Off the Schneid...and A Little Bit About Winrates
Well, my breakeven streak is apparently over. As some of you reading my forum saw, I had a monster session at the $50 NL at Full Tilt. I had run up my initial buy-in up to almost $180 in a matter of 40 minutes before I lost a little back with a set-over-set beat and another weird beat. More than that, I have confidence in my game again (not that I was lacking in that regard, but positive results have a reinforcing effect on the mental side), and it's just in time for me to play in tomorrow's Green Chipper--even though PLO isn't my game.
A lot of people have asked me in various forums about winrates, both in Limit Holdem and in No-Limit Holdem. It's in our nature as poker players to be competitive, and many of us actually wonder how we're really doing. Those of us who are winning players--exactly HOW winning are we? We can see the results in our bankroll, but if a player plays 10,000 hands a month and wins $1000, it's vastly different than a player who wins the same $1000 over 4,000 hands.
This is another use of PokerTracker. The software tracks your play and winnings as well, and expresses your winrate (how much you win--standardized) in terms of Big Bets per 100 hands.
Limit Holdem: In Limit, a Big Bet is the amount you would bet on the turn or river. In a 3/6 game, the Big Bet amount is $6. Because of the nature of Limit Holdem, winrates in terms of Big Bets per 100 hands (or per hour) are often lower than their No-Limit counterparts, but since the Big Bet is far larger in most cases, it can still be used to approximate how well a player is doing:
Here are some examples of winrates and what they really mean:
If Joe Holdem has a winrate of 2.2 BB/100 hands at 3/6 LHE, that means that he wins an average of $13.20 for every 100 hands he plays. This winrate is representative of a successful Limit Holdem player. What this doesn't take into account, however, is multi-tabling and table hours--hourly rate. Say that Joe plays 2 tables at a time all the time he plays. If the average online table plays 60 hands in an hour, and Joe plays 2 tables, he plays 120 hands an hour, so at 2.2 BB/100, his hourly win rate (that PokerTracker also calculates) is 2.64 BB/hr or$15.84/hour. For an online small-stakes player, that's extremely respectable. If Joe plays 15 hours per week, he'll make $237.60/week--not bad at all for a hobby, huh? As the number of hands you play go up (over the long run), your winrate becomes more significant. Winrates in the short term (on good runs) aren't significant in terms of classifying you as a player, but over time, it gives a good idea of where you stand among players.
Winrates start to become significant over about 10-20,000 hands. At most online games, if you're playing a single table:
0-1 BB/100: You're a marginally winning player.
1-2 BB/100: You're fairly successful, but can probably use a little work on your game to get over the hump.
2-3 BB/100: You're a successful online player.
3-4 BB/100: You're an outstanding Limit Holdem player, and if you can sustain this rate, you're doing extremely well. You're in the top 5% of poker players.
>4 BB/100: You are CRUSHING the game. You're one of the best players at that limit in the world. Very few players ever touch this level even over as few as 10,000 hands. This, if it were sustainable long term (which, IMHO, it just plainly isn't) would put you among the top 0.1% of all poker players at that limit in the world. You are elite.
If you're playing multiple tables, the focus changes, as your winrate in terms of BB/100 comes down a bit, but your hourly rate (since you're playing vastly more hands) goes up:
0-1 BB/100: You're a marginally winning player.
1-2 BB/100: You're reasonably successful.
>2 BB/100: You're a VERY successful online player. This is where most online multitabling LHE pros live. At higher limits, you can make a VERY nice living being here. An example:
A small-stakes online pro is 3-tabling 10/20, and is winning at 2.1 BB/100. His tables deal about 45 hands per hour--he's playing about 135 hands/hour, and is winning therefore 2.835 BB/hour. 2.835 x $20 = $56.70/hour. Over a 30 hour week (which is a TON, BTW, and not easy--it's a real grind), he's making a hair over $1700 a week, or $88,000 yearly. See what I mean?
>3 BB/100: You're a liar. Nobody beats the online games multi-tabling for this type of winrate long-term. Nobody. :-)
No-Limit Holdem: Since PokerTracker was originally designed with Limit Holdem in mind, it keeps track of big bets in a similar way. In No-Limit Holdem, just as in Limit, a Big Bet is the same as twice the Big Blind. (Note: In a 3/6 LHE game, the SB is $1, and the BB is $3, a Big Bet is $6--in a 1/2 NLHE game, the SB is $1, the BB is $2, and a Big Bet is $4) So, in reporting NLHE winrates, unlike in LHE, you can't just multiply the stakes by the winrate--we record NLHE winrates in terms of PTBB/100 hands, which is slightly different than a corresponding Limit winrate.
