Low-limit Expectations

[MrBigTime]

Nick Christinsen, who has reviewed many poker books, says, "It can take months or years to have played enough hands to determine whether one even has a positive expectation at low-limit games, much less to know what that expectation might be." Does this statement mean low-limit games are improbable or even impossible to beat in the long run?

[J.R.]

No, it means it takes a long time to figure out whether you are actually able to beat these games, because the short run fluctuations can be great and will often mask your true win/loss rate.

[Ed Miller]

No... it means that it takes thousands of hours of play to generate a sample size that will begin to let you nail down your win rate.

[ZeeJustin]

There's a thread about this in the internet section that tells you how to calculate how many hands it would take to get a win/rate accurate to a certain percentage.