What percentage of winnings comes from fish vs regs?
Granted there's probably a billion variables to this question, but broadly speaking, if you had to guess..
What's the split? Assuming:
a) you're a successful player (say within top 5% of winners in pool)
b) you're only playing that pool for profit
c) a fish is defined loosely as someone you have significant edge against, as opposed to a bedreg where the EV is much narrower.
80/20%? More, less? Is it even quantifiable?
12 Replies
>80%
I'd say 80% of your profit probably comes from the bottom 20% of players, so if you are at a 6-max table with 5 other people, 80% of your winnings are coming from the worst player there (on average).
So if it is this high, theoretically a reg could play strict GTO with zero exploits against other regs in perpetuity, and still climb to what, midstakes with a decent WR?
(obv not super realistic because you would need to master exploits anyway vs the fish, and likely have at least some edge over regs in certain spots, but 'in principle')
The number is >100% for the majority of winning regs if we are talking post-rake results.
I don't remember where I got this, but I believe this is stats for 50 winning regs:
And I remember seeing one of the biggest winners on pokerstars (NL100-NL500) post his stats. He was winning 8bb/100 overall, but only 1bb/100 with no fish at the table.
And he is more like a top 0.1% player rather than top 5%.
..blimey. I've made a handy chart to summarise these nuanced results:
What are the implications of this for MDA? i.e. how cost effective is it dedicating any time to studying reg MDA if it's exponentially superior to study fish exploitation?
I mean, sure, a solid reg mda strategy for your stake is always going to boost WR, and could even reduce some badregs into fish territory, but if the ratio is as disproportionately skewed as described...
I can't see how it's worth the energy. You could spend years mastering/out-levelling good players or one maxing out the various subtypes of fish? For a larger WR boost, correct?
As usual I guess it just depends. Many spots vs. a reg if you hyper exploit will yield similar/same results compared to exploiting a fish... there are just more frequent and more obvious nodes to exploit a fish in... they also are more likely either to not adjust or to massively over adjust resulting in a situation in which you could just hyperexploit again.
I had same results when analyzing regs. All money comes from fish and for 90% of regs playing without fish is losing money.
Main lesson here is don't play bad tables. Not only this directly cost you WR, but opportunity cost is huge. You'll miss a bunch of very profitable tabes and You'll miss some good exploits. WR also drops down with number of tables.
You must study both how to play vs fish and regs esp if you want to move up. You can beat fish on nl10k but regs will eat you alive, so both are important.
Losing less vs regs will always increase your winrate, all else being equal. But, assuming you're playing sub-optimally vs fish (I don't know really), there should be way more points to be gained by improving how you play vs them, for much less effort, than by improving how you play vs regs. Also, table selection, per what Haizemberg93 said, should also have a disproportionate effect on your winrate, for a very little extra effort (compared to studying GTO 😀 ).
Interesting conversation
Seems more online oriented
I play live in a relatively new room, so the separation between regs & fish is different. Many of the people I see every week (regs) are fish. Which is lucky for me as there’s not much table selection available.
Eventually, many of these regs quit coming. It’s kinda reached the point now where many have gone through their disposable income as fast as betting sports.
Good regs show up too, so you have to learn your villains. There will always be those people with too much money dropping in, but I feel bad for people I like running into the wall. My empathy is great even though I don’t really know these people.
I don’t really use your labels, I approach each player as an individual and it’s not as simple as bluff regs, but don’t bluff fish. Some players totally change their style from how they played yesterday. Every game is an adventure!
Let’s be honest here: the real money comes from the fish, while the regulars mostly just keep you afloat.
For smeone in the top 5% of the pool, the breakdown usually looks something like this:
About 80–90% of the winnings come from weaker or recreational players, with only around 10–20% coming from the regulars. And often, that’s just from rakeback or having a better table selection.
When you’re up against solid regulars, you’re mostly just trading expected value back and forth—small edges and a bit of variance. The real profits happen when a fish joins the table, the dynamics change, mistakes pile up, and the pots grow larger.
That’s why the players who succeed in the long run don’t just focus on playing well; they also excel at selecting the right tables.
So, while you can’t pin it down to an exact figure, that 80/20 split is actually pretty realistic. For many top players, it’s even closer to 90/10, especially in live games.
If all the fish vanished tomorrow, even most winning regulars would find themselves grinding just to break even overnight.