Another example: Joe Holdem decides that Limit is too much of a grind and switches to NL. He starts playing 0.50/1 NLHE (known as $100 NL for it's $100 max buy-in). After playing a while, he sees his winrate is 8PTBB/100. What does this mean? PokerTracker sees a Big Bet in this game ($0.50 SB and $1 BB) as $2. So, he's winning $16 for every 100 hands. He's doing quite well. In fact, if he were playing 3/6 LHE, he'd need a winrate of 2.67 BB/100 to match his earnings in this game. He'd need to be a VERY good LHE player to sustain that winrate. In NL, as you will see, 8 PTBB/100 is very sustainable for a good player.
What do these winrates mean? For a single tabler:
0-3 PTBB/100: You are a marginally winning player.
3-6 PTBB/100: You're doing well, but you can stand to plug some leaks to play better.
6-10 PTBB/100: You're playing solid poker, and doing very well at this limit. You're among the top 10% of players in that you're a fairly big consistent winner.
10-15 PTBB/100: You are CRUSHING this game if you're here long term. You're in the top 2% of players if you're here long term.
>15 PTBB/100: Unsustainable long term, you are elite if you're here over the long term. I'm talking top <1% of players at the limit worldwide.
Again, just as in LHE, your winrate means more the more hands you have played to establish and back it up. Winrates at a given limit really aren't significant (and I can't stress this enough--for your own good, DON'T overestimate yourself over a big winrate over 5,000 hands) until you've played over 10,000 hands at a given limit. Some players discount winrates until you're over 25,000 hands at a given limit.
If you're multitabling, you can still pretty much maintain the same numbers as above, but more toward lower ends. For example, if you're winning at 10 PTBB/100 while multitabling, you're crushing a certain limit. Winrates at >15PTBB/100 for consistent multitablers just doesn't happen long term. You're very successful multitabling if you win 6-8 PTBB/100, which can be done. Think about this example:
Back to our friend Joe Holdem. He's playing 0.50/1 NL ($100 NL), he's 4-tabling and winning 6.5 PTBB/100. His tables average about 50 hands per hour. What is his hourly rate?
6.5 PTBB/100 sounds like a very modest winrate. Let's look closer. He's 4-tabling, and this means he's doing very well for himself. How well? 6.5 PTBB/100 = $13/100 hands. He's playing 200 hands/hour, so he's making $26/hour. Again, not bad for a hobby. Compare this to a player who is crushing the same game but only single tabling. He wins 13 PTBB/100--double Joe's winrate. At 50 hands/hr, he's making 6.5 PTBB/hr, or $13/hour. The multitabler, despite half the winrate is making twice the money.
Multitabling, if you can do it, can be VERY profitable. Remember, the best way to read your opponents, especially when multitabling, is using PokerTracker and PokerAceHUD.
Best of luck at the tables, all!
A lot of people have asked me in various forums about winrates, both in Limit Holdem and in No-Limit Holdem. It's in our nature as poker players to be competitive, and many of us actually wonder how we're really doing. Those of us who are winning players--exactly HOW winning are we? We can see the results in our bankroll, but if a player plays 10,000 hands a month and wins $1000, it's vastly different than a player who wins the same $1000 over 4,000 hands.
This is another use of PokerTracker. The software tracks your play and winnings as well, and expresses your winrate (how much you win--standardized) in terms of Big Bets per 100 hands.
Limit Holdem: In Limit, a Big Bet is the amount you would bet on the turn or river. In a 3/6 game, the Big Bet amount is $6. Because of the nature of Limit Holdem, winrates in terms of Big Bets per 100 hands (or per hour) are often lower than their No-Limit counterparts, but since the Big Bet is far larger in most cases, it can still be used to approximate how well a player is doing:
Here are some examples of winrates and what they really mean:
If Joe Holdem has a winrate of 2.2 BB/100 hands at 3/6 LHE, that means that he wins an average of $13.20 for every 100 hands he plays. This winrate is representative of a successful Limit Holdem player. What this doesn't take into account, however, is multi-tabling and table hours--hourly rate. Say that Joe plays 2 tables at a time all the time he plays. If the average online table plays 60 hands in an hour, and Joe plays 2 tables, he plays 120 hands an hour, so at 2.2 BB/100, his hourly win rate (that PokerTracker also calculates) is 2.64 BB/hr or$15.84/hour. For an online small-stakes player, that's extremely respectable. If Joe plays 15 hours per week, he'll make $237.60/week--not bad at all for a hobby, huh? As the number of hands you play go up (over the long run), your winrate becomes more significant. Winrates in the short term (on good runs) aren't significant in terms of classifying you as a player, but over time, it gives a good idea of where you stand among players.
Winrates start to become significant over about 10-20,000 hands. At most online games, if you're playing a single table:
0-1 BB/100: You're a marginally winning player.
1-2 BB/100: You're fairly successful, but can probably use a little work on your game to get over the hump.
2-3 BB/100: You're a successful online player.
3-4 BB/100: You're an outstanding Limit Holdem player, and if you can sustain this rate, you're doing extremely well. You're in the top 5% of poker players.
