How long is "........over the long-run"?

[jmgambler]

Dear All,

Firsly apologies if these are repeated questions..... that said.

You go through a few days of losses/bad beats, you win a little, you lose a little.

The other day I played for 8 hours at PP $2/$4.... first 6 hours I am down around $100 (I consider myself an OK player probably too loose I lack the patience to wait 30 hands until a pair, AK, AA turns up and have a hard time folding A,10EP etc...I am working on it) anyway in the last 2 hours of play I was up $350. During my losing phase when people played 8,3o and was beating my AK and AJs (even after a pre-flop raise) I kept repeating the mantra "They will pay you in the long run"

What period of time is considered long enough to know whether you are a "winning" player?...... and its not "just" an upswing or downswing?


Regards David

[moondogg]

10K hands minimum before you can have any confidence in your results. Far more if you want to be sure. None of it can be measured in hours or days. A $100 swing in 2/4 is pretty standard, just imagine how much you have to play in order to stand back and say "that $100 swing meant nothing and had no real impact by itself".

The general rule of thumb is that a solid winning player should have a bankroll of at least 300 big bets to handle the swings (in 2/4, you need at least $1200).

If you are playing too loose (and have any other -EV traits in your game), at the very least your standard deviation will go up, meaning that you are suseptible to bigger downswings, which would require a bigger bankroll and a much longer long-run. Worst case is that you are not a winning player, in which case no bankroll is big enough.


Also, keep in mind just playing solid starting hands does not automatically turn you into a winning player. It took me a long time to realize that, despite my pre-flop discipline, I was beating myself by playing poorly post-flop, rather than just losing to suckouts. You have to know when your preflop AJs has turned to crap postflop and should be folded, when your two overcards+flush draw should be raised on the flop, etc.

If you are not using PokerTracker, get it. It will tell you a lot more about your game, your standard deviation, your win rate, etc, than you could ever figure out by observation.