Here’s what happens.

A newbie starts playing Texas Hold’Em online cash games. After a while he reviews his play and thinks, „Yeah, overall I lost money; but everytime it was due to a bad beat, or to a beginner’s mistake. I think I can beat these limits with just more experience!“

And he keeps playing – and losing. And he does not give up; after all, there are so many players who make it, who even make a living on poker! Just look at all those blogs and those entries on 2+2 …“

I don’t know if any beginner will ever see this thread, but I will try anyway.

Sounds like me right now, I just don't see how people win at this. Especilly at nl10. I lost way more then I win and when i win it's like 30c but when i lose it's closer to 1.20 so i really don't see it. I'm really ready to give up.

sharkscope says 33% of players are longterm winners at online sngs. would cash really be so drastically different? i think only one of those options even makes sense tbh

Yeah I had the same experience,these last 2 months I've beaten the micro's and assuming it's not just a crazy hot streak it's taken 4 years about 35 books and god knows how much cash to learn the game,the only reason I kept it up is cos I have a home game that isn't raked which I could always beat so I rebuilt my confidence there before taking another shot online.

Link?

in the sharkscope FAQ (can't link to it individually but you can just go to their site and click FAQ) says:

What proportion of online poker players make money from Sit N' Go tournaments?
1/3rd of the usernames are profitable. 2/3rds lose money.

Found it. Odd. I was always suspicious of SharkScope, now even more. 33% winners, right. I hope it is just a typo.

But to answer your question:
Yes. In a tourney you get way more info than in cash games.

need more votes

The question is unanswerable without a clear idea what a player is and what it means to be winning online.

A 'player' is a person who plays; 'winning' means having more money than before; 'long run' means ... well, that's a tough one. Some demand 10,000 hands, some 50,000 hands. I don't think you need more than that to prove that you can beat the specific limit.

At the moment the average vote is roughly 7%. I hope there will be a lot more votes before this thread dies, but let's see what that means:

According to this, there would be 1 winning player among 14 players. In other words - if one of these players sits down multitabling 3 tables, each 6-handed, most of the time he should be the only player who beats the game; every now and then there will be one more player just as good as he is.

But this forum, and many other sites like this, suggest that about everyone can become a winning player; that everyone who isn't a winner must be a donk. I have news for you - not every player among the 93% is a donk! And face it, reader - YOU are 14 times more likely to belong to the players who have less money after 50.000 hands than to be the one who has more.

So, do you still believe that all those posters around here who readily call themselves winning players actually are winning?

Not even close.

Yeah, unfortunately its been well documented that truly expert players will still have 70 or even 100k hands of break even poker, when their real winrate might be 1BB/100, at least at limit. in NL, deep stack, ones edge might be significantly bigger, and so such streaks are far more rare.

Keep in mind it is truly possible for someone to have a 1-2 BB/100 winrate as an expected value, and yet lose over millions and millions of hands. Thats because poker is a game involving randomness. While it is unlikely, it is certainly possible to roll a thousand ones in a row on a fair die. Additionally, for someone that that doesnt like to hear that, if you roll a die an infinite number of times, it is an absolute certainty that you will roll a thousand ones in a row at some point during that stretch.

4Card

Average now at ca. 8% - need more votes - read post #11

cant vote, think it's around 35-40%

yeah, i'm sure they just typoed both 1/3rd and 2/3rd in a coincidental way that makes sense. no, it's definitely right

what?

QFT

OP failed for not letting us choose 25%+

with rakeback it is possible for someone to lose at a small rate and still make money

Average now down to ca. 7.5% - need more votes - read post #11

I see ... hmmm ... in roulette we get 98.65% on each $ we risk on the simple chances ... right, that means that exactly 49.325% of all roulette players are winning players! Now I understand, thank you so much!

For the love of God ...

