Winrates, bankrolls, and finances

I agree cash, costs/profits balances, it's all the same if you account it.

I had my bankroll in 27 black chips, then dipped below 19, freaked out, took $100s for the black chips, and played in the softer, low-raked games. I loved having the cash in a bag. In 1976, my dad came home with $3,000 in cash from a dealer who wanted to avoid European taxes. He took it out of the envelope. We threw it in the air. I felt like a kid. As my cash roll blossomed to $3,000, even though in 1976 the cash was worth $25,000, I took a selfie.

Last week, my wife and I raided the bankroll without putting in promissory notes. I feel like even though the bills from the cashier were clean, the money was dirty. I won it mostly from alcoholics, gambling addicts, and many people with low executive function like my son. All cash is now in a hidden lock box. I agree, a bankroll as cash is imaginary, money is fungible, dirty or clean. Even opportunity costs of playing poker are high if you account for transport. It's recreation that costs more than gardening. Should I deduct the 2011 Honda from the bankroll to make the 50 miles at the Federal rate round trip to the casino? Better to use a spreadsheet.

Thank you 2+2 live strat no limit. I had my best year ever!

Sessions: 27
Total Winnings: $2,095.00
Win/loss Hourly: $17.46
BB/hr: $8.73
Tournament winnings: $660
Weeks on bipolar meds: 50 to today
My gratitude to everyone for strategy advice: unlimited

Thank you 2+2 live strat no limit. I had my best year ever!

Sessions: 27
Total Winnings: $2,095.00
Win/loss Hourly: $17.46
BB/hr: $8.73
Tournament winnings: $660
Weeks on bipolar meds: 50 to today
My gratitude to everyone for strategy advice: unlimited

Still figuring out how to post the camel. Website is slow today.

Sample size is indeed lol small, zone of 60 percent uncertainty, very possible my winnings in 2025 were just variance. Maybe if I spend less time with my family, I’ll have time for the minimum 20,000 hands to get to 90 percent certainty.

So I have been playing poker at local cardrooms since I was 18. Im 35 now. Starting in 2020 I started to track my results, and from 2020-2023 they were BAD. I lost consistently every year.

In 2020 I lost -1446
In 2021 I lost around 4.6k
In 2022 I lost around 3.2k
In 2023 I lost about 5.6k

All playing 1/2, or 1/3 in the NH/NE area. During these poker sessions I became the guy who 'didnt drive to the casino to fold'. Also during these times my job wasnt the greatest and my poker sessions saw me sitting down with less then the max and with maybe money I should not have played with, especially in 2020. After 2021 I got a better paying job and my poker sessions were used as 'entertainment' and to have a good time.

In October of 2023 I had my first child, and realized that blowing a little less then a months worth of pay in poker throughout the year was not smart and honestly irresponsible. So since then I started to take poker more serious; playing tighter, studying more (CLP was a huge help), and being more selective of when/where I played. Since then here are my results from June 2024-December 2024, and then January 25-December 19th, 2025. Granted these are not crusher numbers, I must say I am happy with the improvement.

June '24-December '24

Sessions Played: 23
Sessions Won: 12
Sessions Lost: 11
Money won per winning session: $507.33
Money lost per losing session: $-440.45
Total Profit: $343
Total Profit per session: $14.91
Total Hours: 92
$ per hour: $3.72

January '25 - 12/19/25
Sessions Played: 50
Sessions Won: 24
Sessions Lost: 26
Money won per winning session: $500.62
Money lost per losing session: $384.38
Total Profit:2154
Total Profit per session: $43.08
Total Hours: 210
$ per hour: $10.25

Just wanted to post it here, and maybe get some insight into the numbers - any non sarcastic takeaways from them?

Awesome improvements Perrone! Obviously short sample sizes, but definitely looks like you've gone from the whale / giant fish in your game to someone who can think about beating the rake.

I've always kinda wondered exactly how much various losing players (from whale to fish to badreg) lose every year. Realizing you dropped ~$15K at the poker tables over a handful of years must have been sobering.

ETA: As for the stats (albeit over a small sample size). My guess is session winning percentage is a useless metric; mine's about 2/3rds, but as I say, my guess is unimportant. Those average wins versus losses per session look on the high variance side to me, but this is coming from the lowest variance player in this forum (lol), so whatever. Overall, probably less important to worry about the stats and more important to be confident that your decision making process at all points is decent (and results, and whatever stats associated with that, will follow appropraitely). Good luck!

GcluelessbadregnoobG

You should be happy, seems likely you are a much better player.

Main thing I'd be cautious about is that ~200 hours a year is pretty low, from a sample size POV, so you could easily go on a downswing for over a year. But still, if you did roughly the same hours in 2023 then -$25/hr to +$10 is a huge swing in 300 hours.

