Online Poker : 75% of loosers

[WhiteWolf]

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No, do some datamining and you will see for yourself that the 40/60 for ring game players holds up!

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Interesting, what kind of datamining are you talking about? I would think you would need several thousand or tens of thousands of hands on an opponent before you can classify him as a winner/loser with a high degree of confidence, and I'm fairly sure most PT dbs out there do not have a lot of opponents with this large number of hands. My PT db is pretty small, so I'm just speculating here.

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These numbers, roughly, are consistantly reported by everyone.


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I would expect everyone's db shows the same pattern: Lots of opponents with few hands (and a lower probabilty of correctly classifying as a loser/winner), and a very few opponents with lots of hands (and a higher probability of correctly classifying). Thus I would expect that everyone's db would overestimate the number of long term winners amongst their opponents.

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Tournament play, where there are very few winners, brings down the aggregate numbers of poker players making an annual profit.

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This is a good point....

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I read on a financial review that 75% of all online poker players were loosing money over time. Any comments ?

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I believe the higher estimates. I would guess probably 80% or so are losing players, another 10-15% are about break even, a few percent are winning at a decent rate, and a small percentage or fraction of a percent are winning at a very high rate.

While not positive, I would suspect the results of the top 10% could easily be within the bounds of statistical fluctuation, and not indicative of say, the 98th precentile players being significantly better than say, the 93rd or 94th percentile players. Just an opinion.

IMHO, it is impossible to be ahead in the long term without winning tournaments on a relatively regular basis (e.g., somewhere between 1-4% of total tournaments entered).

I think most players have a hard time getting a Final Table percentage this high, much less bagging the event.

Or put another way, if you buddy tells you he is ahead after 500 tournaments, but at the same time tells you he has yet to win, he has either been very unlucky at a lot of Final Tables, or he is lying his a*s off.

[Runner Runner]

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Most say there winners bur are not. If you told me your a online winner. I would ask you how much did you make or loose on June 30th 2004. If you could not answer your problay loosing. No records = not winning

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This is not necessarily true, 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. I would only be able to tell you how much I made, if I looked at my withdrawals history.

With regards to the % of players that are winning online, I wouldn't be surprised if it is less then 10%. Many winners multi-table and losing players usually don't so that will up the % of people who are winners sitting at any given table.

I am going to guess that at the low limits, maybe 15% of the players at a table are winners, mid-limits maybe 20% and higher limits...around 33%.

[pzhon]

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If you check most people's PT stats, you'll see it's more like 60%, although many "winning" players are either very slightly ahead or breakeven.

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As has been posted dozens of times in the past, this is merely an artifact of the low number of hands everyone has on most players in their databases. It has almost nothing to do with how many players actually win over the long run.

I have 12k players in my database. I have about 70k hands. That means the average number of hands I have with each player is at most 70*9/12 ~ 50. I expect the median to be much lower, and I suspect this is typical of most players.

If 100% of my opponents lose 3 BB/100 with a standard deviation of 15 BB/100, they are all losers, but after 50 hands, it is easy for more than 40% to be winning. If the results are normally distributed, 44% would be winning.

[Scotty O]

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I read on a financial review that 75% of all online poker players were loosing money over time. Any comments ?

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post the link

[ewashingtons]

my poker tracker stats read (over only 20,000 hands though) 45%winners, 55%losers. so as far as the 75% i can believe it... thinking that it isn't any higher than that. i would imagine that the 25% winners are a mostly made up of small gainers, meaning only 5% of all players could be up a lot.

[Sniper]

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Interesting, what kind of datamining are you talking about? I would think you would need several thousand or tens of thousands of hands on an opponent before you can classify him as a winner/loser with a high degree of confidence, and I'm fairly sure most PT dbs out there do not have a lot of opponents with this large number of hands. My PT db is pretty small, so I'm just speculating here.

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Do a search on the forums for datamining threads, there are many. Some people are pulling down 500,000-1 million hands+/month.

[dibbs]

They are pretty loose.

[Pirc Defense]

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Jackpoy Jay wrote a recent article quoting 2 separate online poker room managers saying that 7-8% of online players end the year positive.


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What kind of accounting is happening, though? When they say "end the year positive," what exactly are they referring to?

For example, on 01JAN05 I deposit $500 bucks at Paradise and proceed to lose it all over the course of three days. I don't play again, ever. So, at the end of the year, I'm a loser. Are my stats counted in this "end of the year" stat?

I'd say that for players that play steadily over the full course of a year, the stats are higher than 7-8%.

[ahnuld]

lol