Let's take a stab at how much someone like this is really donating.

If the game averages 8 handed, this person should probably be playing anywhere from 12 to 23 percent of their hands. Let's say 15 percent.

This means 35 percent of the time, they are putting in money when they are behind pre-flop. However, they still have equity in these situations, sometimes a lot of it, just not their fair share. So let's say that these plays average about minus 20 percent EV. And let's say that they are playing an average of 1.5SB-- sometimes pots are raised, sometimes not.

So, 35 percent of hands, they are losing 0.3SB. 35 percent of 35 hands an hour is 12.25 hands, so they are losing 1.84BB per hour pre-flop.

Now, postflop is harder to estimate. But let's say that they call too often on the flop. Well, they are going to fold some, so let's say they call 20 percent of their hands (out of the 35) and fold the other 15 percent.

Further some flops they are going to check through or have the best hand, so let's eliminate another 5 percent of the flops, and think about the other 15 percent of the time.

Again, they are going to have some equity, but maybe they have an average of 3/4 of the outs required to call the flop. So that's about 25 percent of their flop bets that are going to go down the drain. Again, assuming 1.5SB on average will go in on the flop-- sometimes a raised pot and sometimes just one bet, they will lose .38SB on those hands. Assuming 35 hands an hour, that's about 2SB they are losing an hour on the flop, or 1BB.

On the turn and the river, again, they aren't going to make a mistake all the time, so let's reduce that figure in half to 7.5 percent on the turn and 4 percent on the river where they make mistakes. And let's assume that most of the mistakes are incorrect calls rather than incorrect folds (most players know not to fold when the pot is huge). Finally, again, only rarely will the player have zero equity against someone's range. So we are going to be talking about things like calling getting 10 to 1 when we only have a 5 percent chance. That's a 0.5BB mistake. So we're talking about an average 0.5BB mistake 7.5 percent of the time on the turn and 4 percent of the time on the river, let's say.

That's 1.3BB they are losing on the turn, and 0.7BB on the river.

So perhaps this typical fish loses about 4.8BB per hour as compared to a winning player.

But the actual amount he is donating to the game is less than that. Since the winning player might be making 0.5BB per hour, he's actually only losing 4.3BB per hour. That's the donation.

Some of that 4.3BB per hour goes down the rake hole (a $6 rake in 8 handed 8-16 is 1.64BB per hour per player). The rest gets shared among the other players.

Now, of course, a bigger fish, a complete idiot, donates more. But how many of your opponents are complete idiots as opposed to players like rxw described?

Hey man first rule of fight club....

Hey, do you play at Canterbury Park in Minnesota?

It is entirely possible

Slightly off topic but not really off topic:

Only 1.3 percent of daily fantasy football players win.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...ntasy-football

Maximum losing win rates are easier to estimate than presented.

Take all your statistics knowledge about how to calculate longest breakeven stretch and such, and just apply it in a different context to see how sure someone can be about a certain loss rate. Overlay that with a distribution of what people can actually afford to lose based on volume and stakes.

Sure, there may be some people who can financially eat a -8 BB/hr loss playing 20 hours/week of 20/40, or a small minority who have self-deluded to think they're only a small loser through non-recordkeeping or rungood. But even at like -5 BB/hr and 4 hours/week, it's near impossible to have a winning month, the amount lost approaches a noticable figure off an average income, and it gets quadratically worse as your win rate gets worse.

I'd suspect that most losers hang out in the -2 to -4 range, because that's below rake (typically -0.5 to -3) but not so negative that they never get positive reinforcement.