When Do You Know You're Beating This Game?

[BigDan9]

I was tempted to post this in the B,B & V section, (forgive me for not doing), but I really wanted to get the views of regular small (and medium) stakes limit players.

My question is how many hands you need to get under your belt before you can realistically conclude what your BB/100 win rate is.

I've been playing 3/6-5/10 limit poker for a year or so now, just a few hours per week, but have only been using Poker Tracker for the last three months. I've played around 12,000 hands in that time and, having hovered between 1.4BB and 1.7 BB for a while, my stats have recently plunged to a new low of just under 1.00BB after a horrific session last weekend. I know that 'variance nightmares' have to be accepted, but at what point can I realistically conclude that my win rate is (or isn't!) in the 1.5-2.0 range that it should be?

[kendal14]

You will get varying opinions from:

"You don't need stats to know if you are beating the game" to "You need at least 1 billion hands to reasonably sure".

For what it's worth, I do you think you have too few hands to make a judgement. I think a minimum of 30K (and maybe even 50K) hands will give you a good idea. There used to be a lot of posts regarding this and someone (i forget who) came up with a very useful process for determining your win rate within a given confidence interval based on your real life stats.

Hope that helps.

[nooob]

check homer's thread.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...&PHPSESSID=

you'll need an obscene number of hands to be that confident.