Percentage of online players who are profitable

[Abbaddabba]

Those numbers are completely arbitrary.

It depends on the variation in levels of skill.

The bigger the gap between the good players and the lousy ones, the greater the proportion of players will be winners. As the gap in skill approaches zero, the proportion of players that are winners approaches zero.


In high stakes games, the skill can be oddly distributed in that there's one really lousy player coupled with several really good players. That'll result in >50% of the players being winners.

In games where the skill is basically normally distributed, the percentage of winners will be somewhere between 0 and 50%. But just knowing the effect of rake cant tell you where it will sit. You need to know how much better some players are than the others to know that.

[jogsxyz]

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95-5 would not surprise me.

Pokertracker databased are biased.

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PT is not biased. The general public just doesn't understand statistics.

[iveyleague24]

What percentage of nosebleed stakes players are profitable?

[RobNottsUk]

FWIW on a forum for a Poker TV program showing online play and good poker discussion by experts, there was a poll asking the question "Do you win or lose".

There was a majority of regulars who were profitable, though many at low stakes online, and others playing more for fun (some newer) who were candid about losing.

So I think, figures about sites having mostly losing players, and Mason's view are compatible. Regular players, tend to be those self selected bunch, who have discipline to play in games they can beat. That entails grinding it out, spending considerable time on tables rather than gambling for large amounts looking for a big score.

Sharkscope in their FAQ say that 1/3 of players are in profit, according to their results. That's surprisingly high to me, as many beginner's start with SnG's and MTT's, and you'ld expect them to frequently lose their stakes and give up.

[Blue Lagoon]

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According to my poker tracker stats which has 537,643 hands for 12,576 different players, 38.82% are winners and 61.18% are losers. This doesn't seem right to me but stats can lie.

I saw an executive for a poker site on TV saying that 80% lose, 20% win. Sounds more realistic to me.

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While stats don't lie, they often distort. Half million hands, but how many of those players in your sample has over 10,000 hands? Need about 100,000 hands on a player for a good estimate of his winrate.

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Yes, the ratio Winner/Loser becomes smaller and smaller when you add hands and only watch the players with 1000, then 4000, then 10000 hands.