A brief look into how fast the average player improves and what that means for you
There’s always been a lot of panicking in the poker community about Poker eventually dying.
A guick google search with the terms “poker is head” shows dozens of blog articles, reddit posts and even a book with that very title, published in 2014 – a good ten years ago!
The rationalization about it usually revolves around the fact that the average player (and this includes both regulars and recreationals) has been improving at a fast pace due to the abundance of information in the internet. With so many YouTube videos, training sites, blog articles and poker courses out there, the average player can reach a reasonable level much quicker, and as they improve the quality of their play, the magnitude of edges available (supposedly) reduces.
The theory is that if this goes on for long enough, eventually edges will be reduced to a point where games are no longer profitable. And at that point, being an online professional poker player is not possible anymore.
While it’s absolutely true that the game evolves and the average player improves, I haven’t ever seen a quantitative analysis of this perceived improvement. All people have to say about it is a qualitative perspective on how things are progressing. While such perceptions are certainly relevant, it is my opinion that they can’t be taken as truth; at least not immediately. Further investigations are necessary – quantitative investigations.
That’s where I come in! I love quantitative analysis, and I love a good research. So for this post, I’ll analyze the improvement of the average player in online cash games by comparing performance stats and results for the periods of Early 2022and Early 2024. How much improvement can we expect in the average player in a 2 year span?
I’ll compare the following stats and metrics:
- Average winrate of a regular;
- Average lossrate of a recreational;
- Preflop stats of recreationals (proxy for recreational player technical improvement);
- Postflop aggression stats of regulars (proxy for regular player technical improvement);
If people are improving, then we should see the average recreational player playing better preflop, and the average regular playing better postflop. As far as the winrates and lossrates, if edges in poker are decreasing, we should see lower winrate for regs and recs losing less bb/100.
For this purpose I chose to analyze specifically 50NL and 500NL data. I believe 50nl to be a good representation of the whole “Low Stakes” segment, and 500nl to be the best representation of Midstakes. With data on these 2 stakes we can have a very good perspective on how online poker is progressing as a whole.
LOW STAKES COMPARISON
Let’s start with the recreational players. In March 2022, recreational players at 50nl had these numbers for the relevant metrics we determined above:
- Average lossrate: -39 bb/100 (over 1.3 million hands);
- RFI and Cold Call Frequencies: 21/22/26/32/30 and 55/52/53/53/53
Fast forward 2 years to March 2024, we have these numbers for the same metrics:
- Average lossrate: -49 bb/100 (over 1 million hands);
- RFI and Cold Call Frequencies: 20/22/25/30/29 and 53/52/53/53/52
Still at low stakes, we can make the comparison now for regulars. In March 2022, low stakes regulars had this performance:
- Average winrate: 1.4 bb/100;
- Postflop aggression: 38/33/30, with WWSF/WTSD/W@SD = 50/29/55
Fast forward 2 years, March 2024, the regulars at the same stake had the following metrics:
- Average winrate: 2.3 bb/100
- Postflop aggression: 38/34/32, with WWSF/WTSD/W@SD = 51/29/56
Here we observe something interesting. The average regular has improved technically, which can be observed by a higher overall river aggression – aggression frequency increased from 30 to 32 and Bet River stat increased from 36 to 39. This increased aggression resulted in an increased WWSF, from 50 to 51. We can also observe that regulars increased their usaged of overbets, which went from 22.5% of their betting volume in 2022 to 27% of their betting volume in 2024.
All these changes apparently turned into a huge results gain – average winrate went from 1.4 bb/100 to 2.3 bb/100, an incredible 69% increase in profitability.
This gain from regulars needs to come from the recreational players. If regulars are winning more money, then it means recreational players are losing more money. And that’s exactly what can be observed in the data.
Recreational players had a lossrate of -39 bb/100 in 2022, over a very significant sample size of 1.3 million hands. 2 Years later, the same player profile is losing -49 bb/100. which is 25% worse results compared to 2022.
And when we take a look into their technical performance, it doesn’t seem like they got worse at playing poker. Preflop stats are very very similar, with barely any changes other than 1% deviations up or down in any given stat. They also became slightly more aggressive, with turn and river aggression stats increasing a little.
MIDSTAKES COMPARISON
Recs in 2022:
- Average lossrate: -38 bb/100 (over 500k hands);
- RFI and Cold Call Frequencies: 19/22/25/32/31 and 48/48/49/49/48
Recs in 2024:
- Average lossrate: -40 bb/100 (over 500k hands);
- RFI and Cold Call Frequencies: 18/21/24/30/29 and 49/49/49/49/48
Regs in 2022:
- Average winrate: 2.6 bb/100
- Postflop aggression: 40/33/34, with WWSF/WTSD/W@SD = 51/29/54
Regs in 2022:
- Average winrate: 2 bb/100
- Postflop aggression: 39/34/36, with WWSF/WTSD/W@SD = 51/29/55
Analyzing midstakes data, we see that recreational players are also losing more today compared to 2 years ago, even though they are playing slightly tighter ranges. Average lossrate went from -38 bb/100 to -40 bb/100.
