Winrates, bankrolls, and finances
Venice's Introduction to the Thread.
I make a rule to not change someone's post unless it violates a rule. However this is the exception. Not because APD's post is bad (it is good), but because there's lots of discussion back and forth on winrates, and some people are just looking for a simple answer to winrates and bankrolls.
The simple answer is that winning is good. The majority of people playing poker lose money. Poker is a worse than zero sum game because of rake. Therefore if you are winning, you're doing well.
Harrington wrote that if you are beating a live game for 10BB/hr, you're crushing it. That's $20/hr at 1/2 and $50/hr at 2/5. That doesn't mean that you can't beat it for more, it just means that over time winning that much means you're vastly superior than your opponents. Most people don't sustain that over a long period of time because they move up to win more money.
The second simple answer is to stop worrying about what your sustainable winrate is. In order to get a big enough sample to statistically generate an accurate winrate, you and your opponents have play thousands of hands exactly the same way. Poker doesn't work that way. If you aren't improving your play over that amount of hands, you're falling behind your opponents. Therefore, the results are meaningless.
Finally, Kurt put it best that you need 20 buyins to play a level.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78/mic...
On to the rest of the thread.
So here it is... The Win Rate thread (and other finances)!
This thread will basically be a containment thread and will stock pile all of the questions and answers about winrates. I would also like to include bankroll management and other finances into this thread. Bottom line is this, if you are worried about a win rate you should probably be worried about bankroll management also.
Instead of starting this thread like all other winrate threads by asking the question, "What is a good hourly/winrate at live 1/2?" I would rather take the time to explain a few tools live players have to help us with it and to also help us become disciplined. The "whats a good rate" questions I am sure will be asked time and time again.
Online players have some superb tools that they get to use. HUD's, databases, OPR, PTR, Shark Scope, and the list goes on. Live players have one thing, our memory. As we all know the human mind is prone to what is called human error, or in a lot of "winning" poker players cases exaggeration and forgetfullness. I think its important to discuss how we go about keeping track of all this information that will be important to and for our games. So get your pens and pads ready, or phones, and get ready to start logging!
What goes into a winrate? A lot of people simply log the hours played, the amount they bought in for, and the amount they cashed out. At the end they calculate it all together and wala a winrate or, like most live players use, an hourly rate. This is probably the easiest way to do it. When I first started logging my play I would bring a binder with me that kept all my poker "stuff" in it and I would log it into the book at the end of the session. If I had forgotten the binder I would make a quick note in my phone and write it later. I always made it a point to do it right then and there though. Never ever wait! Human error will kick in.
Times have gotten much more advanced though. Live players now have some pretty useful tools that we can use. First one I will talk about is Poker Journal for the Apple fanboys.
Poker Journal by Michael Golden is a program that will track both your live and tournament play (and any game you would like to add to your database) and calculate everything for you. It will give you your hourly rate, time played, average won, average lost, sessions won and lost, and much much more. It will also graph your sessions and run reports for you. You want to know what day or time has been the best to play or what location is the most profitable? Simply filter your stats and its all there. It will also run live cash games. You hit start and the clock goes a ticking. Unfortunately it runs only on the iPhone and iPod at the time and is $12.99.
Next is www.checkyourbets.com. I personally have not used this, but going to the website and looking at some of the screen shots and reading the FAQ it looks pretty solid and its FREE! 😃 Others on here use this site and I will let them add what they feel is appropriate.
Last is cardplayer.com. Their format is very simple yet boring. If you want something quick and easy with not too much detail then its for you. It definately beats a pen, paper and calculator, but I would go with one of the other ones personally.
There are others, but I think those are some pretty good examples. So why go through all this trouble to tell you about these tools? Simple, you want to know what kind of winrate is to be expected then start logging. What I do is not going to be the same as what you do or anybody else does. Not only will you start to learn about winrates at the different levels but you will be able to disect your game and learn many things. It will teach you discipline. When you are making it a point to log each session you will start to treat your poker more like a business and become more serious about it. Also important is to log your expenses. You need to know if you are spending too much and if it is affecting your roll.
