I play 18-man turbos.

Over 1200 games I have an ROI of 11%.

It's not a huge sample but given that I feel like I am much better than most players there I think it is in the ballpark of my true win rate (let me know if that isn't a reasonable win rate at these games or if I should be doing better).

There are a fair number of regs playing them at regular hours each day.

How many can be winning? break even? How many are probably losing?

Between the rake and people like me taking 11% there can't be much left for the rest right?

I'm basically wondering how many of the regs I'm playing with are losing money. There are a couple who give me problems who are probably winners but I have to imagine a chunk of them are losing right?

It really depends on two things. How you define a "reg" and what the size/ratio of the fish population is.

For me a reg is someone who is often seen at the felt and appears to know what they are doing. Frankly at small field turbos, any edges you have against any sort of joe average reg are going to be microscopic relative to variation, so it's pretty irrelevant in terms of win rate, which will be determined largely by how juicy in terms of fish the games are.

Assuming the stakes you play are pretty low, there are a ton of fish in these games, so no reason why any competent reg can't be getting some sort of return and anyway (going back to the definition thing) a consistently losing reg, is not a likely to be a real reg anyway...more likely an addicted poor recreational player.

Just my 10 cents.

I dont have the exact scoure but i recall reading a few different time that about 10% of players turn a profit another 10 to 15% are break evenish players and the other 80% or so lose money in the long run.

Right, so I should assume my edge against other competent players is essentially 0 at turbos. That makes sense.

1.5 buy-ins are taken out of the pool in rake. So how much money is donated depends on how much the bad players can lose. If they can lose at -15% ROI then there is room for 3 break even players and 3 winners.

If we're saying there are only 2 winners then it's tough to look at the tournament roster and see 2 or 3 other competent players.

It might be a waste of my time to play at certain times of day when there are too many other competent players active if only a couple of us can be winning.

That's mostly what I'm trying to figure out.

Exactly (relative to overall variation, which I assume you understand).

So your goal is find the fishiest games possible. This is what will determine your winrate, in the very long term. (which is true for all forms of poker, but the greater the variation factor, the truer it becomes).

Yep. Off felt study during these times, play during peak fish hours.

A model I have says that with an 11% ROI for an 18 man MTT with a 50-30-20 prize structure, 1200 games is large enough to be 90% confident you are a winning player.

Thanks, good to know.

Sounds like I need at least 5000 or so games to narrow down my true ROI.

I will take 'winning player' though.

I guess less then 10 %.
You just need to check the balance sheet, that sites hand to their shareholders.
The ration of deposits to profit is quiet above 90 %.
Considering how it is distributed among the players i would guess just few percent of players are actually making money.

When you posted, "You just have to check the balance sheet, that they hand out annually to their shareholders, over 90 % of the deposited money goes into rake. You basically got to be a one in a hundred player to make a relevant profit", in the "riggies' thread" in IP, a response was:

If that value would be inaccurate that would be fraud.
You got to go with cash-flow not revenue, revenue is always higher because with revenue you can count the same $ multiple times.
Like I said I guess, it is a assumption based on this data.
Less then 10 % of fresh money is open for redistribution.
It just simple math if there is 100k and you take out 90k there is 10k left,
so the value can't be higher.
Also considering the fact that not everybody is going to be straight up broke it gets even lower.

What stakes and what site? What are 'regular hours'?

Pokerstars, $3.50 - $7

By 'regular hours' I mean that they play at the same time each day. Though I suppose maybe not as I haven't actually been keeping track.

My current strategy is just to look to see who is playing and if too many winners are on I go do something else.

Since posting my ROI has dropped to 9%.

#smallsamplesize

I've played similar in the past. I found the variation in "field strength" is huge over differing days and times. In the UK during "office hours" (mon-fri 8 til 6 ish) they were packed with multi table Eastern European nit bots.

Outside those hours and at weekends, all the recs and other fish join in and become a significant presence. The regs are still there, but their presence is diluted.

The implications for your win rate should be crystal clear - especially at this game format.

PS Interestingly, a wee theory of mine, your edge over the multi-table nitbots grows in a fishy field as well (unless you are one of them ). This is because mass multi-tablers are autobotting push fold charts and are highly unlikely to adjust to the more nuanced spots that are exploitable when fish are in the pot.

You don't really understand what you are talking about. How much of deposits ends up as rake is not a cash flow or revenue question, and it doesn't show up on any balance sheet or financial statements. Deposits still belong to the player, and the company is merely holding them. They aren't part of the company's balance sheet at all. But there are statistics available to support what I posted in the other thread, that generally about a third of deposits in any given time frame end up as rake. Nowhere near 90%. Incidentally, one source supporting this is the US DOJ Investigations of poker sites a few years back. There is also information available from the financials of some public companies if you dig, but it ain't the balance sheet as you stated.

A very simple example is, if players deposit $10000/day over a month, that's $300K in deposits. At the end of the month we can roughly expect that $100K of that has gone to rake, $100K has moved to other players who won it, and $100K of it is still in the hands of who deposited it. This ratio should be the same if you measure it for a month or a quarter or a year in an established site that has already reached a somewhat steady state.

And none of those deposits show up on the company's balance sheet other than whatever portion of the new rake (earnings) wasn't used for expenses, thus increasing their cash on hand (retained earnings).

Yes it's true that over time some of that same money still in player's hands will also get raked, but there will also be new deposits too, maintaining the ratio. Looked at another way, if everyone suddenly had to stop depositing but kept playing, then eventually 100% of the money ends up as rake, as the cost of continuing to play. But that is not the ratio of rake to deposits that your point was about.