This is the range most long-term winners actually live in, whatever the tables at the bar claim. It compounds nicely, survives rake, and is sustainable against decent competition.
What 4 bb/100 earns
A win rate of 4 bb/100 means that for every hundred hands you play, you win 4 big blinds on average. At $1/$2 that is $8 per hundred hands; at $2/$5, $20; at $5/$10, $40. 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 4 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 4 bb/100 edge to be statistically distinguishable from breaking even, you need on the order of 241,000 hands. Until then, a graph showing 4 bb/100 is a plausible reading, not a proof.
A true 4 bb/100 winner can still be losing
Variance cuts both ways. A player whose genuine long-run rate is 4 bb/100 is still outright losing after 10,000 hands about 34.5% of the time, after 50,000 hands 18.6% of the time, and after 100,000 hands 10.3% of the time. Run the full distribution yourself in the variance simulator — seeing how wide the cone is around 4 bb/100 is the fastest cure for reading too much into a month.
If your tracker says 4 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 4 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.
