How many people will make more than $250,000 this year playing poker?

[raptor517]

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Just curious since so many people seem to think 250,000 is so commonplace in the poker yearly salary....

Where are all these players at the high stakes tables? Just at the Stars and FullTilt players, there's probably 60-100 regulars at 25/50+ no limit/limit/omaha throughout the year.

And probably 1/3 are winning players. I'm basing this soley off ONLINE players. Live maybe different if you also count the donkamenters.

But to say 1,000 people make $250,000 a year based off Online Poker only seems a bit absurd to me. Anything higher than 500 quite high.

I'm going to quit this thread as I can already see this one building up to the hopefuls arguing how they been playing for 1 year and poker is so easy blah blah I know everything in the world because I'm on a 2 month heater blah blah blah... Yawn.

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u seem to be forgetting live tournaments tournaments. theres a whole lot of them.

[HensonLosesLots]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Just curious since so many people seem to think 250,000 is so commonplace in the poker yearly salary....

Where are all these players at the high stakes tables? Just at the Stars and FullTilt players, there's probably 60-100 regulars at 25/50+ no limit/limit/omaha throughout the year.

And probably 1/3 are winning players. I'm basing this soley off ONLINE players. Live maybe different if you also count the donkamenters.

But to say 1,000 people make $250,000 a year based off Online Poker only seems a bit absurd to me. Anything higher than 500 quite high.

I'm going to quit this thread as I can already see this one building up to the hopefuls arguing how they been playing for 1 year and poker is so easy blah blah I know everything in the world because I'm on a 2 month heater blah blah blah... Yawn.

[/ QUOTE ]

u seem to be forgetting live tournaments tournaments. theres a whole lot of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

[SnglMaltScotch]

Well math tells me there are probably quite a few.

Assumptions:
30 hours/week
5/10 NL Player
3 ptbb/100
Normal Rakeback Deal through FT.

$250,000/year.

How many regular 5/10 players are there.

SMS

[Victor]

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i won't.

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me either. sadly i was halfway there in march.

[prohornblower]

ten point three.

[geormiet]

In the whole world including live and online? I would guess there are 2000.

[Grisgra]

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In the whole world including live and online? I would guess there are 2000.

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FWLIW that'd be my guess as well. Maybe a tad less, like 1800.

[Hock_]

For limit hold'em alone, my guess is between 75 and 100.

[Grisgra]

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For limit hold'em alone, my guess is between 75 and 100.

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ooooooh top 100 limit hold'em players in the world, I like the sound of that. (I think it's probably higher, though.)

[GambleAB]

Assuming online-only and assuming this is sustainable (ie not counting people who win a big tournament or catch a month long heater and then stop playing).

You figure 5-10 tournament players.
Figure 5-10 nosebleed players.
Figure 5-10 SNG players.
Figure 5-20 people who grind out 25/50nl/pl and 1/200 limit who don't put in a ton of table hours/week but have great game selection.

The rest are going to be made up of low and mid stakes grinders, most of who fly under the radar. Estimate that most of these players have to put in between 100-150 table hours/week. More at levels like 3/6nl and 10/20 limit, less at 10/20nl and 30/60 limit. If we estimate that there are 15 tables going at any point in time, with half of those being 6-handed, that's 2700 table hours per day, so just shy of 19,000 hours a week. That's enough room for around 150, but that's impossible since then they would all be playing each other and nobody would be making any money, so if we assume that the table can only support half grinders and half fish at any time, thats about 75 per level per year. If we assume four grindable levels of nl and three of lhe, that's about 525 people. Double that for the omaha games, and you're looking at around 1,050 people.

Add in all of the other 250k/yr players above, plus a couple HU specialists and stud game specialists and I think a very rough estimation of 1,100 people would be in the ballpark. But again, that number is a rough estimate of how many 250k/yr players the economy can support, the number that it actually does is probably far less than that.