In online poker, there’s an unspoken truth that most winning players don’t broadcast: every flashy winrate graph, coaching video, or high-stakes solver screenshot is ultimately subsidized by someone clicking “deposit” after work, hoping today’s their lucky day.
Yet publicly, we all pretend we’re noble warriors—no table selection, no targeted hunting, no exploiting weaker players. Reality, however, is very different: the online poker world thrives on one crucial group—the losing player.
How Fish Drive the Game
Profit in poker has less to do with outsmarting other pros and more to do with exploiting mistakes. Serious grinders hunt the softest games, knowing that just one disaster of a player at their table can make or break a session. Bad players are valuable because they maximize the speed and size of profits, particularly in cash games.
Fish also change table dynamics. Their loose ranges inflate pots and encourage creative play from even the tightest regs. A table full of cautious professionals can feel like a cold war; add a single loose player, and suddenly the action—and the money—flows.
The Great Pretense: We Don’t Hunt
Winning players love to brag about skill, sportsmanship, and playing “anyone.” But the truth is, every serious player hunts for weak opponents. Publicly admitting you rely on fish feels like admitting you’re not the genius you pretend to be. Even solver wizards struggle to beat other top-tier regs consistently.
Table selection is the real edge. Surround yourself with top-level players, and you break even; sit among chaos, and you print money. From a pro perspective, poker is a job—the better the players around you, the smaller the hourly rate.
Keeping Fish Alive
Poker platforms are experts at keeping losing players engaged. The longer fish survive, the more rake they generate. Sites design dopamine loops: treasure chests, bonus systems, gamified tournaments, and casual protections like insurance or run-it-multiple-times features. Algorithms prevent easy bumhunting, randomize seating, hide stats, and create anonymous tables.
The system rewards hope: losing feels like “almost winning,” and even when pros profit, rake often increases. The design isn’t broken—it’s brilliant. Casual players fund the entire ecosystem.
A Sustainable Ecosystem
Every winning player started as a losing one. Today, coaching, solvers, and hand analysis make improvement easier than ever. Platforms must balance protecting game health with rewarding skill. Without recreational players sticking around, liquidity dries up, and professional poker collapses.
The truth is simple: the online poker economy depends on losers. Until they disappear, poker remains a profession, a game, and a business built on exploiting mistakes—and we all know who fuels it.
