winning player?

out of the quazillion players online does anyone know the percentage of players who actually make a living?
my guess is less then one percent. am i close?

Well, I'd look at it this way. The players that are truly the ones making a living off of playing poker are the ones that you see on TV, which of course are the ones mainly in the final rounds of these televised tourneys. Now imagine the hundreds and thousands of people who entered the tourney who are obviously not at the last winning tables. In my estimation, maybe 1 percent is not a too far off of a guess of how many people can make a decent living off of poker, not just winning a little here and there.

[Quicksilvre]

Only seven or eight percent even break even, so one percent sounds high to me. Maybe a tenth of a percent could grind out a really good living, and maybe half a percent could live okay (high stress but still middle class).

[Sal Allegra]

Yeah, it's certainly not over 5%, it may approach that at some higher limits though because you'll find the better players up there.

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out of the quazillion players online does anyone know the percentage of players who actually make a living?
my guess is less then one percent. am i close?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there is a better way to analyze it.

1) Separate tournaments from ring games. Probably the vast majority of people playing online are tournament players, but it is important to make that distinction.

2) Assuming we are looking at tournament players, how many of them have played enough to safely determine within the bounds of statistical fluction, that they are at least playing profitably? How many even bother to keep these kinds of detailed records for starters?

3) Of that number who appear to be playing profitably, how many are making sufficient profit to fully support themselves on that income alone, with no other employment? (this includes as Dogmeat hinted at in another post: taxes, expenses, rent, food, child care, shopping, medical care, vacation, etc., as well as the ability to have a bit left over for savings).

4) What would you or these players consider to be a decent living? Some people can get by just fine on $30k-$40K a year. Some can't make ends meet on $100K a year.

Now away from the questions and let's look at some facts from personal experience (admittedly limited personal experience). By the way, I'm not trying to boast with these results, but rather use them as a point for discussion.

I've played just under 100 tournaments o varying entry fees. I've gone out on the bubble (one before the money) 4 times. I get into the money 20% of the time. I make the final table 11% of the time, or better stated I'm about even money to make the FT once I get into the cheese. I'm over $2K to the good in these tournaments altogether. My average win per tournament is about $30. Assuming that I spend on average about 1.5 hours in each tournament, then I'm averaging about $20/hour.

Further to the point:
- I'm an amateur player, nowhere near pro speed.
- I make lots of mistakes, some of which have cost me a lot of money. A slightly better player would have never done some of these things.
- Based upon the kind of competition that I regularly run into, I would estimate that I'm probably in the top few percent of the players in the fields (less so in the larger entry fee tournaments, more so in the smaller ones).
- Would I ever consider "going pro" on this basis? No friggin' way. It's not enough money. For me, $20 per hour is not a living wage. It's too much risk. Possibly I'm in the middle of a nice positive statistical fluctuation, and have not yet experienced a bad negative swing.
- More proof for me is that I'm net behind in my online ring game play. I've made a lot of mistakes and took a lot of bad beats, and while I haven't analyzed the numebers, I suspect that I'm probably mired somwhere in a -1 standard deviation negative swing. I'm not a great limit player, but I don't think I'm as bad as my results show.

Finally back to your original point, if I am producing these results, and I am nowhere near good enough or making enough money at it to consider doing it full time as a permanent profession, then I have to believe that the percentage of people who are successful playing full time as a living online, are probably way way less than 1%.

Honestly, I would have to guess the number would be somewhere around 0.1% or perhaps 1 out of 1000 players. And this would be the absolute high end of my estimate. I would not be at all surprised if the actual number were much lower still.

Playing poker online as a full time profession has to be extremely difficult, probably as hard or harder than many other professions like an electrician, plumber, engineer, or other. But there are a lot of people who probably believe that they can take an "any two cards can win" philosophy and turn it into an easy living. If you were an engineer, lawyer, doctor, ironworker, or some other skilled profession, would you take that same attitude into your daily work?

But not to be all negative, this is not to say that online playing cannot be a lot of fun, entertaining and educational, if not mildly profitable. It's just that as the old saying goes "It's a tough way to make an easy living."

[capone0]

Really only 7% to 8% make money. I guess my nerdy Cornell Crew of poker players is abnormal. I know many winning players but I guess were all nerds and I guess out group is outliers. I don't know a ton of serious winners (30k/year, I know of 2, 1 that used to play online as a Pro (eixdeuce on Stars) and another who made 500k (ThePrescott on UB) in about half a year mainly from side games at major tournies and is about 25).

I also know a lot of bad players, well very bad players. But 7% breaking even, seems kinda low. I know I'm not the winningest player, but even I am up a couple of thousand this year playing home games, 5/10, 10/20, some S+Gs, NL live and online in my spare time (a couple of hours a week). I guess I'm part of the minority rather than the majority. i've also wondered who are all these people not getting better and dumping all this money to my friends and others.... I also guess this site is very pro-winning players. Hardly anyone posts that they are losing. There has to be some losers if some people are making it out like bandits.....who are these people [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. I know some of them, they are terrible players, and I'm not sure they know there terrible. I guess if they don't get better, same goes online and live at the casino.

[autobet]

I would say your guess is about right for players making 100% of their living at poker <1%

Probably another 3-4% make enough to count on it to supplement their income.

Another 3-4% maybe make a few bucks, but not enough to make a difference in their lifestyle.

[Quicksilvre]

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But 7% breaking even, seems kinda low.

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Oops. I meant to say about 7% made money. Somehow it didn't make it from the brain to the keyboard.

google "poker for a living" and such. there are some good articles that you might want to read. i believe there is a guy trying to answer the same question as he is taking a year off to play poker and see how he can do.

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i believe there is a guy trying to answer the same question as he is taking a year off to play poker and see how he can do.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hasn't someone "been there, done that" already? (A.H.)