Winning session %

[coinflip]

Yesterday during a home game, one of the players (who lost a good chunk of his buy-in) commented that it was his first losing limit session at a home game in years. Now, I don't play very many home games, but I know I have tons of losing sessions when I play online.

The comment got me curious enough to look up my stats on PT when I got up this morning. Somewhat surprisingly, over the last 20k hands, I've won only 45% of my sessions. If I'd been forced to guess before looking, I would have thought it'd be at least 50%.

I doubt the stat is very significant, but it did get me curious enough to post this poll to see how I stacked up against my fellow micro-limit'ers ...

[slickterp]

well, im actually not surprised. i'd say that a winning session % in the 40's somewhere would be pretty good. i think that what gets you is you are up overall, so it seems you should win more than 50% of the time. i think, however, that what happens (in my case anyway) is that when you have a winning session, it is a big winner, and when you lose, you lose small. this way, you don't win over 1/2 your sessions, but you still end up in the positive overall.

[NigelTufnel]

I'm at 47% winning sessions over 16K hands at PP .50/1. My BB/100 is at +2.9.

I tend to play short (50 hands or less) sessions per table, so many of my losing sessions probably consist of of a few orbits worth of blinds, with nothing noteworthy occuring, which leads to a small loss for that session.

I would guess that the longer the average session (for a winning player), the higher the winning % would be.

Or maybe I just suck.

[topspin]

For me, the other effect is that I tend to stay longer at tables where I'm winning, and leave tables that I'm losing (usually because all the fish left and I'm playing with a bunch of rocks and TAGs). This often makes for many short marginal losers and fewer, longer winning sessions.

[LargeCents]

Objectively, I cannot imagine a more meaningless stat. It really has nothing to do with anything. Over a significant sample size, I imagine that a winning player should level off in the 50%-55% range, because if they are a winning player, they should be winning the majority of sessions. Measure BB/100 if you want to know something useful.

[ QUOTE ]
it was his first losing limit session at a home game in years.

[/ QUOTE ]

Either he has only played a handful of sessions in this time, or gotten extremely lucky. Maybe he is just flat lying, or deluded.


[ QUOTE ]
well, im actually not surprised. i'd say that a winning session % in the 40's somewhere would be pretty good. i think that what gets you is you are up overall, so it seems you should win more than 50% of the time. i think, however, that what happens (in my case anyway) is that when you have a winning session, it is a big winner, and when you lose, you lose small. this way, you don't win over 1/2 your sessions, but you still end up in the positive overall.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the perfect example of why the stat might be utterly useless. If a typical session is less than 50 hands per session, a winning player could very easily lose several sessions in a row by not hitting his hands or getting good hands etc, being blinded a few orbits. Then he hits a monster session, which wins 25-50BB when his hands connect a couple of times, then goes back to having these minor losing sessions of -5BB, -10BB, etc. The smaller the number of hands per session, the higher the variability in this stat. Just ignore this stat, except when bragging to your buddies, then feel free to ridiculously exaggerate this stat.

[coinflip]

[ QUOTE ]
Objectively, I cannot imagine a more meaningless stat. It really has nothing to do with anything. Over a significant sample size, I imagine that a winning player should level off in the 50%-55% range, because if they are a winning player, they should be winning the majority of sessions. Measure BB/100 if you want to know something useful.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you missed the part where I said:

[ QUOTE ]
I doubt the stat is very significant, but it did get me curious

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the point others made earlier about having lots of short losing sessions and a few longer winning sessions applies to me as well, and skews my average. It's certainly not a stat I'm working towards changing, or could change for that matter. Doesn't mean I can't be curious about it /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it was his first losing limit session at a home game in years.

[/ QUOTE ]

Either he has only played a handful of sessions in this time, or gotten extremely lucky. Maybe he is just flat lying, or deluded.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't make this post because I was upset about the comment; I just mentioned it because it's what motivated me to check my stat in the first place.

I wonder if this really is such an unreasonable claim though? Assuming that each home game lasts for many hours, so that you see a lot of hands, the odds of having an up session are probably quite high compared to Party. I see two factors contributing to this: lack of rake (which likely adds 3BB/100 or so to your win rate), and significantly worse players (e.g. I can value bet AK unimproved on the river and consistently get called by AT unimproved).

[bottomset]

the effect of the rake drops as the limits go up, its very substantial at .25/.5 through 2/4 at least, by the time you are up to 10/20 it takes 7rakecapped pots to =1BB lost to rake, you pay much much more rake, but its a smaller % of winning being taken .. which is roughly about what you'll win over a 100hand stretch

[btspider]

100%.. its one long session.

or 50-54%.. who cares tho.. its a meaningless demarcation.