Bankroll is another important thing. I think we all can agree that 20 BI's at 1/2is a good starting point, but if you dont want to wait to save up $2k just to play some poker there is nothing wrong with taking shots. In our world (casinos) this is the smallest game offered and we really have no choice. I will leave the bankroll information out for now as there are many different opinions on it.
Last thing I want to add is that this needs to be a place where people compare rates and notes with little to no brags. If you are going to come on here and brag you better have some proof (I gave you some great material above) and many hours to back your claims up. For those that have been wanting to log their sessions now is the time to start. I can see many good self challenges coming out of this and more disciplined players.
Thats it for now. Let the questions begin (and reappear many times).
The reason you have done worse online is because online is far more difficult than live. In order to find online a stake of comparable difficulty to live you have to take your live stake and divide it by a 100.
Yes—I've been at this a while.
My point was, despite the fact I know it's much tougher, and the fact I play much lower stakes online than live—I still don't trust it.
There are quite a few top pros, with their own podcasts, who share the same sentiment.
At this point, I consider any online play I do as purely practice, with no thought of making any $$. It's more like an FPS video game--the goal is to last as long as you can before bust.
For me, it wasn't like this 5 or more years ago.
Case in point. Go to time 34:45
Bloomberg bot-ring story
In 2024 I won 75k in 1,328 hours. 2 ~3month 25k downswings were fairly brutal. Overall hourly rate was $56/hr. Overall pretty lackluster year. Since playing full time in in August 2023 I have won 137k with 1,767 hours with an overall hourly of $78. Here is my overall graph since playing full time:
Some of 2024 was run bad, some of it was drying up of games and not being to play ad much larger stakes. Some of it was playing bad, but overall I am happy with my play this year.
As I have said before, I don't track the stakes because that 1. It is a lot of effort when I switch stakes during the same session and 2. The true stakes vary widely because of straddles. It has been anything from 1/2 to 10/25/50. There were months where the effective blind was 25 most of the time and months where it was probably more like 5 or 10. Lately it has been once a week 2/5/10 where the 20 is on slightly more than not, once a week 5/5 where the 10 or 15 is on slightly more often than not, and other than that deep stack 1/2 where the 5 or 10 is on more often than not. Sporadically 10/25 where the 50 is either mandatory or mostly on.
Overall I am happy with my year overall. My work life balance is very good. I have made some good connections for some regular weekly midstakes games, have my feet in the door in some of the higher stakes games. I improved a good amount as a player this year and I think I have learned how to deal with downswings a bit. Hoping for a sick 2025.
Congrats on the results, Mlark. First five months of the year were swingy. After a few years it'll look like a break-even patch, but probably didn't feel like one. I wonder if it's worth calculating your bb/hour, even though as you say it's difficult to assess given the various straddles. Could you say, for instance, that the average big blind across all games was $15?
Congrats on the results, Mlark. First five months of the year were swingy. After a few years it'll look like a break-even patch, but probably didn't feel like one. I wonder if it's worth calculating your bb/hour, even though as you say it's difficult to assess given the various straddles. Could you say, for instance, that the average big blind across all games was $15?
Does his bb/hr even matter at all though other than for dick waving purposes?
At the end of the day, hourly, hours played and $$ won are all that really matter
As much as I like the potential for "dick-waving" I think it matters because you might be winning 2-3bb in one structure and 8-10bb in another. If you're only winning 2-3bb over a relatively small sample, then you might experience some rather tough-times, especially if you're playing a bigger game. It's also helpful to have clarity on whether you're winning comfortably or not. For instance, I'd much rather win 8bb/hr at 2/5 than 2bb/hr at 10/20---I mean, I would sleep better, at least.
