How Significant Is The "Benchmark" of 10,000 Hands?

[charlie_t_jr]

In post after post, its common for someone to ask about stats and w/r's after just a few thousand hands. General answer is at least 10K hand sample. Then ofcourse, comes the 10K checkup posts.

The reason I'm asking, is because after 11K hands at 2/4, I'm losing money. After 2-3K hands, I wasn't worried. 5-6K, it started to bother me. After 11K...well I'm a bit baffled.

I have 70K+ total hands in PT. Around 25K at .50/1 with a "very good" wr. About 35K at 1/2 with a "solid" wr. A few thousand more winning hands from Pacific and UB at the same limits, not in PT. And then ofcourse the Party 2/4 hands. Even with the 2/4 hands my overall wr at all limits is still solid.

So, how likely is it that I'd go on an immediate losing streak trying to move to the 2/4 limit? How concerned do I need to be?

Its EXTREMELY frustrating reading posts like "if you can beat Party 1/2 for a significant amount, 2/4 will be no problem".

What the hell am I missing in the transition? And more importantly, how concerned should I be about losing after 11k hands?

[SomethingClever]

10K isn't that significant. I'm not doing very well after my first 10K at 2/4 either, and I PWNED .5/1 and 1/2 for like 30K hands.

[bblock99]

I started at 1/2 6-max and did really well. What i would recommend is what i did and that was play 1/2 until i had $1500 in my account, and then take a shot at 5/10 6-max. This is the so-called "schneids plan" and it worked well for me and a few others. However, if you don't do well at 5/10 at first, you should go back to 1/2 if you get down to 900 and rebuild because you know you can beat that game. I think that the 6-max games are where the money's at. I don't know much about the 2/4 6-max at stars, may want to look into that if you don't want to make the jump to 5/10. I think it's worth the shot given the security that you can beat the 1/2 game. As far as the 10k hands, i wouldn't worry about it, i'd say you can evaluate yourself at around 30k and retool if needed.

[Felix_Nietsche]

225K is a sample size where you can judge you results more accurately.

[bilyin]

225K hands!!!! What if your play changes during the time you played 225k hands. Would that make the measurement meaningless? In other words, you are no longer taking a snapshot of your play.

[Felix_Nietsche]

If your play changes during the course of collecting data THEN of course it affects the data.

What are you going to tell me next?
That the sky is blue and grass is green?

[uw_madtown]

The fact is that there's no real good benchmark sample. Any sample large enough at the same level, and either your play and/or the texture of the game will have significantly changed.

Be cautious, play within your means, drop down to recuperate if necessary, and keep improving. Eventually, if you were solid at .5/1 and 1/2, you'll turn it around at 2/4. But always realize you have holes to plug up, and never put too much stock in your specific winrate.

If you're playing tight-aggressive, and constantly working on your game, then you'll be a winner at 2/4 inevitably.

[AncientPC]

You might want to check out Homer's variance thread (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/favlinker.php?Cat=&Entry=52753&F_Board=inet&Thread =1350059&partnumber=1&postmarker=).

[helpmeout]

Play less hands, study more.

If you dont know if you are beating a limit after 10K hands you dont know what you are doing.

Surely you know why you are better than the players you are against? If you dont then you have problems.

I dont worry too much about luck/variance when it comes to stats.

If you are getting rivered frequently then you are having a bad run, if you seem to catch gutshots and flushes everytime you are getting lucky.

Check the frequency of high PPs to determine how good your cards have been. Getting a certain PP is 220:1 from what I remember so if you have only got AA-JJ around 30 times each out of 10k hands then you have been on a bad run as far as the cards go.

These are your big winners so they make a lot of difference.

I get worried if I start a new limit and am losing after the first few thousand, 5-6k is a big worry.

Post some hands and read more, you obviously havent adapted to $2/$4 very well.

[charlie_t_jr]

[ QUOTE ]

Post some hands and read more, you obviously havent adapted to $2/$4 very well.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I can't argue with that. So you feel like 10k+ hands is enough to get feel if you can beat a certain level?

The games are pretty soft. I don't see much difference in play from the lower levels.

I suppose if I just look at my last 4k hands, I'm doing all right...but thats a pretty small sample.

I guess my main concern is how likely is it that a winning player would go through 10k+ hands losing money. And if I need to stress over it as much as I seem to be doing?

[charlie_t_jr]

Thanks, I'll take a look.

[djoyce003]

You are probably just like me. I destroyed the .5/1 games for a while. Then I moved up to 1/2 when I got my bankroll up to around $400 and promptly dipped down to $200. I played a little more .5/1 and built my confidence and BR back up, then played a little 1/2 6 max, and 1/2 ring. I started winning and slowly built my B/R up to around $800. Then I tried out the 2/4 ring games and lost $200 real quick. I studied, kept playing 1/2 and when I got my roll up I took another shot. Finally I started winning at that, and now i'm up to 3/6 and am going to start dabbling in the 5/10 6max games. If at first you don't succeed, drop to the lower level you were winning at, re-think your strategy, review your PT stats to see where your leaks are, and give it another run.

My biggest adjustment from the .5/1 and 1/2 games at the 2/4 level was that you tend to run into tighter players, people are in there with hands and some of them punish you when they hit their hand well, not like .5/1 where they just call or check with the nuts. Use your PT game windows and if the table is full or rocks, move. I won't play unless there are minimum of 4 people with greater than 40% VPIP, and i'd prefer 5 or 6.

[Scotch78]

What I'm about to say is for 6max games where the variance is higher, but hopefully it'll give you some perspective/confidence. When I moved over to Empire from PokerStars it took me ~9,800 hands to reach the green, but by 14,000 hands my winrate was over 2 BB/100. Also, I seem to remember that one of the best 6maxers on 2+2 posted a loss for his first 10,000 hands when he moved up to 10/20.

Scott

[meow_meow]

Just to add a bit of stats to answer your question properly, lets say that your true win-rate, given your play relative to your average opponents, is 2 BB/100. Lets assume also that you SD is something like 15 BB/100 - should be within a couple of BB/100 of this number anyway, right?
So, given those assumptions, after 11k hands your mean expected win would be 220 BB, with a SD of 15*sqrt(110), meaning there is about an 8% chance you will be a loser over that stretch.

[Homer]

[ QUOTE ]
You might want to check out Homer's variance thread (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/favlinker.php?Cat=&Entry=52753&F_Board=inet&Thread =1350059&partnumber=1&postmarker=).

[/ QUOTE ]

"How many hands do I need to play..." (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1342415&page=2&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

-- Homer

[charlie_t_jr]

Wow... I don't get to the Zoo often, thanks for posting the link Homer.

Between that and Schnieds(apologies for the spelling) post on his losing streak, helps put it in perspective.

[6471849653]

At loose limit holdem game I have lost during about 10-15,000 hands two big bets per hour (I was winning 3.5 big bets per hour 10-15,000 hands before that). Limit holdem can be very bad once in a blue moon, and in theory there's no reason why a +EV player could not lose endlessly.

[James282]

As an example, I was down after my first 10k hands in one of my Party 15/30 accounts. By 50k hands, this account was over 3/100.
-James

[FrankLu99]

dont play $2/4
instead multitable $1/2