Hi all,

I have been playing live LHE for quite some time now and often find it inappropriate to ask what other players win rates are. I was just wondering if any of you would like to share your win rate (probably min 1k hours played) or if you are aware of what other top players in the game win rate may be. To note, different win rates between stakes 20-40 through 200-400 would all interest me. Thank you.

anything above .5 big bet/hour = good
anything above .75 big bet/hour = excellent
anything above 1 big bet/hour at 20/40 = awesome. move up already
anything above 1 big bet/hour at 40/80 or higher = stellar/expert

obviously keeping in mind that the bigger the sample size the better.

watch out for confirmation bias and remember that by the time you get to the "end" of a big sample your skill level and the game conditions are probably not the same as when you started the sample. so, some might say that there's no such thing as an exact true win rate. but getting close certainly seems doable

Thank you BigBadBabar for your response. I am also curious how rake affects win rates as you move up in stakes. By that I mean that even with slightly tougher competition, your win rate can increase.

For example, let's say someone's hourly was .75 big bets/hour at 40-80 including paying $16/hr to play (0.2 big bets). In a 100-200 if you paid $28/hr to play (.14 big bets) then assuming same competition level, you are making 0.06 big bets per hour more already just by increasing limits.

I mostly included the previous example above to demonstrate how I find it extremely difficult to win over 1 big bet per hour given the inclusion of a roughly 0.2-0.3 big bet rake/hr along with $3-6 in tips/hr in mid-stakes games. I also wonder if even the top live players in the world can go much higher than this (Maybe 1.1-1.2 big bets/hr seems to be absolute limit in my opinion).

Overall, I most likely overestimate my game like most players do, but I generally feel like very few other players I play with on a regular basis would have a higher hourly rate than mine which is roughly 0.75bb/hr in today's poker climate. I do not consider any of these players to be absolute experts, but I also consider them to be very competitive, experienced, and thoughtful; in addition, I also consider some of the fish in my games to be, for lack of a better description, extremely incompetent, with some who would lose probably up to as much as 8-10bb/100 hands in tougher online formats.

I am generally looking for like 15-20 honest responses mostly just to see what the ranges of bb/hr could look like. My guess is that intelligent players who frequently work on their game, watch videos, have 50k+ hands of experience, 2+2ers, etc would have on average (and this may seem harsh) only a 0.2-0.3 bb/hr win rate, with less than 25% players having over a 0.5bb rate, maybe 10-15% between 0.5 and 0.7, ~%5-10 between 0.7-0.9, and less than 1% over 0.9bb.

My main game is 20-40 with a full kill. I began keeping very granular records in 2013. Every year I have played in excess of 2000 hours each year.

2013 .55/hr
2014 .80/hr
2015 1.04/hr
2016 (data lost due to backup issue...but best estimate .74/hr)
2017 ytd 1.28/hr

I do not consider myself to be a crusher as my game is super soft and I also play with a full kill which inflates my winrate.

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For lower mid-stakes (20-40 - 40/80 with various kills) softer games should be 2 big bets + an hr *after rake*, I don't fully trust the win rates I've had reported to me but 3-4.5 for the strongest players seems reasonable- those will be players with experience playing higher - short-handed can be very lucrative so depending on how often/late a game will run with 6 or less players you might want to calculate 2 rates for the same stake

These winrates are consistent with what I saw at bellagio during the series and I play a lot at other rooms for the rest of the year. I haven't spent a lot of time adjusting for what a win rate without kills would look like, probably 15-30% smaller.

Yup, lots of crushers out there winning 320k/year at 20/40 (4BB/hr over 2000 hrs).

Just keep on grindin'! Run pure! LFG!

I'd be curious to.know what winrates are being reported to you that you don't fully trust

He probably confused big bets with big blinds, pretty common mistake when talking about limit winrates. If he wasn't 3-4 bets/hour is certainly possible

Yes I doubt any 20-40 players can make more than $60/hour for 1.5bb/hr and if they somehow could they would probably play higher.

I have also played about 5k hours over the past 4 years and would guess that my stDev in BB/hr is somewhere between 0.25-0.35 so it could be as low as 0.4bb/hr or as high as 1.1 bb/hr (5k hours is probably around 160k hands). I noticed one data sample where a player had a win rate of 0.5bb in 120k hands online but a 2bb win rate in 140k hands at a slightly different limit.

Any person winning $60/hour at 20/40 sustainably wouldn't be playing 20/40; they'd move up (unless they don't have a bigger game available)

That being said, if a bigger game isn't available, the 20/40 game will have biggest game in the room syndrome, where 1.5 BB/hour isn't possible.

