I took this data from PokerTracker for the last 3 months or so of opponents I have played against that have played at least 400 hands. I am sure that all of you that have pokertracker will see similar stats. The point is for anyone to have even played against me 400 hands their VIP% was nearly always in the teens or lower with just a couple of exceptions. You just can't continue to win at limit holdem if your VIP% gets out of the upper teens. There are a couple of anomalies at the 12 limit level here that are seeing 24% or so and one of them I can pretty much account for his being in the plus as he has sucked out on me about 10 times in some big pots:) If you are struggling to continually show a profit at limit holdem the first thing you should be evaluating is the number of hands you are playing. Good luck.

game_level WON HANDS VIP% PRFLRAISE
$3/$6 291.75 433 14.3187 9.0069
$3/$6 290.25 536 12.1269 7.2761
$3/$6 282 454 11.674 5.0661
$3/$6 277.75 649 12.1726 7.2419
$3/$6 248 455 20.4396 5.2747
$1/$2 235.5 678 15.3392 10.0295
$3/$6 174 451 19.2905 11.5299
$1/$2 128.75 655 24.7328 10.5344
$3/$6 115.75 407 13.5135 7.1253
$3/$6 91.5 704 12.358 8.8068
$1/$2 88.25 486 18.3128 3.7037
$1/$2 65.38 599 19.3656 7.3456
$3/$6 59.5 427 12.4122 7.26
$3/$6 52.25 567 14.2857 9.5238
$1/$2 46.25 1111 24.5725 13.7714
$1/$2 29 567 12.8748 8.1129
$1/$2 27.88 736 18.75 4.7554
$3/$6 26.5 655 14.9618 9.4656
$1/$2 23.75 442 14.4796 7.6923
$3/$6 14.75 501 14.1717 8.7824
$1/$2 14.5 427 14.7541 0.7026
$3/$6 13 473 17.1247 6.9767
$1/$2 3.12 427 23.4192 5.1522
$3/$6 -8.5 443 15.3499 10.158
$3/$6 -9 498 11.6466 9.4378
$1/$2 -10.5 629 13.9905 8.1081
$3/$6 -27 488 14.959 8.4016
$1/$2 -34.75 502 18.3267 7.5697
$3/$6 -38 529 13.7996 9.6408
$3/$6 -43 439 31.4351 8.8838
$1/$2 -47.38 421 13.0641 7.8385
$3/$6 -48.5 443 10.3837 5.1919
$1/$2 -56.37 668 17.0659 6.4371
$3/$6 -70.33 546 11.5385 6.7766
$3/$6 -77.75 610 13.1148 8.1967
$3/$6 -134.49 952 16.4916 6.9328
$3/$6 -135.5 514 9.144 1.3619
$1/$2 -138.75 820 19.2683 6.5854
$3/$6 -159.67 541 15.5268 4.8059
$3/$6 -191 419 16.7064 3.58
$3/$6 -212.75 477 14.8847 6.2893
$3/$6 -224 424 13.2075 8.2547
$3/$6 -239.25 474 35.443 8.8608
$3/$6 -576.25 796 16.3317 8.4171

I'm at 22% at the .50/1 tables and I'm having a hard time dipping below that!

bb/100 is 2, so not that great.

2BB per 100 is not too bad at all. You can probably get away with 22% at 0.5-1.0 limit if you play well after the flop because your competition is generally very poor but anything greater than that or moving up into a higher level I think you would begin to see problems. But if it is working for you now then I wouldn't recommend changing. Although there is a very limited space for adding extra hands that are profitable over time there is still space and each person has to develop his own style of play that best fits and works for them. I do know that I see alot more flops % wise in B&M games than I do online because I have a very good feel for players that I can see that is largely lost online. My solution to counteract this has to been tighten up greatly which keeps me out of troublesome situation with limited information to work with and also makes it easier to handle playing 5 tables at once. Playing that many tables gives me all the action I need:) It seems like I am always involved in a hand if only in the blind although my VIP% hovers around 11.5% week in and week out.

Thankis for the info Piers! It is much appreciated as I'm tring to help my game in all aspects, inculding limit.

I do have a question...I dont know what limits you play...but on $2/$4 and $3/$6 (what i play)
what do you consider a good VP$IP ?

I'm also curious as to what your hourly rate is compared to standard deviation...but you can keep that info to yourself if you'd like I don't have enough hands in the database to give anything even close to accurate. Stupid prima and their hand histories that don't work.

Thanks buddy!

Hey Kenny,

Congrats on another nice BTP tourny finish! I kind of melted down there at the last.

What do I consider a good VIP% at 24, 36? ============ 11.21%

That would be my percentage.

My current BB/100 hands since starting my new database in mid November for 36 limit is: 2.21. BB/hr: 1.62 Standard deviation/Hr: 61.24 SD/100 hands: 70.79.

