Tracking Results: Win Rate, bb/100 and Sample Size

“I think I’m up this year” is not a result. Serious players know exactly how they’re doing — by format, by stake and by hour. Tracking your results tells you whether you’re winning, whether you’re ready to move up, which games suit you, and whether poker still makes sense for your time and budget. It also cuts through memory’s biggest bias: we remember our big wins and our bad beats, not the slow leaks in between.

Key takeaways

• Record every session: date, format, stake, duration, buy-ins, cash-out and notes.
• Cash-game win rates are measured in bb/100 hands (online) or bb per hour (live).
• Tournament results are measured by ROI: profit ÷ total buy-ins.
• Small samples are unreliable — cash results need tens of thousands of hands, tournaments hundreds of events.
• Rake and time are real costs: include them when judging whether a game is worth playing.

What to record

For every session, write down:

Field	Why
Date and duration	Hourly rate, and when you play best
Format and stake	Compare cash vs tournaments, NL10 vs NL25
Buy-ins and cash-out	Your profit or loss
Hands played (online)	Win rate in bb/100
Notes	Tilt, fatigue, table quality, big hands to review

The free bankroll tracker handles all of this and syncs to your account. If you play online, most tracking software records hands automatically.

Cash games: bb/100 and bb per hour

bb/100 is your profit measured in big blinds per 100 hands. It lets you compare stakes directly:

bb/100 = (profit ÷ big blind) ÷ (hands ÷ 100)

Example: you’ve played 20,000 hands of NL10 (big blind 0.10) and won 120.

• 120 ÷ 0.10 = 1,200bb won.
• 20,000 ÷ 100 = 200 hundreds of hands.
• 1,200 ÷ 200 = 6bb/100.

Live, hand counts are lower (about 25–35 hands an hour), so players usually track bb per hour instead. Rough, hedged benchmarks — they vary a lot by game and rake:

Format	A solid winner might make…
Online 6-max cash, micro/low stakes	3–8bb/100 after rake
Online 6-max cash, mid stakes	1–4bb/100
Live cash, low stakes	5–15bb per hour

Tournaments: ROI

Tournament players measure return on investment:

ROI = (total winnings − total buy-ins) ÷ total buy-ins

If you’ve played 200 tournaments at 10 each (2,000 in buy-ins) and cashed for 2,400, your profit is 400 and your ROI is 20%. Also track your cash rate (how often you finish in the money) and your average buy-in, because a big score at a higher buy-in can make results look better than they are.

How much data do you need?

This is where most players go wrong. Because of variance, results over a small sample tell you very little:

Format	Sample for a rough idea	Sample for confidence
Cash games (online)	20,000–50,000 hands	100,000+ hands
Live cash	300+ hours	1,000+ hours
Multi-table tournaments	300+ events	1,000+ events

Until then, combine results with decision quality: are your reviews finding fewer mistakes? Are your trainer scores improving? Those are faster, more reliable signals.

Rake and hourly rate

Two numbers often get ignored:

• Rake. At the lowest stakes, rake can be a large share of the pots. A 2bb/100 winner might be a 7bb/100 player before rake. Compare games, clubs and rakeback deals — lower rake can make a bigger difference to your results than a new strategy.
• Hourly rate. Divide profit by hours played. It helps you decide whether poker is worth your time compared with other things you could do — and whether a format suits you. Remember to count study time if you’re treating poker seriously.

Honest records

The point of tracking is truth. Record losing sessions immediately — they’re the ones people “forget”. If you notice you’re avoiding looking at the numbers, that’s a signal worth taking seriously; our responsible gambling page has help if poker has stopped being fun.

Quick check

You play 10,000 hands of NL25 (big blind 0.25) and win 100. What's your win rate?

1bb/1004bb/10010bb/10025bb/100

Check answer

100 ÷ 0.25 = 400bb, over 100 hundreds of hands = 4bb/100.

Quick check

You play 50 tournaments at 20 each and cash for 1,500 in total. What's your ROI?

15%50%150%−50%

Check answer

Buy-ins = 1,000. Profit = 500. ROI = 500 ÷ 1,000 = 50% — though 50 tournaments is far too small a sample to trust it.

Next up: turning study time into real improvement — Study Routines.