Sorry but that is laughable. To think that there is $300 Million in profit to be extracted from the player pool at these stakes (100,000 * 3000) is crazy. I am sure I could find/do the numbers but that has got to be off by at least a magnitude.

What really hit home for me was reading the PLO rake thread from a cpl years ago. It showed the biggest "winners" at 1/2 PLO? and how much rake they were paying with some tables. Nowadays, the results are probably even grimmer.

Found the thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...art-i-1336479/

Even though I was playing even higher stakes,I became really discouraged after that. It was going to dry up fast.

Cliffs: quit poker, use/get degree for a real job.

People have a lot of arguments they've made in the last nine almost-identical threads, and if they post in the tenth they get a free burrito.

Well how many online poker players are there?

I know there are stats showing how many people are currently logged onto Pokerstars for example, but how many recreational players log in a couple of times a year and drop a few hundred bucks?

50,000? 500,000? More?

I found some stats saying there are 60 million online poker players, but this seems ridiculous and was dated pre US collapse.

Ah yes, the mythical legion of anonymous mid-stakes grinders minting thousands a month in obscurity. Again, my point is that no player knows, not you, not me, not anyone in this thread. P.Stars know though, and they ain't saying are they? I'll trust that more than some could be/should be/would be fantasy. How many SNs LOSE money every year? Personally, I'm guessing most of them.

Look, I don't care. But I think you should ask yourself why every attempt at working things out empirically gives a tiny tiny number of LARGE winners.
OPR..... Maybe 50 guys tops. Your response? "lol, they don't track everything"
HSdb......maybe 30 guys. "Lol....people opt out from being tracked"
"lol, rake back", "lol euro sites", "lol SnG pros".....whatever. Even if we DOUBLE the numbers we can see, it's still bugger all.

And nothing else supports your view either. When people dump huge data bases of millions of 100NL hands and there's, like, the best 3 guys who made 35 grand each where does that fit in? Or you see the dick-swinging graph-posting in threads for minor games like Badugi or PLO8 and the best one has 55 thou or something in a year? Or you see people trying to work out if PLO Zoom is even beatable pre rake back and the guys with the highest number of hands in the whole pool are .85bb/100 winners or whatever? And there's 20 of them?

Your theory only needs ONE piece of evidence to disprove mine. One. One piece of data showing this huge invisible pool of massive winners exists somehow. No-one can find it though can they? So while a 12 year old girl may truly believe in her heart that a forest filled with talking unicorns exists, "We haven't checked every forest yet" isn't much proof. It's like dark matter. We may not be able to see it, but it's existence makes itself felt in detectable ways. We'd be able to see these invisible huge winners somehow, somewhere, if they actually existed. The fact that we can't (and, again, we'd only need to seem them once) gives me more confidence in my view than yours.

I want to know why we're wasting time on boring poker grinders when there might be some forestful of talking unicorns out there to be discovered.

What about live poker players?

Was searching for Ivy posts, and still lloking, but saw this and say-- What about Ivy ?? -- he made it, right? So, why can't some more kids from NYX dso the dsame, or Bostons or Miamis, or LAs, wahtever?

LIVE THE DREAM and have it -- #RICH #IVYLEAGUES

Napkin math. This is the second time I will be using this questionable stat, I believe I read it in a post by knircky, I would love if someone could confirm or correct it. So anyway lets say pokerstars keeps 19 of 20 dollars withdrawn from their site, 95%. Their revenues are $1.12B. So total revenues withdrawn from the site is 1.12*(20/19) = $1.18B. Per Amaya's reports they currently enjoy a 71% chokehold on the global online poker market. So the total amount withdrawn globally is 1.18/.71 = $1.66B. We'll assume pokerstars is typical, so poker players can expect to be able to withdraw 5% of that or $83M.

So $83M is the total amount available for all poker players. Ofc in 2016 that number may well be halved or worse.

Note, the above may or may not exclude all rakeback available to players. But its safe to assume rakeback may add significantly to that number. Maybe the true figure is 100-120M including all rakeback.

where did the pic come from ?

I don't know what you did exactly, but i see at least 400 guys over 100k profit in the first 1000 players on opr leaderboard only for the last 120 days. The complete first page (250 players) is filled with guys that made 90k+ with pretty much absolute certainty. Wonder where your 50 players comes from? May it be that you misread something or so?

Also you are talking about how i need to come up with evidence that there are more than 2k players capable of making 100k or more (including rakeback).
How about yourself coming up with a number, so that i can disprove what you say. What number of players you expect to have won over 100k in 2015?

Probably no more than 1000 seems to be the consensus. That jives nicely with my napkin math from above.

