How long a track record is "enough"?

This may sound a fairly basic question, but I'd appreciate your comments.

After about a month now, I'm running at 5.05 PTBB/100 in NLH. Throughout the run my winrate has been between 4 and 6 PTBB so variance don't seem like it's out of control. Out of 25k hands 90% is in 0.25/0.50 and 10% in 0.50/1.00. All-in EV is a tiny bit higher than net earnings. PFR is between 8-9%. Still learning to use PokerTracker here, but that surely gives you an idea.

I'm debating if I should move up a level. My questions are very simple.

1) Is 25k hands much of a track record yet? Would I be a total dork if based on that I would think I might know how to play just a little bit, or is 25k still a very small sample subject to luck? Yeah, I'm no stats wizard..

2) What other considerations for moving up levels?

Many thanks.

Well, 25K isn't a TINY amount of hands, but a bit of run good in there and the absence of too much run bad... Well, it can be misleading. You could have 1000 hands that could totally change your winrate. Are these your very first 25K hands in online poker at all? It sounds to me that by even posting this you're not completely secure and comfortable in the knowledge that you can totally crush these games even in the face of bad variance. BRM is an obvious consideration, it becomes exponentially important as you move up, there's loads of crap on BRM written everywhere. Oh and, your PFR is too low.

Bankroll. Are you rolled to move up?

Sample is too small to judge winrate but as the others have said if you're rolled for it move up.

I have about 220K hands at 50nl. I've won at 3BB/100 overall but I've had a 40K break even stretch and a 20K hand down turn in there.

Yeah put more volume in, once you've around 75k-100k hands you'll know better, especially with such a low PFR. You can easy have a 25k semi-heater.

Looks like you're doing OK though so keep on grinding

Feedback, nice, thank you. Few brought up BRM which I forget to comment completely and yes I've done my homework there on what's considered an adequate roll. No issues there.

Is PFR 8.5% really a semi-nit? PT average seems to be at 10.3 at my levels. Having said that, I do have a style of play where I really like to take initiative in pots thinking why just call when you can raise and "take control" of the pot. Also, from position I often raise with semi-garbage hands. Then again, if the hand and/or position dont allow raising, I rather just fold than call I guess. According to PT (Details tab, bottom part) I fold 80% preflop, call 8-9%, raise 8-9% and check 2%. Can anyone comment if those stats are in line with how I described my preflop play? What would be a good way to get comments and interpretation help on PT stats?

And yep, those would be my first ever 25k online hands, got some live experience though.

So you're VPIP is what like 17? So you're a 17/9/? What's you agg. factor?

Please don't take this the wrong way but if you where at my table with those stats over a decent sample I'd likely label you a fish. Doesn't mean you are, you might be great postflop but your stats are at least a bit unorthodox. Obviously it's working for you so far but if you do hit a bit of a downswing you might want to reevaluate the game before dismissing it as variance.

Yeah +1 to Hillbilly here...

Edit: Sorry, this got pretty long... Basically all of the stuff below is me trying to help with giving you a reason to play more hands, and pointing you in the right direction for if you feel a bit lost with trying to widen your range

I've been where you are though man, and these are the things that you will most likely need to take into consideration and work on with regard to your game:

1) Table selection: No high VPIPers on your left, that's -EV, you want the fish on your right, table selection is huge. Get the high VPIP fish on your right, nits on your left if possible, that way you can steal lots of blinds, this is +PFR+VPIP for you. Every time the fish on your right LIMP, you ISO-RAISE. If they fold to c-bets a lot (check HUD), you can iso-raise with a wider range (+PFR+VPIP) and aggress to take down the pot on many flops, which leads me onto my next point...

2) Board Textures & Villain Ranges: Once you know how to read a board and villains' ranges, you're pretty much all set, this allows you to confidently play a wider range of hands. Atm you're playing mostly your best hands. If you know how to react to different board textures, and how to assign a range to your villain properly, you can BALANCE the top of your range with lesser hands but still rep the same strong holdings vs. the right opponents. This means you'll get paid off more vs. the right opponents (by being loose enough), and you'll also command enough respect vs. the right opponents in this regard (by not being too loose). Initiative, initiative, initiative. Initiative is huge. That's all I'll say about initiative.