So really, anyone who has sustained 1.5 BB/hour over a huge sample (~ 5000 hours) is just a massive anti-variance nit.

Survivorship bias is very real in live poker and plenty of relatively skilled players in small/medium stakes games that were .5bb/hr or so favorites ended up being roughly break even and disappearing from poker while plenty of break even to small winners run good for a very long time. This run good can result in a lot of things from just lasting essentially for their entire career at small/midstakes, for long enough that they are able to actually gain the skill to match their winrate, until they have a massive roll for the largest game in their local card room or to help them move up to higher stakes games where their modest winrate actually generates a substantial $/hr. Or they just keep running good in bigger games too.

Additionally, my experience is that nearly 100% of people who vocally boast winrates >1bb/hr are somehow perpetually broke/staked and rarely play higher than 40/80. I've always thought they were delusional but in retrospect it was probably just them trying to sell themselves to potential future stakers. Maybe both.


I think this is probably very realistic. I'd guess that even fewer actually possess .5bb/hr+ winrates.

I made a guess that 25% had around 0.5bb/hr because in a 9 handed game I would say there are probably 2 players on average in a game who can make $50+/hr long term in 40-80.

Pretty sure he meant to post what he posted but didn't post what he meant.

im at $48.52/hr over 937 hours at 20/40

this is what i meant when i said 'confirmation bias' - whoops

I specifically said 'soft games.' In stronger lineups it would not be nearly as worthwhile for me to play. Idk what is so shocking about strong players beating them for 2BB+ and pro limit players beating them for 3BB+. With kills and bad loose passive players it would be strange if good players weren't winning more than .75BB/hr.

I thought giving a benchmark for soft games would be useful information to share.

20/40 is pretty much the sweet spot in terms of bad players compared to the money on the table, it can get reg-infested pretty quick just a little higher

The best player at the table should absolutely be beating the table for more than $80 in a 40/80, otherwise they would probably be doing better in a similar buy-in nl game

You are definitely correct about 20-40 being the sweet spot. The same player would probably increase his win rate by 30-40% at most jumping from 20-40 to 40-80 as opposed to doubling it. I do disagree, however, that the best player a 40-80 table should be beating the table for more than $80/hr.

Looking at some regs for the 100-200 and 200-400 game on HSDB, it appears to be very difficult to achieve a win rate of over $2/hand. Obviously the games are much, much tougher, but very large fish still existed in these games from 2012-maybe up until the past year or so. If you play less than 50% the stakes (40-80), with a higher rake/hand, it is still difficult to achieve $1/hand profit in tough 40-80 fields. Obviously these tough 40-80 fields rarely exist but you will still end up playing a decent % of your time (maybe 15-20%) in games that quite frankly aren't that great. Getting dealt 30-33 hands/hr and achieving a $2/hand win is a very strong result IMO.

the slightly shocking thing is that you are assuming things, or making things up, and then presenting those things as facts. this doesn't help anyone - please try not to do it!

It is possible to grind 40/80 for 1.25 BB an hour over 2k hours if you game select, seat select, and look for shorthanded must-move, latenight spots. This does require having a relatively large roll b/c the swings are huge. But you aren't going to make close to that in a full game with 7 other regs and one fish unless you are a certified dream crusher.

+1. Game selectors have a huge advantage. I never recorded wins and losses and have no idea what my winrate is though.

It'd be kind of nice to wait for more posters to share win rates before trying to shout me down. Kills, half kills, and straddles have a huge impact on win rates & potential win rates, and you can see that across all the poker formats. Trying to lump 20/40 and 40/80 into the same category may have been misleading. One reason I did that is because given a sufficient bankroll a limit pro will typically game select between 20/40 30/60 and 40/80 and the bigger game should not always result in higher hourly earnings. That's common sense, just like how a pro rolled for 10/25 could prefer a 5/10 game with lots of action.

2 of the players I cited for my data did in fact move up to higher stakes. The other players I am familiar with making more than 1.5BB/hr are also likely/capable to play bigger. Good games still exist, if they didn't there would be many less players studying the game as hard as they do.

There are a few more things I could bring up to defend myself that haven't really been touched on but I would prefer hearing from some new posters before turning this thread into an argument.

I'm also hoping to hear win rates specific to certain rooms.

Qualitative > Quantitative

Putting too much emphasis on your win rate can incentive you to forgo certain +EV situations. It's good to have an idea of how much money you can expect to make in a game and necessary to calculate your bankroll requirements but I think that's the extent of how much you should think about it.

Someone could pretty easily manufacture a ridiculous win rate using extreme game selection but using that as a benchmark for yourself would be pointless.