20% of online players win, why do so many say only 10% do???

[Rubber Soul]

Now, the next question is, if only 10% or so win overall, what would you speculate the winning percentage is for regular 2+2 members (for online cash games at various levels)?

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[rgschackelford]

It's a combination of things. Mostly, people who go out of their way to keep records on poker trackers are probably taking poker seriously. They aren't playing for the hell of it, they are looking to make money. Second, I would figure that people like to lie to themselves about wins and losses, and not count some losses, or exaggerate wins. Don't look at me, though. I once finished down 40 cents and marked it down. Third, keeping records will help you get better in choosing time of day to play, games to play in, limits to play at, and other tangibles. I'm, honestly surprised that poker trackers don't have more than 20% winners. I would expect 50% winners. Well, that's my 2 cents.

Rusty G.

[Victor]

according to my pt at 10-20short 43% are winners.

[Paul2432]

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I think there is another Huge point that is being missed in this ongoing discussion. Namely that the number of hands played by winning players will always be greateer than the number of hands played by losing players. Take the people on this site who have 800,000 hands at 2/4. SInce they are winning they can continue. SOmeone who loses .5bb/100 or slightly less than break even will have busted out their 300 bb bankroll in 60,000 hands meaning that a properly bankrolled slightly losing player will have busted out 13 times over before they play this many hands. Therefore 20% of hands are played by winning players but not 20% of players are winning players. These are 2 very different concepts and it is important to recognize this distinction when trying to understand these numbers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent post... Makes perfect sense...
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Also, I should have stated in the beginning I was talking only about cash game players. I truly believe (as others have said) that less then 10% of tournament players are winners...

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I believe in the long term, less than 1% of players are winners. Consider a multi-tabling pro who plays the 15/30 game. Suppose this player plays 8760 table-hours per year, or one table-year per year. Over the course of a year the house will rake around $800,000 from this table ($100/hr) and the pro will win $250,000 ($30/hr). The rest of the table must lose $1,050,000.

I think a fairly reasonable assumption is that the average losing player loses no more than $5000/yr. If this is correct, it would take over 200 losing players to sustain one pro.

Of course, at any given moment the percentage of winning players is much higher.

Paul

[tripdad]

i know this is probably a dumb question, but how can pokertracker be so wrong about this? i have a pretty sizeable database, and from all limits, PT says that 42.4% are winners, and 57.6% are losers. now, i know that i don't have a huge amount of hands from a single player, but it still seems like the number should be a lot closer to what you are all saying (that 20% or less are winners).

having said that, i do have a player in my database who i know for a fact is a winning player, as a loser over 1800+ hands. so, i know the numbers can be misleading, but i just wouldn't think they would be THAT misleading.

cheers!

[KyleM]

well, lets say that hypothetically you only sat at tables with 7 random players, and 2 players that only pressed "called" (they called to the showdown 100% of the time). your database would should the majority of players as winners, because the majority of players will win at tables with these 2 terrible players. your database will be affected by your table selection, and your own play (if you were a huge loser it would also show an inflated number of winners). also, your sample size could be too small.

[jtr]

Tripdad, this old thread answers your question I think.

Exactly the same sort of question starts off the thread: "Hey, my PT database says 40% of people win, what's up with the 10% estimates I hear about?" About ten posts down I chime in with some statistical and simulation analysis to show exactly why the PT number can be so misleading. Basically it's the dread problem of small sample sizes once again.

Hope you find the older posts useful.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
i know this is probably a dumb question, but how can pokertracker be so wrong about this? i have a pretty sizeable database, and from all limits, PT says that 42.4% are winners, and 57.6% are losers. now, i know that i don't have a huge amount of hands from a single player, but it still seems like the number should be a lot closer to what you are all saying (that 20% or less are winners).

having said that, i do have a player in my database who i know for a fact is a winning player, as a loser over 1800+ hands. so, i know the numbers can be misleading, but i just wouldn't think they would be THAT misleading.

cheers!

[/ QUOTE ]


Its because of the huge amount of short term luck involved and the bitch-god Variance.

If you watched any given table for, say, 100 hands you would almost certainly see anywhere from 2-5 winners at the table, even accounting for the rake. But then you don't follow those same players from table to table over time to see how they do. Its possible that some, or even all of those players are long term losers. But over the short term, even with the rake, some number of people at almost every table will be winners.

Multiply that affect out over many observed tables of different players and you will see a lot of apparent winners who simply are not winners over the long term. But because it would be very surprising to see very many tables that nobody beat the rake over a small number of hands, you see a lot more apparent winners than there actually are.

Pokertraker, for the most part, is a serious of these short term snapshots. If you could get the complete hand history for those winning players, many many of them would turn out to be losers. You've just recorded a small sample of their hands win they were winning due to the short term luck involved.

--Zetack

[MicroBob]

right.


i use a different game in my analogy.

picture a casino with 1000 blackjack players all playing generic basic strategy so they are at roughly a 1-2% disadvantage.
They are all going to continue playing no matter how much they are up or down.

After 10 hands: 500 players are 'up' a little bit and 500 players are down a little bit

After 100 hands: +450, -550 (and some of the 45 winners are up a lot)

After 200 hands: +350, -650
After 500 hands: +250, -750

After 1000 hands: +50, -950

After 3000 hands: +10, -990

You could run the same kind of example in gigantic casino with 1 million blackjack players and get about the same results.
After 10 hands it would appear that the house is just dealing out an almost 50/50 game.


So....if everyone only played 100 hands or so and then left you would be led to believe that 45% of all blackjack players end up winners in the long-run.
but this isn't the case...they were just on the positive side of variance.

After enough trails EVERYONE playing a -EV game will end up losers.


Obviously poker is different in that some players are +EV while others are not.
I just use this to demonstrate the aspect of how it can appear that 45% of the players are actually beating a game when, in fact, it's just due to a small-sample size allowing them to hang-out on the positive side of variance for a little while.

[ggbman]

[ QUOTE ]
right.


i use a different game in my analogy.

picture a casino with 1000 blackjack players all playing generic basic strategy so they are at roughly a 1-2% disadvantage.
They are all going to continue playing no matter how much they are up or down.

After 10 hands: 500 players are 'up' a little bit and 500 players are down a little bit

After 100 hands: +450, -550 (and some of the 45 winners are up a lot)

After 200 hands: +350, -650
After 500 hands: +250, -750

After 1000 hands: +50, -950

After 3000 hands: +10, -990

You could run the same kind of example in gigantic casino with 1 million blackjack players and get about the same results.
After 10 hands it would appear that the house is just dealing out an almost 50/50 game.


So....if everyone only played 100 hands or so and then left you would be led to believe that 45% of all blackjack players end up winners in the long-run.
but this isn't the case...they were just on the positive side of variance.

After enough trails EVERYONE playing a -EV game will end up losers.


Obviously poker is different in that some players are +EV while others are not.
I just use this to demonstrate the aspect of how it can appear that 45% of the players are actually beating a game when, in fact, it's just due to a small-sample size allowing them to hang-out on the positive side of variance for a little while.

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This is an excellent illustration of the issue at hand here Bob, very nicely done.

Gabe