this is a bunch of absolute bull****

You're gonna play different in different lineups but there is no way your win rate in a nitfest is ever gonna be remotely as good as it would be in a good game, let alone a great game.That money has to come from somewhere.

The bolded is especially comical. Logic and math just don't back up rake,buy in structure, how deep people sit and the quality of your opponents don't matter.

"hey 5/10 nl is 5/10 nl 100 an hour hear I come"- sorry doesn't work that way.

I am glad people think this way though. Let them rot in the Bellagio in horrible games instead of getting of their ass and taking ten mins to play in great games.

Speaking of bellagio, how are the 10/20 games during wsop?

Just wondering, I've played 5/10 for at least 2-3 months in at least 8 poker rooms around the country/world and found it to be the case for the top players(ie best 2-3 players in each room make $100/hour give or take).

So how many cities/countries have you been a reg in 5/10+? My guess is, your knowledge of the games worldwide/around U.S. is a lot more limited so you're not really qualified to comment on what I've seen to be the winrate for top 2-3 players in each room running 5/10.

Also btw..
1) Bellagio games are NOT terrible(terrible for OP but that's another matter..) and I personally don't consider them "nitfests" at all.. if you do and find it hard to make $$$ there it isn't because the game is too nitty(by world standards it isn't), but it is because of factors to do with your own play.
2) You claim Bellagio is terrible but 10min away there's an amazing 5/10? LMAO where is that? Aria? lmao

2-3 months? Insufficient sample size on which to base conclusions.

Country/world? Which is it?

So for the last 3 months, you've gone into 8 rooms (that's 1.5 weeks per room, not counting travel time between these rooms all over the country/world, whichever story you're going to stick to) you've been able to identify the top players in that room and get them to share their honest win rates with you?

I'm with borg23. This is complete bull****.

he clearly meant 2-3 months per poker room. so that's close to 2 years of live play total

Difficult

Laugh all you want.
I didn't say every night the Aria is amazing or whatever or every night bellagio always sucks.but there have been plenty of times I was at the bell,they had three or four nit fests game and I went to wynn Aria and once in a while Venitian and got into great games.

A lot of these ****s are more than happy to table select if they can sit on their ass and have software do it for them but are too lazy to go to a nearby casino which I guess makes sense since many are also too lazy to shower.



Fwiw I haven't been to Vegas since last year's wsop but I have about 1000 hrs of 5/10 nl at bellagio ,maybe 300 or so at the wynn and about 700 at Aria lifetime.I have no idea if those games have changed much since.But chances are 90 pct of those Bellagio regs have been to the Wynn and Aria as much as I have in the last 10 months.

I also have a ton of hours at borgata and parx,a few hundred each at the isle and hard rock by Miami (although haven't been there in two years) about 200 or so at commerce over a 2-3 year period so we've played in a similar amount of rooms.

But hey if you think top regs make 100 an hour regardless of game quality you're ignorant at best.there are tons of players who play at the Borgata or bellagio and play 2000 hrs a year.none of them make 200 k year after year regardless of how good they are.

If you don't think there are a couple of players at Bellagio or Aria who make $100/hour in 5/10 then you're clearly both 1) very far from doing that yourself, and 2) not associating with the best players in the game.

I'm not going to talk about my own winrate(not here to brag and it's irrelevant anyway) but I know for a fact there are at least 2-3 guys in Vegas who've averaged $100/hour across all rooms over the last 5 years. Same with Commerce, Macau, and London. That's different buyin structures, different rake, different stacksizes, different playing styles. It's moronic for you to even say that people don't do that and can't do that.. I'm merely stating a fact that in all these cities there is someone averaging $100/hour over the longterm playing 5/10. But I guess I didn't expect someone to get so butthurt over what someone else can make..

I didn't get butt hurt over some people making 100 an hour at 5/10 nl.

I said it's completely idiotic to say that regardless of the game lineup your win rate will basically be the same if you adjust your playing style. That's not remotely logical or possible. In a vaccum I don't mind players thinking like this since they stay playing in bad games and hurt themselves. But these also tend to be the type that are miserable to be around and treat the fish like crap since their over inflated ego makes them think they can make piles of money from poker no matter what,

I didn't say NOBODY makes 100 an hr in Vegas in 5/10. Reread what I wrote.I said nobody makes 100 an hour playing strictly at the Bellagio or Borgata just playing 5/10 nl playing 2000 hours a year.Sorry if that wasn't clear. Do some top tier players in Vegas make that? yes- but they don't sit in crap games all year. They play 5/10 all over- and at the other casinos in vegas who spread 5/10 the games play a lot deeper than the bellagio. When those games are good a top tier player can make a lot of money.It's moronic of you to think the players making 100 an hour are the clowns who only play at the bellagio and play no matter how bad the games are.I never said nobody can make 100 an hour at 5/10 nl in Vegas.I've played with a few I'm fairly certain do.And yea they're better players than me and I have no problem admitting that.

