What Is a Good Poker Win Rate? bb/100 by Stake, and the Sample You Need
Ask how much someone wins at poker and the honest answer comes as a rate rather than a total. The awkward part is how long it takes before your own rate is telling you the truth rather than telling you about your luck.
What bb/100 actually means
Poker win rate is measured in big blinds per hundred hands, written bb/100. Take what you won, divide it by the big blind, divide by the number of hands, multiply by a hundred.
Win 250 big blinds over 5,000 hands and you're running at 5bb/100.
Two reasons it's built that way. Big blinds instead of money, so the number survives a change of stakes. Per hundred hands instead of per hour, so it won't depend on how many tables you play or how fast the game runs.
One trap. Lowercase bb is big blinds. Uppercase BB means big bets, which is two big blinds, a leftover from limit poker. Old forum posts use it constantly. If a figure looks half or double what you expected, that's usually why.
What a good win rate looks like
| Stake | Strong regular | What's realistic |
|---|---|---|
| Micro, up to 25NL | 5 to 8bb/100 | Most players are negative before rakeback |
| Low, 50NL to 100NL | 3 to 5bb/100 | A solid winner clears 3 |
| Mid, 200NL to 500NL | 2 to 3bb/100 | Small edges, large swings |
| High, 1000NL and up | 1 to 2bb/100 | A fraction of a big blind is a career |
Read the column on the left and the pattern is obvious: the better the game, the smaller the edge. That isn't a sign of decline. A player earning 2bb/100 at 500NL is making several times the money of one earning 8bb/100 at 10NL, because a big blind is worth fifty times as much.
Anything above zero over a genuine sample puts you ahead of most people who play. The rake sees to that.
The uncomfortable part: how long it takes to know
Here's what almost nobody tells a player starting out. Your win rate after 20,000 hands is mostly a description of your luck.
Poker's swings are large relative to its edges. A typical online cash player has a standard deviation somewhere around 80 to 100bb/100, which is to say the ordinary bounce is tens of times bigger than the edge being measured.
Roughly what that buys you:
| Hands played | How tightly your true rate is pinned down |
|---|---|
| 10,000 | Give or take about 18bb/100. Useless |
| 50,000 | Give or take about 8bb/100 |
| 100,000 | Give or take about 6bb/100 |
| 500,000 | Give or take about 2.5bb/100 |
Look at the 100,000 row. Show a 4bb/100 win rate over a hundred thousand hands and your true rate is plausibly anywhere from about minus 2 to about 10. That's a full career's range of outcomes, from losing player to crusher, inside a sample most players never reach.
The variance calculator runs these for your own numbers.
What to do with a number that can't be trusted yet
If the win rate is that slow to arrive, it's a poor tool for week-to-week decisions. Use it for the one thing it's good at: the long-run question of whether this stake is beatable for you. Check it every few months. Never after a session.
For everything shorter than that, use the stats that settle faster.
- Your preflop numbers are readable in a thousand hands. VPIP and PFR tell you something real long before your win rate does, because you make those decisions several times an hour.
- Your aggression and showdown stats need a few thousand. WTSD will find a calling habit months before it shows up in the money.
- Your red line needs about twenty thousand. What it means, and why most of the panic about it is misplaced.
That ordering is the practical point of tracking at all. The numbers you can act on aren't the number you care about.
Things that shift the figure without telling you
- Rakeback and bonuses are usually missing. Your tracker sees the pots. It never sees the money the site pays back afterwards. A player at minus 0.5bb/100 with 30 percent rakeback at the micros is often in profit.
- Table size. Full ring win rates run lower than six-handed ones in bb/100, because you play fewer hands per orbit and the blinds come round less often.
- Where you sit. Your win rate from the button is positive and your win rate from the blinds is negative, for everyone, always. The blinds are a cost of playing rather than a leak.
- Mixing formats. Fast-fold pools and regular tables produce different rates. Averaging them together gives a number describing neither.
The short version
Measure in bb/100, expect a smaller number as you move up, and don't read anything into a figure under 50,000 hands. Judge the stats that move faster, and check the win rate a few times a year to answer the only question it can answer.
To get any of it, you need your hands off your poker site first. Start here.
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Frequently asked questions
How is poker win rate measured?
In big blinds per hundred hands, written bb/100. Winning 250 big blinds over 5,000 hands is 5bb/100. Measuring in big blinds rather than money means the number still means something when you change stakes, and measuring per hundred hands means it doesn't depend on how long you sat there.
What is a good win rate in online cash games?
Anything above zero over a real sample is good, and most players never get there. At the micro stakes a strong regular might run 5 to 8bb/100. By mid stakes, 2 to 3bb/100 is a genuinely strong result. The number falls as you move up because the players get better. Nothing happened to you.
Is bb/100 the same as BB/100?
No, and the difference is a factor of two. Lowercase bb means big blinds. Uppercase BB is an older convention meaning big bets, which is twice a big blind, left over from limit poker. If a number looks half what you expected, check which one you're reading.
How many hands do I need to know my win rate?
More than feels reasonable. At 100,000 hands your true rate is still only pinned down within a few big blinds either way. Under 20,000 hands the number is mostly noise, which is why a losing month proves very little and a winning one proves less than it feels like it does.
Can I have a losing year and still be a winning player?
Yes, and it happens to real players. With a genuine edge of about 2bb/100 and an ordinary amount of swing, a losing stretch of 100,000 hands is uncommon but nowhere near impossible. This is the arithmetic behind the advice to judge decisions rather than results.
Does win rate include rake and bonuses?
Rake is always already taken out, because it leaves the pot before you collect it. Rakeback and bonuses usually aren't in the figure your tracker shows. Plenty of players who look like small losers before rakeback are comfortable winners after it.
Why is my win rate lower at higher stakes?
Because your opponents are better, and win rate measures the gap between you and them rather than how well you play. A player who runs 8bb/100 at the micros and 2bb/100 three levels up is earning far more money at the higher level.