If you're only playing a few times a year, then honestly it's probably not worth too much extra effort off the felt; just enjoy your rare poker outings for what they are.

If you start bumping up those recreational hours to something more significant (say 300+ hours/year or whatever) then you'll want to consider putting more off felt effort into your game.

Ggoodluck!G

In 2014, I played 446 hours. I started to play a lot in 2015, but I over did it. I played 58 hours in January and 98 hours in February and I only made $558 in that time for $3.57 per hour. So, I found a better hobby and ended up meeting my wife.

If this was giraffeable, you would have the best giraffe in the thread.

Gyou'rerunningwellatthethingsthataremostimportant, congrats!G

+1000

Takes a lot of moxy, and is much appreciated.

Paulhamr, what hobby were you doing that ended up with you meeting your wife?

Just passed the 300 hours milestone as a rec player:

I'm not a crusher but feels like I am improving by posting here, and since I took it more seriously (2018 - 160 hours so far)

Thanks to all ! GL

Improvisational comedy

Met and married a women doing improv.

Probably the sickest brag posted in this thread imo

Hi all,

Will be positing a graph when I get to 1000 hours

What do you guys think about having a 4bb/hr winrate at 1/3 over 680 hours and winning 5bb/hr over the last 582 hours?

Solid? Room for improvement?

I want to move up to 2/5 eventually.

Always room for improvement. Always.
Having said that, very nice work. You're doing well. And almost certainly within the top 10% in your room, and maybe in the top 5%.
Winning over 1000 hours is good almost no matter the win rate, at 5+/hour you're doing well.

Congrats!

Thank you very much! I appreciate the feedback!

Nice job! ..... Tho wouldn't $16.37/hr translate to 8.2 BB/hr at 1/2?

I have to say, when I first started playing live poker, I was pretty mediocre.

Started off with a bankroll of $1k to play live 1/2 as a sophomore in college.

First 400 hours

Profit: $5100

Hourly: $12.75/hour

(played a whole summer with a ton of time on wednesday and thursday at 2pm in a pretty dead card room. hard to sustain a good hourly when you're playing in ****ty games)

This was playing a combination of 1/2 and 1/3 winning 4-5bb/hr. Not exactly ideal. Right now, in my last year of college, I am on a hell of a heater (playing mainly on friday and saturday nights helps too). I've even moved up to 2/5 in the meantime.

Next 265 hours

Profit: $12759

1/2 and 1/3 hourly: $42.48

2/5 hourly: $36.87

Bankroll is up to 15k (after buying a ****ty used car with some of the cash) and am hoping to move up to 5/10 by the end of 2019!

+1

Gcongrats,imoG

surely the last 5 posts are counter the thread rules and deserve bans?

Yeah, fair point and mea culpa. I'll delete the derail and the responses.

heh, you're right on the math. I took those numbers right from the app I use . Possible that it's including hi-hand wins ? Those were about $ 1600.

Do people over exaggerate how much you need as a bankroll for lice cash? I currently have 3.5k for 1-2 200max. I watched a neeme vid and he said a 3k swing can happen at 1-2. I feel like a player would have to really suck to go down 3k at 1-2 and prolly would be a player issue and not variance? I’m just trying to get to 2-5 and will be adding cash when I can go make bankroll. Going to take notes so I can figure out what my hourly is.... I know you need to put mass hrs to get an idea but I feel a general ballpark can be figured out over months of playing 2-3 times a week. Thanks for any advice!

Depends also on the way you play.

The more tag is your play style, the more it will swing (both ways).

The more ABC tag-ish, the more constant income.

But swing do exist, and you can run pretty bad on "long period of time" in live. Since "long period of time" is such small amount of hands in live...

I have 2,114 hours of 1/2 in my database. Most of that is in $300 cap games. I always buy in for the max and anytime I'm $25 or more less than Max I always top off. Over those hours my biggest downswing was little over $1,800.

Your mileage may vary.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

I have 1100 hours of mostly 2/5 with a couple of $5500 downswings, which would be like 2200 at 1/2, with a high winrate (13bb/hr). It's not quite 3000, but I also have never run extremely poorly. So yeah, I bet a $3000 downswing can happen at 1/2, but plenty of players will never experience it

I've got 6000 hours of live play in my log, mostly $1/2 either $200 or $300 cap (4500 at least), but more and more PLO recently.

Sample sizes less than 100 hours are garbage. Pure noise. Now you might be able to tell by the people around you or your eyeballs and experience that a game is likely to be very good or bad a lot faster, but for statistics ... 100 hours is junk. If you're only 2-3 times a week that might be 3 months.

You can have varying results over 500+ hour samples too. But that's where we can start saying something about if you're actually good or running hot. Especially coupled with hand analysis.

Over all that time I've had a couple of nasty downswings > $2k. Some of it is pure runbad, and some is always mental (even if it's subtle). But if I just look at my graph and the "noise" or random up and down oscillations in the otherwise climbing line it's over $1k wide.

A lot of the BR requirements that people state are for if you're playing for a living, or otherwise unable to replenish your roll if you go busto. So if you can peel off a couple grand of "life money" if the variance monster hits ... then $3.5k for $1/2 is fine, and I'd start taking shots at the $2/5 game (when it looks good) at $4k, dropping back to $1/2 exclusively if below $3k.

what does this even mean?

I'd guess in his previous sentence he meant "The more lag" and by ABC tag-ish he probably meant playing a tight hand range aggressively while playing hands mostly face-up for value.

I've had a really good year at 1/2 and 1/3. I play a lower variance style, by design.

I went to northern California and a few of the games I played were the best I've played all year. I take other measures to reduce variance, such as only topping of selectively. However, that weekend in Ca I was down $1600. Probably played 10-12 hours. I think I tilted a little, but not much. At my worst, I was still one of the better players on the table.

I'm pretty sure I've had 3k downswings and certainly, prolonged periods of bad loses, breaking even and modest wins.

I'm not a great player, but I'm easily a long term winner. Not "pretty bad."

Once, playing VP, I drew a straight flush draw in dueces wild, playing ten hands at once. I went 0/10. Wasn't very significant then, but I imagined how brutal it would be to have that happen over a month of real poker. That could certainly lay the foundation for a 3k+ downswing during which you begin to sincerely entertain the idea that God or the universe or something is effing with you.

The environment of the game you play in is arguably as important in determining the variance you experience as your own individual style.

If you play in shallow loose passive games where everyone plays face-up and never bluffs/semi-bluffs you'll experience much lower variance than if you play in deep aggressive games that see many 3bets/4bets preflop and lots of semi-bluffing post.