I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that, without rake, there would be fewer winners than losers (because of the top players sucking up a disproportionate amount of the profit to be had), but I think the percentage of winning players would be within sniffing distance of 50%.
But yeah, the rake is just brutal. The number I’ve heard says that 6-7% of online players turn a profit.
It certainly isn’t thin in an absolute sense, but it is relative to the games that I’m multi-tabling. Playing mostly 3/6, I’m making just over three Big Blinds per table/hour. The games don’t have to get much tougher at all for that number to shrink by two Big Blinds, which would basically mean a 60% “pay cut.”
I would guess the ratio of winners to losers would be something like 30/70 in an unraked game.
But even ignoring that 70% would still be losers, they’d be much less significant losers. Many of them would be much closer to break even, and those that lost would lose significantly less.
The numbers I’ve seen for poker in its entirety have ranged from about 4% to 8%. I would guess the online numbers would be higher, with the reduced rake/no jackpot/no tipping/ability to multitable. If 6-7% for online is true, 3-4% for live sounds more likely… but then again, live players are significantly softer for any given limit.
True enough. Should online ever dry up for you, I’m sure you could make out nicely at 2-5 and 5-10 nl games in Vegas if you’re beating those games online.
The books that VarlosZ recommended arrived today and I’m about 100 pages into the first one. I’m really enjoying the reading and finding out how poorly I’ve actually been playing. I still haven’t had a losing night at the play money tables so that just seems to confirm that I’ll never get any better unless I play for real money.
Having said that I think I should let the dopers have first crack at the new fish! Can one of you fine upstanding gentlemen PM me the details? I usually get home from work around 7:30pm Mountain Time so I should be able to join the Thursday night game.