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Win Rate and Variation in Poker Statistics

Many successful poker players today pay careful attention to their statistics, especially the ones that play online. Possibly the most important statistic for a player looking to be successful is the win rate statistic.

What is a Win Rate?

A win rate is simply how much you can expect to win in a given time. Win rates are usually expressed in terms of big blinds per hour (BB/hr) or big blinds per 100 hands (BB/100). If your win rate is positive, you have a positive expectation and can expect to be a long-term winner playing poker. If your win rate is negative, your bankroll will eventually drop to zero over a long enough time unless you makes some adjustments in your game.

How Does Variance Affect Your Poker Statistics?

A game like no-limit holdem has a great deal of variance. In one session of $2/$4 blind no-limit holdem, you could win $1000, in another you could lose $500. It’s very difficult over the short term to know your win rate in no-limit holdem. Therefore, making any assumptions based on limited statistics is probably a mistake.

If you’re interested in truly knowing your poker texas holdem online win rate, you will need to play many sessions and carefully record each one. Once you’ve logged thousands of hands of play, you will be ready to generate a reasonable approximation of your win rate.

More about Variation in Win Rates

Keep in mind that your no-limit skills may be fluctuating as well. Even once you think you have a pretty good idea of what your win rate is, you should continue to keep statistics. Your skills may improve resulting in a higher win rate, or psychological factors may reduce your win rate.

Consistent monitoring of your wins and losses will help you keep a rough approximation of where you are, which you can use to decide whether you should move up or down in limits and how much time you should devote to poker.

An advantage of variation is that you may get lucky. For example, even if you normally wouldn’t buy in to a $10,000 tournament, you could play some cheap satellites, get lucky, and qualify for 2008 WSOP through pure variation.

Think of that the next time variation brings you down!

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