[Bobo Fett]

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Mathematic Expectation. and Hourly rate.

I never really think of this. It’s hard to understand how I can look at a game and tell how much money he can make per average hour. Does anybody do this? Explain.

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At times Sklansky talks about calculating an hourly rate by determining how many times opponents will make incorrect plays in an hour, then later he suggests it is difficult to do this as one can't always make the perfect play. I think there are too many variables involved to make such a simplistic calculation, but the idea of knowing my hourly rate is relevant to me in three ways:

1) Thinking in terms of hourly rate is one thing that seperates the "hobbyist" from the pro or semi-pro. When you are playing for a hobby, winnings are still what you strive for, but in a different way. Someone who plays as a hobby might take a lot of pride in, for example, taking a $50 free bankroll and running it up to $2,000 in 6 months. To someone who makes a living at the game, that's likely to be a pretty poor 6 months.

2) For me, my goals are generally about increasing my hourly win rate. Some months I may not be able to play as much as others, but if my win rate is still good, I'm happy.

3) Thinking of the game this way is very beneficial psychologically. One or two or even several big wins or losses don't matter; all that matters is that are you making what you want to per hour in the long term.

When Sklansky goes on to talk about hourly expectations at different tables, this is something most of us do, but not usually in quite the same way. Table selection is all about choosing tables that will result in the greatest hourly expectation, but I sure don't try to calculate my hourly rate at each table. Less sharks, more fish = good table...of course, that's a little simplified.

However, I DO calculate my hourly expectation from site to site and decide where to play based on that information. That's not based on individual players however, but on overall player strength + bonus + RB, etc.