What exactly do you mean by this? You think there is no possible way to calculate one's win rate in any poker game? Everything I have ever read recommends honestly keeping track of your wins and losses, which is what I have always done. Do you think it's better just to make guesses at what one's true win rate might be? Obviously past results do not guarantee future results, and games change over time, etc. But it still seems much better to try to keep track of your past win rates than to ignore the,/

If you want to know the total money you won in the poker room over a certain time period, in $/hr, then include it. If you want some sort of indication of what your rate/hour is based upon the way you play poker, then don't.

I don't think the fact that it comes out of the jackpot drop matters at all. I've played where they have $1000 hot seats where the bravo system randomly picks a seat and you win the money. Including that in a statistic that is usually used as a measure of poker ability would be silly. But sure, if you want to just brag about how much money you walked out of the poker room with than include it.

This. Include it in a database as a separate line and then choose to include or exclude it based on why you're calculating a winrate.

The gray area are things like HHJ where you may win enough over time to reach the long run, in which case it should always be included.

This comes up every few months in the winrate thread.

Simplest thing is to record it as a separate category "Jackpot winnings" or whatever. That way you can filter it in or out as needed. You are paying the drop, so it's a form of rakeback that I'd think may effect your relative winrate from room to room. It's like choosing to play in the room where they rake $4 max instead of $6 max.

I'd even keep the smaller $100 HHJ type things in a separate category.

Why are you calculating your winrate?

1. If it is to get a good statistical estimation of your long term skill, then exclude.
2. If it is to get a good statistical estimation of your long term profitability, then exclude actual wins but adjust for 'theoretical' wins.
3. If it is for bragging rights, then go ahead and include it. Double it, why don'cha?

I just keep 2 figures... It would not make much sense to count a BBJ into your short-term win rate. I would just figure your overall, lifetime, win rate, and then factor in the BBJ to see how much of a difference it actually makes.


I keep several different win rates

I have my total/overall/GROSS win rate with promo's, tips, rake, and absolutely everything I can remember to keep track of...

then I have like my home-game win rate. My Online win rate. My Live win rate with and without promo's. I don't play many hands live (<1k per month) so when I win a high hand it really skews my win rate. Sometimes, promo's even put me in the the black (or is it red?) for the month, as my live game is break even.

I miss bets or give free cards in position sometimes when I'm drawing to a big paying high hand. I factor it into pot odds. I think a good discussion would be whether its a leak to factor it in, or a leak not to factor it in. But since I'd be lying if I said I never consider jackpots when making poker decisions, I'm fine with including it into my win rate.

Quite the thread for such a 'simple' issue, perhaps not.

Any 'income' that's not associated by someone 'matching' chips that you put in the pot should be kept outside your win rate IMO. I could say 'showdown' winnings, but you actually have a showdown in a BBJ hand, but perhaps not in a high hand promo.

So any income from Nike should be put against the salary cap for NBA players? So any money from Callaway (or a hole-in-one car) should be used in the PGA money list? Extreme statements but it's a different pool of funds 'unrelated' to actually playing the game of choice.

Very true you can consider promo 'opportunities' when it comes to table/room selection, but it's really 'fool's gold' when it comes to evaluating your performance. GL

Obviously, leave it in if you are a losing player and it puts you in the black, leave it out if you are a winning player without it.

Seriously, though, you should count it the same way you would count rakeback online.

I seriously disagree with this. Online rakeback was something you could cound on coming in regularly; it actually was practically guaranteed, with either no variance, or at least much less variance than regular poker winnings. Jackpot winnings are the opposite; you might never get any, and the variance is much higher than regular poker winnings.

The only good reason to track win rate is to figure out whether and how much you should be playing. I think you're better off figuring out the hourly expectation on a jackpot/promo system and adding that to your winrate than adding in how much you actually won, but if you frequently win small and reliable promos, it's fine to add those to w/r.

No, you should also do it to pay your taxes, and if you have a comingled bank account, how much of it can be used for poker.

Exactly, just as we track out workout results to figure out whether we should go to the gym.

If you won a 50K piece of a work lottery pool, would you tell people you make 70K a year working the condiments line at Subway?