Congrats on the results, Mlark. First five months of the year were swingy. After a few years it'll look like a break-even patch, but probably didn't feel like one. I wonder if it's worth calculating your bb/hour, even though as you say it's difficult to assess given the various straddles. Could you say, for instance, that the average big blind across all games was $15?
I have tried to do that before, and there is probably some value in that just to know. But even so it is of limited use. At the end of the day, I can really only try to play the best games available, do what I can to get in better games, create the best games, and play my best. It would be nice to know how many bb /hr I am winning, but even then the games are constantly changing in terms of effective stacks, straddles, and players.
My general thoughts are that recreational players are going to lose about 15-45bb/100, which live is roughly 4.5bb-13.5bb (or straddles) / hour. Looser recs lose closer to 13.5 and tighter closer to 4.5. That's more for 6 max though, so for full ring I think it is going to be somewhere between the same loss rate and about 67% of that. The regs are going to win that, so take the recs in the game times their lose rate divided by the regs and that will be the win rate for the regs. The better regs will win a bit more on average, and on any given day it will depend on positions and randomness, but that is the basic gist. Also, in a game with a lot of recs, some of the recs can be winning players, but they don't bring down the regs win rate too much because they still lose to the regs, but they do win some off of the looser recs.
A large part of win rate in terms of bb (straddles) / hour is the number of recs vs regs at the table and how loose the recs are. And we all know that we will be chasing elusive numbers with too small sample sizes. Bb per hour in one stake at a random game in Dallas vs a random game in Vegas or LA is apples to oranges.
All that to say, if it is not too inconvenient for you to track your win rate in bb and that number is meaningful to you because the games are similar and not drastically different because of straddles, then go ahead and track it. For me it isn't very convenient and it isn't very meaningful. Maybe I'll start tracking it in 2025 though.
My general thoughts are that recreational players are going to lose about 15-45bb/100, which live is roughly 4.5bb-13.5bb (or straddles) / hour. Looser recs lose closer to 13.5 and tighter closer to 4.5. That's more for 6 max though, so for full ring I think it is going to be somewhere between the same loss rate and about 67% of that. The regs are going to win that, so take the recs in the game times their lose rate divided by the regs and that will be the win rate for the regs. The better r
I like this approach to assessing win-rate, with the rec-reg ratio being crucial (as well distinguishing different types of recs and regs). Obviously rake is another factor. In the 2/5 game I was playing regularly in Melbourne, the house was taking between 50 and 60bb per hour, which is equivalent to the loss -rate of 2-3 recreational players. The rake in the USA is probably, at a guess, 20-30bb per hour, so you could say on average, a higher rake game contains 1-2 less recs/1-2 more regs, which is significant.
All that to say, if it is not too inconvenient for you to track your win rate in bb and that number is meaningful to you because the games are similar and not drastically different because of straddles, then go ahead and track it. For me it isn't very convenient and it isn't very meaningful. Maybe I'll start tracking it in 2025 though.
The impact of straddles makes it cumbersome to measure, particularly if the straddle isn't "semi-mandatory". If you could be bothered and/or you're an excel wiz you could include a column on a spreadsheet for straddles and double straddles and scale it for a session (e.g. 1-10, with 10 being always a straddle).
Yeah, that is a decent idea. I am pretty good in Excel since I am a CPA and worked in public accounting for 9 years. But straddles are almost never mandatory and all ocer the place sometimes.
As far as rake, I usually pay flat time and no rake other than a flat 2 promotional drop at one cardhouse. Time is 12/hr with various discounts and comps. I do play in a weekly home game, 5/5 nlh plo roe 10% $15 cap.
I'm no expert of the industry but I am pretty sure dealers make less than standard minimum wage and mainly are paid in tips. And the cardhouses are basically unregulated, plus I am sure there are a lot of overhead costs casinos have that Texas cardhouses don't have. That said, I don't know that it is an amazing industry. 8 cardhouses in town and only 2 are really killing it.