3) Betting and Not Betting: Post-flop, you always need to be asking yourself "Can I get a better hand to fold?" and "Can I get a worse hand to call?" when it comes to your betting decisions. You've most likely heard this before, but just practise thinking these questions to yourself when it comes to every single betting decision. Obviously you need to be able to put your opponent on a range of hands, so this goes with point number 2. Positional dynamic is huge when it comes to betting decisions, also. Oh and... "Do I have the initiative?" - Lol.

4) 3-Betting Strategy: I can't really be bothered getting into this in any detail, but a solid 3-betting strategy is vital for anything above 25NL, and useful at 25NL and under. Look into this. Positional dynamic is also huge when it comes to marginal/important 3-betting decisions.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit patronising like I think I'm a total expert or something, obviously you're a winning player over the 25K hands you've played, and at the lower stakes it can often be as simple as waiting for hands and getting value from them, and that's all good, but if your aim is to move up the stakes and at times where your variance isn't good and you're wondering what you can do to really start crushing levels and to be able to crush the top end of the micro and low stake games with a healthy red line (non-showdown winnings) that can oftentimes counter-act some of those all in bad beats that we get, then look to these areas of your game. For a player who is well versed in all of the above, his PFR is never below 15. I ordered these points in order of importance, but 2 and 3 were pretty close, could easily swap them round. Oh and... Position and Initiative.

Hillbilly: Thanks for the additional comment. Assuming I'm interpreting PT correctly I'm a 15/8.5/4.2 (total aggression factor which breaks down into 1.0 pf, 4.4 flop, 3.7 turn, 4.3 riv). That mean anything to you?

Madtom: Very informative, so informative that it's actually gonna take me a while to sink all that in and implement. Can't even begin to thank you enough. Another quick question: if I scale my net winnings to 1.00, my red line is approx at 1.80, and my blue line at -0.8. Does that support your theory at all?

This forum rocks.

So I assume you're open limping preflop with small pairs and probably not 3betting very much (what's your 3bet %?). Probably should think about cutting out the open limps entirely. Looks like you're very aggressive postflop though with lots of ch/raising and 3 street betting I would assume. This is fine as long as you're not getting spewy with it too often.

I too am a redline (NSD) junky. My blueline (SD) is negative. It's because of our aggressive style postflop. We get tons of folds (and likely miss out on some value) but when we do get to SD our opponents generally have very strong hands thus the blueline suffers. It's really a matter of postflop style and as long as the greenline is good who cares.

Honestly the best strategy for your opponents is probably to make hands and call you down using your aggression against you.

1) My total 3bet-% is 4.9 (preflop 4.1).

2) Yes I'm trying to be very aggressive postflop. Maybe I should try to move that initiative to start more preflop. To be honest, I THOUGHT I WAS taking a lot of initiative preflop, but you guys are starting to convince me otherwise with the stats interpretation. And I welcome that notion 100%, I gotta work on that. And yes, I do get tons of folds, and no, I don't have ANY problems firing also on the river with air if I sense weakness. Often it seems to work

3) It's ridicilous how accurate that is.

Do you think such postflop aggression we seem to both use might not work as well at higher stakes? Hell, I don't even know where you play..

I play at FTP. You?

For comparison only because stats don't really mean shit, I'm 16/13/3 and what people generally consider "good stats" (read: standard stats) have a vpip/pfr difference of 2 or 3. Important to note that there are huge winners with non-standard stats and plenty of TAGfish losers with beautiful preflop stats.

As for moving up, I've struggled mightily at 100nl and I really think it's more spew than anything. Seems like at 50nl and below people are less likely to look me up without the nuts when I bet big on the river but at 100nl I find more people who can read a hand better and if my story doesn't add up I get lots more calls with medium strength hands. That's not such a great thing when you're fos.

Also if you're going to stick around introduce yourself in the monthly Cash game thread and check out the HA posts.

Yeah I'll check out the monthly thread too, and hey thanks again for getting on my case both you and madtom. Really helpful thoughts. You'll see me at FTP nl100 as a regular soon enough.

hey tom, sorry i hav'nt contacted you on msn yet. i will after the weekend i have just been busy. i would really like your advice and opinion on my game as i feel like im doing most things right and my postflop skills are decent but im still breaking even after like 12k hands. would really appreciate your help and i will get in touch with you after th weekend.

brody