Message Board : Hourly Win Rate for NL Hold em Live Games

High__Rolla said:

I didn't find much on this topic in the archive, but maybe I missed it.  My question is what is an average and a good hourly win rate for live NL games, such as 2-5 NL and 5-10 NL?  I moved up to 5-10 NL about 8 months ago, and want to know if I am just on a lucky streak or can reasonably expect to continue my win rate.  I have logged 180 hours at 5-10 NL over the last 8 months. Thanks

If you have to ask if you're just running good, you're probably just running good.

If you aren't sure whether you're just running good and you're basing it on a sample of about 5000 hands, you're definitely just running good.

Sorry to be so glib.   Maybe someone else has a better answer.  I know for a fact it's been asked on 2+2 a million times, and $1-2 winrates are discussed at length in this thread.   Please don't start another thread there to ask about winrates.

The problem with objectively analyzing the question is that you have to make certain assumptions about your opponents.   For example, if something like the Wilson Turbo Texas HE simulators works for NLHE (I don't know if they ever updated them or not), you could simulate nine opponents who'd play as poorly as possible and then figure out some theoretical “maximum”, but that would have nothing to do with real game conditions.   Unless we know that the sample of games that Miller or Sklansky or whoever plays in is similar to our own games, there's not much applicability.

For example, you say that your $5-10 games are full of gamblers and your $2-5 games are weak tight.   I play in a locale where $2-5 is the biggest regular NLHE game, so that's usually full of gamblers and the $1-3 varies between gamblers and weak-tight.   (Actually, the $2-5 varies too, but it's more often LAG.)   So I'm interested in your estimate of the max attainable winrate in your games, but I'd have to take it with a grain of salt.  It's just one more data point.

I suppose the experts might be able to observe specific mistakes made at different stakes and estimate a theoretical max. winrate, but it would have to be a very inexact science.   Certainly looking at their numbers for B&M would be interesting, but NLHE cash games have only been prevalent for 3-4 years.   At 2000 hours a year that's barely long enough to provide a sample to estimate “true winrates” with very much accuracy!

AKQJ10 said:

The problem with objectively analyzing the question is that you have to make certain assumptions about your opponents.   For example, if something like the Wilson Turbo Texas HE simulators works for NLHE (I don't know if they ever updated them or not), you could simulate nine opponents who'd play as poorly as possible and then figure out some theoretical “maximum”, but that would have nothing to do with real game conditions.   Unless we know that the sample of games that Miller or Sklansky or whoever plays in is similar to our own games, there's not much applicability.

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I really like your idea of running a simulator to find out a good range of win rates.  Of course, I have no idea how to do this.  BUt suppose, you could set-up a three scenarios in which you are the best player that can be programmed in:

1. Against 9 other poor players

2. Against 9 other average players

3. Against 9 other good players

Then you could run eighty gazillion hands to see what the hourly win rate comes out for each scenario.