Poker Basics - BB/100

If you are a cash game pro you need to keep an eye on this stat, but what exactly do we mean by BB/100?

Often in poker we use terminology we expect the new players to understand that they probably don't and BB/100 is one of those terms. 

BB/100 stands for Big Blinds per 100 hands. It is a statistic you will find on tracking software and it measures how many big blinds you win or lose, on average, per 100 hands. 

So for example, if you play $1/$2 NL and you have a winrate of 4 BB/100. That means on average after 100 hands you would be up $8 and after 1,000 hands you would be up $80. 

It is very important to state at this point that you need a large sample of hands to get an accurate estimation of BB/100. We are talking hundreds of thousands to be close to accurate. So don't pay much attention to it in a single session, week or even month. 

A metric for moving up in stakes

BB/100, when you have a reliable sample size, is a useful metric for game selection. You can get a relatively accurate assessment about how much you should win after putting in a certain amount of time at the tables. 

If you know the BB/100 of the people you play against it also helps to decide who to avoid at the tables and who to play longer against. 

Perhaps more than anything it is used to decide when to move up or take shots at a bigger game. A 2 BB/100 player is not far off being a breakeven player, but once they start getting to 4 BB/100 it might be time for them to think about moving up. Once they get above 7 BB/100 they are a crusher and dominating their games, they should seriously be moving up stakes. 

BB/100 can be negative too and it is no small feat to go from a minus 7 BB/100 to a minus 2 BB/100 player. Over a large sample that is a genuine sign of improvement. Although it should go without saying that you should almost certainly be thinking of moving down in stakes if this is your situation, rather than up. 

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