How Significant Is The "Benchmark" of 10,000 Hands?

[charlie_t_jr]

Thanks, I'll take a look.

[djoyce003]

You are probably just like me. I destroyed the .5/1 games for a while. Then I moved up to 1/2 when I got my bankroll up to around $400 and promptly dipped down to $200. I played a little more .5/1 and built my confidence and BR back up, then played a little 1/2 6 max, and 1/2 ring. I started winning and slowly built my B/R up to around $800. Then I tried out the 2/4 ring games and lost $200 real quick. I studied, kept playing 1/2 and when I got my roll up I took another shot. Finally I started winning at that, and now i'm up to 3/6 and am going to start dabbling in the 5/10 6max games. If at first you don't succeed, drop to the lower level you were winning at, re-think your strategy, review your PT stats to see where your leaks are, and give it another run.

My biggest adjustment from the .5/1 and 1/2 games at the 2/4 level was that you tend to run into tighter players, people are in there with hands and some of them punish you when they hit their hand well, not like .5/1 where they just call or check with the nuts. Use your PT game windows and if the table is full or rocks, move. I won't play unless there are minimum of 4 people with greater than 40% VPIP, and i'd prefer 5 or 6.

[Scotch78]

What I'm about to say is for 6max games where the variance is higher, but hopefully it'll give you some perspective/confidence. When I moved over to Empire from PokerStars it took me ~9,800 hands to reach the green, but by 14,000 hands my winrate was over 2 BB/100. Also, I seem to remember that one of the best 6maxers on 2+2 posted a loss for his first 10,000 hands when he moved up to 10/20.

Scott

[meow_meow]

Just to add a bit of stats to answer your question properly, lets say that your true win-rate, given your play relative to your average opponents, is 2 BB/100. Lets assume also that you SD is something like 15 BB/100 - should be within a couple of BB/100 of this number anyway, right?
So, given those assumptions, after 11k hands your mean expected win would be 220 BB, with a SD of 15*sqrt(110), meaning there is about an 8% chance you will be a loser over that stretch.

[Homer]

[ QUOTE ]
You might want to check out Homer's variance thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

"How many hands do I need to play..."

-- Homer

[charlie_t_jr]

Wow... I don't get to the Zoo often, thanks for posting the link Homer.

Between that and Schnieds(apologies for the spelling) post on his losing streak, helps put it in perspective.

[6471849653]

At loose limit holdem game I have lost during about 10-15,000 hands two big bets per hour (I was winning 3.5 big bets per hour 10-15,000 hands before that). Limit holdem can be very bad once in a blue moon, and in theory there's no reason why a +EV player could not lose endlessly.

[James282]

As an example, I was down after my first 10k hands in one of my Party 15/30 accounts. By 50k hands, this account was over 3/100.
-James

[FrankLu99]

dont play $2/4
instead multitable $1/2