And sorry but nobody playing strictly at the Bellagio makes 100 an hour in that game over 2000 hours year after year. Over 1000 hours sure i'd believe that.Over 2000 hours no ****ing way.it's a lot easier to play 1000 hours a year in really high +ev games than 2000. One year when they ran hot it's possible. But NOBODY has played that game and made a million dollars over those 5 years strictly from that game.ABSOLUTELY NOBODY.The better players who play the wynn aria ventian deep stacked games- sure.



I never played in Macauu or london- but from what I've seen at commerce I'm sure multiple players can make 100 an hour.

Some poker players have HUGE egos and treat their expected hourly like a card counter in blackjack player would. In BJ you can plug the game conditions into a simulator and easily figure out your expected hourly. Poker players want to do the same thing. So a lot of them will say "i make 60 hours at 5/10 nl, i played 10 hours tonight so my ev was 600 dollars" but it doesn't work that way. At some tables their ev is way higher than 60 an hour an in some lineups it is a lot less and may even be negative.

You seem to think that a top tier 5/10 nl player can just sit in ANY 5/10 nl game and his expectation will be around 100 an hour which i strongly disagree with. Even if he's the best player at the table, if he sits in some nitfest game with shallowish stack his ev isn't close to 100 an hour. If he's in a deep stacked game at the Aria or Wynn with 3 or 4 bad players, his ev at those tables is way over 100 an hour.

If you wanna tell me you're a better player than me that may be true and I really don't give a ****. I'd rather be under confident in poker than overconfident. No matter how good you think you or anyone else is, if someone has a high win rate the vast majority of their winnings comes from bad players.For some reason people get butt hurt at admitting this and want to act like they're poker gods that just own souls.You can be way better than me and it's still true of you.

If you think I'm wrong look at how win rates online have plummeted over the years- this despite the fact that the best players get better and better every year. Obviously online is way harder than live but by far the biggest factor in one's win rate (unless rake is just obscene) is the caliber of players they're up against.The same thing has happened live. Nobody is making what they made 5 years ago - unless they weren't that good 5 years ago and have improved a ton.

As far as -not associating with the best players in the game.

That is utterly comical. I wouldn't associate with 99 pct of the scum at the Bellagio if you paid me to.But it doesn't surprise me that a few of those guys have lied and have you believe they make way more than they do.

IME over a large enough sample size the softness of games in different casinos in the same city tend to average out. Most of the regs highly exaggerate how good/bad other casinos are. For this reason I think overall 5/10s across the country aren't drastically different. I haven't played a 5/10 anywhere that I would call a nitfest, that includes Bellagio.

To claim that buy-in structure, competition skill level, rake don't have very substantial effects on winrate is well... I don't know, I can't find a polite word for it.

I played B $5/$10 nearly every day for three years. I see what kind of Profit/Loss regs get on a daily basis so I have a good idea of hourly winrates. Moreover, I'm friends with most of the best grinders. Generally, it's known among the regs who the best players are. There is a consensus on that. From conversations with them - I can tell you none average even close to $100/hr.

I don't follow the board as much these days so I don't know your history, maybe you like replying to people with a "personal" tone and that's the only reason I replied to you.. because otherwise I don't disagree with most of what you say.. if there's a choice and Bellagio games are bad, I definitely would also head over to Aria/Wynn/Venetian and see what's on offer. In fact the reason why my own winrate is very decent in Vegas over several stints of a few months each time is because I never stuck to one casino. If I did, I'm pretty sure the winrate wouldn't be as high.

And I have avoided to specify my own winrate because that's not why I posted.. I'm simply saying that top players adjust to game conditions in order to achieve roughly the same winrate. Why is it that in nitty games in Macau with rake several times higher than Vegas, the top regs achieve roughly the same winrate? It's called adjustment. You can compare every single room that has consistent 5/10 against every other room anywhere in the world and you'll find the best regs adjust and improve.

