Rounds per hour

[NotEnoughHeat]

I guess the biggest question, is when im walking around trying to find a table to backcount, does that count towards the hours?

Back counting definitely contributes to your 'hours' in many significant ways. As with software, I'm pretty sure qfit products include back counting. Also I believe there's a feature (in one or both of the qfit sims) where you can adjust the delay time it takes for you to find a new table.

If ZK, was including rounds spent back counting as part of his 200/rounds per hour, well, I failed to understand that. I personally, have never liked, or used that approach. When I say, I play x amount of hands or rounds, like 80,000 rounds a year, that is the number of rounds that I actually have money on the felt, it doesn't include back counting.

I know there are some that will say, back counting is like playing with a $0 bet, but I don't buy that. I can't win money with a $0 bet. I only count rounds that I have an actual monetary wager on as rounds played.

Rounds seen, or back counted is something else. It's a supplemental thing, a tool. It allows you to win more on the rounds you actually do play, but it isn't rounds played (to me). Similarly, I don't count time traveling to games. I mean, I can't play the games if I don't get there, but time traveling is not time playing (to me).

I think it depends what you're looking for when it comes to 'hours'.

If you're looking for a metric to compare how much you earn compared to a regular job, I think it's crucial to include any and all time you spent at your craft. Normally you might not consider your commute part of your hourly, but if you hit and run and have to drive from place to place it might be relevant.

Another example is looking at your actual results compared to expected. You definitely need to include back counting (unless your software doesn't count it). N0 is usually calculated by the number of rounds seen opposed to number of rounds played. You'll be underestimating how close your play is to N0 if you don't include back counting.

Of course, there's other complications I won't bother considering, let alone discussing at the moment (just a bit tired/lazy if anyone is wondering), when looking at tombstone back counting versus a constant table hope approach.

To recap, I don't think there's any "right way" to tally up your hours absolutely but I do think there is a correct way given a particular goal. After all, some of us might have slightly different concerns when it comes to our book keeping/recording results & information, so what you should include in your hours varies on your situation.

[Thirdbaseman]

I have tried to manually calculate EV from backcounting using info from BJA3.
For example, Table 10.18 indicates TC Freq of 6.95% for +2, 3.28 % for +3, 2.23% for +4, etc. and the EV for each.
Using your bet ramp, you can calculate your EV if you have an accurate hands per hour.
Most places I play seem to average about 60 hands per hour for play all, but with backcounting you are not sitting through long periods of negative counts, and sometimes counting 2 tables at once.
So hands per hour should be higher, but how much higher?
I assumed 100 hands per hour for my calculations, but my actual results over the past 800 hours are 50% higher, so maybe it should be 150 hands per hour.