Is 25k hands enough tell whether or not your a winning player?

[Eihli]

It would save me some time and money if I knew.

[Octopus]

25,000 hands is enough to get the standard deviation of the estimate of your win rate down to about 1BB/100 hands. This means that there is (about) a 95% chance your true win rate is within 2BB/100 hands of your win rate to date.

So, if you win 2BB/100 hands for 25,000 hands you can be somewhat confident that you are at least breaking even in the long run. If you win 4BB/100 over that period you can be very confident that you are at least breaking even in the long run.

[Eihli]

So if my BB/100 is -.32 then there is a little less than 5% chance that I'm a winning player on a bad streak?

[MAxx]

[ QUOTE ]
So if my BB/100 is -.32 then there is a little less than 5% chance that I'm a winning player on a bad streak?

[/ QUOTE ]


That's what it sounds like to me, if Octopus's statement is correct. I honestly do not know.

How do you view your own game? Do you know what your strengths and weaknesses are? Do you feel like you play well, but are unlucky? Do feel like you play a disciplined game? Do you think your leaks are resolvable? Sounds like you are thinking about hanging it up, do you enjoy poker?

[Bill Smith]

[ QUOTE ]
So if my BB/100 is -.32 then there is a little less than 5% chance that I'm a winning player on a bad streak?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a ticky-tack point, but statistics actually say that if your win rate is -.32 BB/100 with a std. dev. of 1 BB/100, there is actually about a 37% chance you are a break even or better player. What we can say is that we are 95% confident that your win rate falls between [-2.32, 1.68]. In other words, 5% of the time, your "actual" win rate (given your ability) is either higher than 1.68 BB/100 or lower than -2.32 BB/100.

[bisonbison]

Move down. Honestly, it's not like you're born a winning player or a losing one. If you're basically breakeven after 25,000 hands, move down a level and work on your game while rebuilding your roll a little.

[Cleveland Guy]

It sounds like right now you are a losing player. However - not at a huge loss rate. If you started in with 300BB - you've only lost about 80, so you should still have about 240BB left.

If your still enjoying it, and the losses haven't taken to big a toll on your overall lifestyle(and they shouldn't at your rate/hands) then think about what you might be able to fix to become a winner.


has your rate gotten better or worse over the past 10k hands?

Is there one thing in your game that you think you can change that would turn your -.32 to a positive .32 or better?

If you could win at .75BB over the next 10k you'd be back to just about break even.

from -.32 to +.75 is just over 1BB/100 hands, so one less chase where you don't have the odds, one more fold to a check raise where you think your beat, a couple less playes from the SB or BB where you don't have the cards you should could turn you into a winning player.

I play shorthanded (5max) and realized I was defending raises from the SB and BB too much. realising those hands has had a huge impact on my win rate recently.

[Octopus]

Amen, move down. More importantly, think about your game and post some hands.

Also, as a (hopefully) improving player, your win rate even 10,000 hands ago may have little to do with your win rate today. Certainly my own play has changed dramatically in the last 10,000 hands.

In any case, Bill's comments are correct; you can not conclude that you are a losing player from this any more than you could conclude that you were a winning player if your win rate were .32BB/hand. .32 is just not far enough from zero for us to tell. The best guess we have at your long run win rate is -.32BB/hand. That guess is not particularly good in the sense that we could easily be wrong by a couple of BB/100 hands (and might be wrong by more than that). In statistics we would say something like "we can not reject the hypothesis that you are a winning (or losing or breakeven) player".

[Trix]

I would guess that it is, but cant really tell, since my I only got like 3XXXX hands.

Do you see your opponents mistakes ? , Do you understand why you choose one play over another when you play ? and so on...

[Bob T.]

So if my BB/100 is -.32 then there is a little less than 5% chance that I'm a winning player on a bad streak?

No, if Octopus's arithmatic is correct and it seems about right, and I am too confused at this time of the morning to check it, there is less than a 5% chance that you are a 2 BB/100 winning player. The good news is, is that there is also less than a 5% chance that you are a -2.5BB/ 100 losing player.

Further good news, depending on the limit you are playing, you are probably paying more than 2 BBs/100 in rake, and you are overcoming that. This means that you are probably very close to a winning player if you are not one. Statistically, if your winrate is accurate, you are probably the fourth best player at the table, and if you can plug a few more holes, you could move to being the second or third and at that point, you would become a winning player.

