Overall, in real life, I’d say someone who earns their living by poker, and plays the long game.
For fun, like this site, it’s anyone who is just playing the game the best they know how (as am I), having fun, doesn’t get emo, and actually has a strategy other than 'buy more chips, go all in, then overcome the other players with ludicrous bets", and that is rare!
Anyone who has a positive ROI in either cash games or tournaments is a winning poker player and ONLY winning poker players are good poker players. Bottom line, you can’t possibly be a good poker player if you lose money, i.e., have a negative ROI.
The true definition of a good poker player is that he(she) respects the game and their fellow players. You can throw all he other answers in a hat as extras but RESPECT is where its at.
Whoever reduces his losses and increases his profits is a good poker player in my opinion. It’s like managing risk in trading, because I consider poker to be trading cards.
So I just asked this question in the wrong forum, …I’ll ask here again. We all have a page showing our “stats”. So, what is a “good players” PERCENT WINS? To make it relative lets say you have played 88K hands, folding 70%. I haven’t seen one person on replay EVER tell anybody this stat, so I dare ya! LOL
And as I expected, not a soul responds. Despite the fact that I have never purchased any chips, I have managed to get to 36M by winning, then lost it all gradually. I play lose and free because I can, they are play chips. My “i don’t care” win percent is, according to replay stats, 19%, which means I win nearly one of every five hands, yet, I’m broke once again, lol. Here is the rub, no matter when I checked my stats, it has ALWAYS been 20 or then 19, and has stayed at 19 for over a year. Most of my play is in the gemstone tourneys. So, at 19% win rate, am I a good player? You tell me.
what makes a good player is bank roll management… you can have great stats… but at some time you have to move up to bigger tables, there is risk involved…
Eye Just thought maybe I wasn’t the only player who would actdually show/state their win percent, like it is a big secret. I did read some early posts in this topic, and somebody said that it is mostly luck. Well there you have it, so many non players playing, makes that even more true. Calling when they don’t have a hand and hitting some magical river for a win against your flopped str8, well…that is online poker. Have fun trying and enjoy the circus Eye say.
Many people have discussed and shown their stats - myself included. Just because you didn’t see it does not mean it did not happen. It’s just that no one really cares. I mean, I care about mine a little bit - but not really about yours or anyone else’s.