How do you know if you're good?

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admb0m

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After having a bad run, I stopped playing for about 6 months. I started back about 4 months ago with 4 dollars in my account. I babied that up to 75 and back down to 20 many times over those months. In the past 2 weeks, I am up to about 450. I usually play a 25 or 50 cent no limit table and a 10 man SNG. Everything seems to be working. I am worried that it is just a streak. My stats are
hands won 13%
Showdowns 56% 12500 hands
Flops seen 23%
Win if see flop 35%
How do these stats seem to stack up?
I fold alot and slow play alot. Check call alot, too. I know this is not the prefered way to play. But I seem to get burned alot playingTAG.

Thanks,
admb0m
 
ChuckTs

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Usually your results over a large sample size are a pretty good indicator of how 'good' you are. Your results could be way over your expectation or way under, no way to tell with that small of a sample size.

Playing 50nl is WAY above your bankroll. Search some banrkoll management articles here.
 
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Dayne G.

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"HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU'RE GOOD?"

Hi admb0m,

I used to ask experienced players that all the time when I started, but looking back, it never mattered.

In the big picture, none of us are very good anyways... we should only be looking to Improve! Improve! Improve! Improve! There's no finish line, only the process. I play up to $60/120, but compared to the great $200/400 players, I'm just "ok"...

Try not to get bogged-down w/ whether or not you're "good," just keep getting better!

Good luck,
Dayne
 
naruto_miu

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You know that's a very good question, and the trueth, as dayne G had stated, know 1 is really good, but improving, but on another note as chuck Ts, had also said your sample is to small, now with that being said, I personally think, and don't tell him, cuz it might get to his head personally believe chuck is a good player, weather he thinks it or not, and I personally try to either match his style and yet I fail because he and only he can do it, so with that being said and done, I try to accomplish certain goals in poker, doesn't mean your "good", it just means improving, and everytime u play ur getting better at the game, hope this helps
 
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Michelle5000

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chuck and Dayne are spot on. Why such a rush?

What don't you try what i'm doing. However, i wouldn't recommend going as low as myself - atm 2/4c. Maybe play 10-15k of hands at 10/20c NL and see how you get on. If you win, put some money to oneside and try 25/50c and see if you can beat that level. If not, move back down.

Also u can experiment more and improve in the process at lower stakes. YOu can't really experiment with a large chunk of ur bankroll in play. It's probably affecting your game & making u timid. At 2/4c i can try to improve my reading and other areas. Then hopefully, if i do play higher i'll be all the better for it.
 
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mundybags1

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i don't know if this is the right thing to say in this post but i am going to say it anyways. i can't play less than .25/.50. maybe that says somthing about the way i am but i play a lot worse when i play them stacks. i play really lose aggressive to the point of stupidness. ok ok i know it sounds dumb but if i have 200$ in my account i will play .50/1.00 till i am either down to 50$ then go down till i am broke or win some money. i feel like i am good enough to play them stacks and i play tight aggressive and have done well with that. if i do go broke i will take a couple weeks off then play again. have only gone broke about 5 times over the past ten years, so i think i am doing ok.
 
burton_boy

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i feel like i am good enough to play them stacks

Unfortunately good enough doesn't matter much in our game. You will get unlucky and take some downswings from time to time and your BR simply doesn't allow you any room for that. If you find yourself donking around too much at lower limits try multi tabling, if you play too many hands it will get ridiculous. This should cause you to pick better spots and not go nuts since you are considering the limit to be beneath you.
Remember we all have to start somewhere. I just tried to make the move to $25nl and well, failed and went back to $10nl where I currently belong. No big deal, sure maybe it's not as much of a rush since the pot sizes aren't as large but oh well. I got over it and hopefully I'll get another shot here soon enough.
If you simply need to play the higher limits to have fun perhaps you are more in it to gamble than to play the game.
 
SavagePenguin

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Obviously being good or not depends on your definition of "good." I consider being a winning player (which is better than most players) to be good. I think anybody can be "good" if they put a little time and effort into it. IE, they put in a good amount of off-the-table learning time.

Now, of the 15% (or whatever the real number is... I'm just guessing at 15%) of players who are profitable, there varying degrees of "good." Personally, I'm at the not-so-good end of the spectrum.

How are you getting these stats? I assume you're using PokerTracker?

If you break even or make a profit at the ring games, you are better than average in ring games.

As far as seeing how you're doing at tournaments, plug your online ID into Officialpokerrankings and see what rating they give you. I think anything above 50% is better than average, but I'm not sure.

You can also try look at SharkScope. (Neither of these sites aren't 100% accurate, but they'll get you in the ballpark.)
 
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Egon Towst

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i don't know if this is the right thing to say in this post but i am going to say it anyways. i can't play less than .25/.50. maybe that says somthing about the way i am but i play a lot worse when i play them stacks. i play really lose aggressive to the point of stupidness. ok ok i know it sounds dumb but if i have 200$ in my account i will play .50/1.00 till i am either down to 50$ then go down till i am broke or win some money. i feel like i am good enough to play them stacks and i play tight aggressive and have done well with that. if i do go broke i will take a couple weeks off then play again. have only gone broke about 5 times over the past ten years, so i think i am doing ok.


