I have been having some discussions abut metrics recently, both in the forum and in live games. Let’s try to Let try to review a few key points.

First, a winning player is a winning player. If you win something (after rake), you are a winner. Speaking of rake, your session totals should count the money you started with and the money you ended with. I sometimes get e-mail where someone tells me their results not counting the rake. That is like a store owner counting profits but not subtracting rent. Rake counts. To be a winner, your bottom line assumes you have already accounted for rake, tips to dealers, cocktail waitresses, and anyone else you tip. Some people who eat at the table count dinner costs separately. That’s OK, but I never did.

How long does it take to determine if you are a winning player? Long. The exact length depends on how much you win and how high your volatility is. the more you win per hour, the faster you will have an idea if you are winner. The higher your volatility (standard deviation), the longer it will take. Your actual likelihood is a function of the two.

A couple of thousand hours live (75,000 to 80,000 hands) will give you a good beginning [note this is equivalent to a full time job], but is not nearly enough to be definitive. If you play on-line and have recorded 100,000 hands, you have a start of an answer but not a final result. Again, results analysis tools like StatKing will give you answers telling you with what degree of certainly you can trust your results. It is accurate but fairly depressing to see how little you can be certain of for quite a while. Poker has a very large luck factor, which I alluded to in my column on “Hidden Luck.” If you have been winning three big bets per hour for a few months, good for you. But do not quit your day job because those results may be very inaccurate.

Let’s talk limit first. Is one big bet per hour good? Sure. Can you make more? Certainly, at lower and middle limit games, and maybe higher. Can you make less and still be a winning player? Yes. In fact, you can be a pro and never make 1 big bet per hour. As already mentioned, some pros grind out $25 per hour in a $20-$409 game and put in the hours it takes to make a living.

No limit has higher volatility for most players, but lower variance for experts, they tell me. In any event, aim for five to seven big blinds per hour. Yes, top pros can do better, but that is a good average expectation for a good to very good player. I don’t know enough about NL standard deviation, so I won’t discuss it.

Tournament take a very long time, since, somewhat like video poker, you need to hit an occasional jackpot to make your results reflect your overall chances. Sklansky has said that if you enter 80 similar events and are still a loser, chances are you are not a winning tournament player. I have no idea, but I believe him, as he is a very smart guy. In the long run, tournament players should expect to win one buy-in per tournament, but it may take years to hit some sort of meaningful average. (Less if you play only tournaments with small fields, more if you play only huge events.)

Sit-n-Goes are not really tournaments, because they pay 30 percent of the field. A decent metric for these events is a minimun15 percent expectation in terms of money. So if you enter many $50+5 SnGs, you should average a better than $7.50 per event. Percentage win is interesting, but not as important as money returned.

That was a quick look at metrics. Like height and weight charts, they do not apply to the entire poker population, and you may make more or less and still be a good player. If I have made any errors, I’m sure someone will correct me.