Online poker pros have a 0% chance of having a losing month..

[LImitPlayer]

Agree or not? Just curious as to what others think about this.

I think the chances of having a losing week are fairly high but I think the chances of an online poker pro having a loosing month is pretty much non-existant.

I define a "pro" as a winning player, someone who plays poker for a living, as their only source of income.

Now I'm talking strictly online, B & M would be a different story.

Look at all the advantages of playing online

The ability to make notes on players and look at those notes during play, tools such as pokertracker, playerview or gametime, rakeback plans ,the ability to choose your tables not be assigned to one, the abilty to multi-table and the sheer # of hands you can play per hour vs playing at a B & M Casino. Not to mention no travel time, no traveling costs, no tips and less rake etc.

Lets say an online pro play 40 hours per week(some will play more, some less) playing 4-8 tables at a time will net you anywhere from 40,000 80,000 hands a month.

A B&M player playing the same # of hours per week will end up with anywhere from 60-70k hands in a a year.

A poker player can have swings that can span 10, 20 or even at the extremes 30k hands( but with the tools available to an online player, Pokertracker, Playerview, Gametime, notemaking ability, rakeback etc there is no way an winning online pro player can have swings that put him in the negative over a month period.

The tools available to him are to good.

Agree or disagree?

[thetman]

Not sure if I totally agree,but losing months should be rare.

[emonrad87]

I wouldnt say it's impossible (because, statistically, ANYTHING is possible). But with a good rakeback deal and playing that many hands per month, it seems like it would be very very unlikely.

[bisonbison]

After 30k hands, someone with a win-rate of 1BB/100 and an SD of 15 will have a losing month less than 15% of the time.

[x2ski]

I've personally had months where I was very close to losing, excluding rake back. In fact, within the last 3 months, I had 2 streaks in which I was in the red for 3 weeks at a time. Of course, I was still adjusting to 3/6 (and still am), but I never ever had anything close from .05/.10 (started in May) up to 2/4. I also only throw down about 30,000 hands/month.

Therefore, I think it is in fact very possible, regardless of my qualifications, that losing months can and will occur.

In fact, I think bicyclekick made a post about his first losing month a couple of months ago. I apologize to bk in advance if I am mistaken.

[LImitPlayer]

Ok I'm not a stats person so;

If a players winrate is 2 BB/100 hands whats the chance he will have a losing month?

Also, if a winning player were to have a losing month wouldn't it be a very minor loss? A winning player isn't going to go 40K + hands in a month and lose huge. If he were I wouldn't classify him as a winning player.Also wouldn't Rakeback cover these minor losses and put them into a profit situation?

Also how many people are playing online as a pro that have a winrate that low? Not including semi-pros or people playing for fun

Very Few i would suspect..

[lefty rosen]

The tilt factor alone can induce bad play. I play 20 hours a week and minimum 2 table short and I have had half dozen weak months over the past two and half years. They happen alot more than you think(I didn't get a rakeback deal to cushion the marginal winning months)....... [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[bisonbison]

I've played as many hands this month as ever, but I'm experiencing my first month of bad results. I'm not losing, but I'm winning at about 40% of the rate I'd had over the last 120k hands. I just pored over a bunch of stats and other than the fact that I've tightened up (because 3/6 has become a pit for multiing TAGs), I don't notice anything really different. All that's going on is that I'm winning less money with my moneymaking hands. AA and KK are doing well but all my unpaired face cards are making much less than normal. There are obviously more hands and leaks and so on involved than that, but it's just a reminder: the game is fluid and the long run is really really long.

[Alobar]

it will happen, I've had one losing month in over 14 months of playing poker. I lost a grand total of $50. Tho I didnt get alot of hands in that month, so I suppose if it were to only count months where you played 160 hours, then its a different story, but you cant do that every month

[dogmeat]

Not true.

I don't play eight tables, and most online players (at least those that post here) do not. Most do not play as many hands as you suggest. Even playing four tables and 173.5 hours (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) does not make 40,000 hands.

I would say the odds are slim, but I know I had a stretch of 5 weeks where I was about even (it straddled calendar months, so I managed a win in both months).

I don't count my rakeback because it is not part of my win. When adding that to my "income", sure, I did fine both months if I don't mind only have a few thousand in income for an 8-week period.

Please remember that for a professional, a month where you only break even, or only win say $1000, is a tough month to deal with. If I only make $3000 for two months, but have $5000 in expenses, it looks like a losing month to me. Not everybody is at college with low expenses. Some of us have mortgages, kids in college, car payments etc.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]