You provided the answer to your own question right there. Patience and bankroll management are among the key skills which a "good" player must master. You have major leaks.

Compare (for example) Chris Ferguson, who can and does play equally well in a big-money televised tourney or in a micro-stakes online game.
 
KyleJRM

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The good thing about poker is you don't have to be the best!!!
]

But to consistently beat the rake, you have to be pretty darn good :)


To answer the original question: If you win money consistently over periods of 25k hands or more, you are good at the level you are playing. No excuses, no "I was winning until that downswing," no "Well, that's counting the shot I took at ..."

If your money goes up over the long haul, you are good.
 
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Pentecle

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I knew I was getting better at poker when the mistakes I made were about not optimising the money I made from a hand rather than mistakes which led to me getting knocked out of a tournie
 
KozakAlex

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This is how most of the players play. In my opinion, the usual level of the game. No surprise there. But you're a good player.
 
Rockyfour

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12500 hands is a sample size imo big enough to say whether you are a winning player or a losing player.

Like maybe you win after 12500 and are actually a losing player, but it becomes significantly more unlikely.
 
NWPatriot

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I personally would not worry too much about the sample size thing. Granted, in any statistical discussion, we want enough info to be reliable, but when folks start talking about needing 100,000 hands to have a good enough sample, I just don't buy it. If it takes me a year to hit 100,000 hands, I sure hope I was playing better at the end of the year than I was playing at the beginning of the year. But now my "stats" are now burdened with a bunch of bad data that no longer means anything, if I have improved my game.

ROI is all that matters. How we each achieved our ROI may be different, and that is OK. Primedope has a great variance calculator that will help you see how your current stats might play out over a statistical set of sessions.

When we have a solid ROI and move up in stakes, monitor your ROI and see if you are able to hold on to it. If it drops considerably, you have answered the first question - you now know you were good enough to win at stake xx, but are not good enough, yet, to consistently win at stake yy. "Good" can only be ascertained in context.

Don't forget to look at your bb/100 results at various stakes over various periods of time. This is a good piece of data for assessing performance as well.

Good luck and God bless.
 
Dimission

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I think if your money continues to grow and you often get far in tournaments? Then you have the perfect combination between luck, bluff and good play.
 
Datdude1

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Yo know your good when yiur skills and patience improves. Also you'll know your good when you start and continue to cash in on games and tournaments.
 
spectralwave

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1st Sign: You stopped playing hands just to end boredom A constant problem for amateurs is that they play differently when they are bored than when they have just finished playing. Almost all low-limit players have the boredom factor. In live poker, hands come slowly and gradually, and it is not common to get 20 or 30 bad hands in a row before the flop. This can mean 1 hour or 1 and a half hours without action. After giving up hand after hand, and after realizing that they could have spent that 1 hour doing something better, this type of player starts to get anxious. They start looking for reasons to play a hand, like "They think I'm conservative, so this is a good opportunity to bet", or "Sometimes it is necessary to force the action", or "You can't wait for the nuts" and so on. None of the above phrases have any logical reasons for playing a hand. At the moment it is no longer about profit, but boredom. Random cards are, of course, random, and if you take a long, bad straight, this is how it works.


2nd Sign: Do you find good reasons to stay in post-flop hands that you missed This is an important one. There are players who remain in many hands after missing the flop. They think that by paying more bets the saving card will be able to come and win the pot for them. Sometimes it works, but usually you end up losing money. However, that is not what I am talking about here.
What I mean is to be in the hands for the right reasons. Good poker players win more pots than average players, and the way they do it is by staying in the pot after the flop and finding ways to win them. However, this requires some judgment, as normally, in these situations, giving up will be the best choice. This way, you can know that you are getting better when you start to clearly see the types of hands you should stay in and in which you should fold.



3rd Sign: You have a clear idea of ​​the reasons behind the size of your poker bets Bet size is a very important tool in No-Limit Texas Hold'em poker to help us lose less and win more. Almost every bet or raise you make, especially on the turn and the river, requires some consideration for size. When you're not so good at the game, those decisions will seem confusing. “Should I bet high? Low? Maybe something in between? ”. Right now, your sense of understanding still offers you little sense of direction in that direction. When you start to realize that you are fully aware of why you are making such bets the size you are making, you can know that you are improving. This is especially true if you are able to abandon fear as an integral part of your decision-making process (most amateur players will bet small in certain situations just for the fear of losing chips, this is an extremely weak and exploitable trend, and also quite ordinary). So, if you realize that you are placing bets of different sizes on the turn and on the river, and that you are fully aware of the process that led you to choose those sizes and not those, you will definitely be improving.



4th Sign: You are more focused on playing your hands well than making money This leads to another trap that catches many amateur players. If they lose a big hand, they will already try to think of ways they could have played better.