According to interpoker general manager 10-15%

http://www.pokertips.org/weekly.shuf...ves/2007-08-26

He was probably talking about % of account with a balance+withdrawal > deposit, so I guess lots of people who deposited 100$ one night and lost it are considered losers, if you only count regular active player its probably closer to 25-33%

are you brain damaged? what the bloody hell are you even talking about? there is no relation to that and what we're talking about now

sharkscope has a database. they can filter the winners and losers. about 1/3rd of players in their data base make money. 2/3rds lose money. please tell me which part you fail to understand

I fail to understand how anyone can believe those numbers to be accurate.

But then again, maybe there is no contradiction. Is SharkScope's database restricted to the most recent months? Then it might work. Those who constantly lose give up poker after a few months and drop out of the statistic eventually, while the 1/3 that wins comprises roughly the same players all the time ... hmmm.

What is the probability distribution of a player to win a random hand in a table of 10? If you simplify the game to be say one where each player in a table of 10 contributes 1 unit of money per hand and the random j player has Pj probability to win the total pot =10*0.95=9.95 units (5% rake) . So the j player has a revenue of Pj*9.95 per hand or a net gain of 9.95 Pj-1 . You need 9.95Pj-1>0 so you see what fraction of population obeying the probability distribution f(P) satisfies that inequality.

For instance you could assign each player a quality called skill Sj that ranges from a to b such that in a table of 10 with s1,s2,..s10 the random Pj is Pj=Sj/(S1+S2+...S10)


If you did something like that for say a uniform distribution of skill from 1 to 2 41% of players would be winners. If you made the skill range more narrow like 1 to 1.5 you would have only the top 36% winners.

Given the fact that a lot of players also lose due to gambler's ruin by not being familiar with bankroll management or because they are simply viewing the game as a gambling experience and play for the excitement of big fluctuation you can reduce that number even further. Hopefully a good game skill player over time actually understands not to do such mistakes and have poor bankroll management but there will always be the new generation degenerates i guess...


I dont know what to say . It comes down to how you distribute that Pj . The narrower the skill -probability Pj range the more important the rake will be .

See how a move to skill range of 1 to 1.5 (implying at best one player has only 50% bigger probability to win the random hand vs the worse possible player) makes only the top 36% winners.

Given the fact in higher levels skill range will be much more narrow than that you probably are looking at sub 25% levels there.

As the rake becomes less important at big stakes the condition for a winner probably becomes as simple as finding what fraction of the Pj probability distribution population is above the average .


I would tend to think if all players played properly in terms of bankroll management and were true to themeslves willing to stop that level of play after prolonged losing periods and re-evaluate the activity you would be able to claim that 30-50% winners would not be unrealistic since mean and median tend to be nearby for most distribution functions.

By that i mean that in a typical table a player with slightly above average skill would be winner long term if rake was not important. Since for most distributions of skill being slightly above the average holds for nearly 50% of the population you have indeed a big fraction of winners although most of them marginal.

Therefore at higher levels i would imagine that how the distribution of skill behaves defines the fraction of long term winners if they apply proper bankroll management.

If the above mentioned effective probability was say a normal distibution then the random above 50% skill player would be a long term winner. For other skewed distributions it would be a bit different.

To me this indicates that it seems unrealitsic to claim that at large stakes only a very tiny fraction are long term winners because it would indicate a very skewed distribution for skill. Then again the rake and other friction terms or the rate at which the very good players play (how often) may influence that . For example if the very good players play very often (regulars) and the vast majority of the population plays substantially less often then the typical player is often the victim of the regular forcing a significant deviation from the above near 50% claim. (ie you may have 50% of the players in a table being regulars and the other 50% the occasional players . If the regulars played 5 times more often you can imagine how gradually all the sub regulars lower in skill people although they represent the majority of the population and a lot of them are above average skill unfortunately for them they are the typical losers because they play people like themselves less often than you would expect if they all played at the same rate)

That and the rake are probably the reasons something below 25% is more realistic assumption.