Ring game players - expected return per hour

I know I have seen this on the site before, but I just can`t find a thread

For guys who do well playing ring games, how do you work out your profit (per hour ?) and what would be a decent return vthe stakes you play?

Thanks guys.

I have no idea. Never really cared. bb/100 is probably more important to pay attention to, but even that over a small sample doesn't mean much.

Yeah. It seems "per hour" isn't as popular a stat as "bb/100". I've read that a great player is one who is around 7 bb/100 hands or more, a good player is around 4-5, and the average player is around 1-3. And I've heard the minimum sample size to even consider this stat is 10K hands.

Anyone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I think the typical estimation for limit is one big bet per hour as the standard goal. With NL hour to hour varies so much, I don't think you can have an hourly goal, but more a session goal. You can take Jesus' BR management as an example where he would sit down with a max of 5% of his BR and once the money on the table represented 10% of his BR he would have to leave once he played his free hands.

MrSticker said:

Yeah. It seems "per hour" isn't as popular a stat as "bb/100". I've read that a great player is one who is around 7 bb/100 hands or more, a good player is around 4-5, and the average player is around 1-3. And I've heard the minimum sample size to even consider this stat is 10K hands.

Anyone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

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The average player is a losing player, so I'm not sure if I'd say average is 1-3

I also think that you need at least 30-40K hands to get a true estimation of your skill edge.

c9h13no3 said:

The average player is a losing player, so I'm not sure if I'd say average is 1-3

I also think that you need at least 30-40K hands to get a true estimation of your skill edge.

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Hmmm. You are right. I should have said "average winning player" or "above average player".

The only problem with looking at bb/100 as estimating your winrate is that it doesn't factor in how many tables you are playing.

Someone playing one table could be beating a game for 9bb/100 but maybe could make more money by increasing the number of tables he plays to say 4. Even if he was now only winning at 7bb/100 he would still be making more money per hour than he was before.

Also depends on limit, or basically skill of opponents. At 200nl I'm not sure anyone has a winrate of 4+ BB/100 long-term. If someone won at 3 they'd be among the top winners at the level.

rileyl said:

The only problem with looking at bb/100 as estimating your winrate is that it doesn't factor in how many tables you are playing.

Someone playing one table could be beating a game for 9bb/100 but maybe could make more money by increasing the number of tables he plays to say 4. Even if he was now only winning at 7bb/100 he would still be making more money per hour than he was before.

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This is correct. Figuring your profit per hour would help in determining how well you do as you change how many tables you play.

But I think the OP wants to know more about the quality of play at not the amount of profit since it would be skewed by the number of tables played. I take "decent return" to mean quality. Since a fluctuation in profit per hour due to tables increase wouldn't dictate quality of play, the "bb/100" is a figure that is always based an the same equation. You even said yourself that more tables could mean a lower bb/100 rate and that is based on a possible deterioration of quality induced by increasing the number of tables played at the same time. So for a judge of "quality" of play, "bb/100" is still the preferred stat.

Though I think a player should always include the number of tables he plays at a time when he quotes his bb/100 stat since everyone's "deterioration factor", if you will, will be different. But that's still difficult to measure.

Ronaldadio said:

I know I have seen this on the site before, but I just can`t find a thread

For guys who do well playing ring games, how do you work out your profit (per hour ?) and what would be a decent return vthe stakes you play?

Thanks guys.

Click to expand...

zachvac said:

Also depends on limit, or basically skill of opponents. At 200nl I'm not sure anyone has a winrate of 4+ BB/100 long-term. If someone won at 3 they'd be among the top winners at the level.

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Since in HEM capital "BB" means "big bets" and small "bb" means "big blinds", do you really mean 3 bb/100 hands is good at 200NL? I'm running at 3 bb/100 at 25NL/50NL, which is 1.5 BB/100.

MrSticker said:

Since in HEM capital "BB" means "big bets" and small "bb" means "big blinds", do you really mean 3 bb/100 hands is good at 200NL? I'm running at 3 bb/100 at 25NL/50NL, which is 1.5 BB/100.

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oh sorry I just always assume bb/100, BB/100, PTBB/100 are all big bets. Confusing imo and kinda like metric as your way makes sense but it's a stupid convention taken from limit.

ANYWAY, yeah you're right for big blinds, pretty much spot on imo. Although 3 bb/100 is certainly solid at 200nl it wouldn't be spectacular. 6 bb/100 would be among the top winners (what I had said was 3 BB/100).

Nick Brancato (online cash pro) has stated that a winning player should expect to make 1 buy in per 1000 hands.

Dantigua said:

Nick Brancato (online cash pro) has stated that a winning player should expect to make 1 buy in per 1000 hands.

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That's 10BB/100 which is just absurd.

As to the OP, my win rate per hour at 25nl FR was just about $5.25 over 102,000 hands.

The problem with hourly win rate and BB/100 is that you can crush one table for say 7BB/100, yet make more per hour playing 10 tables and only winning at a rate of 1BB/100. There are so many factors involved here it's difficult to say whats good and whats not and what can be expected from a good player. Table selection, how many tables you are able to play at once well, tilt control and size of the stakes will all affect hourly rate.

Just back online as I have been moving house

Thanks for all the replies.

I suppose, what I am looking for is an idea if I could make a sustainable income out of poker. (I don`t mean full time at moment)

I also ask because I have been playing MTT`s for a long time, dabbled in ring games, then had a long hard look at how to beat ring games after finding out the hard way that MTT strategy does not work playing limit ring games.

Since then, but over a small period of time, I am winning a lot of cash playing $1/2 FL. (I`m not getting carried away as the sample is too small)