Winrates, bankrolls, and finances

Makes sense. I e been playing for 20 years. Onky been tracking for the past few when able to play. Been playing 2/5 to 5/10 most of that time. Never gone busto. Just life took
Me away from the game.

I was siting at the table Wednesday with what I used to think was a tough lineup. But was able to navigate well and only pick on the weak players. Also noted the full time pros and crushers really didn’t get involved with me as I didn’t with them. And this has been a recent observation. So was thinking. Do I belong on this player pool? (5/10 btw)

So I checked stats and saw I crossed the 500 hour mark at 5/10 and was curious. Hence the question

Are 15000 hands enough to figure out your win rate? Because that's what 508 hours is.

500 hours live is not enough regardleass of how you put it,its just way too much that can happen in regards to variance in such a stretch.

Winning players can go on 200 hour losing stretches,or even 300-400 hour breakeven stretches. Its not often it happens,but it sure is possible.

In the recent year we had a massive gambool whale go on a super heater.I dont have the amount of hours precisely,but between 200 and 300 hours where he absolutely destroyed the games. His extreme positive variance manifested in a way that he ran off the charts hot in all the big pots he played. Small/medium pots he could lose,but when like 500 BB went into the middle he shipped it. I can tell you it was unreal witnessing this session after session after session.This was in half/half games NL/PLO,so the variance in PLO pots is alot more crazy. I am just mentioning it as a reminder on what is possible in terms of swings.

Started my 2018 with an almost 600 hour break-even stretch playing one of the softest 25/50 games ever. Couldn't string together more than 2 winning sessions Jan to March. Luckily for me I basically lived in the casino and 600 hours was 3 months worth of poker(couldn't do that now lol).

That is absolutely brutal.I havent experienced quite 600 hours myself going nowhere,but around 400.Hope i never have to go through something like that again,or that it will be years until it happens again.

Bottomline is:you dont understand how brutal stretches is possible in livepoker until you might experience it for yourself one day. Or you might quit playing before you come out on the other side,because it is that soul crushing.

If I could play 150,000 hands in 500 hours, I would put it differently!

And if I could put 1.5 million hands in 500 hours, I would feel very confident that my observed winrate is very close to my true win rate!

Kind of a free fun tool to visualize variance from Phil Galfond

https://www.philgalfond.com/variance

The zones of uncertainty are brutal.

First image is all the data on my phone (4 yrs or so), second is past couple years after changing up my game a bit.

What stakes? Times of day, raked or unraked?

Speaking of variance, it wasn't until I took a look at my 1000 sessions @ 1/3 giraffe above that I really noticed that semi-recent ~flatline, so I investigated.

From the beginning of June 2024 thru the end of May 2025, I won at a clip of 2.73 bb/hr over 439.83 hours. Obviously I suck at pokr.

Since May 2025, I've won at a clip of 9.4 bb/hr over 449.66 hours. Obviously I'm a top 5 player in my room.

All in the exact same game at the exact same steaks in the exact same player pool.

And if I don't include yesterday's session in that recent run (where I booked my biggest loss in 1.5 years), my winrate over that time jumps a whole 0.5 bb/hr to 9.9 bb/hr.

The fickleness of results over lol live rec yearly sample sizes cannot be overstated, imo.

Ggoodlucktousall,imoG

so that begs the question. why bother keeping stats

If I didn't keep stats, I would literally have no idea whether the method I'm using likely makes me a winner versus ~breakeven versus a loser in the game. I'm fairly confident the stats suggest I'm a winner, but far less confident as to what degree.

GcluelessstatcollectingnoobG

The thing that stood out to me about your giraffe is how smooth the upward climb is. I don't see any noticeable extended downswings! Could that be due to the scale, like if we zoom in are there any downswing of say 10BIs?

but what if the method your using just happens to be during a good variance stretch (or the opposite if it isnt "working")

to me. either the stats are accurate to depict you are a winner or they aren't; I feel sample size is LOL (to an extent...anything under ~250 hours isnt enough). what if Garret A. is just in a really long upswing...or the top pros just happen to be in a lifelong upswing and haven't experienced . the negative downswing.

or what about the players that when starting just started on the downswing variance. so they quit. never getting to experience the upswing that would make them an overall winner

either your a winner by stats or a loser by stats. i think you guys like to move the goal posts to fit your narrative.

I could be totally off. but. money talks. if you are +$$ from playing regardless of hours played (again to an extent) you are a winner.

feel free to roast me. I just find it interesting to think of the sample size in another way

and as a note. I THINK I'm a winning player.....I've been playing since 1998 and would definitely have stopped playing if i was dumping money all the time.

