399 hours or sessions?

1300 hours, 399 sessions. Each session lasting 3-4 hours and usually two per day.

Yeah that was the roughest downer I've ever experienced. It was very drawn out and felt like it lasted forever. I struggled to put in the hours during that period, but can honestly say that I played well during that period.

Hopefully I don't encounter another one like that for a long time.

looks like -12kish?

I am in a pretty huge DS as well, the worst part (or feeling) is that I was in a break even stretch then broke out of it, went on a little heater then just nose dived downward.

cbayly12 you should post your hourly graph in the 2/5 winrate thread - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/27...n-rate-528999/

Nice earn.

A poker fiscal cliff story...

I have been keeping records of my play since the summer and have 34 1-2 sessions tracked by the hour. (I keep a note file on my phone for each session and at the dealer change at the top of the hour, I note what I have and any big hands from the past hour.) FWIW, I am averaging slightly more than $10/hr and have won 22 of 34 sessions with 2 breakeven (+/- less than $25) sessions. So I am winning decently and consistently.

What I have learned from the hourly tracking is probably more interesting. I play almost exclusively Friday and Saturday nights, usually from about 8 to some time in the middle of the night. My hourly breakdown is as follows -

8pm to 9pm: $20.26
9pm to 10pm: $5.22
10pm to 11pm: $30.03
11pm to 12am: $17.75
12am to 1am: $37.07
1am to 2am: -$42.79
2am to 3am: -$14.08

All of these, except the last one, consist of at least 24 hours, so small sample size isn't a major concern here. Furthermore, I have been up in 18 of 28 midnight to 1:00 hours and up in only 9 of 27 1:00-2:00 hours so it is not a case of hitting a couple of huge hands in the former time frame and a couple of coolers in the latter. It is a consistent pattern of falling off the cliff at 1:00.

So why is this happening? Fatigue could be part of it, except for the fact that my loss rate declines in the 2:00-3:00 hour and I actually am profitable after 3am (but sample size gets smaller there - 18 hours, then 12 hours). Also, my winrate for 7+ hour sessions is slightly higher than my winrate for shorter sessions. (Looking at the rate by hour of session is all over the place - hours 3, 5, and 8 are all over $30/hour while hours 4, 6, and 7 are between -$10 and -$15/hour.)

I think the bigger factor is that the room composition changes as the night goes on. There are usually about 10 1-2 tables running in the room from about 9 to midnight and then they start breaking. By 2 am, there are usually three or four tables going. In other words, the fish get busted or just go home after midnight and the average table gets much more competent as the night wears on. The tricky thing, however, is that the later it gets, the more likely the random drunk wanders in and sits down, so I think that I am falling for the illusion that the games get easier as it gets later but we are actually trading five sober fish at a table for an occasional drunk spew monkey and that is a net -EV trade. And our room is not one where there is much drinking (no free liquor and a 2am cutoff ) so drunk tourists are never a factor in the games.

So what is my tl;dr point? First, if you are not tracking by the hour, it is probably worth doing for a while to see if there are any hidden cliffs in your stats. Second, has anybody else out there done hourly tracking and found the same thing?

I still think your sample sizes are too small. You win a good size pot at 2:15 and bam you are profitable from 2-3 am. If that's the case your samples are still pretty small. You can view it as something that needs to be looked at/worked on, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's 100% true yet.

"All of these, except the last one, consist of at least 24 hours, so small sample size isn't a major concern here"


[ ] OP understands statistics

24 hour samples is not enough to determine whether you can spell poker, know what a chip is, etc

Neither are 240 hour samples


Talk to me when you get close to 1k hours


Interesting idea tho

Well...except for this small detail. The p value for the two-tailed t-test for the two data sets is .02 so yes, there is a statistically significant difference between the two "samples."

However, of course, as you surely know, sampling theory does not strictly apply here since we are dealing with populations and not samples. These are the hours that I have played and there is a $79 difference in my hourly rate between the former and the latter. However, as Grodsky and Pager (2001) have noted, standard errors can be viewed as estimates of parameter dispersion when dealing with censuses and not samples. Therefore, p values can be used as estimates of the magnitude of population differences in the case of a t-test using two populations.

