Sample Size

[FlushDraww]

Ok you experienced NL cash players give it to me straight, once and for all. What is the accepted amount of hands played where you can then determine that hey, this hand does not play so well in EP, or hmmm suited connectors are not profitable vs a raise and things of this size. It used to be 10,000 hands years back, but I have the feeling that is old school thinking in a new poker world. So what's the generally accepted number of hands in the poker community to make determinations about poker?

[jyms]

It depends

[MadMojoMonkey]

10k hands is a pretty good number and it has to do with variance, not the style of players.

The point is that there's not only variance in the deal, there's variance in mood, action, image, attention... Name anything that varies during the session, and you have a source of variance. (get it?)

In order to find the answer you seek, you must first state the question. Each question will require a different sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions.

For the class of questions you posed, 10k is a good start.

A question like, "Is this villain able to bluff?" might take a single hand.

[Icanhastreebet]

10k hands is a pretty good number and it has to do with variance, not the style of players.

The point is that there's not only variance in the deal, there's variance in mood, action, image, attention... Name anything that varies during the session, and you have a source of variance. (get it?)

In order to find the answer you seek, you must first state the question. Each question will require a different sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions.

For the class of questions you posed, 10k is a good start.

A question like, "Is this villain able to bluff?" might take a single hand.

For the questions he posted you would need a couple million hands. I mean you might get dealt 76s OTB like what 3 times at FR in 10k hands and like 5 in at 6m? So even if you look at like 76s-JTs it's still obviously irrelevant until a few million hands. This is why ptr was so so powerful if you used it correctly. You could basically look at the biggest winners for each position and just ~copy what they were doing until you learned when/why to loosen or tighten up etc.