The South Florida rooms I play in all have high hand payouts every half hour or so depending on the night. They are anywhere between $100 and $300 depending on location, day and time and are paid by the extra $2 taken separate from the $5 rake.

My question is should these bonus windfalls that you usually hit once or twice a week if you play enough be added to total win at the end of a session or just pocketed as a bonus?

I know there's not a right answer to this necessarily but just curious how other players handle stuff like this...

Small stuff like that I'd note but include. It's just a high variance side bet that you're paying for each time you win a pot.

It should be included, but I mark it in such a way that I can remove it from the data if I want.

The best answer is to keep it separate it and include or exclude it depending on what you want.

In general, you should include anything that reaches the long run, so HHJ maybe BBJ definitely not.

Yeah, I log it in as poker profit, but keep it separate so I know it was a high hand. I mean it is profit that I got from playing poker.....

I don't know that it's profit. If you're deducting the jackpot drop from your winnings (which I assume you are), then it should be added back in when you get it back.

I just keep track of net. I don't adjust for rake, tips, or bonus payouts. I suppose a BBJ would really throw things off. But for my purposes, it's fine.

the winnings/losses from it even out in the long run.... its just variance. Not counting it would cause u to artificially lower ur winrate as it would be near impossible to count how much u lose to BBJP and keep it totally separate. I think if I won a substantial amount (10x more then I knew I was expected) I wouldn't count it as my winrate though I'd prob try to calculate around how much I paid for BBJP and use that # b/c its going to cause you to grossly misinterpreting ur estimates.

If you only play in rooms that take the extra drop, that you pay for, then count it towards your winrate.

This is my line of thinking. The promo drop is automatically factored into your winrate whether you like it or not. Not counting promo wins at all in any manner would artificially deflate your winrate.

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I have not been lucky enough yet to win any large promos yet but have got a few extra $ from being at tables when a Royal was dealt. I write down my hours played and +or- $, then list any bonus $ in it's own row but the money still goes into my BR either way. I like to run the numbers and see what my win rate is with and without any bonus money. I also get Free Slot play sometimes and I don't play slots, so I list that as well in it's own row. In my mind I would not be getting the Free play if I did not play poker, so it is related to poker but not my win rate, still good for BR though.

The problem with including your jackpot wins is that it's really easy to deceive yourself into thinking you're a bigger winner than you are.

Let's say you play 100 hours. You expect to hit the HHJ once. But what happens if you hit it twice? Your apparent win rate is several dollars higher and you get false confidence because you've been playing one night a week for 6 months and seems like a really long time.

It's a lot easier to exclude your winnings until you've reached the long run.

I'm not singling out jackpots. There are a lot of things that require the same vigilance - flopping sets is probably a good example. Over 100 hours, if you flop 25 sets instead of the expected 20, you're going to fool yourself into thinking you're an awesome player because each time you flop a set you win a bunch of money.

If you're going to include jackpots in your winnings, you need to include the associated variance in your variance calculations as well.

yeah, all the rooms I play at have the extra drop. So if let's say, I buy in for $200......& I walk out with $400, I made $200 that day. I don't think "well, they took $2 on every hand for the jackpot, so I actually made $480......etc."

These aren't jackpots, per se, they're bonuses for having the best hand during that period of time. Theoretically, the whole process should work out to be completely ev neutral over a long period of time. IOW, you pay $2 out of each pot won, but you get it back in small chunks over the course of a year or years. Given that scenario, it would make sense to include the HH bonuses in your win rate since the $2/pot is deducted from it on a daily basis.

I count it. I will do an * or some kind of side note.

Thanks guys, I agree with what you are saying that it is probably ev neutral and go ahead and count it. I have been so far this year and wanted to make sure I wasn't just artificially inflating the numbers.

I've made a total of $1900 on the high hands so far over around 700 hours so I would imagine that would be around 1000 pots over $10 that were $2 light.

If you're hitting it once or twice a week, I'd add it. That is part of your expected returns. The danger is adding a BBJ or HHJ that you'll hit once every couple of years. Even then, it depends on what you do with it. If you decide that you're crushing the game and don't need to work on your game, it is a bad idea. If you are constantly looking to improve, it won't matter.

I don't.

Yes, but do you play in rooms that take out $2/pot to pay for high hand bonuses?

In SoFla there is no other option. If you play 1500 hrs/yr and win an average of 3 pots/hr, you're going to pay out $9,000 during the course of the year that you hopefully will recoup through winning HH and other bonuses. Why wouldn't you include the money you've recouped in determining your win rate?

In fact, since the payment of the $2 and its return via HH bonus is a virtual wash, it makes no sense to me not to include it in your win rate. If you don't, you're understating the win rate.

I do. The bbj wouldn't be listed as it is such high variance. However, if a player sucks out on me, I record the loss. If I hit a magic river and suck out, I record the win. With the sole exception of the bbj, I record the money I buy in with and the amount I cash out for. Tips are pulled out of my stack throughout the session, so they are considered part of the win/loss amount.

If the promo drop is $1 or $2 (during the wsop this year), it comes out of my bankroll and any wins from the promo pool are added the my bankroll. It just seems like the right way to do it. Clearly, others disagree, but that is how I do it.

I figure the drop as a cost that I have to beat to beat the game. In the LHE strat discussion the promotion drop is often mentioned either bec it alters the math slightly or when someone is asking if a low limit game is even beatable but nobody ever says 'play the hand xxx way bec you might hit the promo', so that's the way I look at it. But not to worry: Casino Arizona send out tax forms for every sort of promotion players hit except for splash pots so I end up having to put in in my tax return anyway where it always creates a problem.

Hit a high hand last night....noted it with a note. *(+250 high hand)

One way is to determine your expected winrate from the promotion (divide the total amount given out in an hour by the approximate number of people in a room). For one of the casinos I play at, it's $500/hr and there about ~150 people in the room so I assume the promotion pays back about $3/hr so I can compare my actual winrate from the promotion vs the expected winrate.

As for the jackpot drop that pays for all this, it's just extra rake to me.

What a strange inference. My comment had absolutely nothing to do with taxes. In fact, I don't believe anyone on this thread is referring to anything "official." People are just wondering how one should define their own win rate in order to most accurately determine their poker proficiency.

i went back and forth on this when i started keeping a spreadsheet. in the end i decided to count it as profit (made a note but for all intents and purposes it showed up in my win rate).

my reasoning was i am paying the jackpot drop every hand and i don't separate that out so when i hit a jackpot it should show in the same pool. might make a few sessions jump up but it should average out pretty quickly.

HOWEVER, i won a bad beat jackpot once for over 30k (20k after taxes) and i didn't count it. seemed to big to not mess up any relevant stats i'd be looking at.

You should never count promos in your win rate calculations just like you shouldn't count other comps. If you do you are skewing your win rate and deluding yourself.

The $2 drop is just a cost of doing business as is rake, doesn't justify including this in win rate. Winning a promo is shear luck, no skill involved.