Winrates, bankrolls, and finances

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This rake is insanely good; I often wonder how card houses can even survive on rakes this low?

Genjoyitwhileitlasts,imoG

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.

It's a lot harder to charge more when it's time like this (and paid separately) than rake. Funnily enough when people can feel the rake more they are more frugal about it.

My 2024 (first time I track my live results):

• Almost entirely 5/10
  
• Hours played: 392
  
• Profit: 29500$
  
• Hourly rate: ~75$
  

Yeah, I've only played a time raked game once (on a visit to a Texas cardroom) and I found it certainly sat in the front of my mind (as it would for most nits, lol). Still, at $12/hour that means a 9 handed table is only dragging $108 off the table every hour... which is easily ~50% less than what is dragged off my lol small BI 1/3 NL table.

GcluelessinsanelygoodrakenoobG

Where can I get the software for this I would love not to have to manually track.

This is a random practical question, but do those making a decent bit who then owe money to the feds pay that owed money from their bankroll?

Not sure what you mean by a "decent bit", but not for me.
However having $5k+ lying around in the house does mean it occasionally gets used, esp. so if there's some cash only (or even preferred) thing.

I'd guess if poker got to be a significant part of my taxes then a lot more of the bankroll would be in the bank anyway.

Unless someone filing as a pro has a second job, where else would the money come from?

Or are you thinking of someone with a day job who also is claiming poker winnings?

Fair point, lmao.

I was projecting with someone who uses poker as a side hobby. I guess it is a matter of personal preference and whatever is financially suitable for the person.

aiight im just posting here as a bit of accountability to myself as well as provide some more data to the conversation.

just bought a poker bankroll tracking app finally. obviously the hands/hour is variable - i've sat and counted a few times and i think somewhere between 30-35 per hour seems reasonable given the amount of bullshit and tanking mf'ers are doing these days. if im stuck at a slow table i try to rotate out of it more too unless its properly deep stacked in which i dont mind the lower hands / hour in favor of potential gains with 200+bb stacks.

so 10 sessions im hittin ~22BB/100 with a std deviation of 103.22/100 which I can hopefully bring down too but i do play late nights and its often 5-7 handed as opposed to 8 so will be a little more variance there.

yes 10 sessions and those numbers pretty much means **** all but i had some notes from prior bankroll app that i lost which had easily over 3k+ hours at 1/3. i ran better at the 1/3 at the start of keeping track with that old app for sure, probably a solid leap above expectation.

i've had some long stretches hitting about 38BB/100 in the past sustained over quite a large sample size but my std deviation was considerably higher so I think that 38 figure was perhaps a little baked with fortune's favor. also there was a period of time where the one card room i went to just had a TON of action players and blasters who just really played a swing dick style of cards as well as fact that i would sit predominantly on night shifts so looser gamblers/drunk fun players/degens tryin to just get back to even vs the more consistent afternoon early evening crowd.

i think ideally i wanan find a private game w/ fun players somewhere local once i get the roll to 2.5-3x's what my RoR <5% suggests i need. I want that layer of loose gamble to keep getting invited back to a situation like that, and might even need to be a bit more conservative and say 4-5x that RoR metric

Forget about bb/100 for live poker. It is impossible to calculate. Just go with bb/hr.

10 sessions is a meaningless sample. I'm closing in on 12k hours of tracked live play.

If you are playing as a side hustle/hobby, I wouldn't worry too much about risk of ruin. That assumes if you go broke, it wouldn't take too long to afford 1/3 again. If you want to make a more than McDonald's fry cook hourly, you want to move up to at least 2/5 ASAP.

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

ah dude thank you for the reply, appreciate the confirmation of things mentioned.

yeah im just using it as a barometer against my past online play where bb/100 was the sort of relative data point to then deduce/infer other things. i'll pay attention to the bb/hr though for sure.

goal is definitely to 2/5+ asap again for sure. I was hoping i could just ride a nice luck box rush into 20 or so BIs for 2/5 before committing full time. the problem is the closest card room to me generally only spreads 1 single 2/5 game save for the weekends and at least 2 PLO games. My PLO game while i may underestimate myself here is not where i want it to be to sit those regularly especially given the higher swings those games yield - i think there's good money to be had there but i definitely wanna have a a good chunk of a roll before adding PLO to my schedule.

And I'm not worried about RoR outside of the fact that I dont want to siphon too much cash outta my other incomes with regularity that could just help out the household more so my desire there is more of a set and forget type thing and as you mentioned getting to place to comfortably reg 2/5.

That said i found a few guys who would be willing to sit some HU with me at the room which would be $100 dollars each for time and dealer tip in which case I'm gonna push to do that ****ing QUICK and while I think my edge there could be realized faster, the swings would also be a bit larger relatively so same boat.

As i stated i was posting mostly for accountability and contribution of data points to the thread and will continue to check in at milestone moments worth sharing. and yes 10 session is absolutely worthless, well aware and did indicate that too. but i have 23 years of live cards in a casino and a big chunk of online play though that tapered off before black friday even hit.

Had two sessions back 2 back that just sucked - couldnt get my big hands paid off and had to fold a bunch of premium 3bet hands that went MW to the flop. thinking i need to be a bit more fluid in my 3bet sizing relative to table dynamic. i tend to just establish a # for IP and OOP fairly quickly (im very aggressive preflop as a rake mitigation strategy - no flop no drop- and most players arent able to counter it sufficiently etc etc) and I know a lot of live poker strat guys prefer some absurdly large sizing for 3bets, i just dont see it as sustainable unless its absolutely filtering it to HU at a frequency sufficient to nullify the bloated pot size / stack ratio stuff. i do run a consistent 33/28 VPIP/PFR in 8 top ring games - basically confirmed via some online sites recently across a sample larger than the last 10 sessions, nothing felt like i was doing more or doing less and have enough experience to recognize the differences between 33/28 and 24/18 etc.

I mean you can use BB/100 if you want to. Just multiply your bb/hour by 3.3 or so.

it seems there is no distinction between big blind and big bet now - which is fine by me but was confusing when i first started seeing BB and bb interchangeable.

I'm going to preface the rest of my response with notice that I'm going for best of intentions constructive feedback. I'm not trying to be a troll or dick.

A lot of your wall of words post is just a word salad. Using poker terminology in mixed up ways makes me think you are trying to sound like a deeply studied player when you really have a lot to learn.

I can't imagine any public card room willing to spread a HU cash game where you buy in for $100. Would that be 1/1? HU is a completely different animal. Regardless of skill edge, variance is much higher, so bank roll required is also higher.

Thinking that 2 rough sessions in a row is meaningful in a win rate discussion shows a lack of experience. I've had 200 hour chunks being kicked in the nuts night after night after night. And other 200 chunks making 25bb/hr. When looking at a 11k hour graph, those extremes aren't noticeable at all.

Check out this 1,500 session graph. There are lots of 100-200 hour chunks if looked at in isolation show I'm a horrible losing player. A different 200 hours in isolation, and I'm the best player that ever lived. Neither of those extremes is true.

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk