Is anyone beating 5KNL for 10BB+/100?

Beating 5k nl at 10bb/100 are we back in 2004?

You guys have it all backwards. No way to tell if you're a losing player. We are all probably just running bad. No need to work on your game, just keep playing til variance evens out.

If no one is beating it for 10+bb/100 then no one is crushing it.

U pros fascinating. I cannot believe the Mason 328 episode on Thinking Poker. Listened to it like all day. Amazing!

GL Rick very cool!

Poker is still a gambling game by definition and there is always a chance to lose no matter how good your decisions are or how long you play.

You should be aware of that, but that shouldn't harm your motivation or will to improve as a player.

The chances of losing on a huge sample of good play are anyway slim (still there though!) but man, luck may have a huge impact on every aspect of our lives.

Not playing Poker because there is a chance you lose over X million hands of bad run is the same as not going out because you may end up killed in a car crash, victim of a bombing or stuck by a bolt of lightning.

Let go of the illusion that you have full control, you don't.

tl;dr: conjuction of events of which at least some have probability <1 will always have probability <1

Now think about successful "traders" who have a sample 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller.

Or respected "businessmen" who's entire success is based off a handful of decisions.

Juk

Getting a case of losing over a million hands may be “possible” but it is also possible that the estimated win rate is simply wrong. With a probability of .021%~ that seems like a more likely conclusion. Of course it is possible, just statistically unlikely.

here come the pros with 10bb winrates out of the closet again kekw

The formulas are just formulas, not reality. HEM2 says my PLO zoom sd was 60 big blinds per 100 hands.

I remember around 2015 or something doug moaning about Negreanu bragging that he could beat 5k NL after two weeks of study, and Doug was like ‘I actually have to work hard for my 1bb/100 winrate’ and he was one of the biggest winners

Today I learn that 3bb/100 in 2021 is a disappointing winrate

Lol

Yup and this is how terrible players win MTTs and become poker pros.

Quantitatively that's right, especially because poker changes so fast you can never get to the samples required. But fortunately we're humans and we have the advantage of qualitative analysis which converges towards expectation much faster than any statistical method. Meaning, a 500NL player will be able to tell you if you're a winner at 100NL after glancing over a couple of your sessions. No need for million hand samples.

That being said, the upshot of playing higher stakes is always worth more than a "sure" winrate at a lower stake. The goal should always be to move up as fast as possible, not hang around and try to "prove" you're a winner at X stake.

Variance is a scary thing, yes. You could simply end up being a bottom 5% run (not unlikely - 20 in 1 chance) and then you're ****ed almost no matter how much you play. Unless you get really really good.

You could also get the top run and print, who knows

But yea, variance calcs are hella scary to think about

This is also a good reason to chase games where you are more than a 3bb winner. Going just a few bb's above that largely negates this whole thing. 8bb+ winrates look hella linear at larger sample sizes. Smooth sailing (in comparison to the low winrates).

I guess "crushing" is subjective but if someone is playing say 12K hands/month at 3BB/100 and making $18K/month , not even considering rake back, playing something like 80hr/month, and the vast majority of players have a lower win rate than that, I would probably feel okay saying they're crushing the game

I don't think we can say, it's ok to put in a bunch of work into poker and play a ton to try and make it, because we don't have full control over life anyway.

I understand the viewpoint, but my issue is I could spend X amount of hours getting good at something else more concrete such as science/technology/business.

These I think are lower variance, more rewarding routes that even if they go to ****, would leave someone in a much better position to continue a career.

I feel like there are of course risks involved with that too. Such as back in the day people who made textiles by hand were out of a career when people came up with machines to do the work. I guess that kind of thing can happen in any field, but it's probably still lower variance than poker.

i.e I don't wanna pour my life into poker when I could work on a career

Thoughts?

Now that Im 31 I agree 100%. But when I was 21 I wanted to be a poker pro and my Engineering degree was just a fallback.

But after being a full time pro for a couple years, its waaaaay better to have a stable job and be recreational player who travels to nearby events or cash games on the weekends.

There might be a few people worldwide that can make money still from online poker, but a lot of them are likely grinding out small winrates for $20 to 30k a year in countries where you can actually live on that

There are obviously exceptions, I know a guy who can still beat the games for 100k$ a year or so but I don’t think even he realises how rare that actually is

For those chuckleheads who actually think there is more than a negligible number of people who exist at high stakes who have any meaningful sample beating any stakes at all for more than 3bb/100 any evidence for your ridiculous claims, or is it just something you made up? Where do you suppose that sort of money comes from in the ecosystem? Games don’t really run anymore to the extent you think they do

anyone else any input before this thread dies?

.... yes, I believe we have a working model for analysis.

After over 45+ years in and around the poker world, I think you have a good grasp of objective reality.

Amen Brother

Variance is always the same regardless of winrate, you mean the lower the winrate the higher the chance of ending up losing?

Yes. e.g. 3bb/100 winner outcomes could be 7b/100 to -1bb/100 while the fabled 10bb/100 winner could be 14bb/100 to 6bb/100

A million hands of slight winner vs a million hands of huge crusher, same std deviance. Yeah the swings around the mean are the same size bb-wise, but they sure won't feel like it.