If you are a winning player, it is likely that you are a small winning player at this point.

One thing that you could do would be to plot your total win loss every 200 hands on a graph, or maybe every 1000 hands. If you just have your data in pokertracker, it would be kind of messy, but I think you could do it if you check your running total every couple of days. by using the preferences tab.

If you get a graph that looks like a smile, where it is running upward at the end, you might be able to make the assumption that you have learned something, and are now a winning player about to break even. If it looks more like a crooked straight line, then you probably haven't learned much or changed your game much in 25K hands. And if it dips down at the end, then you probably are playing worse than you were at the beginning.

So the next question is, -.32BBs/100 means that you have lost something like 80BBs over about 400 hours. Depending on the limit you are playing, is that a reasonable expense for the amount of fun you have playing the game? A lot of other entertainment expenses are higher, do you have more or less fun playing poker than going to a movie, a bar, a restaurant? You might want to look at it as an entertainment expense, and just play for the fun, until you plug those couple of holes. (Just doing that, and not putting the pressure on yourself to be a winning player, might be enough to make yourself a small winning player)

Good luck,
play well,

Bob T.

[Eihli]

If I thought I could evaluate myself this wouldn't be so hard. If I've never known what winning play was how can I tell if I'm doing it? But, if I had to evaluate myself...

As a result of my losing, I've tightened up preflop. This way if my leak is in playing mediocre hands postflop, I can at least lose less by folding preflop what would be a +EV hand for an expert but causes me to make more costly errors postflop. I also hope it reduces variance. I'd sacrifice a little bit of EV right now for less variance. I don't get very good reads on my opponents. If I'm in a hand where someone way overplays there ass-end of a 1 card straight I'll mark it down, but other than that it's just what I have in PT export for them. I think I'm paying off more hands now that I've read SSH. But, most of the hands I pay off are hands that the moron hit on the turn or river and even if I pay them off every time I still made more money on the previous rounds to make their play -EV. It feels like I'm constantly being sucked out on but how do I know I'm not just remembering the times I got sucked out on? I've read TOP, HPFAP, SSH, Zen and the art of poker, TPFAP, most of super system, hellmuths book, and WLLH. I turned a deposit of $100 on party into $600 playing .5/1 and $5 sit and goes, then played .5/1 1/2 and $10 sit and goes untill I had $1200, then played $2/4 untill i had $1600, then played 2/4 and 3/6 untill i had $2800. This all happened over the course of about 25k hands. 15k of which i had pokertracker but I reformatted and didn't backup the database. I took a break for a few months because of school/work and cashed out all but $1600. I've been back playing now for 2 months and have been losing ever since.

So anyway I'm actually about +1300 over 50k hands. and down 300 over the past 25k since my new beginning.

[Eihli]

I had a 320bb downswing my first 10k hands so yes, my winrate has gone up.

[Ed Miller]

I had a 320bb downswing my first 10k hands so yes, my winrate has gone up.

I lost at a rate of 0.5BB/hr over the first 400 hours (live.. so maybe 12k to 16k hands) of my poker career. I doubt I was actually a losing player during that time (that is, I think I ran bad), but I probably wasn't much better than break-even.

Poker's a tough game. Sometimes people on this forum make it sound easy to win lots of money, and they make it sound like they were instant winners. But most of us had to put in a lot of time thinking, reading, and talking about poker... as well as a lot of time playing poker... before we became long-term winners.

And when you see how poorly your opponents play, you say to yourself, "How could I be losing to these clowns"? It can be very frustrating. But understand that you aren't losing to the clowns... you are beating the clowns, but not by enough to overcome the rake.

So basically, your results don't suggest to me even remotely that you are hopeless... /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Bob T.]

After reading this, I second Bisonbison's response. Move down. You are probably just running bad, but it also sounds like your confidence has been affected, and that will hurt your game. Move down. The games at a lower level will be easier, you will have a chance to get some momemtum and confidence back, and when you have the bankroll to play higher again, you will be better for the experience.

A couple of years ago, I found that my winrate was pretty much the same whether I played .5/1, 1/2, 2/4, or 3/6. It didn't make sense to play at higher limits, until I had enough experience to beat them for more than the lower limits because of the higher volatility and bankroll requirements that the higher limits dictate. After a while, I could beat the higher games for more, and I moved up.

Good luck,
play well,

Bob T.

[Jdanz]

ed, you post goot.

-JDanz