How many hands is statistically valid?

[djzcko]

Guys-I moved over to NL from limit (made a small profit but the rake was killing me) a while ago. There were too many donks who would call you down with anything and then river me to death. In short, it got too frustrating and so i decided to move to NL where you could actually influence opponents to fold. So, I started off playing the $25 tables and much to my surprise, I have been doing well. I am +20BB/100 hands. Yeah, I know the sample size is small (using PT, 2K hands) but I just wanted to know what a "statistically valid" number of hands I should play to see if I can really play that well in the long run. 10k? 20k? I think I can realisitcally keep up 10BB because there are so many donks there...what I love about NL is that you can really set a nice trap and make a huge profit from it if you play the players correctly.

[Pelion]

Its more about hand histories than results over any number of hands so keep posting to find out how well you are doing.

Other than that if you are beating the game for 10BB/100 after 10k hands then it would be a reasonable assumption that you are playing well for your limit.

As for an actual winrate, for that to get accurate would take even longer than in Limit since the potential varience over the course of 1 hand is so huge (100BB or more). A reliable estimate of your winrate to within say 1BB/100 would take so long that your play would probably have totally changed by the time you played enough hands.

[djzcko]

Thanks for the advice....yeah, variance is huge with NL vs limit. When I review my stats, the normal hands (AA, KK, QQ, JJ) are all my top $ winners. However, AK SOOTED is my WORST hand! overplayed them once, made a bad read the other time and then got sucked out on the other time. I'm just gonna fold them next time...it's a donk hand anyways. lol

[Pelion]

Varience over the course of week or so is actually my larger in limit than no limit (or so ive heard). Especially in short handed limit.

Its just that varience over 1 session in no limit is huge if you get 1 big hand in the session (or 1 second best hand)

[WildBobAA]

Most people believe that you won't know what your stats truly are until 100K hands.

[Irisheyes]

100k is a really solid number I'd say. Everytime I move up I can usually get a general idea if I can beat the level or not after about 4000 hands but I've also experienced a breakeven run of 10k hands so its hard to know. If you feel confident you're doing well you're probably doing ok.

[Demiparadigm]

for winrate, about 600K should be close.
for standard deviation, about 3K should be fine.
For VPIP/PFR % 200 hands is usually pretty accurate.