How many hands before I know I'm a winning player?

[Banzai]

I just recently started playing LHE "seriously" online. I decided to buy Pokertracker and really chart my progress. I have a job, wife and 2 young kids so I only get to play short sessions a few times a week.

I mostly try and play 5/10 or 3/6 at WPEX but also sometimes at Pokerstars and I have a few dollars in Party where I will play if the games at WPEX are dry.

I choose to play at WPEX because it is believed by many to be the toughest site to play at and I want to be competing in the toughest games going to find out if I'm a winning player or not and how high I can play if I am.

So, how many hands do I need to play before I can establish with reasonable confidence I am a winning player?

Is it thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands?

[sanmarcosrun1]

at the very very least about 50,000 hands could give you an idea that you are a winning player but still for limit holdem can be way off your true winrate. Concentrate more on analyzing hands from your poker tracker to fix leaks in your game and the results will follow. Concentrate more on making the right decisions as variance can lead to overestimated or underestimated results.

[KurtSF]

Could someone pull out the Standard Deviation and Confidence Intervals maths to help this guy out. Thanks.

Suffice to say its tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. The more you win, the fewer hands it will take to be "sure".

My advise is to try to constantly improve your game and keep grinding.

[johnnyrocket]

atleast 50K, usually way more, you really just need to feel it, some players play over 1 million hands then get great after, this question is too broad to have a real answer

[uDevil]

http://www.castrovalva.com/~la/win.htm

[reddred]

"I choose to play at WPEX because it is believed by many to be the toughest site to play at and I want to be competing in the toughest games going to find out if I'm a winning player or not and how high I can play if I am."

Slightly off topic, but being a winning player is not about beating the toughest out there (whether WPEX is, I don't know), but about selecting opponents/stakes that you have an edge in. I'm a winning player b/c I try to play people who don't play as good as me, and mostly avoid those opponents/stakes I have no edge in. Build your roll, and take measured shots at higher stakes/tougher opponents whenever you feel ready.

[YourAce]

I am in a similar situation; I work FT and have a wife and a 2 yr old daughter. How I gauge if I am a winning player is if I, for the most part, walk away from a cession with a positive return.

The dollar amount gauge would be what your goal is each session \ week \ month, and do you meet these goals consistently. The more hands you play, the more experience you will gain, but you can’t compare your winnings \ hand played versus the player who plays full time and is a winning player.

IMO – set goals, track your results, and determine if you are a winning player!!!!

Good Luck.

[Banzai]

Thanks for the input guys, it looks like 50K hands is a reasonable target to establish if I'm a winning player.

Regarding winning vs tough games: maybe I should have said I want to become a top LHE player and a way I believe I can achieve this is to play in the toughest games available at the limits I am rolled for.

I plan to play 1 night per week for 3 hours, I only single table so I'm looking at ~300 hands per session. I want to achieve a win rate of 2BB/100 so I will stop at either 6BB profit or the 300 hands whichever comes sooner.

[KurtSF]

Banzai, I respect your desire to become a top LHE player. Everything else in your posts is absurd. Is this a gimmick account?

[Shoot59]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the input guys, it looks like 50K hands is a reasonable target to establish if I'm a winning player.

Regarding winning vs tough games: maybe I should have said I want to become a top LHE player and a way I believe I can achieve this is to play in the toughest games available at the limits I am rolled for.

I plan to play 1 night per week for 3 hours, I only single table so I'm looking at ~300 hands per session. I want to achieve a win rate of 2BB/100 so I will stop at either 6BB profit or the 300 hands whichever comes sooner.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are going to play only 3 hours/week, you should learn to multitable as soon as possible. Also, quitting when you get ahead 6BB is not going to help your game. You might win the first hand and then what? done for the night? Play as well as you can for 3 hours, experiment with playing more than one table, and don't fret over the results of any one session.