I’ve had the staff here at Bill’s Poker Blog pouring over the results of this recent World Poker Exchange survey and we’ve arrived at some pretty interesting observations.
6% of those surveyed play poker online to supplement their income.
2% of those surveyed play poker online as a full-time occupation.
After running those numbers through my Cray Super Computer, we’re pretty confident that adds up to 8%. That would indicate that only 8% of online players play seriously enough to make any sort of real money.
That seems to mesh with this quote from Jackpot Jay who got some hush-hush data from online card room managers who said that only around 8% of players finish the year in the black.
But what’s really intriguing are the responses of those obviously not in the 8%. Fifty three percent of those surveyed said they make bets online for fun. Almost 70% said they play enough online poker to make a little money now and then and 40% said that win or lose, they love the thrill of betting on poker.
That would seem to jive with the kinds of plays I see online. Lots of thrill seekers and people who will call down bottom pair because winning the pot means more than making money. It’s something to keep in mind though when you try to get inside the head of your opponents. These guys aren’t wired like those who take the game seriously.
Other disturbing findings include:
13% of male players want to play poker with George Clooney. WTF?!?
Half of men surveyed think women playing poker is sexy. Really? I’m torn as whether to be shocked that only 50% of men thought women playing poker is sexy or repulsed by what women would have to do to not be considered sexy by these pervs. I’ll figure it out later.
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Clooney? Meh. If I had to pick a guy, I’d love to play w/ Phil Gordon, he seems like he’s actually enjoying himself.
8% is a little hard to believe. My PT stats have always shown 35-40% of people are winners. Of course this can be very misleading because I don’t have long time stats on a lot of players, but 8% seems extremely low.
Nick, my PT stats show 48/52 winners/losers. Though some of the winners are up less than 1BB so maybe they’re not including those.
Hi,
PT is a little misleading: if roulette was the game then we’d all be losers long term, but a ‘PT DB’ of the game would show a good proportion of winners after a reasonable length of term. I wouldn’t have though so low as 8%, maybe 1 in 7, but I can see that it is credible. The other moot point is there is not a 1 in 12 chance your opponent in a pot is a winner, unfortunately it’s much higher. The reason for this is that winners play a lot more hands/ year than losers. This is probably why ‘it feels’ that 1 in 12 is so low, since it is extremely rare not to find a winning plaer at your table and so our perception is one of much higher.