Deciding wether your a winning/losing player?

[KaptainKangoroo]

How many hours would you guys say, for Real Life and Online, would want to know if your a winning player or a losing player? Like if your losing after 100 hours, you are a losing player for instance..

Is 100 hours a reasonable time? Is this even a reasonable question?

Any advice would be appreciated

[JKratzer]

If you are trying to figure out whether you are a winner or loser, the true test comes down to results (money). They will vary overtime, but keeping careful notes of wins and losses should provide you with the answer you're looking for. If you are trying to ask how big a sample you need to make sure random swings aren't affecting the outcome, the longer the better. 100 hours probably isn't enough to be sure, but it should give you an idea. The more time/hands the closer your results will reflect your play. More than that though, study your play: if you are playing correctly then you are a winning player and the results will (eventually) support that conclusion. If you are unsure of your play, ask other winning players for help or advice - this forum is an excellent place to start.

[KaptainKangoroo]

ok. I was just curious. I have Statking, and have been tracking my progress... So far, lots of fluctuations, and i'm currently down at the moment. This is however with like 4 different games, online and real life... But however, i only have 74 hours logged... Maybe i'll play a bit more before swearing off poker [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[Guy McSucker]

I seem to remember that for limit poker, Sklanksy talked about logging 1000 hours to get a good idea of your hourly rate. That's probably 30,000 hands in live play.

For NL/PL, though, hourly rate depends so much on who you're playing, stack sizes etc, that I don't know if this would be enough. If you played the same people for that long I guess it would, but that's not going to happen.

Still, to know if you're a winning or losing player, 30,000 hands ought to suffice... maybe less. Some of the stats bods might want to chime in here.

Guy.

[ALL1N]

Instead of putting effort into finding out whether you're a winner or not, put effort into playing well. If you play tight and aggressive like the books, and use your head while you're playing you're sure to be a winning player. Then you can calculate your WIN rate.