My guess is 5%. too low or too much, lol?

The question is about what you mean by winners? A lot of pros/semi-pros who are winners locally come to WSOP to take their shot. Even if they lose there, many of them are still winners in the game overall.

I was asking the question regarding the WSOP series. I played a couple of tournaments this year and when the topic of how people at the table were doing overall there was no one who was actually ahead. some were only down that buy in but others were stuck 40 to 50 thousand.

It struck me that for every person who wins a million in a $1,000 buy in tournament there are 1,111 people who lost a thousand (assuming the WSOP takes 10%).

They are selling a dream but when I was there I could almost feel the desperation coming off the crowd. Now that they are accepting credit cards it will be far worse.

The only way this works would be for the wsop to share some of the TV money but of course that will never happen.

As with many "Bucket list" items I was disappointed with the reality. Funny thing is I cashed two tournaments out of four for a small loss overall. I may be back next year or maybe not, I guess I will decide when the time comes.

good luck to all playing the main event.

Are you including the cash games they played while at the tournaments?


Since each tournament pays 15% (and those were winners for that tournament), I would think the number higher ... over 10%.

If you're talking about exclusively tournament results without including cash games, I believe the number is definitely less than 5%, but you're in the right ballpark. Probably 3%. I've played at the WSOP in multiple events for 7 years, some years cashing multiple times, and I've lost money all 7 years. I'm not a great player by any means, but poker has been fun and profitable for me overall. Just not at the WSOP.

For people playing several tournaments, min-cashes aren't going to make them winners. They're just going to give that money right back in the next tournament. Everyone's goal in tournaments should be to minimize losses until they make a final table of a large event and hit a really nice score. The best way to minimize losses is to frequently play small fields against soft competition. That means mostly avoiding stuff like the Big 50 or Colossus, which have a gazillion entrants, and the $10K six max, which has a bunch of sharks. A $200 4PM daily deepstack with 300 players, most of whom are recs, is more likely to yield positive results. That doesn't make it likely that you'll come out a winner. It's just that those tournaments offer you the highest probability of success.

So there aren't many winners at the WSOP. Just a whole bunch of players trying to stay afloat and hoping to afford their next buy-in. But the good news is that those 3% who are winners (or 2%, or whatever) those lucky, lucky few tend to be really big winners. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or even millions. And that's the dream we're all chasing.

Some people only play the Main Event, so those people are going to be winners a much higher percentage of the time. They have roughly a 15% chance of being winners that year. But for people playing lots of events, they're almost always going to come out on the losing side. Min-cashes only pay about 1.5 times the buy-in, or sometimes even lower. So there's just no way to stay ahead of your expenses without making a final table, or at least having multiple deep runs.

Most pros supplement their tournament losses with cash game play. Losing tournaments for days, weeks, or months on end is no way to earn a proper living!

If you are talking purely money-wise, for the vast majority of poker players, the best bet by far is to play as small $ a tournament as possible, so they will lose less in the long run. For most recreational players bracelet events are awesome, as long as they put a premium on the experience and not focus solely on the money.

Accepting credit cards for payment was only new for PHo this year. The Rio has been accepting them for three years, and we STILL see people on here whining about the verification process. And based on the conversations of so many that don't seem to know how to maximize rewards structures, the impact upon the overall numbers in the player pool would seem to be minimal at best...

I only played two of the WSOP events, specifically the $1,500 Stud 8/B and the $1,500 2-7 triple draw. I would not have said I saw a lot of 'desperation' in the player pool.

Similarly, I didn't see it elsewhere. I saw some that were enjoying the overall experience, but in the seniors realm, this is as much about vacations as it is about making money.

As others aptly note, there are too many factors that you seem to overlook as it relates to what makes one a winner. Personally, I can be content if, through all of the events, cash and sports book, I break even on the summer. I met that goal this year...actually exceeded it.

The WSOP isn't really the best MTT series to grind if you are purely looking at ROI and profit. The fields are so huge in most of the events that your EV is essentially buried under a lifetime of variance. When you are battling against 2-4k+ entries in many of the cheaper NLHE events, you're a huge underdog to earn any real money regardless of your skill level. So what you get is a handful of guys who walk away with six figure scores each summer and then literally thousands of people who brick out or only net small cashes that barely cover a couple buy-ins.

It's a little bit different in the $10ks because the fields are small enough that a good player has a very real chance of realizing their EV and actually making a FT, but it's just not going to happen for many people in stuff like the Big 50, Colossus, 888, Milly Maker, etc. You might have to play these for the rest of your life each summer to get to a FT. They are highly impractical, even if the fields are soft. The sheer number of people you need to get through negates a lot of that.

From a profit standpoint, you are better off targeting events that attract 100-500 runners, since you're going to get into the big money spots with a much higher frequency. Anyway, most players still wouldn't be profitable since poker is worse than a zero-sum game when you factor in rake.

I agree with DogFace about the variance aspect.

The problem is that you have to take a long term approach. You can't look at one tournament, even looking at one summer is short term variance. you have too look at someone playing the WSOP series and playing 20 - 30 + Events over the course of 20 - 30 years.

If you are asking what the % of tournament players, long-term playing WSOP events are going to be up $$ over the course of their life time of playing the events, I would guess it would be in the 10 - 13% range.

you forget that someone who goes deep in one tournament and has a 300K+ score, that is going to be 5 or 6 years of WSOP buy-ins.

Basically, the variance in tournament poker is insane. Too look at one summer, does not give an accurate picture of whether a player is a winning player or not. Even top pros regularly have summers where they are down money.

I understand the variance aspect but my thought was that a lot of them were losing money they could not afford to lose and would take years to recover (if at all). The majority of non pros do not have years and years of buy ins; they take their one shot or one series and that's about it.

Isn't the big issue here taxes? I mean let say someone is up 100k for the wsop. He's paying at least 30 percent in taxes. Then he has a few losing years and down 100k. Well technically he is break even but down 30k because of taxes.



I read most players are backed but what percentage of those big name players or medium name grinders are winners? I can't imagine it being more than 15 percent at the absolute most.

Upon what were you basing your belief/opinion that they were 'losing money' that they could not 'afford' to lose?

A non-professional player need not have 'years and years' of buy-ins. They need to have enough to cover their annual vacation, which is precisely what the WSOP and other Vegas-area series really are for many people.

there's only one winner per event in my eyes.
everyone else even the person who finished in second place is a loser.
then there's the winner of the entire series who accumulates the most points.

who cares about winning millions of dollars when you can have the satisfaction of being wsop main event champ. best attitude to have since pay jumps don't affect you allowing you to play more aggressive in a lot of spots against players who love money too much.

also be thankful once the chips are in whatever result it is be thankful about it since it was suppose to happen the way it happened.

the other option is to chase after money but you will never have enough of it and a lot of discontent.

Exactly what I would've guessed lol

Its hard to say b/c I'm sure most players don't track their buy-ins and only their winnings. Many people will tell you they are winning but really don't know for sure