts playing and loses his last chip).

Hello?

[Sniper]

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You're wrong.... With ~10% long term winners you'll forever see a 40/60 split in your pt data.

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You continue to neglect the more complete picture of poker play that I presented, specifically that the expected number of winners in MTT is very low.

Considering all factors, I would have to conclude that if the total of all winning players is roughly 10%, then the population of winning ring games players would necessarily have to be greater than that.

[Rudbaeck]

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You continue to neglect the more complete picture of poker play that I presented, specifically that the expected number of winners in MTT is very low.

Considering all factors, I would have to conclude that if the total of all winning players is roughly 10%, then the population of winning ring games players would necessarily have to be greater than that.

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I think you overestimate skill for MTTs online. With the short rounds online standard deviation is humongous. If for example the WSOP main event was played like an online tourney with respect to round length way fewer big names would make the final two days.

But we can probably agree that the winner span for ring games is something like 7-15% long term winners in limit hold'em.