I've been keeping stats on the number of pots won per hour, and I'm curious to know how typical my results are.

I'm playing a pretty tight style (using the SSHE opening hands for loose games) and I'm only winning about 2.84 pots per hour, on average. This means that it's not uncommon for me to go long stretches (1+ hours) without winning any pots. I once played for 4.5 hours and only won a single pot.

It can be extremely frustrating at times -- when you go dry for hours while some loose donk is winning a pot every couple of hands -- yet I'm winning more than 1 BB/hr on average, so I don't know if I'm playing too tight, or what.

Is this typical in your experience? Or does it look like I'm playing too tightly?

Very style dependent of course, but if you do the math that sounds about right. Figure there are only 25 - 35 hands dealt per hour in a live game, and you're going to win slightly less than your 'share' of pots as you're playing tighter then the average player.

Personally I don't keep track of pots won because amount of $$ is more important than the number of pots (by far), but yeah I've gone hours without winning a pot, and I've also won 5 or 6 pots in a row.

Some friendly advice: stop counting.

I've always used 3-4 as my number in FR mid stakes games; 2.9 seems very reasonable in a smaller (slower, looser) game.

What's the matter with keeping track?

One thing I want to know is whether other players are adjusting to me. I've become a regular at the club now, and there are usually several players at the table who now have a good idea of my ranges. If they start folding more hands against me (resulting in more-frequent-but-smaller pots), I want to know it.

I should add that these tend to be very loose games. Usually at least 3-4 players to the flop, and often as many as 7-8. Sometimes there will be a table with 4-5 extremely LAG players, and it can be very hard to win a pot in that situation.

Your estimate sounds about right. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

When regs start folding to me, I open up and steal with weaker hands. When I notice that they are on to me, I slow down and change gears again. The nuts is when you open up and get LAG, regs notice, and when it's time to change gears, you get a monster but they think youve got air. ship it.

at the small stakes, most people are mouthbreathers and have no idea you're playing tight because they don't know what playing tight means. If you find yourself with a table of regs who adjust to your style, get on a better table and play with droolers.

If your having trouble winning pots:

A) Change table

b) Drop a limit...you might make more $

c) Playback at them and find out where their comfort zone ends

d) Be super tight and sell them the nuts

I usually pick d). I pick my spot and then play it very aggressively.

I don't think this is a "bad" table to be at, by the way, so I don't change tables. While it can be tough to win a pot, the pots also tend to be huge. I may go 1-2 hours without winning a pot, but then I can get back into positive territory with a single pot. And if I hit a few hands in a row, watch out!

I picked up about 3 racks in 20 mins at a table like this last night when I finally hit a small run of good hands.

It is the path to becoming intensely results-focused. There is a trap in playing live of focusing on small sets of hands and thinking they signify something. Next you'll be keeping track of how often you get AA, then how often it wins, and then more. The stuff about people adjusting can be handled by noticing them folding. Basically, focusing on your won pots for hour is a distraction and for most people should be avoided. Other things along these lines would be stuff like computing your BB/HR during a session. Spend your time thinking about your opponents and the decisions you're making.
Nice win. Think about how much time you spend tabulating the results of short term luck.

How are you supposed to know if it's a statistically-significant change, as opposed to your opponents just getting weaker hands for a bit?

These aren't mutually exclusive options.

It doesn't really take a lot of time or thought to tally up the number of pots won. I always toke a dollar per pot, and at the start of each session, I buy a fixed number of $1 chips for toking. So I can easily keep track of both the amount of the tokes and the number of pots won at the same time. That also tells me how much I'm paying through the house drop. All this goes into a spreadsheet.

I'm a statistician by training. I like to collect data and analyze it. That's just how I operate. It doesn't mean I can't also think about other things.

I'm not saying you don't have the processing power to do this and other stuff. I'm saying it leads to bad places.

Oh, and what exact sample do you intend to do this over? In three hours you get 100 hands. You win 5 pots this period instead of 8 in the last 3 hour period. This signifies? Oh, nothing. Online, people will giggle at you talking trends in 10K samples. As a statistician, you have to know that you're looking at meaningless samples here. If you don't, go look on more of the online focused forums and look at stats threads.

Like I said. Stop doing this. You'd be much better off just talking to the person next to you and leaving your note-taking device in the car. It would be way better for the game.

Keeping track is fine - I think the point is don't read too much into it. I think a better indicator of how players are adjusting to you is paying attention to how often they play pots with you and how often they call when you raise.

If they adjust then take advantage of it - but hands won/hour isn't necessarily the best measurement of how other players are adjusting to you. If the rate goes from 2.84 to 2.96 does that really tell you anything?

I've noticed lots of the regs where I play have tightened their play against me, and in response I've increased my bluff/barrel rate against those players. If you notice a similar tendency I'd recommend doing the same.

It takes a large number of samples to compare hourly win rates because the SD of an hourly win total is enormous relative to the average hourly rate. My SD is about 11 times the size of my average hourly win rate.

The SD of the number of pots won, on the other hand, is relatively small compared to the average number of pots won. For example, my SD of the number of pots/hr is 0.97, compared to the average of 2.84.

So you don't need such a large sample size to compare pots/hour. I could detect a difference of 0.5 pots per hour with a relatively small number of samples. (I can do the power calculation for you if you like.)

How many mistakes an hour are you averaging for the last 50hrs?