Yes if we knew this it would be much easier to figure out the edge available in a game. My guess is that most people are not actually winning as much as they think in the games they play. Let's say you are playing 2/5 at Bellagio. Rake is 5% up to a $6 cap. We can be generous and say $180/hr is coming off the table per hour(realistically people take money off their stack for waitress and food runner tips and massages etc. There are usually 3 winning players minimum in the game. So how much does a pro expect to make these days in that game? $30/hr? So that's $270/hr that must be lost among the remaining 5 players at the table. Are those players actually losing $50+ per hour? What if there is another pro a the table or a breakeven player? If a rec player lost $50/hr and played 500hrs in a year that's $25k. Is that actually what people can afford to lose in a low stakes poker game? I wonder

You improved a lot. You should be proud. Genuinely mean that.

There’s not a minimum of 3 winning players at a table, and there are tons of people losing $25K/yr in 2/5 games

The 1st major milestone in any gambler's career isn't winning a ton of money--it's breaking even over time (IMHO).

From there, the sky's the limit.

Thanks. That made my day.

In full disclosure, I lost 120 in a low raked home game last night. Someone lit a monster joint, and the host wouldn’t open the windows even though the smoke was so thick I blew smoke rings like in the Berlin bars in the 1990s, now only cannabis, not tobacco. I had great fun but played terrible.

My conclusion is having a family made you not only a better person but also a better poker player. Candor about your past poker sins and current relentless self-criticism in your game probably made you a better parent too. Playing poker is self indulgent. It creates no value in itself and can damage lives. But it also develops patience, attention, and cognitive empathy, all excellent skills for parenting.

Played my last session of the year today, so sharing my results for 2025 ITT. I always put in pathetic volume but this year was particularly bad, as I have a new baby (#2) and have been softly pursuing other forms of advantage gambling. Still, I managed to completely sunrun live poker for a second straight year.

I also won $7.7k playing online, mostly 100NL on ClubWPT Gold.

Extremely happy with my results overall. I am hoping to play a lot more next year, and would like to finally start playing a majority of my volume at 2/5. Maybe I'll feel differently when I finally have a real downswing at that stake though.

My hours this year were a bit lower than the previous two years, but I think that’s mostly a function of the fact that I was shot-taking $2/$5 throughout the year. My average session at the bigger game was only around 2 hours due to my semi-strict $1k stoploss and a number of fairly blatant hit-and-run wins.

Up until August, I was having a pretty disappointing year. Then, I took 6 or 8 weeks off from playing to do some non-poker-related travel, enjoy the outdoors, and pursue some time-sensitive AP gambling-related opportunities. I made my return to live poker on a week-long trip through Pennsylvania with my Dad where I started a ~$5k sunrun that I rode for the rest of the year.

In Pittsburgh, I hit a bounty-style royal flush jackpot for more than $1.5K before taxes (but after tip). I decided to factor that jackpot into my statistics because, up until this hit, I had never had a lot of luck with poker room promos and was almost certainly down more than $2K lifetime paying into promo funds. I decided to treat the jackpot similar to online rakeback. Certainly if it were a once-in-a-lifetime, five-figure BBJ payout, I would probably separate it out from the rest of my results, but ~1500 felt reasonable. Curious how others feel about this.

The jackpot hand was pretty incredible. Here is a HH:

The sunrun continued at my home casino of Mohegan Sun, even despite a 15BI downswing at $1/$2 that extended from late spring into the fall. Better to use up your runbad in the smaller game, I guess.

Totals are below, separated by stake. Obviously, the jackpot was at $1/$3. I didn’t bother to include separate rows for the small-stakes home games I played (around 35 hours of play at stakes ranging from 10c/20c to $1/$1) but I have those numbers in my personal tracker and they are included in the grand total at the bottom.

I also won about $1.5k on ClubWPT Gold before CT shut it down, which was a somewhat disappointing result given the success I have had on a different sweeps coin site and the overall level of play.

1-2: +$6,752 over 462h30m = $14.6/hr aka. 7.3bb/hr. ... which I was recently informed by my accountant is less than minimum wage.

2-5: +$553 over 71h40m

over the last few months, I've made a comeback of sorts to poker after more than a year away. thankfully I ran pretty well and in conjunction with all of the best regs going to higher stakes private games meaning the game feels a lot softer. But...sample size

67.5 total hours at 2/5-10 (1000) +5847. Well...probably 10 hours of 2/3 (500) in here tbh but I only take a note of the hours and the win/loss

my plan is to aim to play a session per week next year. Likely 5ish hours. I will also be heading to Vegas in June if life permits to fritter my ill gotten gains away in Senior's MTTs! If I could get 300 total hours in, that would be terrific.