Hourly win rate ca.: 33.15 assuming 250 hands per hour at 5 tables. In all honesty I really think this should be quite a bit higher. This is the way I try to think about it but I have never been able to reach what I thought I should be making at a particular limit online and it is somewhat disconcerting. When I played live my BB/Hr was right at 1.5 for 1020-4080 games and slightly better 1.6 or so at 48 and 816. At 36 limit I would be expecting to make 9.00/hour at worse in a B&M scene. Now online you are getting roughly twice as many hands per hour per table. So at one table I would be expecting to make a minimum of 18.00/hr and extrapolating to 5 tables I should be knocking down 90.00/hr. Well that just isn't happening and I honestly don't know why. I am sure i give up a little with multitabling but I use Game Time + which is a big help in keeping track of players at each table but I am still not coming close to 90.00/hr. Some of this may very well be explained by my different playing style in B&M versus online as well as I play quite a few more hands in B&M games than I do online and I have a VERY good sense of players at a live table and what they have or are capable of doing which I give up alot of online. I just can't imagine that I am giving up nearly three times that value though online but if so this speaks a tremendous amount about how important physical reads play in winning poker at least for me. I would VERY much like the input of some other players that played primarily B&M and knew their BB/Hr there compared to what it is now online while multitabling. Like I said this has bothered me quite a while and I just can't explain away all the factors causing this lower overall win rate online.

Bankroll needed with 1% ROR = 1777.00 This would be the bankroll needed if I was playing B&M games at one table. I get a ludicrously low number (around 250.00 or so) when computing for multitables because of the higher win rate which is just not accurate. I would estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-1400 would be a a safe BR for me at this limit online to avoid going broke with my fairly low SD.

Hope that helps you some.

The above thoughts about why my win rate is not as high as I think it should be has had me thinking alot about this over the last hour or so and I am going to try and come up with some explanation.

In B&M I think a good average of hands per hour is probably in the neighborhood of 35-40 with good dealers and online at the lower limits I have done some looking around and it seems like 55 hands per hour is a pretty sound number to start at there, probably a little higher at higher limits but at the lower limits with more players in per pot I think a little less than a hand per minute is pretty close. So in my estimate previously I was doubling what I thought I should be making at each table because of the double amount of hands per hour and this just isn't accurate (although if I had a few more dealers like the ones in Baton Rouge on the riverboats it would be very close )

So if I use 35 hands per hour versus 55 hands per hour online as a baseline my earnings should go up to ca. 14.40 per hour per table assuming I am making 1.5 BB per hour.

Now I am also going to estimate that I increase my VIP% to about 17-20% say in live games versus my 11.21% online. I would be involved in about 4.76-5.6 hands per hour in the B&M games and 4.92 hands per hour online both removing the hands in the blinds of 7 and 11 respectively.

So I am beginning to see where all of my extra profits are going. If for the sake of argument the number of hands that I play per hour is exactly the same in both B&M and online which it very well could be or extremely close then my average per table at 36 online could very well be in the 9.00/hour range which should put me up to about 45.00.hr for 5 tables which I am not obtaining either which could also be an artifact of loss of information while multitabling as well as loss of information from physical tells. I feel a bit better now that I have actually sat down and explained away were alot of my supposed earnings are actually located and it is largely do to the fact that the number of hands I am actually playing online per table is actually pretty close to the number of hands I would be playing live per table. So perhaps my 33.15/hr at 36 isn't as bad as I first thought.

If some other folks are well above this average I would be interested to know some of your stats as far as VIP and such as I may well adjust my game a little but for right now I think I will not tinker too much from my ultraconservative methods.

Hope this has helped some others as to where your possible extra perceived profits are going if your B&M verus online game philosophy mirrors mine as far as the different styles played in the two, mainly tightening up to limit trouble situations largely due to the loss of information from physical tells. Good luck.

thanks for the info!


I do hope you have more then $1500 in your bankroll though low SD or not!


My SD is probably in limit is like $1,000,000 an hour. I stll remmeber my horror 10/20 session on pokerstars 2 years ago. Lost my enitre bankroll on one table lol. I did suck though! and needed a lesson.

I have to respectfully disagree. While the VP$IP cap of 20% may apply at upper limits that I haven't gotten to yet, at lower limits (0.50/1, 1/2, 2/4, 3/6), I am currently at 21.80% over 5k hands, and am at 3.32 BB/100. Unless you're folding things like AQo in MP, you're not getting under a VP$IP of 20. According to the textbook, AQo isn't the type of hand you play in EP/MP, but I've noticed success at my current level.

I will play AQo in EP but will fold AJo depending on the table in EP. I can assure you that I do indeed have a VIP% of nearly exactly 11% in limit games and I can't imagine how I could ever get it up to 15% little less 20%.

Whatever you are doing all I can say is keep doing it and hope that it continues to work for you. I can only tell you what I have surmised from the data at hand and it doesn't look pretty for folks with a VIP of greater than 20%.

Put in about 15K hands at 24 and 36 limit and if you are still showing a nice profit and entering that many pots by all means let us all in on what you are doing. I hope your good run continues but I honestly don't see you posting a 3.2 BB/100 winning rate after 15 to 20K hands at 24 or 36 at whatever % you are showing. But continued good fortune.

Yeah i think piers is right. I think 37% is a teensy bit high... I think i play too many hands and mine is 35%. Over 22k hands im about 3bb/100, up about 13k for the year playin almost exclusively 10/20 6max, and some 15/30 tables, when they are short (3-4 handed). Also, this stat takes into account all the HU games i have played, as well as the 3 handed ones, etc. Not a huge portion of the sample, but still probly at least 10% of the total, and im still at 35% overall.

Personally im trying to get my VP closer to 30%- thats what i would recommend for the 6 max tables, esp if your just starting and trying to get a feel, you dont want to have to get too fancy. Twenties is def. too low, and forties is def. too high.