How Many Hands Per Hour in Online Poker? Here's the Numbers

How Many Hands Per Hour in Online Poker?
If you play a lot of online poker something that you need to know is how many hands per hour your play. The reason why this is important is because some games deal much faster than others.

For instance:

Typically you will get dealt about 75 hands per hour in online poker at a 9-max table and 90 hands per hour at a 6-max table. In fast fold online poker games like Zoom, Zone or Snap you will usually get dealt around 200-250 hands per hour.

The number of hands you are dealt per hour can have a big impact on your overall profit because as a winning poker player more hands equals more money.

The number of hands per hour in online poker is also very important when figuring out your rakeback or how long it will take to clear any bonuses.


Hands Per Hour Live Poker Versus Online Poker


Now the first thing to note is that if you come from a live poker background (casino or home games), then the speed of online poker is going to be immediately noticeable to you.

Even the slowest online poker games will deal much faster than the average live poker game, usually around 3 times faster.

It is common in most live poker games to only see 25 or 30 hands per hour.

This is indeed why many people coming over from live poker to internet poker have a hard time adjusting. In fact many of them even think that online poker is rigged!

The reality is that online poker just deals much faster than live poker due to everything being automated. This means that you are going to see far more hands and therefore far more bad beats.

Going from live poker to online poker is kind of like switching from your Toyota Corolla to a Ferrari. It's going to feel very different at first. You just aren't going to be used to the speed yet.


Full Ring Versus 6-max


Another important consideration with how many hands per hour you will get in online poker is if you are playing full ring or 6-max.

Full ring (9 players) is a game that plays a fair bit slower than 6-max due to there being 3 more people at the table.

Most poker sites display this information right in the lobby by the way. Here for instance is a random selection of NL10 6-max tables on PokerStars with the hands per hour statistics.

Hands per hour zoom poker

You can always expect around a 25% increase in the number of hands that you are going to see per hour if you switch from full ring over to 6-max.

In general I have found that you get about 75 hands per hour at a full ring poker table and 90 hands per hour at a 6-max poker table.

Keep in mind though that if you play super low stakes like NL2 or NL5, where there are more recreational players playing a lot of hands, then these numbers may be lower.

And if you play ultra-short hands tables (3 or 4 people) or heads up (2 people), then you are going to see even more hands. Less people equals more hands per hour.


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Zoom Poker Hands Per Hour


Now in fast fold poker games like Zoom, Zone or Snap poker you can expect to see a large increase in the number of hands dealt per hour.

And this is due to the fast fold button allowing everybody to quickly throw away every hand that they don't want to play and be moved on to the next table and the next hand.

In a regular poker game you of course cannot do this. You have to wait for the entire hand to be played out every time even if you are not involved at all (folded preflop).

So in Zoom poker games you can expect to see anywhere between 200 and 250 hands per hour on average. Again, if you play 6-max it will be on the higher end of this range.

This by the way is between 8 and 10 times as many hands as you will see in a live poker game. And if you multi-table, then you can double or triple these numbers.

This is why if you are switching over from live poker to online poker I would suggest staying away from Zoom poker at first. It is going to be way too fast for you.

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But my suggestion is still to start at the regular tables. It will be a much smoother transition.

And when and if you want to try Zoom poker make sure you check out my complete Zoom poker strategy guide as well for even more.


Hands Per Hour for a Professional Online Poker Player


Now whether you choose to play full ring, 6-max or Zoom, these hands per hour numbers are very important especially if you are a professional poker player.

When I used to play poker professionally full time I would always shoot for daily target hand numbers. Typically for me as somebody who liked to play a large amount of tables I would aim for at least 3k hands a day and 10k hands maximum.

Since I was playing as many as 30 tables at a time I could do some simple math to find out how long this would take me.


For Example:

I want to play 3k poker hands in one day. Well if I play 11 tables of 6-max poker then this should take me almost exactly 3 hours.

Because once again, a regular 6-max table deals around 90 hands per hour. 90 x 11 tables = 990 hands per hour. 990 x 3 hours = 2970 hands.

The reason why these numbers are also important is because depending on the poker site you play on, they will have a big impact on how much rakeback you get or how fast you clear bonuses.

Since Zoom poker deals the fastest of any poker game on earth basically you can imagine why this is the personal favorite of many full time heavy volume online poker pros.

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Final Thoughts


The number of hands per hour that you will see in online poker depends heavily upon what table type you play, full ring or 6-max.

And if you play fast fold style games like Zoom poker then this will also have a large impact on how many hands you get.

It is important to remember though that it is the quality of your decisions that is going to have the biggest impact on your success in online poker.

So you need to make sure that you are never playing an amount of hands that feels like too much or forces you to rush your decisions.

This is going to be different for everybody so you need to experiment and find that sweet spot for you.

Lastly, if you want to know the exact poker strategies that I use to make $1000+ per month at the poker tables as a 10 year pro, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.


Let me know in the comments how many hands per hour are you getting on your poker tables.

How many hands per hour in online poker?

4 comments:

  1. hi lately i've found the poker room like 888, limits the number of cash game tables allowed (ie max 6) does that mean online cash game is dead? Because i see most 9handed vpip is less than 30% which is bad

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    Replies
    1. Dunno about 888 but In my opinion 6 tables is the sweet spot between best play and sheer volume on autopilot.If you want more hands/hour play 2 zoom tables.As for 9h tables my guess is that either you play when the games arent that good or the tables are infested with regs or tagfish.Most of the action is on 6max games for some time now and that means more fish imho.Not sure about 888 but thats what it is in general.

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    2. @Moan there are easy games everywhere at the micros. But you have to table select and site select.

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    3. Bad for you or for them? Cause if you consider they're wrong, maybe you should exploit that part. Even more so since vpip mistakes are easily spotable and exploitable.

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