QUESTION: When are you "beating" a stakes level?

When I see people post a sentence that includes "beating XXX NL", I wonder at what point is it widely considered that one is "beating" a stakes level.

- Is it based on a certain percentage of winning sessions over a certain period of time?

- Is it based on a certain amount of profit? Number of buy-ins won? BB or bb per 100 hands? per hour? per day? per month?

- Or is it just "winning" and not "losing" or "breaking even"? If your profit is +$.01, are you "beating" your stakes level?

I could be beating my stakes level and not even know it. Opinions, please.

IMO, for cash games, beating a stakes level would mean the following.

1) A sustained profit, shown in terms of BB/100 over a minimum of 10,000 hands.

2) The cash value of that profit must be greater than the cash value of the profit earned at tthe previous level.

This allows you to judge your level of play and factor in for your style of play. So although as your BB/100 may (probably will) decrease as the stakes increase, the cash value of BB/100 should still be increasing.

Another way of saying this is if you earned more at a lower level then you cannot be considered to be beating the higher level.

# winning/losing sessions is completely irrelevant. Your BB/100 is equivalent to your $$/hour when you adjust for your hands/hr, $$/day (hours/day*$$/hour), and month and buy-ins won (50BB = buy in). And so it is just used to gauge how well you are "beating" a level.

As for number of hands, I'd say you need probably 30k, unless you are crushing the level and not running extremely hot. It then depends on factors such as number of tables you are playing (more tables = less win rate/100 normally but your $$/hr might be more since your hands/hr is more).

If you are able to say run at 3BB/100 at 500 hands/hr, you are probably beating a level fairly well. It depends on stakes, however, because to beat 0.10/0.25 or 0.25/50 for 3BB/100 means that there is a large room for improvement, because these levels are chock full of very poor players. Whereas if you were beating 2/4 for 3BB/100 you are doing extremely well indeed.

But ultimately it doesn't really matter if you are "beating" a level or not. Try to find a level where you can handle the swings and have a decent win rate.

Ultimately, the ONLY thing that matters at the end of the day is $$/hr (ie. BB/hr). So if you get 1000 hands/hr in at 2BB/100, you are doing a better job than if you were winning at 10BB/100 while only playing 150 hands/hr.

uhhhh, BUMP

for me beating a level is winning, even if it is only a small ammount

crushing is obv winning alot lol

I would say anything positive over say 50K hands. If it's close say .5BB/100 you may still be a long-term loser but you should be close after a 50K sample.

Pretty much what Feitr said.

Well reading this tells me I need to learn so much more about the ins and outs of this game POKER.. I will just keep reading

I go mainly by how many buy-ins you have for whatever limit you're playing. If you go from having 50 buy-ins to 70-80 buy-ins in a few months, I'd say your beating the game. Of course if your not making any profit your obviously not beating the game.

I'm wondering this myself. I'm comfortable on $1 SNGs, but -- as was pointed out to me -- the $2 ones have a much less brutal rake/fee. So is the level of competition appreciably different there? I haven't played enough hands to know my ROI.

No. The level of competition between 1$ and 2$ sngs is not appreciably different. Same players.

IMO I would say if you can sit down at a $x/$x table and show a profit consistently, then you are beating that level. I’m not meaning that you are winning a couple bucks here, losing some, then winning that back, but rather sitting down winning, leaving the table, coming back another day winning ect.
For example, you start out with $20 and are playing a .10/.20 table, two months later you have $5,000 in your account, I would say you are beating .10/.20 stakes and could move up in stakes. (Just an example, no real math or calculations)

I see your point, you could win just as much money in 200 hands as you can in 20000 hands.