Obv neither are large sample sizes, but why is 20k hands considered a decentish sample size to gauge cash game progress, while 20k hands is not in tourneys (obv diff people will have diff ideas as to what a decent sample size is for either). That would be somewhere in the range of 200-225 tournies I guess. Which is obv not much in tournies. I understand it's not that much in cash either.

In cash games, alot of people seems to say, if ur beating it for a decent % after 20k hands, ur prob, but not necessarily obv, beating that level. But in tournies it's like 1000 or more games? Which would be around 100-120k or more hands. Seems like there would not be so much disparity to assess progress between the two diff types of games.

who thinks 20k handsi s a good sample for cash games??... it is not, 100k-1million or it doesnt matter

20k tournament hands is worth nothing. 1000 tournaments means nothing. Cash and MTT's are very different and as a result edges (or lack thereof) are realized over different sample spaces. You can't sit down at 200NL and make 1200 buyins in a session, but you can do just that in a tournament. You can also go hundreds, if not thousands of tournaments without a significant score which can have a profound effect on your ROI. Tournament late game is all about short stacks and subsequently even a great player has only a marginal edge over bad players in those stages. And since big scores are made or missed in those later stages of the tournament the swings are going to be huge.