How long is the long run

"In the long run we are all dead"

John Maynard Keynes

Just a little joke in this context, but with a true essence

A ambitious beginner in poker kind of has no real long run I guess. As a beginner you should be working so much on improving your game theoretically that you get no samplesize while standing on one skill-level.
No beginner should play 50k or 100k hands while being on the same skill-level. If you improve in poker, your play from hand 0 to hand 10k is not comparable to your play from hand 40k to hand 50k in my opinion. Thats makes it really hard to say "I've got winrate X bb/100". Also climbing up the limits before having a huge samplesize is a "problem"

If you don't get better and play a certain amount of hands with the same skill, its a matter of the wanted accuracy of your winrate-approximation.

A short example out of my mind (in Fixed Limit):
1. You have won 5000 big blinds (aka 2500 Big Bets) in 50k hands
2. You have won 200 big blinds (aka 100 Big Bets) in 200k hands

In 1. you are probably a winning player. Its not totally sure, but its likely.
In 2. you could be a slightly winning or a slightly losing player, even if the samplesize is four times as high as in 1.

But in 1. your winrate is probably far more away from your real winrate than your winrate in 2. is from your real winrate.

Harder than I thought to talk about mathematics in a foreign language, but I hope its understandable. Its also pretty theoretical and you don't have to understand every detail of the stochastics (it would be a lie if I would say I understand everything in that field) to be a good poker player.

It's always a matter of what you want to know and how accurate you want to know it. If you work on your game really hard and improve your game all the time, there is no 100%-accurate long run ♦

Best Regards,
Krupsinator

EDIT: What I almost forgot: Good Luck ♠_smile:

I think Igot what you were saying. Be as it may, judging your winrate is a tricky thing.

Originally posted by Krupsinator
"In the long run we are all dead"

John Maynard Keynes

Harder than I thought to talk about mathematics in a foreign language, but I hope its understandable. Its also pretty theoretical and you don't have to understand every detail of the stochastics (it would be a lie if I would say I understand everything in that field) to be a good poker player.

EDIT: What I almost forgot: Good Luck ♠_smile:

Thanks!

Originally posted by bogstratos
4K is nowhere near a good sample too see if you are running bad or just playing bad. 100K is what you should be looking for, as what JB said.

And 2,5 BIs isn't that much of a loss really in 4K hands.

Post hands in the evaluation forum (very important imo), ask for help and study!

you obviously didnt play one hour FL in your life or didnt observe that the poster speaks about FL , or you would know what 240bb means in FL

The long run is a theoretical entity. Asking how long is the long run is kind of like asking how big is infinity. There is simply no answer. It is impossible to be 100% confident that your true Long Run WR is xbb/100.

Relevant Question:
1) How many hands does it take for me to be 95% confident that my nominal WR is within xbb of my true WR given that I play y game and given my playing style?
-this would assume no progress in one's game.