question about total hands played

General question about hands played. How many hands do you typically play before you can look at your stats as pretty accurate?

Looking for a ballpark type figure, obviously each case is somewhat different. 10k? 25? 50+?

Thanks!

I've always heard more is better,so of your list i would say 50+.

Like everything in poker it depends...

In this case it depends on which stat you are looking at. Things like VPIP/PFR can get somewhat accurate in a few hundred hands. Whereas things like steals start to converge at thousands of hands. 3-bet stats start to converge at several thousand hands, and 4-bets at tens of thousands of hands.

Of course how often they are c/r the flop from what position takes a lot of hands. The less often the situation occurs, the more hands it takes.

Get ready for all the people disagreeing on when the stats converge....GO!

500K hands.

1,000,000 hands!

lol, love that pic.

Note you guys are talking about two different things I think - marginal is responding appropriately to when your own stats are accurate, Ubercroz is talking about when Villain's stats converge enough to develop effective reads.

lofwyr, "your stats as pretty accurate" - depends on which stats and for what purpose - if you're talking about winrate, I like marginal's answer alot. If you're talking about "accurate enough to start using statistics as a way to evaluate my game and look for improvement opportunities/leaks", I'd be looking for 25k to 50k hands.

With the assumption that winrate is the statistic in which you're most interested, the next bit of info we would need is the stakes, game, and table type you're playing. I submit that your variance will be substantially lower at full ring .05/.10 limit hold'em than at heads up $5/10 NLHE.

Generally speaking, anything less than 50k hands is completely meaningless. 100k probably has the markings of an actual trend, and above 200k might finally yield some meaningful numbers for you.

Cool. Thanks for the info. It was a general-ish question and thus the wide array of answers is appreciated.

The '25-50k hands' before self-analysis is really interesting. I'm wondering how to approach reviewing sessions atm as I'm not really clear what I'm looking for. Looks like I have many more hands to play before I should start to pick my play apart.

I was going to link FP's guide to analyzing hands https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/guide-analyzing-your-own-hands-long-171059/ (still am for the benefit of others), but I see you posted in it, so...

One thing to keep in mind is that you'll constantly be changing your style as you learn / adjust to the limits. So there comes a point where a large-ish sample isn't a very accurate representation of your current play. I'd say if you stuck to one strategy/style, about 10k-20k hands ought to give you a good idea of what you're doing in most situations, fwiw.

250K before the numbers begin to converge.

25-50k for a hot/cold analysis. i.e yes you are beating the game but the winrate is undetermined.

10K for one weeks play would be someone who played 6 tables 3hrs a night 5 days a week. Its not all that many hands when you break it down like that.

Win rate is a whole different thing. 10-20k should be enough to look at your stats and say, for example, "I've only 3bet 1.5% of my hands over the last 20k hands. I should probably start looking for more spots to profitably 3bet," type of analysis rather than converging on your true winrate which probably takes more than 250k+. But, your game changes considerably over that many hands, especially if you are learning the game, so even then it's not a true representation of your actual ability to beat the game. Unless, you assume you haven't gotten any better and your opponents still play exactly the same. In my opinion, statistics are somewhat over-rated due to their dynamic nature. They are useful for spotting obvious leaks that appear w/in 10-20k hands, and fish at the tables, however.

I think u need at least 200k hands untill u resolve some of the problems of your game. But u need to "learn" and study the game untill u become a good player. It is not the number of hands that makes a player a good one i think. Holdem or omaha are like chess. Study, experience and a high IQ i think are the path to become a good player.
400k will make u a decent player because of experience but will not make u an excelent player if u do not study and if u do not have an aptitude for numbers and mind games.