Hourly rate
Hourly rate is profit divided by hours on a stated basis. Cash-outs minus all buy-ins already reflect pot rake and tips or fees paid from the stack. Deduct only additional costs not already included. Table hourly uses table hours; overall trip hourly can include travel time without changing cash profit.
In short: Your profit per hour, in money.
- Category
- Metric
- Best use
- Session review and bankroll decisions
- Related page
- Hourly rate calculator
Why Hourly rate matters
Use the same treatment of waiting time and breaks whenever you compare sessions or venues. Metrics matter because stake decisions need a unit that survives a change of game size. Cash profit tells you what happened. A rate tells you whether the session belongs in the long-term picture, and whether a bigger game, a different room, or a different schedule is actually paying you.
Worked example
Synthetic example: a £12,000 cash-out-minus-buy-ins result over 600 table hours is £20/hr after stack-paid costs. A further £1,200 of separately paid travel, not already included, leaves £10,800, or £18 per table hour. Stack-paid tips are not deducted again. The useful part is not the label itself; it is the decision it changes. If the example changes your stake, stop-loss, review queue or next study block, write it cleanly in the log.
How to apply it
Write the raw session first, then convert it into the rate. For live cash, that usually means hours, net result and big blind size. For online or tournament work, use the hand count or total buy-ins when the format gives you a cleaner denominator. For Hourly rate, the practical question is whether the label changes a bankroll, session or study decision. If it does not change a decision, it belongs in a note, not in the headline read.
In Overshove, log the raw result, stake, hours and any cost fields before you judge the rate. The dashboard can then show the number by stake, venue, day and sample size, so you are reading a filtered metric rather than a headline graph. Use the same spelling every time, then link it back to hourly rate calculator so the page, calculator or guide beside the term does useful work.
Common mistakes
- +Reading a rate without checking the sample behind it.
- +Comparing raw money across different stakes.
- +Ignoring rake, tips, travel or buy-in volume when the metric depends on them.
Questions players actually ask
How should I use Hourly rate in a session log?
Use Hourly rate as a decision label, not decoration. Log the raw session first, then attach the term only where it explains a stake, bankroll, variance or study choice you can review later.
What is the common mistake with Hourly rate?
The common mistake is reading the term without the sample and context behind it. In live cash, a clean label still needs stake, hours, stack depth, cost and result data before it tells you anything reliable.