Well, so far this is the process common to all poker players, good or bad. However, weaker players tend to focus on the wrong thing. They ask themselves, "How could I have prevented this great loss" or "What could I have done differently to prevent you from losing all that money?" Invariably they decide that they should have folded at some point in the hand, or just checked. When you are focused on figuring out how to not lose money, you tend to decide that you shouldn't put your money at risk. This leads us to conclude that you should have played your hand more passively than you did, and this conclusion is usually not the most correct one. Good players know that sometimes losing a lot is the result of playing a hand well. This is true not only for coolers that you "can't escape", but also for other hands, such as when you lose everything on an unsuccessful bluff or are surprised by a monster hand trying to catch a bluff. You can be sure that you will be improving when you revisit those hands that have caused you losses, and instead of assuming that putting money at risk was the problem, you ignore the results and try to figure out the best way to play the hand next time. situation appears.
:deal::deal::deal:
 
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pcurley17

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judge your winings/losses in a large sample size
 
kirkham69er

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This is quality advice, so thanks for this :)
1st Sign: You stopped playing hands just to end boredom A constant problem for amateurs is that they play differently when they are bored than when they have just finished playing. Almost all low-limit players have the boredom factor. In live poker, hands come slowly and gradually, and it is not common to get 20 or 30 bad hands in a row before the flop. This can mean 1 hour or 1 and a half hours without action. After giving up hand after hand, and after realizing that they could have spent that 1 hour doing something better, this type of player starts to get anxious. They start looking for reasons to play a hand, like "They think I'm conservative, so this is a good opportunity to bet", or "Sometimes it is necessary to force the action", or "You can't wait for the nuts" and so on. None of the above phrases have any logical reasons for playing a hand. At the moment it is no longer about profit, but boredom. Random cards are, of course, random, and if you take a long, bad straight, this is how it works.


2nd Sign: Do you find good reasons to stay in post-flop hands that you missed This is an important one. There are players who remain in many hands after missing the flop. They think that by paying more bets the saving card will be able to come and win the pot for them. Sometimes it works, but usually you end up losing money. However, that is not what I am talking about here.
What I mean is to be in the hands for the right reasons. Good poker players win more pots than average players, and the way they do it is by staying in the pot after the flop and finding ways to win them. However, this requires some judgment, as normally, in these situations, giving up will be the best choice. This way, you can know that you are getting better when you start to clearly see the types of hands you should stay in and in which you should fold.



3rd Sign: You have a clear idea of ​​the reasons behind the size of your poker bets Bet size is a very important tool in No-Limit Texas Hold'em poker to help us lose less and win more. Almost every bet or raise you make, especially on the turn and the river, requires some consideration for size. When you're not so good at the game, those decisions will seem confusing. “Should I bet high? Low? Maybe something in between? ”. Right now, your sense of understanding still offers you little sense of direction in that direction. When you start to realize that you are fully aware of why you are making such bets the size you are making, you can know that you are improving. This is especially true if you are able to abandon fear as an integral part of your decision-making process (most amateur players will bet small in certain situations just for the fear of losing chips, this is an extremely weak and exploitable trend, and also quite ordinary). So, if you realize that you are placing bets of different sizes on the turn and on the river, and that you are fully aware of the process that led you to choose those sizes and not those, you will definitely be improving.



4th Sign: You are more focused on playing your hands well than making money This leads to another trap that catches many amateur players. If they lose a big hand, they will already try to think of ways they could have played better.

Well, so far this is the process common to all poker players, good or bad. However, weaker players tend to focus on the wrong thing. They ask themselves, "How could I have prevented this great loss" or "What could I have done differently to prevent you from losing all that money?" Invariably they decide that they should have folded at some point in the hand, or just checked. When you are focused on figuring out how to not lose money, you tend to decide that you shouldn't put your money at risk. This leads us to conclude that you should have played your hand more passively than you did, and this conclusion is usually not the most correct one. Good players know that sometimes losing a lot is the result of playing a hand well. This is true not only for coolers that you "can't escape", but also for other hands, such as when you lose everything on an unsuccessful bluff or are surprised by a monster hand trying to catch a bluff. You can be sure that you will be improving when you revisit those hands that have caused you losses, and instead of assuming that putting money at risk was the problem, you ignore the results and try to figure out the best way to play the hand next time. situation appears.
:deal::deal::deal:
 
carlosnuno

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I consider that if your money is increasing it is that you have improved the way you play, but remember that this game is 50% luck and 50% knowledge regards
 
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gio1

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you are good at poker

I started playing poker since I was 18 years old, I understand that many people started even younger but from my point of view people who are good have invested several years in poker because it would not be a stroke of luck, because all the decisions that took Brands are based on experience gained at the table.:smile::smile:
 
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spider9

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All about the $

I think it's all about itm % If I usually finsih late in tournaments I'm ok If I usually finish early then I need to do something perhaps to make it longer in the future? But sometimes your just lucky and you have a good run for instance first tournament I played online I won was a good player then no probably not but I was lucky hitting big hands all the time sometimes you are really unlucky that's part of the game
 
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