There seem to be a lot of early twenties types who read this who may not appreciate the industrial stamp press that is opportunity cost. So to spell it out again, online poker as a career path is in the bottom tenth of a percent of the options universe. Maybe you're a convicted felony rapist, or a wheelchair bound quadriplegic. Fine. If not, you would honestly do better to emigrate to Camden NJ, or Detroit, and slang heroin or do contract killings. Or work a subcontractor gig with a drug cartel out of Ciudad Juarez jacking third-world-based legacy jetliners, there would be less risk and it would probably be healthier from a psychological standpoint, not to mention lots of fun. Or get addicted to opiates and suck ****s and roll tricks. Or get locked down and learn to call shots.

Bottom tenth of a percent ain't one of the Queen's f****n' garden parties.

They wouldn't.

There are a lot more than 30 players making >$100k though. Most are running several bots at once across accounts that pull in $50k or so each. Seems to be the best way to win at poker now.

No idea what you are talking about, but i see where you are coming from. You are one of the angry persons expressing their disgust for young people playing poker for a living. If someone decides to take poker as a career path, let him do instead of spreading negativity using foul language and absurd comparisons, pretending to be a wise guy that educates half the world with his bull**** posts.

See above noted industrial stamp press. Hyperbole here couldn't possibly be raised to a high enough power.

Edit: wiseguy is one word unless you meant it out of context .

Again, no idea what your motivation for making this post is and what the deeper meaning behind all your nonsense may be, but you seem to bother alot what other people are doing with their lives.

How many unexperienced young poker players have you rescued already?

Btw, i am fully aware of being just human and a non native english writer. Thanks for clearing that up. Btw, do you write the plural of life with v?

Just the pursuit of truth.

But if you found yourself sitting around idly sipping Milwaukees Best Ice one starry evening 50,000 years ago on Santa Monica Blvd, and a perfectly nice looking saber tooth cat strolled by you might think out loud, or maybe even intentionally speak "them there some tar pits ahead, Mr. Cat".

It doesn't matter that he ended up fossilized, its the impulse that counts.

why?

I appreciate the math, that's what I would have done.

I would say the correct phrasing is that poker stars keeps 95% of deposits onto their site. The big what if is that 5% number; I'd love to know the real number. Does PS or any other site publish this in their reports?

Let's take it a little further. If we took that number (83M), the max 100k+ winners is 830. Once you factor in all those sub 100k winners, that number diminishes a lot. Let's say the top 5% of all winners make on average 100k. The bottom 95% of all winners make on average 10k. I think these numbers are being very generous, but I welcome criticism or more valid numbers.

((.95x)*(10000)) + ((.05x)*(100000)) = 83M

This equates to 286 100k winners.

Sry, but your math must be totally off. Just take a look at opr and you find there more players than 300 like i already said. And remember this is just mtt results. Just take a look being logged in/opt in.

95% is way too high. This is just a guessing i assume.

Oh my numbers are speculative at best. Just trying to get the conversation going in a more math direction. I do see what you are talking about on OPR and it's interesting.

I'm not sure if/how MTTs should be counted. I mean every week someone makes >100K in the Sunday Million so there's 52 right there. My view is that those are just lotteries that artificially generate $100k+ players. And of those that binked hard how many are actually pros? But those prize pools are part of the total deposits we talked about so maybe it is correct to include them. If that's the case there are certainly many $100k+ winners that aren't pros.

Personally, I am more interested in the cash game numbers but it's too difficult to differentiate.

So many factors we dont know.. are these MTTers donking it off in HS cash?, impact of rakeback, etc. But what I do know, is that all of my poker friends, some who were highly regarded in HS community have moved on to more prospective careers.

Try playing heads up or higher stakes, and asking yourself what is my perceived edge against these opponents? What mistakes are they making? These days, it can be a daunting task just to answer those questions.

A comment about MTT players is that I have never met one that wasn't backed at one point or another. Even the highly regarded ones that binked early and people thought were gods, were backed within a couple of years. And if you meet these guys, every one of them is/was living paycheck to paycheck if you will and seemingly broke just waiting for that next big score.

So even if these guys are clearing 100$k year which I doubt, because a lot of them play live MTTs with 5k+ buyins which crush their roll. Add in that 50% or more of their $100k+/year profit winning could be going to their backers or against makeup.

These days, my impression of the MTT community is it's just a bunch of guys trading money around, while the casinos/sites gobble up the rake.

Fedor would like to sit down and have a talk with you...

Seriously? I'm guessing you are pretty decent at poker but it's actually pretty damn hard to beat 25nl these days and for a total beginner it would be even tougher.

Since every sunday someone wins about 100K, pretty sure you can say there are more than 30. But your talking 1%. The amount of people making a respectable 80,000 to say 150,000 a year would be in the many thousands.