This includes all online poker including tournaments. What % of online players made at least $5k a year on average after rakes for a long period (3+ years) pre-Black Friday? "On average" can mean, for example, someone who profits $15k after rake in year 1 and breaks even the next 2 years.

It's probably near impossible to get actual data for this (% who made $5k+ a year on average), so I thought I'd do a poll. The collective wisdom here is probably fairly close to the right answer. Basically I'm wondering what % got a decent income supplement from online poker for the long-term. ("decent" to me meaning $5k+ a year on average).

$5k is decent income? I mean basically if poker is like fun/hobby (even if you're pretty serious) then any amount of money is great. If it's *income* then 5k is pretty terrible.

I have no idea what percent make 5k or more/year and I'd be very suspicious of anyone who claimed to know, to be honest.

3.5%

not me :P

You could get a decent answer for tournaments by looking at random high-starred players on OPR. I reckon 5k per year is at least an 8 star performance, which means better than 99% of players. Haven't checked it in detail, though, but anyone prepared to put in the effort should be able to get a reasonable estimate. Handily, it tracks profits on a year-to-year basis.

Maybe Sharkscope can give an estimate for STTs (OPR just does MTTs). I doubt whether PTR is accurate enough to be very useful in terms of cash games.

Note: this is for cash games only.

You can estimate this pretty accurately if you consider what $5 k means in terms of winrate and number of hands played.

$5k = 5 k bb at NL100 = 100 k hands at 5 bb/100 at NL100, or 200 k hands at 5 bb/100 at NL50, etc...

Now consider the following hypotheses:

5% of players win at 5bb/100 + at NL100 and are able to put that volume, the same for NL50.
People at NL25 or below don't put enough volume to make 5k a year in general.
10% of NL200+ players make 5k+

And the following distribution of players across stakes:

NL 25 and under: 80%
NL 50-100: 15%
NL 200+: 5%

So the total percentage would be 5%*15%+10%*5% = 1.25%

You can play around with the hypotheses and the distribution of players if you like but the calculation remains the same.

It's hard to know if you're counting everyone who played a single hand or if you mean people who played an average of 20hs+ per week or something.

Also, the % of players playing poker at any one time who are winners is very low, but the % of players per table who are winners is very high. Because most winners play many tables at once, and most losers play very few or only one table at a time.

Between MichaelP and gerryq I think that gets you pretty damn close.

Probably around 1.5% or so in the cash game and another 1.5% in tournaments for a total of around 3%

That's got to be within +/- 1% . Of course probably 40% of said players are in both categories which would lower the overall percentage...

In any event, I'd feel really comfortable saying 2% - 3%

I think $5k would be a decent income supplement in addition to working a full time day job, especially since you get the $5k doing something fun/a hobby. Just wondering what % of online players made enough $$ for poker to provide a decent income supplement to a regular job (if not an income replacement).

Just as a reference, most data I've seen indicates somewhere between 7-15% of online players are winners (i.e. make more money than they lose, after rake) in the long term. But there are plenty here who would say it's <7%, and some would say >15%. And most who are winners are only making a small profit. But in any case I would think the % who made $5k a year on average for 3+ years would be a tiny %, probably very tiny.

Provide a reference to this data, because I've never seen anything like that.

You are dreaming...

I've never seen stats indicating that anywhere near of 7% of players are winners online and you are smoking crack if you think 15% of players are winning players online.

Please submit the so called stats that show this.

Hell, just go to OPR and look at the stats of someone who is at 93%. Add up their numbers and no way they are a winning player and definitely no way they are making $5K/yr...

that doesn't happen until you get to around 98%

If you mean % of all online players then I would say <0.1% and would be shocked if it was more than 1%. The number who win anything at all over 3 years is probably <5% imo.

The vast majority of players are playing at low stakes with low volume. In fact the average player only stays active for a few months after setting up an account. Rake is eating up $10-digits per year and the few winning players are taking out another chunk.

Another way to think about it is that over a 3 year period tens of millions of people play online poker (50 million as a rough stab). If 1% of those players were averaging $5k net per year that would be 2.5 million. That number just seems absurdly high. Compare it to the number of people who use these forums for example.

There may be an estimation bias by people in this forum as there will be a higher proportion of winners than in poker overall (and they are likely to have a higher proportion of winners among their friends).

I dont understand this thread. you mean $50k not $5k right? im sure there are plenty of NL25 players making more than $5k a year.

??? 1% of 50 M is 500 000. That actually still does seem high, though.

Honestly I'd be very surprised if less than half of the people who have had a +5k year online since 2007 weren't 2p2ers, since winning that much does imply a certain dedication to the game. Anybody have any idea how many of us 2p2ers there are / have been since it was created?

My bad. Oriinally wrote it as 5% which is where many have voted. Point still stands though.

1% max

And this is lolworthy;-

But how much did they lose?

Should we include the players who only played freerolls as well?

Eagerly awaiting your response before turning on my supercomputerbrain.

According to the front forum page on the very bottom...

there are 318,000 members

Thanks for that.

So basically, if 10% of 2p2ers made 5k per year pre BF, and half of the people who made that amount were 2p2ers, that would mean about 64000 people made 5k per year pre BF...

Now we just need to define the denominator. The definition of an online player is pretty important here, if every fish who ever deposited $50 on a poker site and burned through it in two weeks is included, then I'd change my answer to less than 1%.

I don't play NLHE so maybe it's different, but all the folks I play with at Party who are 93% are also winning.

They are not making 5K/yr at 93%, but they are cashing out occasionally for sure.

http://www.sharkscopers.com/blog/the...rs-are-winners

According to Sharkscope, 26% of online players are winners, and rake is accounted for. But winning (profit >0) and winning $5k are not the same thing. The Henden Mob has a blog that supports this percentage in a general way.

is all this data purely tournament data? im pretty sure the majority of winning players make their money playing cash games.

thanks for the link, didn't know it was that high to be honest.