>4 BB/100: You are CRUSHING the game. You're one of the best players at that limit in the world. Very few players ever touch this level even over as few as 10,000 hands. This, if it were sustainable long term (which, IMHO, it just plainly isn't) would put you among the top 0.1% of all poker players at that limit in the world. You are elite.
If you're playing multiple tables, the focus changes, as your winrate in terms of BB/100 comes down a bit, but your hourly rate (since you're playing vastly more hands) goes up:
0-1 BB/100: You're a marginally winning player.
1-2 BB/100: You're reasonably successful.
>2 BB/100: You're a VERY successful online player. This is where most online multitabling LHE pros live. At higher limits, you can make a VERY nice living being here. An example:
A small-stakes online pro is 3-tabling 10/20, and is winning at 2.1 BB/100. His tables deal about 45 hands per hour--he's playing about 135 hands/hour, and is winning therefore 2.835 BB/hour. 2.835 x $20 = $56.70/hour. Over a 30 hour week (which is a TON, BTW, and not easy--it's a real grind), he's making a hair over $1700 a week, or $88,000 yearly. See what I mean?
>3 BB/100: You're a liar. Nobody beats the online games multi-tabling for this type of winrate long-term. Nobody. :-)
No-Limit Holdem: Since PokerTracker was originally designed with Limit Holdem in mind, it keeps track of big bets in a similar way. In No-Limit Holdem, just as in Limit, a Big Bet is the same as twice the Big Blind. (Note: In a 3/6 LHE game, the SB is $1, and the BB is $3, a Big Bet is $6--in a 1/2 NLHE game, the SB is $1, the BB is $2, and a Big Bet is $4) So, in reporting NLHE winrates, unlike in LHE, you can't just multiply the stakes by the winrate--we record NLHE winrates in terms of PTBB/100 hands, which is slightly different than a corresponding Limit winrate.
Another example: Joe Holdem decides that Limit is too much of a grind and switches to NL. He starts playing 0.50/1 NLHE (known as $100 NL for it's $100 max buy-in). After playing a while, he sees his winrate is 8PTBB/100. What does this mean? PokerTracker sees a Big Bet in this game ($0.50 SB and $1 BB) as $2. So, he's winning $16 for every 100 hands. He's doing quite well. In fact, if he were playing 3/6 LHE, he'd need a winrate of 2.67 BB/100 to match his earnings in this game. He'd need to be a VERY good LHE player to sustain that winrate. In NL, as you will see, 8 PTBB/100 is very sustainable for a good player.
What do these winrates mean? For a single tabler:
0-3 PTBB/100: You are a marginally winning player.
3-6 PTBB/100: You're doing well, but you can stand to plug some leaks to play better.
6-10 PTBB/100: You're playing solid poker, and doing very well at this limit. You're among the top 10% of players in that you're a fairly big consistent winner.
10-15 PTBB/100: You are CRUSHING this game if you're here long term. You're in the top 2% of players if you're here long term.
>15 PTBB/100: Unsustainable long term, you are elite if you're here over the long term. I'm talking top <1% of players at the limit worldwide.
Again, just as in LHE, your winrate means more the more hands you have played to establish and back it up. Winrates at a given limit really aren't significant (and I can't stress this enough--for your own good, DON'T overestimate yourself over a big winrate over 5,000 hands) until you've played over 10,000 hands at a given limit. Some players discount winrates until you're over 25,000 hands at a given limit.
If you're multitabling, you can still pretty much maintain the same numbers as above, but more toward lower ends. For example, if you're winning at 10 PTBB/100 while multitabling, you're crushing a certain limit. Winrates at >15PTBB/100 for consistent multitablers just doesn't happen long term. You're very successful multitabling if you win 6-8 PTBB/100, which can be done. Think about this example:
Back to our friend Joe Holdem. He's playing 0.50/1 NL ($100 NL), he's 4-tabling and winning 6.5 PTBB/100. His tables average about 50 hands per hour. What is his hourly rate?
6.5 PTBB/100 sounds like a very modest winrate. Let's look closer. He's 4-tabling, and this means he's doing very well for himself. How well? 6.5 PTBB/100 = $13/100 hands. He's playing 200 hands/hour, so he's making $26/hour. Again, not bad for a hobby. Compare this to a player who is crushing the same game but only single tabling. He wins 13 PTBB/100--double Joe's winrate. At 50 hands/hr, he's making 6.5 PTBB/hr, or $13/hour. The multitabler, despite half the winrate is making twice the money.
Multitabling, if you can do it, can be VERY profitable. Remember, the best way to read your opponents, especially when multitabling, is using PokerTracker and PokerAceHUD.
Best of luck at the tables, all!
1 Comments:
Great article. You are not only a terrific theorist, you are a great writer and explainer.
Thanks for sharing your expertise and your time
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