Before it is acceptable to say you can comfortably play at any given level?

Obviously I'm not talking about 200 hands as enough but at the same time I'm a regular guy with a job and a social life so playing 500,000 hands is out of the question!

I'd say that after 5,000 or so hands you can easily judge if you are cut out for a certain level, I'm a 5/10 and occasionally 10/20 player who does alright at these levels with similar amounts of hands logged, around 5k or so.

Sadly I only get to play short sessions of under an hour due to general life, drinking, golf, football, tennis etc plus playing like a robot, festering away in my underpants for hours on end is not my idea of a life!

i dunno, 200k maybe.

200k? Dear me!

Like i said, I can only play short sessions, dunno, maybe 100 or so hands at a time due to life etc and having no desire to stare at a screen for any longer than half an hour or so! If i win then great, if I lose its rarely much so it doesnt affect me in any great way!

Honestly though, as i've moved through the levels, you get a realisation very quickly if you are cut out for it and quickly who the decent players are and who isn't.

Far to mouch is made of guys who think you need to grind 200k hands just to draw up conclusions on whether your cut out for it or not!

You are right OP short term results mean everything.

ahh, the usaul nonesense has started.

Its hardly short term for me as it takes around a month for me to play 5k hands. After this month, I judge my play on one thing, if more readies are in my account at the end of the month as opposed to the start. For the last 6 months this has been the case, admittedly I'm not a millionaire out of the game but I do alright as a hobby which gets roughly 4 hours a week dedicated to it.

So your point is wrong, its not short term for me, 5k hands a day may be the norm for you and I admire you 100% if you can be bothered or have the ability to do so, which I neither want to nor can't!

If you have ntohing to contribute then i'd rather you kept your nonesense to yourself as I was seeking a debate on the inital topic

Why did you start this thread if you are so confident your sample size is sufficient?

I never once said it was sufficent, I wanted to get an understanding of what others viewed as acceptable.

I was under the impression that 5k hands was a decent amount to judge as in my opinion you can run well but with the low volume I put in, to log in over 6 months and be a winner each month is unlikely. Obviously I was worng and I am a luckbox over the past 6 months, oh well, time to move back to 1/2 as 5/10 will eventually catch me and i'll go bust!

no it still is. playing less volume doesn't change your standard deviation on a per hand basis and thus is not statistically relevant to your whole 'long vs. short term' paradigm.

if you aren't even going to play enough volume to make a statistical conclusion you are going to have to start making your conclusions based on non-statistical information.

example: for a time i used to play HU online a fair bit and even though statistically speaking it would take many thousands of hands to guarantee i have an edge vs some particular opponent, often times within 5 hands i *knew* my edge was large because of the way in which those first 5 hands were butchered by my opponent. similarly, you are going to have to look for evidence that you're exerting some edge on your opposition. If there is some reasonable thesis for you playing a superior game than the vast majority of your opposition then you can move to step 2 and consider whether or not this strategic edge is sufficient to overcome the rake. ultimately you are just going to have to use your best judgment. be rational. be pragmatic. be somewhat skeptical of your abilities and your talent relative to your peers.

if playing the occasional lengthy session constitutes a waste of your life then you should probably stick to your other more rewarding hobbies. seriously. if you are just busy for a week or two that's fine, but if spending a free night playing poker is not part of a good life to you then you should really stick to those things which are.

EDIT: just picked up on the fact that you are probably an online player. shouldn't be that hard to build sufficient volume over time. try playing more than one table.

Tyler, the problem with assuming that an opponent has huge leaks in the short term is that if you feel the need to post whether a 5k hand sample is sufficient to determine whether you are a favorite, then you are probably not in a position to judge. For people who have played a ton of hands and are winning over that sample then it becomes easier to be confident, bc you have proof that your reads are consistently correct.