What's in a Winrate?

Matt Vaughan

Matt Vaughan

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Okay, so I'm not sure if this is in the right forum category, but it didn't seem to quite fit under "Learning Poker." Admins, feel free to shove this elsewhere if that's where it belongs.

On the topic of winrate, I have always been a little shady on the details of what it means to have a "good" winrate. In the pure, mathematical sense, obviously any positive winrate is a good thing, because this means profit (in the long run). But I have been on various strategy sites that talk about how fast one can move up limits if starting in the micros, and they are using assumptions like "2BB/hour" or "4BB/hour" winrates. Are these good? Bad? A minimum expectation that most people can accomplish?

I have been tracking my games for only a few months now, and as a full-time student I don't get to play much, so my sample sizes are abysmally small... But so far I have a winrate of 17.9 BB/hour on Lock Poker's 2c/4c tables over a span of 14.8 hours, and a 47.6 BB/hour on BetOnline's 1c/2c tables over a span of 15.7 hours. Like I said, it's an absolutely tiny sample size, indicated in part by the huge differences in those two rates, but my question remains: What would be a good winrate for micros?

I'm not overly antsy about moving up levels - I'll do it when my bankroll and I are ready for it - but I am curious what I can be "expecting" to make. Because when I looked at these sites using 4 BB/hour as their standard, I must admit I was not excited to imagine making 16c or 8c per hour. But if this is more likely than not, I'm prepared to accept it.

Any obvious facts, personal experiences, and extreme opinions are welcome - just looking for anything to expand my own views on this. :D
 
micromachine

micromachine

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Mostly you will hear people talking about BB/100hands, where 1 BB = 2 big blinds.

5BB/100 would be considered a good win-rate at the micros, which equates to 1 buy-in per 1000 hands. So if you're playing 10nl you can expect to win $10 every 1k hands on average
 
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BlueNowhere

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Never seen it wrriten as bb/hour mostly because that's a retarded way to think of it as it allows no comparison between people.
 
OMGITSOVER9K

OMGITSOVER9K

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can't really count win rates unless you've got a sick amount of hands in though..

people have 100k breakeven streaks, apparently.

I wouldn't make much of it, as long as you're not losing money.
 
Karkus77

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yes bb/100 is the stat most use

as campbell said, to get your true accurate bb/100 you would need to play a ton of hands, but genereally speaking after 100k it gives you a pretty good idea

you answered your own question though, you should take a shot at a higher level when your bankroll says you can and when you think your ready

it also depends on how many tables you play, the more tables you play the less bb/100 you will have but obviously made up for because your playing more hands

i dont like to multitable much and only ever play 2 tables

i think a 10bb/100 is posible
 
Arjonius

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BB/hr isn't especially useful to know because it doesn't factor in things like the avg number of tables you're playing how fast the tables are (e.g. SH vs FR), regular tables or zoom, etc. That's why people look at BB/100.

Also, you should be aware that BB can be two things, big blind or big bet. The latter comes from limit and equals 2 big blinds.
 
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