So please, before you throw out the "you need 1000 hours of poker for any results to be significant", you should probably understand the statement being made and the necessary statistics behind it.

I finally decided to download poker tracker software to my cell phone.

Since I got it, I've played 53 hours and am down $291.00.

Owned.

If you don't think you have a low sample size then you have to quit playing 1AM-3AM because you're lighting money on fire. Are you going to actually do that?

Yes, that is my plan - to the extent that I can exercise the necessary amount of self-control to get up and leave.

What the data say to me is that either (a) I suddenly become a much worse player at 1:00 or (b) the games I play in get much harder at 1:00. Either way, continuing past 1:00 is a generally losing proposition.

Now I recognize that there is nothing magic about 1:00 exactly. Different nights, different tables, different cards, etc. But this is a striking difference and one that the stats state is very unlikely to be due to mere chance. (In fact, it is only a 2% chance of being due to random chance.)

That's an interesting analysis. (Regardless of the disagreements about sample size, the method is interesting.) I've looked at similar trends by room or session start time, but never hour by hour winrates. It's probably a very strong function of the room itself. I play in a couple of charity rooms that close at 2am, and the last hour is usually insanely profitable with people loosening way up to try to get un-stuck for the night. But at the local casino the 1-2am hour tends to be more dead since people are getting tired but they're not facing the eminent closure for the night.

It seems like there *might* be something different happening to the table dynamic at that hour, and there's no reason that perking up and paying extra attention at that time to try to detect the change would be a bad thing to do. Maybe one simple adjustment would make all of the difference.

First-time poster with a general question. I've been playing NLHE, almost solely live, for about four years, but just started tracking my results in September. Think I was up before that, but can't say for sure because I wasn't keeping track. Since I began tracking, I've been diligent, getting in every session including the losers. I'm now up $2,150 over 150 hours, for a $14.50 win rate. Mostly playing 1/2 NLHE, with a bit of 1/2 PLO mixed in. All at home games/raked home games (in NYC with a family so can't get to the casino very often). I feel like I'm usually one of the better (if not best) players at the tables I play in, and study the game (including lurking here a lot when I should be working).

Question is, how confident should I be that I'm a winning player in my games. 150 hours isn't a lot, but on the other hand I think it's hard for a losing player to get up $2,150 over that amount of time just due to variance. Don't really have a sense for how to measure this though, wondering what others think.

It is most likely that you are a winning player when +2150 over 150 hours. It is not certain though. The old go-to rule is 300 hours will tell you winning or losing with confidence...

As for win rate, takes thousands of hours, and even then, expect it to continue to change as you and the games do not stay static.

Thanks bip! Good point on not staying static. I've been working on my game, and feel I've recently improved my play on big draws by getting more aggressive with them. Not only good in a hand, but also think it's good for the meta game. When people see me get in with "just" a draw (even if I'm ahead) I think it makes them more likely to look me up when I have the nuts. Important since I'm playing in a pretty small player pool.

Goal is 20 hours this weekend. Lets get it.

Sounds like a miserable weekend. Good luck!

January results:

Total profit = $8,698
Total sessions = 28
Average session profit = $310.64
24 winning sessions, 4 losing sessions
Longest win streak = 10 sessions, plus an 18 out of 19 stretch

$5500/mo goal is off to a good start. All of my play has been $1/2 at Red Rock except for the session on 1/5 which was at Venetian. Also scored a +$1740 cash off staking 2+2er iSUCK_out in his 2nd place RR main event finish...pretty good month overall.

Ur the most awesome 1/2 player ever.

Everyone in this thread is, had to join the party

Why did you take the 22nd off???

He was running bad, ldo.

Made less than 1k in 5 sessions...shush.

To drink beer

This is what i have noticed at about 3-7 am, alchol has worn off, everyone is tired and can not think so they jsut go on auto pilot mode. I have spent the last two months playing thur, fri, and sat night until morning. And i really do not think it is any more profitable then playing until like 1-2am.

The drunk fish that everyone speaks about on weekend nights is extinct.