how many hands to evaluate a player?
 

"your sample size is too small" is a common mantra here. We all know it takes hundreds of thousands of hands to have a high degree of confidence in win rate.

However there is a second way. That way is evaluating the quality of a player's decisions directly. I think a bad player can sometimes be identified after as few as 10 or 20 hands (for example if I see a player call a UTG PFR with junky off suit cards and then call down with bottom pair no kicker a couple of times, I am certain this player is a long term loser).

Identifying a winning player is probably more difficult. How many hands would an expert need to observe a winning player to be able to state definitively that that player is a winning player? (assume for purposes of this question that the player in question does not have tilt issues)

Paul

Re: how many hands to evaluate a player?
 

I play mostly live. The truth is, that you start to categorize players immediately and you constantly revise your opinion of their play as you gain more knowledge of their play and you get better at the game yourself.

It is funny how some players who used to be able to crush me are now fish for me because I can see the mistakes that they are making.

This is important because you will not need to see them make every mistake, only know that they make this type of mistake which occurs with frequency x.

You need to know exactly what the mistake is anyway or you won't be able to capitalize on it. I don't think it is advantageous to say that player A is a good player, while player B is average and C is terrible.

I find it better to think along the lines of Player A hasn't cold called all night and plays pretty tight aggressive, Player B plays any ace, and Player C plays every hand to the river. I think I can sometimes bluff Player A when I miss a flop, and I'll only play good aces against B so I'll usually have him dominated, and Player C needs to be value bet all the time.

This is much closer to how I actually do it and it works well for me. It also avoids the tilt problems that can come from thoughts like: How the hell can I be losing to THIS guy?!

Hope this helped.

Dov