Exceptional, and rare as a long-run number outside soft small-stakes or live pools. If your sample is small, the honest reading is that your true rate is probably lower and running well is doing some of the lifting.
What 12 bb/100 earns
A win rate of 12 bb/100 means that for every hundred hands you play, you win 12 big blinds on average. At $1/$2 that is $24 per hundred hands; at $2/$5, $60; at $5/$10, $120. Whether that is a good hourly depends entirely on hands per hour — roughly 25–30 live, 75+ per online table. The hourly rate calculator turns this rate into dollars for your exact game speed.
How long before 12 bb/100 is proven?
Here is the part most content skips. Assuming a standard deviation of 100 bb/100 (typical for no-limit hold’em), your measured win rate carries a 95% confidence range of ±19.6 bb/100 after 10,000 hands, ±8.8 after 50,000, and ±6.2 after 100,000. For a true 12 bb/100 edge to be statistically distinguishable from breaking even, you need on the order of 27,000 hands. Until then, a graph showing 12 bb/100 is a plausible reading, not a proof.
A true 12 bb/100 winner can still be losing
Variance cuts both ways. A player whose genuine long-run rate is 12 bb/100 is still outright losing after 10,000 hands about 11.5% of the time, after 50,000 hands 0.4% of the time, and after 100,000 hands 0.0% of the time. Run the full distribution yourself in the variance simulator — seeing how wide the cone is around 12 bb/100 is the fastest cure for reading too much into a month.
If your tracker says 12 bb/100, the right question is not “is that good?” but “over how many hands?” Check where your sample puts you with the win-rate confidence calculator, which shows the range your true rate could occupy — the same math StackWise runs on every rate it displays.
Context: the win-rate ladder
Broadly: 0–2 bb/100 is a thin edge that rake pressures hard, 2–5 is a solid long-term winner, 5–9 is strong and usually means soft games or a real skill gap, and double-digit rates are rarely sustained over serious samples outside small stakes and soft live pools. The full picture — including why live rates read differently — is in what is a good poker win rate.
Know whether your 12 bb/100 is real.
StackWise tracks your sessions and shows every win rate with a 95% confidence range and a sample-size label — never a number it can't stand behind. Free to start.
