Online Poker : 75% of loosers

[Aytumious]

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I don't have any idea what the actual percentages are, but I do know that the PT data you are looking at won't provide the answer.

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SO let me get this straight... you don't have any idea what a more correct number is, you just think that the extensive analysis done by many people who have reviewed extensive amounts of data is wrong [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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That is precisely what I'm saying because you could have the most brilliant mathematicians review the data in question and it wouldn't matter because the correlation between the data and the conclusion you are attempting to draw is obviously quite small.

Although this is blatantly obvious and it has been repeated numerous times in this thread already, unless you have a very large sample of hands on each individual player in question, the data is basically worthless in concluding the percentage of winners and losers overall.

This is my last post on this since the answers to your questions already exist in this thread.

[phish]

The answer is really very simple: people's PT results that show a 40/60 split simply don't have enough hands. And this is because the more hands there are in the database, the more rake would have been charged. And this will lead to the % of winners getting smaller and smaller until it converges to the 5%-10% that can actually beat the game plus rake.
To illustrate: Let's take 100 players, all of whom are equally skilled. Let them play 100 hands. At the end of the 100 hands, the rake collected is relatively small, so that the total amt of money at the table hasn't dropped by much. The result is that you will have close to a 50/50 winner/loser split.
But if they continue to play. 100,000 hands later, the rake would have been so great that they are now probably all losers since the total amt of money left at the table is so small. Many probably would've busted out.

As your PT database gets more and more hands, you will see the winning % drop. (Pooling % numbers from different people's database won't work. )

[arod15]

i thought it be higher than that....

[Sniper]

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But if they continue to play. 100,000 hands later, the rake would have been so great that they are now probably all losers since the total amt of money left at the table is so small. Many probably would've busted out.


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Phish, the counter argument to 40/60 relies on two factors which don't exist in todays online poker environment... however, will be much more relevant when the poker boom dies down.

I will call the counter argument the Theory of Large Numbers in a Closed System. This theory requires everyone to play a large number of hands.

Taken to the extreme... if a fixed number of people were to play limit ring games until only one was left standing with any money (like a tournament, except with raked hands)... ultimately the rake would be the big winner and the final player left would have a pretty small stack.

The problem with this theoretical argument is that roughly 99% of all ring players play less than 10K hands/yr, and the population of ring game player has increased substantially over the last couple of years.

So at the moment, online poker neither suffers from the effects of large numbers or from the effects of a closed system, to a large degree. (or at least in my opinion, to as large a degree as some in this thread would like to believe)

That's why (at least in my opinion), the 40/60 is sustainable in online poker ring games, at the present time.

However, at some point in the future, as the games get tougher and fewer people add to the player pool the effect of the Theory of Large Numbers in a Closed System will be more pronounced... and the Rake Effect will force the number of winners down!

We are just not there yet!

[Hoss1193]

1. I don't think that's true. Online games are typically tighter, not looser, for a given limit.

2. Even if it WERE true, looser games make it EASIER to win, not harder.

3. Regardless of degree, both online and B&M games at 5/10 and below are way loose enough for a good player to win.

My experience for basing these comments is Party .50/1 - 1/2 - 2/4, Pacific .25/.50 up to 5/10, and B&M cardrooms in western Washington and southern California, if geography makes any difference.

[Hoss1193]

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I don't keep records, and I have been withdrawing money from from my poker account on a monthly basis, and I haven't deposited in a couple years.

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If that's true, you've got to be in a tiny (i.e., statistically almost insignificant) minority.

Seems to me that anyone not serious enough about their game to keep records is just not going to have the game to be a consistent winner long-term.

Btw, do you use pokertracker, and use the data in it to some degree? If so, then yes you ARE keeping records, so maybe you're not a poster child for the "I don't keep records, but I know I'm a winner" crowd after all.

[Hoss1193]

That's a good point, which had not occurred to me before. I'm a winning player (by a modest amount). But over last two years, Pacific and Party would count me as a winner, while Paradise and Pokerstars would count me as a loser. Why? Simply because I played at the first two sites a lot more.

It would be very interesting to see what the numbers would be if the major sites reported the winning percentage only among folks who had played, say, 100k+ hands over the preceding year. I'd bet the percentages might be closer to the 25-75 split mentioned at the start of the post...maybe even 30-70.

[Sniper]

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It would be very interesting to see what the numbers would be if the major sites reported the winning percentage only among folks who had played, say, 100k+ hands over the preceding year. I'd bet the percentages might be closer to the 25-75 split mentioned at the start of the post...maybe even 30-70.

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The percentage of all players playing greater than 100K ring game hands/year is very small, and the percentage of those players that are winners is significantly higher than the overall win%. Especially when you factor in that these players are much more likely than the avg poker player to be maximizing bonus and rakeback.

Okay - question then - does skill have anything to do with this?

For example - look at the breakdown of a payout for a chess tournament.

I do not think most of the players really believe they will beat the top Grandmasters...so they play in a class/field C,B,A, Expert, Masters for which they feel they can at least 1) make a little cash back, 2) work on their play with similar players until they place for the cash prizes.

In ring games this would compare to the .50/$1.00, $1/$2, $2/$4 and so on.

Is my assessment off?

Anyone who thinks they are going to be one of the "LUCKY" ones to win - without practice, understanding, analysis ability - IS playing strictly with luck. That compares to hoping a Grandmaster has a splitting headache and drops a Queen within the first 10 moves. Yes?

Respectfully submitted,
Nucleus Project [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[BlackRain]

I can say with 100% certainty that I am a winning player, whatever percentage that may put me in. And I know a few others that can as well. Why? Because I have never deposited a cent of my own money at an online poker site and have cashed out several times. At Pokerstars, I don't know about other sites, it is possible to sell play chips for real money and there is a large amount of this activity going on. Thus, there is a fairly large group of us who have never deposited anything and can only be breakeven at worst.