FAQ:"What’s a good win rate for X limit? If you’re winning, be happy."

[bfactor]

This makes no sense to me. Why is it generally considered to be weird or illogical to ask what a terrible, bad, medium bad, medium, medium good, good, great, excellent, and world class long term winrate would be for heads-up nlhe. I mean, in the SNG forums you constantly see people discussing what kinds of ROI's seem to be normal and acheivable for a player of such and such skill level, and it kind of makes sense that human beings discuss this.

Think about it... say you were in college and you were trying to major in something so that you could go get a job in that field when you graduated. Say you were an electrical engineering major. Say you made a post like this, in some electrical engineering forum:

Hey guys. I just graduated from college with an electrical engineering degree, what would a good realistic salary be for me if I graduated in the top 5% of my class. Thanks.

Would these responses seem normal or logical to you?:

Re: Salary:

Hey, if you are making more than $0 a year, you should be happy. Any positive salary is a good salary.

Re2: Salary:

Hey, don't focus on what a normal and acheivable salary is for you, just try to focus on the day to day tasks and hope that you get paid a salary



Lol, as you can see, these would be kinda silly responses in this similar scenario, yet for some reason, everyone seems to think these are the types of responses they should give in winrate discussions.

I strongly disagree with this fad, and I hope that one day people can grow up and be willing to talk about this taboo subject. I mean, porn used to be taboo, and now its not, well kinda not, and now I can look at hot asian chicks on teh interweb. See, getting rid of taboos is fun. Come on guys, who's with me!!?!?? Lolz.

-bfactor

[Somekid]

I think people talk about ROI on here a fair amount. Also in poker, the overwhelming majority of people lose money. So the comparison you make to people talking about salaries, where everybody makes money (I hope), doesn't really work.

[bfactor]

Uh, the analogy totally works though, because just like in poker, the vast majority of people will fail at getting a high paying professional job, like being an engineer etc.

Most people will end up doing something like being a gardener, a plumber, a trash man, a waiter, a small time construction worker, bottom level employee at some large company etc etc etc. Most people DO NOT end up being a lawyer/doctor/engineer/scientist/etc. Just like how in poker you need to do a lot of studying, get a lot of experience, be intelligent, be patient, blah blah blah the same goes for getting a high class dayjob, its the same thing. So although for most people the answer would be "gl holmes you'll probably fail" the answer for people who actually went to college, studied hard, did internships etc is kinda different from the answer for the avg person. This is because the latter described person actually put themselves in a position to not fail, and now they wanna know how much money is normal for someone LIKE THEM to make. I thought the analogy worked fine, but I guess I could be wrong.

-bfactor

[PenixSkeet]

I completely agree with you here bfactor.

We are both trying to figure out what our win rate should be for HU SNGs. It doesn't seem like a difficult question.

We come here for help, and don't exactly get a lot of it.
Your analogy is head on.

I'm going to do some looking on the interweb I'll PM you with any win rates I can find, if you don't mind the PM obv.

[bfactor]

I actually don't care much about hu sngs personally. I already know about hu sng roi's as I did research on it in the past, so I know what kinds of longterm ROI's are normal for various skill levels etc. What I DO NOT know much about is winrate for hu nl CASH GAMES. I can't find anything on it anywhere.

So far I've looked for the following, and have NEVER found anything interesting yet:

1. A pokertracker graph with 100,000+ hands of strictly heads up nlhe cash game hands. I haven't seen one yet. I'd love to though.

2. Any reasonable/intelligent discussion of hu nlhe cash game longterm winrate. Keyword(s) = reasonable/intelligent


I won't lie. This kind of bothers me. I want to know more stuff lol.

-bfactor

[mb6tour]

[ QUOTE ]
1. A pokertracker graph with 100,000+ hands of strictly heads up nlhe cash game hands. I haven't seen one yet. I'd love to though.


[/ QUOTE ]

sbrugby/aba20 prolly have one, and as far as I know you have a reasonable chance of him providing it to analisys, specially if you are CR member.

[ChicagoRy]

[ QUOTE ]
I completely agree with you here bfactor.

We are both trying to figure out what our win rate should be for HU SNGs. It doesn't seem like a difficult question.

We come here for help, and don't exactly get a lot of it.
Your analogy is head on.

I'm going to do some looking on the interweb I'll PM you with any win rates I can find, if you don't mind the PM obv.

[/ QUOTE ]

Keep searching the "interweb" your answer was most recently given a few posts away from this one.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=0#Post12820017

[Collin Moshman]

As somekid notes:

[ QUOTE ]
Also in poker, the overwhelming majority of people lose money.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now you're right -- if you want a career playing HU SNGs, then a +.01% ROI would be pretty weak. But if you're playing with other motives as well, such as testing your skills, having fun, etc. (see the chart in Dr. Al's Psychology of Poker) then anything better than break-even really is good.

From a strictly career/profit perspective, I'm pretty sure we've had some decent discussion here on realistically attainable winrates at the different stakes.

-- Collin