This was briefly brought up in another thread. I'd like to get some other opinions on this.

What do you guys consider Long Term?

For instance how many hours/hands do you have to play before you can call yourself a "winning longterm player"?

Or how long will it be before suckouts and bad beats even out and your results are on average?

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Well, heres my take.

Long term is where you start seeing the average conistent results you have been aiming for over at least 6 months. Ok, thats not long term, thats what you should be doing.

I really don't think you can say you have begun the long term unti lyou have found your game. I have been playing for about 2 years, seriously for about 18 months, and have just in the last 6 months felt my game has a reached a consistent playing level that I could be happy with. Of course I'm constanly trying to improve, but I have reached a level where the level of improvement will not be exponentional any more. I think the long term cannot begin until you have reached such a point where your game will not change significantly anymore.

That being said, mathmatically, I have no idea what the true long term is. I think you must really ignore the 'long term' and focus on the here and now. We do this by playing for the long term . We make the right plays with right percentages now, and let god sort'em out later. Meaning we earn our sklansky chips now, and someday, it will pay off.

I truly believe some players can never hit the 'long run'. MAybe they're just cursed, but its statistically POSSIBLE to never hit a flush draw (VERY unlikely, but POSSIBLE). I dunno, I don't really believe in Karma, but I sure aint voting against it. Whats the long run for these types of people? 10 years, 25? 100? 1 million? Sure love to ride that upswing though.

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NLHE. Ring 9/10 players:

Statistics become significant at 30 samples - lets call it 50!
169 combinations of hole cards - lets call it 200
There are about ten 'types' of flop - very approximately.
There are about ten 'types' of table - judged from flop entry.

Winners should avoid certain table types because the ROI is small. But recognising this part of poker

Guesstimate: 50*200*10*10 = 1,000,000 hands.

The reality si is that a winning player should not be playing this much because of table selection and not playing certain hole cards.

Experince telel me that runs (good and bad have an upper life of about 2000 hands - average is 1000 hands)

Ballpark: 50-100k hands- you know you're a winner or loser...

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Hey,

Yeah I'm still kinda new to the game (started playing in April with playmoney), and variance/longterm fascinates me.

I would probably consider long term to be 100k hands. I know that many experienced players say it's longer (a lifetime).

But really, imagine you play a in 1 week 5 hands where you flop top set and guy beats you by getting runner runner gutshot. Those are his only live outs and you've lost to it 5 times in one week. The odds of runner runner gutshot are terrible, and in 3 of those times it was capped flop and turn!

So in this instance it'll probably take me forever to reach this situation and finally break even. I mean not only will I need the hands to hold up 290 tiimes or whatever it is, but I'll have to get some really good bets in there also!

Is this false thinking? I mean is breaking even losing these hands in this fashion, but then sucking out hardcore with top pair vs a flopped straight enough times to make up for the previous suckouts now 'even'?


Mike

100k is a number thats tossed around a lot, It's probably higher than that though

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“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

100K isn't bad. Consider this for an online player:

4 tables at a time
200 hands/hr
30 hrs/wk
That's 6K hands a week, 24K+/mo.

You're looking at 4 months to find trends. That's a good sample if you ask me.

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50hands/table may be a BIT low.. more like 75 for 6max 1/2, which is a game I want to play

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“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

That's still 2.5-3 months. Definitely enough to spot trends.

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And definately a chance that a losing player will still make 2bb/100

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“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

HMMMM, at 35/hr that would take 71 weeks or 40hr/week play.