This small increase in losses didn’t translate into higher winrate for the regs, however. Regs average winrate dropped from 2.6 bb/100 to 2 bb/100, which represents a 26% decrease.
Since recs are still losing just as much, I believe this to be a function of the number of regs in the pool and the amount of reg battling the average reg has to do on PokerStars to sit at a table with a fish (the analysis here was done with PokerStars data).
In early 2022, reg battling (defined as 2 to 5 handed games with no fish) represented 20% of the total volume of a 500nl reg. In early 2024, this number jumped to 28%. Reg traffic, measured as total number of hands played by regulars, increased an incredible 63% in the period analyzed (6 month span between October-March), going from 2.7M hands to 4.4M hands. This excess of hands at midstakes could be a result of the rakeback incentives provided by PokerStars in recent times. So pre-rakeback winrate decreased because there are more regs fighting for the recreationals. However, post-rakeback winrates might have overall increased, as rakeback these days on Pokerstars can be way above 0.6 bb/100.
ANOTHER RELEVANT METRIC: REC:REG RATIO
One issue people have with the abundance of information available in the internet is that they assume recreationals will turn into regulars or semi-regulars much faster; faster than the speed of new recreationals coming into the game, which could then make online poker increasingly more saturated with an excess of regulars relative to recreational players, which of course would lead to lower earnings per player.
That’s not what I observed in this data however.
In 2022, for the period analyzed, 50nl had 16730 recs and 1290 regs, for a 12.96rec:reg ratio. In 2024, 50nl had 14061 recs and 1046 regs, for a 13.44 rec:reg ratio. The same trend is observed at midstakes: 1006 recs for 443 regs in 2022, for a 2.27rec:reg ratio, while in 2024 there were 1092 recs/459 regs = 2.38 rec:reg ratio.
WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE FROM THIS DATA?
It seems more recs are coming into the game than recs are turning into regulars. That’s great news for the ecosystem and for professional poker players.
Also, contrary to what a lot of people seem to believe, in the 2 year span analyzed, which is of course a very short time frame, the edges increased in poker, not decreased. Recreational players are losing more today compared to what they were losing 2 years ago, despite their technical performance staying very stable.
This can be attributed to higher technical performance by the regulars, which is in fact observed in their stats, mainly represented by increased overall levels of aggression, both at low stakes and midstakes. And that’s the most important part of this analysis, in my opinion.
In this new era of solvers and abundance of information, the average player improves quite fast. And while it doesn’t seem like the gap between regs and recs is decreasing (in fact, it seems to be increasing), if you fall behind your peers in terms of technical development, you might end up with a smaller piece of the cake year after year. The top 10% of regs of every limit are improving even faster than the already fast pace of improvement of the average player. These top 10% of players will take most of the money from the recs while you’ll have to make ends meet with their leftovers.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Don’t wait until you find yourself in a tough situation to wake up to the fact that poker is no longer easy money. There is still (a lot of) money to be made, for sure, but the level of effort required to put your hands on such money surely increased over the last few years. And I don’t think this trend will stop.
Next year, and the year after that, and later, the gap between regs and recs will continue to increase, which means higher potential winnings; but, the top regs will be responsible for a disproportional amount of all these winnings. Just like in a tournament structure where top 3 positions concentrate the bulk of the prize pool, in online poker the distribution of profits amongst professionals will follow the exact same logic. A small group will take most of the money, while a big group will have to settle for the crumbs.
Which group do you want to belong to going forward?
Of course you want to be in the most successful group. The guys taking the bulk of the money out of the industry. But, in order to belong there, you gotta be willing to do what most people aren’t willing to do.
Sometimes it feels to me people forget poker is a competition. What separatesYOU from MORE MONEY are, guess what, your opponents. If you just do the same shit that they do, study in the same ways, for the same 3 hours per week; if you tilt the same way as they do, and play unfocused the same way as them, and neglect your routine the same way as they do…you’ll get the same results that they get.
Playing online poker as a profession is a huge blessing. To be able to work from the comfort of your home, playing a fun card game on your computer, while not having to take orders from anyone, being your own boss, making your own schedule and routine – how many people in the world do you think have this opportunity?
You know the answer to this question.
It’s time to stop taking poker for granted. It’s time to reach your full potential. No more procrastination, no more bad habits, no more feeling sorry for yourself during a downswing. No more unfocused play, no more laughable volume, no more of the same stupid mistakes. You’re better than this.
If you want to keep up with how fast poker evolves, y o u n e e d t o e v o l v e t o o. It’s the only way.
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
Until then – keep it simple.
Saulo