Failed at my goal of 500 hours live this year (mostly due to several home games I played in that stopped running), but the best year financially I've had in live cash since I played for a living (albeit still peanuts)

I hit a big downswing at 1/2 to end the year, with a mix of running into coolers/not being able to get any c-bets through/whiffing in tons of 3b+ pots, but still mostly happy with my play. I'm sure I ran well to a degree, but I somehow caught a lot of massive punts on the river in $1k+ pots this year, after rarely getting into those spots in previous years. I guess I game-selected well?

Only my local spreads 1/3, which I've historically gotten destroyed in, albeit in a small sample size (~$3k in ~180 hours). Didn't help that in that span, I've lost AA aipf in 3 spots for >$1k each time. If I want to get hours, I'll need to play there more often and win!

Most hours are 1/2, small size of 1/3, the rest were lower-stakes home games.

My 2025 giraffe and cumulative stats:

If I don't count my lol sample size Covid years, a solid 3rd worse year ever at 1/3 NL. Was mired at a single digit winrate for about ~half the year until I rebounded to somewhat respectability in the second half. If I include my single high hand bonus of the year (of $433) it improves things slightly to $17.58/hr... or almost minimum wage in my parts, lol @ me, ldo.

Honestly, kinda thought I'd be rocking the mid-teens winrate after my horrendous 2017/2015 years but mostly have managed to somehow stave that off. Not sure if this is just a blip over a lol sample size or more a sign of things to come... although my guess being the latter. The last time my cumulative winrate was below $20/hour was on September 27, 2011, but I have a legit chance at doing that this year.

Also have to really lol @ sample size variance. In my first five months of the year, I ran at 1.65 bb/hr over 191.67 hours, I suck @ pokr. In my last seven months of the year, I ran at 8.26 bb/hr over 275.42 hours, I'm perfectly adequate @ pokr. Lol @ us live sample size players.

GcluelessrecreationalpokernoobG

My local casino is running what to me seems like one of the best sustained promotions and curious what we think this is worth in terms of hourly rate. In January from 10am to 2pm Tuesday through Thursday, $500 instantly paid for any high hand of Aces full or better, must play 2 cards in your hand (but any pocket pair on an AAA board would qualify). Hand does not have to go to showdown and multiple people can win on same hand.

What do people think this is worth hourly? Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but my gut says that I could expect Aces full or better every 25 - 50 hours or so, so this might be worth $10 - $20 an hour? Given I'm playing 1-3, this seems very good.

Do they take anything from each pot to cover the promo costs?

If not, obviously freerolling, so whatever, awesome.

Otherwise, it would depend on the size of the drop (and perhaps to some extent what action, if any, it generates). My room's been running a high hand promo for the last 2.5 years (seven categories of quads / straight flushes, only first one hit in the day wins it, each accumulate until hit and are then reset, where $1 is dropped in each pot that reaches $15). I've only won two for a total of $680 over the ~1000 hours I've played during this period. If I assume I win 2 hands per hour and thus donate $2 per hour to the drop, that means I'm stuck $1320 on the promo during this time (although I'm also assuming I'm running far below EV given the number of high hands all the other regs have won). Although it's also (very) debatable whether I make that up in profit due to loose preflop opponent calls that otherwise wouldn't have been made.

GcluelesspromonoobG

So ... using psql in PPT Odds Oracle, I think your chance of hitting AAA22 or better by the river is:

20% range: ~0.61%. So the max bonus is ~$3.05 per hand.

60% range: ~0.46%. So the max bonus is ~$2.30 per hand.

That doesn't take into account that you need to play both cards, and that you need to win the hand (I assume multiple people can win with KK on AAAxx, not that KK and QQ both win the bonus on that board).

Would assume that winning the hand is a much more significant problem playing a 60% range, and also playing that wide likely means you are playing hands that are going to lose more than you gain in bonus.

Math/psql might be off above, and not sure off hand how to discount from max to realistic ... but assuming my math/psql is correct then:

At 30 hands an hour, it's only _max_ ~$18 extra.

Seems likely that's way too much money for them to be giving away though, and they aren't getting much benefit from people playing 60% ranges where they'd give out more.

tl;dr Probably the easiest way to get a decent approximation would be see how much money is given out per hour on average and then divide by number of players. #nomath

For reference, with the giant $2,026 an hour high hand promo at Mohegan Sun on NY day they had a full room of qualifying tables for most of it ... which is 33*9=297 players. Which is ~$6.82 per player per hour. Then they take an extra $1 per flop for promo. drop (which they mgmt fee 10% of), and "everyone" tips %10 of the HH ... so that was directly worth more like $5 an hour per player.

That was a 10 hour promo. and yours is roughly an 80 hour promo. ... so unless they have to get rid of a lot of money (or poker room management screwed up) I would be pretty sus. of it being over $5/hr.