What percentage of poker players are profitable? Judging from the number of times the question has been asked in various forums, the answer is amongst the game’s Great Unknowns.

My answer was usually “about 10%”...although, I’ll admit, it was just a guess with no supporting data points. Until now.

Recently, I tackled the problem from a somewhat controlled, meaningful analytic perspective. Necessary tools include a trustworthy data source, a reasonable sample size, and a player set representative of the worldwide nature of the game. I assembled a list of players from three different $4+.40 180-man SNGs, and three $20+2 180-man SNGs on PokerStars. I gathered names from three different times of day, over three different days. Eliminating duplicates from my data set, I had almost exactly 500 players at each buy-in level.

Then, I looked everyone up on OfficialPokerRankings.com. Most people agree OPR is fairly accurate for MTTs; I was thus able to obtain the majority of results data I was seeking, for free. OPR doesn’t show you how much someone has lost, I calculated the values myself based on average buy-in, # of tournaments played, and total prize won. Such an algorithm does a terrible job figuring out rebuys, obviously…I found my results could trend high by 3-5% if someone had played a lot of rebuy MTTs. Given a clear discrepancy if someone was a winner or loser, I went with OPR’s numbers versus my own calculation.

I also didn’t do any more digging than MTT results on PokerStars. No Sharkscope. No cash games. No other sites. Someone could show up as a loser on my list and be up on every other site – I could very easily miss the boat on a specific player. As it turns out, overestimating people as losers in order to hit my original 10% guess was the least of my concerns….

What I found surprised the hell out of me:

- Out of 502 players in the $4+.40 180-mans, there were 151 winners (30%) and 351 losers (70%)
- Out of 501 players in the $20+2 180-mans, there were 195 winners (39%) and 306 losers (61%)

Put them together, and 35% of the players are winners, 65% losers – almost exactly a 2:1 ratio. My estimate was incredibly off. Why?

Did I pick the online tournaments with the greatest percentage of winners?

My theory is 180-mans attract a higher grinder-to-casual player ratio than other tournaments or SNGs. If someone wants to sit down and play for an hour after dinner, they won’t be in this game. 180-man SNGs simply last too long. If someone wants to take a shot at running good for a huge return on a small buy-in, they won’t be here either; you can only win about 50x the buy-in. Those two groups – leisure-timers & shot-takers – constitute the highest concentration of casual players.

Even at the lower buy-in, it’s clear the 180-mans’ appeal to people looking for multi-table sessions, and have as many tournaments running as they can reasonably play at a time. Of the total $4+.40 group, 108 players sampled have played more than 1000 tournaments on PokerStars. These players, by nature, are going to be more skilled…almost 60% of this subset has a positive ROI.

The $20+2 group has even more players who are playing tournaments as a predictable income source. If they’re not true professionals, we might call them “semi-pros.” Over 1/3 of the sample size has played more than 1000 tournaments. In fact, more players in the list have played over five thousand tournaments (44) than have played less than twenty (41). Seventy-five players in the $20+2 group have over $10k in total profit. Almost ¼ of the players have an ROI greater than 20%.

No wonder the $20+2 180-mans go off less than once an hour during most times of day, way less than they used to…it’s a far tougher field than a normal $20+2 freezeout.

Some other fun numbers to throw out…first, the good:

- most tournaments played = 38,573 (with an earliest result of May 2006, this player has been around for 42 months…playing an average of 31 MTTs a day…have mercy)
- average In-The-Money percentage for the top 100 most profitable players = 15.8% (for those of you who ask “what ITM rate should I be targeting?”…this is a good answer)
- highest profit by someone in a $4+.40 = $47k (he’s a long-time PocketFiver…congrats, who-know-who-you-are!)

The bad:

- greatest number of tournaments played without ever having cashed = 84
- most money lost in buy-ins without a cash = $1,120, in 70 MTTs played (this type of persistence is, in some ways, quite admirable!)
- most tournaments played by someone with worse than a -15% ROI = 11,013
- most tournaments played by someone with worse than a -30% ROI = 8,968 (honestly, when you’ve lost $50k with an $18 average buy-in, wouldn’t you figure out you needed lessons at some point?)

And the ugly…the worst “box score” I found:

- # of MTTs played = 4771
- Average Buy-in = $3.85
- Total Spent in Buy-ins = $18,368
- Total Prize Winnings = $4,672
- Return on Investment = -75%

At the end of the day, I don’t think I found a true answer to the “how many online players are profitable?” question. But it’s a start, and a thought-provoking start at that.