Some of y'all are being silly, you don't have to treat variance like some unknowable spooky boogieman. Any halfway decent database program (even just an excel sheet where you input the excel functions yourself) will give you total hours, winrate/hour, and stdev/hour. From there you can extrapolate margin of error for any period of time with some pretty simple math

In my approaching 7000 hours of 1/3 NL, I've had two downswings of exactly $2866. One I did pre Super Nit method when my BI was $300, so 9.6 BI. The other I did just after I started my Super Nit method where my BI is now $200, so 14.3 BI. IIRC, I did at least one other decent downswing of about ~8 BI in my pre Super Nit method days.

But, yeah, since going to my Super Nit method in 2017, I've actually only been on the one downswing, where I lol consider a downswing being $1500 = 7.5 BI. I've come close a handful of other times but never officially booked one. You could argue it caps my winrate but it seems to provide a relatively variance free ride overall. Cue doomswitch, ldo (I'm actually about halfway to a downswing in just my last 2 sessions, lol).

GcluelessvariancefreenoobG

You asked whether 508 hours is enough to get an idea of winrate. You got some responses. Make of those responses what you will.

I posted my 1000 sessions @ 1/3 NL giraffe above (which was around ~6900 hours). 6900 hours for a pro would only be about 3.5 years (but for me as a rec it's more like ~16 years). For an on-line player it's probably closer to a Tuesday afternoon, lol. I'm fairly convinced the giraffe shows me as a winner and I'm not just some huge outlier, but I've already given a couple examples of much larger sample sizes than 500 hours within my own fairly steady giraffe that are vastly different. Again, make of that what you will when it comes to having confidence in the number you are currently rocking at your hours.

FWIW (and to your point about some winning players never moving past an initial downswing), I started out my tracked poker journey in 2006 by playing 2/4 Limit. After 137 hours, I was stuck $1201 and feeling like a huge degenerate gambloorer. I'm not exactly sure when I would have pulled the plug on my poker journey, but it likely would have been at the $2000 mark, a mere $800 away. But I lucked out, didn't hit that magic -$2000, and here I am 20 years and $185K (across all steaks + a BBJ) later.

GcluelessluckboxnoobG

How much do you all factor in venues vs. stakes when calculating win rates?

Is it the same number of hours in a specific cardroom as opposed to at a stake?

I notice I have drastically different win rates in certain rooms vs. others that I can't help but chalk up to the player pool (playing similar hours across all rooms)

nooooo. dont misread my playing devils advocate as a way to determine my own winning/losing....was just trying to find a reasoning behind all of it.

6900 hours is 1000% enough of a sample to make a determination.

its like the 1000 AB's in baseball. one year can be a fluke (~500 AB's) but two years for putting up numbers...is a good indication of the players ability.

again. this sint pertaining to me.

but to cherry pick 500 hours from a 6000 hour sample is a dumb argument. there HAS to be an hour threshold where you can determine with pretty close accuracy a winner vs a loser. (now determining big winner vs little winner or loser different story)

I think 500 hours is more than enough. and if its wrong because it was an upswing in variance...oh well. thats how it goes....but stats are stats. what if i never played poker again. I played 508 hours and am up $34k (actual stats)

was I a winning player? 99.9% of people in the world would say 100% because i have 34,000 reasons more than be fore i started playing. how about here? would you say no cause its ONLY 500 hours? that would be silly. its not like i sat one hand vs. Johnny Chan, rasied and re-raised...he mucks and i wracked up and never played again. that would be "got lucky"

I have stats on 4 rooms. 2 of which i have played 200 hours in each. they are almost identical +$$ the only diffeence is slight % of sessions won.

m biggest change of hourly is Day of the week played. Mondays and Sundays Im in the red. could be player pool...my mood.....the variance we speak of....vibe in the room...who knows

What are you asking/arguing? I can't tell if I am just not understanding or if you're being difficult for no reason. This all started with ''is 500 hours enough'' and the answer is kind of but also no, then GG posted a few times giving fairly good insight into variance. I have no idea what you're playing devil's advocate for.

Do you need someone to tell you you're doing well? Being up 34k after 500 hours is great. Good job, you're almost certainly a winner.

Just like the previous discussions regarding variance, unless you have massive hours at differing locations, it could easily be simple variance.

I'm too lazy to do this again, but ~fairly recently I simply divided my results between odd numbered days and even numbered days. The difference wasn't massive but there was a small difference (which is obviously only due to variance).

Kinda ditto for back in the day when I had all my stats on an iPhone app (which I no longer do) and could easily breakdown my stats per day of week. I had some very big differences that didn't really seem to make that much sense (there really shouldn't be that much of a difference from one early in the week night versus another early in the week night), but again over lol ~700 hour each or whatever sample sizes. It was no coincidence that the day I had by far the most hours in (i.e. largest sample size) also started skewing most closely towards my overall winrate.

I mean, it likely ain't the difference between winning and losing for anyone with a solid winrate, but variance is most definitely a thing over lol sample sizes. And I'm guessing every on-line player rolls their eyes at every live player's sample size.

GcluelesssamplesizenoobG