blonde poker forum

I remeber reading about poker back in 2003/2004 and the books told you that 95% of poker players were long term losers.
These books were written primarily based on the live poker game.

Four or five years later, I am still seeing this statistic being quoted here and there.

Given that the game has changed so much in the last five years, the game is easy to take up from the comfort of your own home, players have instant access to a wealth of advice and helpful software, as well as less rake (and rake-back) helping a players bottom line.
Do you think the 95% is still accurate.

If not, does anyone have any insight as to what the figure might be today.?

Im a loser



but i make a nice profit playing poker


in fact im a total degenerate

My understanding was that 15% of poker players today were winners, with 1% being massive winners (dunno what the definition of massive is btw). I think the 5% is from, as you say, the live days.

+1 excluding the winning at poker bit

I dunno this could be accurate

I know the owner of a skin on Boss told me once 95% of players on that site were unprofitable...

Fewer big winners these days - that money ihas been redistributed so there are more small winners.

Very very few game crushers on the internet now.

If 95% of players are losers still, I can believe that.

A good deal of them might just be of the type to deposit a tenner, have a casual punt in their pyjamas, then decide that online poker isn't for them.

I wonder what % of people who play online at least four times a month are long term losers? I'm pretty sure that number would be less than 95%.

Do you know where this comes from?

IMO at least 95% are losers, the online industry is huge and there are many skins/sites taking a hell of a lot of money out of the games and personally I wouldn't be in the slightest bit shocked if the actual figure was nearer 99%. Recreational players deposit maybe £50 per month and month after month they find themselves redepositing. They treat it as a hobby and as such £50 per month is not a huge expense however as the credit crunch/recession deepens these recreational players will slowly cut back on their deposits and the online grinders will find it harder to earn a living out of the game.

I think the 95 still applies and if anything it may have gone up.
As you say, a lot will be made up of the occasional depositor of which there are hundreds of thousands, and even the player that plays once a week, most will be losers. If they were winning they would play more. These will be hobby players who enjoy the odd tournament or cash game. Most of them losers.

The only winning players (with the odd exception) will be those who commit serious time to the game. There are still loads of those but only a few will win. Most will just deposit and lose on a large scale.

Liberace (2nd in wcoop main event) is a perfect example. Look at his stats and before last night he was a regular tourny player at high buy in level and was $50k down over the last year or so.

The game has got tougher since the USA law change and I agree with the comment that there are VERY few players really coining it in. Maybe 0.5% if that. 2 or 3 % will be making good money ranging from enough to live on to just a bit of pocket money.

Tank,with the deepening credit crunch.do you not think that every player will be long term losers.just not enough dead money around to make a living from?discuss

Think of the Blonde community. A crowd that have more than a passing interest in the game thats for sure. Whats your best estimate of winning player % of Blondes?

I wouldnt even like to hazard a guess. It will obviously be higher than the norm % but it wont be all that high.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=27163.0

lol at ckingusc.  Won 1.7m last night and is still playing mtt's today!  

Im just glad i don,t rely on poker for a living.apart from the fact i am gash,times they be hard.tank are you eating candles yet.this can be a sign.

I just play part-time, full-time student.

Eat currys from ASDA paid for by your tax dimes.  8)

Lol now there is a loaded question that will never get properly answered. Such is human nature especially among poker players that alot of the long term winners will be saying "yep im a winner",  and you will get the odd honest soul who will admit to losing.

I wasnt asking people to say their own situation, just interested in everyones estimate of the overall %?

Yeah i know you were, just going off on a tangent as per usual.

My estimate is that 5% seems about right, given the amount of once in a while depositers who do there money on a regular basis. Of active players say on stars at the moment i think the figure might be as high as 15%, as obviously the winners will be online a hell of more than the losers.

I,ve found a new site,and am crushing it.played bout 150 hands and outta 6 pairs i have setted up 5 times on the flop,and i got AA fully paid off.this site is just like the good ol days.now you sharks stay away.its miiiine.weeeee

Surely it must be harder on Stars where there is no rakeback which helps quite a lot of losing players on other sites make a small profit.

The high volume players on stars are getting 20+% effective rb from FPP's, but hell i picked out on stars as a random site. Insert in you own random site and yes i suppose rb will make a difference to the numbers.

Im in two minds i play reguarly online and according to my records most months i record a profit (OCCASIONALLY IVE BROKE EVEN) even if its only a small one think once i recorded a monthly loss of $10 but when in profit im usually $40-$100 up for then month

Im a reasonable player playing at low stake level $5 SNG and this month my poker bankroll has cracked £1000 (NB that is over a period of 2-3 years) Whilst I dont think Ill be booking my seat at WSOP anytime soon I win more than I lose yet I cannot envisage that I am in the top 5% . Ive now moved up a level ($10 SNG) and so far no real changes in my results.


What im trying to say is that anyone with any degree of poker sense could im sure replicate these results or is it a case im slumming below my level (dont think its the latter)

I reckon that there is a very small percentage of people who have at some time played online poker who have left with profit, probably less than 1%.

Most players have no bankroll management and even if they win they will keep playing higher stakes until they have lost it all.

There will be a higher percentage of winning players online at any point in time as winning players would play more than the average losing player, say 5% to 15%.

A place like blonde will attract people who live poker and spend a lot of time playing/reading/improving their game. So they percentage of winning players might be as high as 50% for regular posters and 25% for less regular posters.

All this is just my best guess though, I am sure that there has been some surveys done if you can trust the results.

I once interviwed the man who runs/invented sharkscope. He claimed that in sit and gos at least that according to the data they had less than a third of players were winners and the rest were unprofitable, I certainly fall into the latter in terms of sit and gos.

Doing a little digging on OPR (which isn't 100% accurate) purely on Full  (http://blondepoker.com/index.php?q=node/12206)Tilt (http://blondepoker.com/index.php?q=node/12206) Stats. For mtts with fields over 11 runners, 114,000/461,000 are in profit of which around 16,500 have a profit of $1,000+

FWIW for those that play (or have) played on PokerStars you can email support and they'll send you your lifetime profit/loss stats (excluding ring games).

[  ] That's a figure I want to know.

also "profitable" could be open to interpretation

If I play 100 $5 and record a profit of $60 is that profitable given the time spent

personally I think it is because i play the game for enjoyment rather than to make money but just because thats my take on it someone else could easily think otherwise

yeah

bout 5% roi


not bad,but not life changing

So i emailed Stars for my stats and got a reply within a couple of hours, with five reports attached. What i can draw from them is the following. I've withdrawan approx $3.3k more than i've deposited, been transferred about $2.2k more than i've transferred to other, i'm $64.35 down in HU games lifetime and that i've played 150,494 hands on PokerStars since I created my account. That's about it.They also attach reports detailing your sit and go record and one for regular tournaments. But, if you've played satellites, either mtt format or sit and go then your total profit/loss for the last two will be skewed as it doesn't record if you un-reg'd or not.

can you get this info from ipoker / titan?

I'd be hesitant to include rakeback in these figures... like theres a lot of sng'ers that lose at sngs but the money they make from rakeback covers their losses and then they profit from high turnover. obviously they make money from the act of playing poker, so you could consider them "winners", but their stats at poker, ie simply ignoring rakeback, make them losing players, just glorified bonus hunters like these casino rats. I can see arguments for both sides though.

as for the origional Q, id say 5% is a generous figure over the course of every poker players existance.