Poll on experience

Long time lurker, first time poster (though I occasionally post in that wacky, paranoia-riddled, non-strategy discussion Internet forum).


I've been playing about a year and read this forum almost daily.


I write today because I have been suffering several weeks of bad cards coupled with horrible plays by me that have exacerbated the negative results. I'm frustrated. Statking tells me that after about 550 hours (mostly .5/$1 to 2/4 online and about 60 hours of live 3/6-4/8--tuff to find a game in Houston), I am up a whopping 31 cents an hour /images/tongue.gif.


My poll:


1. How many hours have the posters on this forum logged at the tables?


2. When did you begin to notice that you are a winning (or losing) player?


3. I've often read that you can't tell anything about your game until you've logged 1,000+ hours, is this correct?


Thanks for any responses.

1. How many hours have the posters on this forum logged at the tables?


~1000 live, ~2000 online. I am 23 and I've been playing serious poker for about 2 years. I started once I got a job after college.


2. When did you begin to notice that you are a winning (or losing) player?


I won my first live session, and I've been in the black ever since. I started out playing weak/tight, and luckily the games in my area are loose/passive, so this was a perfect match. After playing online I started to improve.


3. I've often read that you can't tell anything about your game until you've logged 1,000+ hours, is this correct?


No. You should be able to tell fairly quickly as a beginner that you have a large edge over your competition. This can be seen by the many obvious mistakes being made.


Once you move up to tougher games it will be harder to make these conclusions, and a lot of data will be required.

Every day, you will think that you know more than you did the day before.

And everday you will be wrong as to how much you have left to learn.


Jimbo


30+ years with over 30,000 hours live and 1500 online. Which means I have had pocket aces over 5500 times and have Never won a hand with them. /images/smile.gif

"And every day you will be wrong as to how much you have left to learn"


How true. The "me" of today thinks that the "me" of January was borderline retarded. And the "me" of January thought he was the shit relative to the November "him".


Just think...today's genius, tomorrows moron.

You didn't ask how many big bets per hour are you winning after 1000 hours experience.And are you keeping exact records.

I have a friend who's been playing low stakes (4-8) for at least 15 years. Claims he's making $20 (2 1/2 big bets) per hour. It's not that my friend is lying, which he is, it's that he's addicted to poker. If he were that good, he'd be playing at higher levels. But then he'd be up against better players and his ego couldn't take it.So there's different levels of comfort. I suspect my friend plays poker to show off in front of weaker players.

I'm a complete newbie (130hrs), but I have noticed a lot of regulars who are stuck at a certain level of play with no desire of advancement. And they imagine themselves to be good. If you've been playing small stakes for 15 years at 100 hrs per month, you're not that good. OK, good, but not great.

What I think you're really asking is whether there are really winning players out there and whether you're enduring a bad run of cards or you just suck.


If you're a winning player, you will know without much doubt after a few hundred hours. If after 550 hours you are not winning over 1 bet an hour at low limit games then you are doing something wrong.

How do we factor in the times we've stepped up in limit and gotten wacked? Over a few hundred hours, I'm up a little of 1 bb per hour; I then step up in limits for about 40 hours and get whacked(a combination of going a little weak tight and a fairly bad run of cards). So now, I'm back down at the lower limits and rebuilding the bankroll which got hit but not destroyed in the move up. I am also now winning just over 1/2 bb per hour. So, how do I account for this? It might take a couple of hundred hours, or more, to get my bankroll back to where it was when I stepped up. I don't use stat king or poker stat; I track everything with a spreadsheet of my own creation, and I haven't broken out times at the various limits; it is all tracked together.


Fitz

You are correct Aaron, I'm trying to figure out if I suck /images/smile.gif. You have also directly answered my question, and I thank you for it. And Fitz' take helped put it in perspective.


When I break down the stats, I get 478 hours online at about .75BB an hour. The stats are skewed by my live 3/6/12 and 4/8 experience where 75 hours have a net loss of $232. It's hard to make up for that when I play no higher than an occasional 2/4 online (the vast majority of hours are .5/$1-1/2).


At the same time tho, what about "winning players" with losing years? Certainly there are those of you out there with a net loss after (or less than a 1BB/hr win rate) over a 550 hour swing?


Bah, I'm rambling. I'll start posting some hands and improve my game.