Usually on this board you have guys claiming, as someone did earlier in the thread, that they can make $25-30K/month in 2/5 which is impossible over the long run. $100/hour for top regs in 5/10 is a pretty reasonable winrate.

You're also forgetting that sometimes the best player isn't the one everyone considers to be the best... it often is the guy that just quietly comes and goes, wins highest % of his sessions, is probably nitty but has lower variance than the flashy guys. It takes a trained eye to spot the highest winner in any given room sometimes. As for Vegas a couple of years ago this guy whom I thought was a decent winner @ $60-80/hr went out and got drunk with me, then showed me his session recordings and he was at $102/hour over 2.5 years of play. His session recording was pretty detailed and could not have been faked. I can bet nobody in any of the rooms thought he was one of the top winners because he was very nitty and rarely got in big pots and rarely played long sessions. But if even he was making that much then there were others quietly making a very good amount also.. while some of the laggier players probably often had huge stacks and talked a big game but in reality made less than people thought they did.

Anyway there's really nothing new being discussed here, I'm not gonna disagree for the sake of disagreeing when we're pretty much on the same track.

There's no polite way to say this OP, but top regs will never tell you their true winrate since they know you're pretty much a breakeven player at 5/10.

This is probably true.

I never discuss my true WR with bad regs. You don't want to make the skill gap so transparent

What was claimed?!?

OP isn't a bad reg. All indications are that he's been playing professionally at the 5/T level for 3 years. So most likely you would spill all your secrets to him. Albeit, I'm not sure you've been playing long enough to have a true winrate to discuss.

Nobody said they could make 25-30k in a month on a regular basis.they said it's possible in great games when running like God for a month.

Man the discussions in this thread are making my head spin. If you're a pro, you're probably playing enough hours so that game quality will work itself out. If you're the type of player who only plays in juicy games and otherwise doesn't actively contribute to maintaining the game itself, you're probably gonna get crushed in the long run by better regs, aggressive whales and/or variance; at best it will be very difficult for you to move up in stakes.

I think focusing too much on things like game selection, seat change, etc. reduces the beautifully complex game that is poker to a purely self-serving petty form of diversion. Granted we all play to take each other's money, but I don't think we should tackle poker as an optimization problem where you're trying to maximize what you can get out of the game solely as a freerider.

As for OP's situation in Bellagio games, I would suggest taking concrete steps to improve his game, including studying videos, discussing HHs with other players, coaching, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm a degen who plays a lot of hours under suboptimal conditions.

^ agree 100%.. those who don't give to the game, don't deserve to take from the game.

And just because the table is full of nits doesn't mean one can't make money from them.. in fact they just might be the most willing contributors to your hourly rate..

Deserve has nothing to do with it. If you want to take from a game and never give, you're well within your rights to do so. The 5/T at Bellagio will still run tomorrow regardless.

Right. And why pay taxes? The roads will still be there tomorrow without your contribution right?

If you are not required by law to do so, then I don't know why you would. For instance, if I'm in a 0% tax bracket, I'm not going to send the government money to ensure the roads will be there tomorrow. I know the roads will be there tomorrow. The Bellagio 5/T will be there tomorrow as well. People can play however they want as long as it is within the rules. And if the Bellagio 5/T doesn't run tomorrow, my world won't be any worse off for it....and frankly, neither will OP's.

except a lot (not all)of these people who play in total **** games arent giving anything to the game at all. many are utterly miserable to be around, don't shower, sit there quietly with their headphones, berate bad players etc. That's not giving to the game. They make casual players not want to play.
They're a big reason the games get worse over time and casual players don't want to play anymore.

If you're pleasant to be around, funny, are nice especially to fish, entertaining to talk to then you're giving to the game.

pro tip: move the **** around. sit to the left of donks and iso them, and sit to the right of nitty tags.

cultivate an aggressive image and people will ship wide on you.

if you can play breakeven at NL100 online, you can make 10 BI's on a good night at B 5/10.

so ****ing fun

but yes - some nights, even on weekends, it plays like super boring predictable nitty tag poker and you should just leave or move up to 10/20nl

$14 over 1650 hours compared to $50 in the past $3200 can be attributed to variance. I wouldn't be too down on yourself but also realize that there is plenty of room to improve as well. How many hours did you spent studying while you did those past 1650 hours in 12 months?