How to assess poker skill level?

I play mainly low limit Hold'em ($2/$4) online at Paradise. I play some at casino. However, there are not any real live playing options where is live (Florida). The times i have played live, I came out a small winner. Clearly haven't played enough time to be significant.


I have accumulated approximately 1,000 hours of online playing time and I am even (actually up a few $$)..


QUESTION:


Is win rate in (Big blinds per hour) the only way to assess skill?


THOUGHT:


Due to house rake (3-6 big blinds per hour - say 4.0 per hour)... The average player should lose 4 BB per hour. So I think I am better than average......Here is my table of skill/ win rates....


Highly skilled (5 % of players) --- win 1.5 BB per hour


Skilled (20% of players) ----- lose 1.25 BB hour


Average (50% of players) --- lose 4 BB per hour


Student of game ( 20% of players) --- lose 6.75 BB per hour


beginner (5 % of players) -- lose 9.5 BB hour


========= So based upon a break even win rate......my guess is that my poker ranking approximately 16 % - given 100 poker players (that play at Paradise) 15 are better than me. this be based upon eyeballing the above table). ======== Comments are welcome.....

Gatorman,


I don't know if this means anything, but using my database of 11000 hands, there seems to be a 40% winners and 60% losers on paradise. It stays close to these percentages if I look at all players or if I look at only players I've seen play 200 or more hands (about 100). So if I had to guess LL paradise skill, I would say....


Highly Skilled (10%) ~ 1 to 1.5 BB/hour (1 table) Skilled (20%) ~ .5 to 1 BB/hour Average (20%) ~ -.25 to .5 BB/hour Less then Average (30%) ~ -1 to -.25 BB/hour Terrible (20%) ~ -x to -1 BB/hour


This is only an educated guess and is for low limit only. If I look in my database, I have the most hands for the Highly Skilled and Skilled players and so on down the list. The terrible players don't show up after going broke but new names always pop up at the site. Average and Less than average players seem to come up periodically for a couple weeks every month or two.


Just my two cents,


Jeff

Blinds do not constitute a loss; its the rake. If its $3 max then the average loss per hand is less than $3, lets say $2.5. If there are 10 players and 3 orbits/hour, the average player would lose only $7.5 to the rake; a little over 1bb/hour. The higher you play and the tighter you play, the less the relative rake there is; more hands/hour its higher. Reasonably selective players are winning, I'd guess, about 2/3 as often as average, which results in $5/hour loss in rakes.


1000 hours should be plenty of time; your winnings should accurately reflect your skill.


- Louie

I agree that 1000 hours should be more than enough time to wind up on the side of zero which you belong. However, it's not clear (at least to me), that this is enough time to accurately reflect one's skill level. It's certainly possible to run good,bad or flat for 200-300 hours chunks, which may skewer results over a mere 1000 hour perioed...

I have similar results in my database for low limit online Paradise Poker. I've come to the conclusion that these win rates (40% winners) is not accurate though (which you seem to hint at).


A lot of players play only a few hands and get lucky and win, so for all players (even ones who play 1 hand) you still have a high winning players percentage. The players who play a lot of hands tend to be better players, which accounts for the winning players percentage remaining high as you increase the number of hands.


I'm not sure how to calculate a "true" percentage of winning players from a database, if anyone has any suggestions, we'd love to hear them! I'm personally very interested in how many players are winning at the low limits. I suspect many players are "winners" of 0.01 BB/hour or so (meaning they are "up" maybe $50 after a lot of hours of play).

I have no idea how to do this...I think it's even harder to judge in a low limit game where Variance and the rake are even more brutal.


I've never walked away from a table and said..."Hey, I've played 3-6 for 6 hours and walked away $20 ahead...I'm a success" - I don't get that kind of stability and I don't really consider that to be a good indication of success for a low limit game where you're playing with a lot of bad players.


Can I look back and say I made the right call, for example, with A-J, raising preflop, and the betting with top pair until the guy rivered an 8 on me to make his 5-8 two pair? Did I not go on tilt afterwards? Did I recover most of my losses but not come out ahead because I didn't feel like burning out to make those last $40 dollars back? Well, then I played skillfully...The fact that I probably lost about 15 BB's is irrelevant. I did everything right.


Makes sense against experts to use the BB theory, (1.5 big bets per hour expectation) but a lot of pros (T.J Cloutier and Tom McEvoy, for example) don't like that as a measure of success I know this, however. Put nine of the top players in a room with the best skill level (You can even try to do it on Turbo Texas Hold-em with the best computer profiles) - and you'll find one winner...the rake. Everyone else just trades money and slips down. Not really an indication of your skill level.


That's what gets me the most...The one big bet per hour theory assumes you have at least one player who is a substantially inferior player, and so that's why I'm leary of it as a measure of success. But what do I know...I've only been seriously playing for 3 months

nt

$/hour with reasonable hours/month is the best measure of "poker success". You can compare this number to whatever hourly rate you think you can make elsewhere. So if you are a $40/hour engineer making $12/hour in a 4/8 game; don't quit.


bb/hour is an excellent measure for the game you are in, since you can use this number to determine whether you are playing at about the right limit. As you approach 2bb/hour, take shots at the higher game.


If you don't use $/hour or bb/hour, how DO you measure success.


- Louie

Gatorman, where in florida?