10% of poker players are winners???

[pudley4]

False. It's actually less than 10%, according to "Jackpot" Jay Lovinger

[ QUOTE ]
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.



[/ QUOTE ]

I think their sample size is quite sufficient too [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

This doesn't surprise me. My net gain is reasonably close to my net rake paid (usually gain about +25% over). So for me to win $100 I can easily see 10 people each losing $20 each.

It's hard to even be a break even player. There are a lot of rocks who are probably -BB/100 players except for rakeback and bonus whoring.

[theben]

do thier records of a 'winning player' treat winners true winners, or 'winning players' as poeple who show a profit after BWing and RB

[spacemonkey57]

[ QUOTE ]
do thier records of a 'winning player' treat winners true winners, or 'winning players' as poeple who show a profit after BWing and RB

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt they keep track of bonus whoring and I'm positive they wouldn't count rakeback. I hope this is true. It makes me feel a hell of a lot better about my crappy winrate.

[4_2_it]

Woo-Hooo! I'm in the top 7%-8% of poker players online. I'll bet my mother will be proud [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[FieryJustice]

I make almost as much from rakeback as I do from actually playing. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[RollaJ]

My poker tracker shows me that 39% are winning and 61% are losers. So 10% sounds way off at the limits I play. Id guess that at a 2-4 game with $4 rake + $1 jackpot drop it may be very close to 10% though

[Brainwalter]

Your pokertracker stats are probably misleading for this problem.

[OrianasDaad]

Overall, I thought the article was a good read.

However:
[ QUOTE ]
I have a proposition bet for anyone interested: You pick who you believe are the 10 best players in the world, and I'll give you even money that none of them makes the final table of the main event by the time the 2012 London Olympics conclude.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll take that bet, and I'll let David Sklansky pick for me.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
My poker tracker shows me that 39% are winning and 61% are losers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haven't you been on here long enough to know that these two datapoints actually support each other?

Your session results will form a bell curve around your long term true win rate, the steepness of which depends on your standard deviation. The peak of the curve coincides with your true win rate.

Now picture this in your mind, put the top of the curve at -3BB/100. Notice that a wide part of the curve is in the black?