It depends on your purpose for calculating your winrate. If it's to know how well you play poker, you may not want to include huge wins that are random occurrences. If it's to know how much you've on per hand in the past, by all means include it if you don't want to know how much of those winnings were due to your ability to beat the game given the rake / bbj drop.

It comes down to a personal preference.

Yes. If you want to know exactly how you actually did in the past, you might as well include any HH and BB wins, since you did actually receive the $.
BUT if you're trying to use a calculated winrate as a predictor of future performance, you should exclude them (or include their theoretically calculated EV, which will be pretty small on a per-hour basis).

There's a difference between keeping track of your wins and loses and trying to calculate in a statistical way. The biggest mistake people make is that they assume that they haven't changed their playing ability over a long period of time in Live play and that their villains are being kind enough to do the same. Once these change, then data you collected in the past is meaningless statistically.

People then use that bogus data to do is figure out whether they are better than others, typically in a epeen contest on the internet.

What is important is how you stack up compared to your opponents at your table. Are you the best or second best player at the table? If the answer is yes, you'll be a winner long term. The only way to know this is to measure how they play vs. how you play. If you see more mistakes they make than you do, then they are worse. If you don't understand how they win money or why they make certain plays, they are likely better than you are.

The main rooms I play in frequently have high hand and hot seat (basically a raffle drawing for everyone seated in BBJ eligible games) as their promotions. If I happen to win one of these promotions then I'll log it and count it as winnings, but I log it separately from my individual sessions. Basically I'll add it to my bottom line but I don't count it towards my hourly win rate or any other statistic I want to calculate. I just view them as poker bonuses or windfalls, even though the promotions are 100% funded by rake.

BBJ , Best Hands , and so on are actually just prizes that a player can win at a casino or even a home game. I am only a rec player but I keep records and include this kind of rare event mostly just for fun. Don't think a serious player should use these lucky windfalls as part of his normal winrate stats. Winning a lottery (big or small) adds to your household budget a lot, but does not increase your salary at work!

OK boys .. fun thread.

What happens if you earn player points at your regular casino and you win a car in one of their monthly promos .. or even cash? We have one guy who has won $15K (2 'wins') the past 6 months in these drawings.

Seems to me that you need to put that in your win rate since you worked so hard to 'earn' it!! (not really)

Win rate is an evaluation of performance. Although you may choose to play at a certain location due to the promos available you shouldn't really 'count' on these promos to justify your poker skill. Is there a skill to getting hit by lightning?

It does you no good to win a $500 high hand once in a while if you are losing $3000 a month playing poker ... or even just breaking even for that matter. GL

Depends how often you hit the HHJ.

Fundamentally, you should include anything where you reach the long run. And this means including anything you can expect to hit often enough.

Let's say in any session you have an X% chanve of hitting the HHJ. You can calculate an EV and a variance for the HHJ and calculate what time it takes to reach the long run. Over that time period (which may be less than a year for full time players and frequent jackpots) you can definitely include it. But if your planning horizon is shorter than that (e.g., will I make rent next month) then you shouldn't include it.

DO YOU THINK YOUR LIMIT POKER STRATEGY SCHOUD BE ADJUSTED BASED ON THE FACT PEOPLE PLAY DIFFERENTLY TRYING TO HIT A HIGH HAND I MEN AS FAR AS RAISING WITH YOUR BIG PAIRS?

If you are using "winrate" as a measure of skill, then no.

If you are using "winrate" as a measure of profitability, then yes.

There's also a case to be made for whether someone is a consistent high hand winner or whether lucking out with a high hand is an exception for them.

I think you should hit that caps lock key on your keyboard so you aren't SCREAMING.

Meanwhile, if you are playing at a stakes level (whether limit or no limit) that has players fishing for high hands, then yes.. you should adjust your game. I've seen nits flat calling huge pairs (including pocket aces) just to see if they are going to get a high hand.

I keep three columns in my ledger.

1. One for total $ poker money which includes the simple math of (what did I bring) - (what did I take home)

2. One for table earn. Does not include anything but net pots.

3. Expenses

#1 is poker earnings
#2 is winrate ...........currently a number #2 as well