I know why there are so few long-term winners at poker

[vhawk01]

Even harder if the average winning player makes 200k/yr. Neither of these are reasonable, but your point still stands. I guess.

[_TKO_]

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Another piece of evidence comes from PT data. There was a huge thead a long time ago showing that at each limit there are 60% losers and 40% winners. Why is this different from the 6-7% winners reported by online casinos? That's because online casinos report individual win/loses CROSS-LIMITS. It takes a lot of 0.5/1 losers to provide for the winnings of a 30/60 winner.

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Link?

[fep]

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Another piece of evidence comes from PT data. There was a huge thead a long time ago showing that at each limit there are 60% losers and 40% winners. Why is this different from the 6-7% winners reported by online casinos? That's because online casinos report individual win/loses CROSS-LIMITS. It takes a lot of 0.5/1 losers to provide for the winnings of a 30/60 winner.


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I agree, PT shows that 40% of the players are winners, I've seen that myself in my PT data. But I don't agree with your reason why.

I believe the reason is the winners stick around, play more often, and play more tables. A big percentage of the 95% losers that PokerRoom reports are simple not playing anymore or play very seldom. The 5 - 7% of the players that are winners make up 40% of the players actually seated at a table at any given time.

So if you look at a typical table, it's likely that 40% of the players at that table are long-term winners. However, only about 5% of the players that have played online are winners. These two statements do not contradict each other.

[Exsubmariner]

I was thinking that obviously, this guy doesn't play 10K hands a month or more.

[starbird]

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It has nothing to do with how well or how poorly anybody plays. The mathematics of the game can't support more winners than that.

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Others have pointed out that this isn't literally true, but I think it's true in practice, given the current mix of player skills/activity (i.e., who's playing how much).

Suppose you took, oh, say, a thousand new poker players, and trained them up into strong, winning players, and turned them loose on the online poker ecology. What would happen? Well, there would a thousand new winning players. But the games would become less profitable for (almost) everyone else, and some players who had been only small winners would become breakeven players, or small losers. So the overall number of winning players might not change much. (Note: 2+2 is actuallly an example of this.)

So the pool of winning players doesn't change size much over time. What OP's point suggests is that the turnover in that pool is larger than one might otherwise expect. What happens to the winning players? In theory, once you become a winning player, you should be able to remain one until you die, unless you get pushed out of the pool because online poker is getting tougher overall.

In practice, though, a lot of the current winning players just haven't run very bad yet, and rate to be taken out due to inadequate psychological fortitude (or bad bankroll management).

[SEABEAST]

Yeah, I still don't really understand why poker players seem to naturally gravitate towards moving up limits as soon as they have the bankroll. Sure I'm all for taking calculated shots when you specifically think you are ready and your game has evolved to the point where it will be profitable, but the whole move up as soon as technically possible thing seems to me like it's all too often just a manifestation of that sick gambling instinct to seek action and take risks. I enjoy possessing and spending money personally [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] (Of course I do play much much higher limits now than when I started making money too, but I'm glad I never felt the impulse to keep taking shots every single time I had a well padded bankroll!)

[_TKO_]

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Yeah, I still don't really understand why poker players seem to naturally gravitate towards moving up limits as soon as they have the bankroll.

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If you are growing your bankroll solely from poker, then your bankroll reaching a level that is sufficient for the next limit would suggest that you are "ready" to move up. The reason people move up is because it makes sense - why play indefinately at a low limit when you could increase your hourly rate by moving up.

[sweetjazz]

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Yeah, I still don't really understand why poker players seem to naturally gravitate towards moving up limits as soon as they have the bankroll.

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If you are growing your bankroll solely from poker, then your bankroll reaching a level that is sufficient for the next limit would suggest that you are "ready" to move up. The reason people move up is because it makes sense - why play indefinately at a low limit when you could increase your hourly rate by moving up.

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I think this is an accurate empirical observation. The reality is that just because you have a bankroll for the next limit does not mean you are ready to move up. Nor will your hourly rate necessarily increase.

But...most people moving up to new limits after winning up an adequate BR at lower limits aren't that far from beating the next limit if they aren't there to begin with. So if you are willing to keep working at the game, then moving up will eventually allow you to increase your hourly rate and, more importantly, improve your game.

[nhsir]

Moving up is fine if you are beating a certain level over a sufficient sample size. It also gives you a goal to shoot for, which is helpful. However, I think the problem with a lot of players is that they try to do it too quickly with too small a sample size and/or bankroll. A lot of newer players underestimate the power of short-term luck. They assume that their good results will always last, but if their sample size is small, it's quite possible they have simply been running hot and may not be as big of a winner they think they are at their current level, or at all.

[NapoleonDolemite]

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However, I believe the number one reason why there are so few long-term winners is that most people cannot handle the extended bad runs. No matter how good you are, you are going to go through periods of time when you lose money and sometimes those periods are going to last for a really long time. I don't care how much control you have, after several months of this, it's going to get to you.

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For online players playing say 10k hands a month or more, there is no such thing as a bad run that lasts several months. If you lose money for three months in a row playing 10k hands/month, you are not playing winning poker. It would probably be fair to say if you lose money for even less than that, you are not playing winning poker, but I'm being conservative.

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This is wrong.