Good or Lucky? PT stat question

[MAxx]

How many hands do you need to evaluate your play with confidence at a particular low limit holdem level. For example for the BB/100 stat. Would you say that you can draw solid conclusions from this stat after 500, 5000, 25000, or how many hands? After how many hands would you be confident to draw conclusions about your rate because of your play, and not due to the cards running over you in the shortterm?

[astroglide]

100k. after 300k i think you can be sure.

[EWillers]

I know the math guys can answer this much more precisely, but. . .

100K minimum I think is quite a bit too high. It depends, of course, on how accurate you want your rate to be. But in the time it takes to accumulate 100k hands (unless you're playing 2 or 3k a day) I imagine that the "goodness" of the games will have varied enough over the time the hands are played to outweigh any more precision in the winrate created by playing 100k hands vs. say, 20k hands.

I think that it's a scale. The smaller the # of hands, the more off your winrate may be. As the # of hands goes up, the more accurate the winrate tends to become. Beware of comparing hands from 6 months ago to hands played now tho. 1) You may have gotten better (or worse) and 2) (more likely) the games are noticably better or worse now than they were 6 months ago.

Bottom line, in my opinion, 10k or so will give you a pretty good indication and 20-30k will give you solid enough of a win rate to feel comfortable about (assuming the level of play remains relatively constant--big assumptioin).

[astroglide]

10k is not REMOTELY enough. i have played hundreds of thousands of hands and have had many breakeven or losing stretches over periods that long.

[MMMMMM]

I pretty much agree with 100K hands for a dependable reading, just based on B&M. That is about 2 years full time play at B&M and that is about the time it should take for a really good reading IMO. Playing B&M, even very good players sometimes do run significantly good or bad for 6 months or even for a year. Of course more than 100K hands would be better still.

I don't have nearly the number of hands logged in PT that you do, Astro, but it is nice to know that your online stats roughly match my feel for B&M fluctuations.

[balkii]

Hi maxx, if you're trying to decide who to listen, go with the guy with 4K+ posts, not the one with ~70.

Astro's right. Here a way of thinking about how long the long run is, as far as win rates go. After 110K+ hands, I am a net loser with 33. 33 is not a difficult hand to play. You flop a set, and either win a whole bunch or lose a whole bunch. So far its the latter.

Since your overall winrate is made up of the combined winrates of your hands, that cant be accurate until your hand EVs are accurate. I am sure that my 33 EV is inaccurate, thus my overall winrate is inaccurate.

[Thythe]

I agree with astroglide. 100K is the bare minimum to start drawing convincing conclusions.

[BruceZ]

[ QUOTE ]
How many hands do you need to evaluate your play with confidence at a particular low limit holdem level. For example for the BB/100 stat. Would you say that you can draw solid conclusions from this stat after 500, 5000, 25000, or how many hands? After how many hands would you be confident to draw conclusions about your rate because of your play, and not due to the cards running over you in the shortterm?

[/ QUOTE ]

See my post in this thread:

Standard error and confidence intervals

[o0mr_bill0o]

is there a standard deviation stat in pokertracker? that makes it oh so easy....

[Yeknom58]

I think your conclusion is correct but your example seems poor.

33 is probably only slightly profitable in the long run and only if you're calling in the right spots/games and getting paid when you flop that big hand. So if you're losing with 33 it could easily be your play not just the numbers.