Unrealistic goals?
 

Wow. Just found this site and this is my first post. After reading the site for a few days and downloading the PokerTracker software, I'm more confused now than I was before (especially after reading the progress thread).

I think that I'm a pretty decent player, but by no means am I a star.

I began on Party in June of last year with $200 and started playing in the NL25 and NL50 ring games and the $10 SnG. I used the money from my ring games to get in larger SnG's and worked my way up to $100 and $200 SnG tournaments before I quit. After 6 months, I had gone from $200 to $6,000.

Typical story... got pissed at Party, withdrew my money and didn't play for 6 months.

Signed up at PS in June of this year with $200 and have played NL .25/.50 and NL .50/1 for the last 2 months and have worked my way up to $1,400. I am currently only playing in the NL .50/1 rooms.

So now that you have the background info, here come the questions....

I normally only get to play for 1-2 hours a night about 3-5 times per week. I always play 2 tables at a time. My goal when I sit down is to be up $50 total between the 2 tables when I quit. After reading this site and downloading Pokerstats, I think I understand that if I play 100 hands/hour for 2 hours and make $50, that this equates to 50BB/200 or 25BB/100 hands. More reading has me understanding that a good return would be around 5BB/100. I had 1000 hands in my email that I imported into the stat program and it shows that I'm at 17.5BB/100 over the last 1000 hands.

What's the deal. Is my math correct? I know that I'm a decent player, but could this be correct? I know that I wouldn't be happy with 5BB/100... if I sat at a table for an hour and was only up $5, I'd be disappointed in my play.

If this is correct, should I move up to the next level? I've thought about moving up, but the ROI seems to be higher at the lower levels.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

I think you're just comparing no limit and limit stats. My NL BB/100 is 10-20x higher than my limit stats, since the average post-flop betting is so much higher than BB in the no-limit games.

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

Thanks.. that was one of the things that I was wondering.

So, what is a good BB/100 target for NL?

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

There's a lot less talk about BB/100 on the NL forum, but you might try there is you want to find out how well the experts are doing. From what I understand, 17.5BB/100 is about right, though 1,000 hands is not a very large sample to go from.

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

I'm historically a winning NL player, but I can't give you any good stats, since I have less than 1000 hands in PT for NL games now, and I'd need 10000 to give a decent number. (I'm running 60BB/100 now, but it's a worthless stat, and I don't think it's sustainable -- I've been pretty hot recently.) If you can find any good goals, I'd be interested too.

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

Hold up let me get this straight you can be a consistent winner at NL at almost 20x limit rates? Is it that much more difficult to be a successful NL player, I just can't see why I'd want to grind it out at limit if I could be increasing my BR alot quicker playing NL

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hold up let me get this straight you can be a consistent winner at NL at almost 20x limit rates? Is it that much more difficult to be a successful NL player, I just can't see why I'd want to grind it out at limit if I could be increasing my BR alot quicker playing NL

[/ QUOTE ]
The BB/100 rate at NL is actually the largest posted amount so this is actually the SB amount in limit (I'm almost positive). I certainly believe that the same caliber player could win more at NL than at limit because opponents mistakes are magnified because you can always bet enough that they are making a mistake to call (if you read them correctly). However the loss rates in NL can also be much greater. But either win or loss rates would not be near 20x over a decent amount of time/hands. The difference just isn't THAT much.

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

The reason people like me (and I assume others out there) grind it out at micro limits is because we don't have the bankroll to deal with the severe variance in winning/losing that can come with playing NL. Furthermore, NL requires even more intimate player knowledge than is needed in micro, so you can't multitable as well and as such can't cut down the variance as easily as in micro.

I'd personally love to play NL (since that was my poker background prior to micro limits) and I've tried a couple tables here and there. It can definitely be profitable.

Re: Unrealistic goals?
 

You're going to need a bigger bankroll to play .25/.50 NL than .5/1 limit, but I do have to say that while you can punish bad limit players over time, you can utterly *destroy* them at a NL table, so it is probably more profitable, dollar for dollar.