Poker Demographics

Does anyone know of a reliable resource regarding current poker demographics? Both live and online? I checked out Poker Players Alliance but their data is pretty old, from the year 2005.

I'm interested in knowing how many people, particularly in the US but also the world, are playing poker these days, as well as all the usual demographic data: age range, geographic region, gender, education and that sort of thing.

My reason? I'm just curious...

Here is a more reliable and up-to-date Poker Demographics you can trust. http://www.universityofonlinepoker.c...ographics.html

Pretty hard to find any reliable sources regarding demographics, age, sex, etc. because many people who play poker a lot do not admit to their families and friends that that play so much. There is a stigma about saying you are a professional poker player. As if there is something wrong with the person: a disease or compulsion to play. Mainstream society still hasn't accepted playing poker as a respectable occupation. There can never be a demographic profile until poker is considered a worthwhile endeavor to pursue.

The age domographic on the attached link seems a little off to me. It says only 20% of the people playing are between the ages of 21 and 39. That seems low.

Unfortunately, I'll be pretty hard to make an investigation on percentages how many people play live worldwide. I guess it would be a lot easier if you only take in consideration profesional poker players.

Clint, thanks so much for the link--very informative. The one thing I'd like is actual numbers to go with the percentages. I've heard that 100K Americans play online poker from one source and 50K from another. I've also read somewhere that 90K Americans play live poker (home games and poker rooms) but nowhere have I found anything definitive. It's like they are just throwing out these numbers.

CheeseConey (gotta love Skyline ), I too questioned that number. Then again, maybe the people in that group aren't as into poker as they were say 4 or 5 years ago and the older baby boomer group has stayed with it. Who knows. With Mike Sexton so high profile there, that site does look credible. I doubt that he would let misinformation slip through.

Sendittoken, interesting and probably valid point you raise. Welcome to CC!

As far as numbers go, Dusty Schmidt posted this in the Well here on CC:
"The poker market is like a billion people and the number who buy books and watch videos is under 100,000."

While a billion is hard for me to fathom, these figures sound closer to the mark than the other ones I've heard.

No Problem. If you heard that speculation from any sources without a valid proof, there's no reason to believe.

The info at that link appears to be based on a small sample of Americans only, and is therefore not very representative.

it's saying that poker is a old-men's game ...

I find that to be very surprising. I would have guessed the 20-30 yr old group would have been the largest, not the second smallest.

I'm sure it is one of the largest, just us young folk aren't represented very well in whatever sample they took. Really have to take most data on the subject with a grain of salt. That website just says we took demographic data from a "group of poker players". Well how did they choose their sample, how big was their sample size, where did they choose these people from, etc, etc. Pretty much all data like this is skewed one way or another based on how they actually compiled it. Just like most surveys you can manipulate results by the way you ask the questions and who you actually ask.

Hmmm... my guesstimates: right now (Sun. aft.) there are ca 700,000 players easily found online, make it a million:

Stars 200K
Tilt 80K
AB and UB 25K
Ten other sites with 20K
Twenty other sites with 10K
etc.

So a million players right now, representing perhaps 25% of all, meaning upwards of 4 million players. Probably more.

Avg Age: 24
Genders: Male 70%
Winning or break-even: 400,000

I think the numbers for US must be much higher than 50-100K.