^ In a bit of a downswing limon? You know with no online poker you won't be able to grind that roll back up through the micros.

Lmaooooooo


Btw, since 1) you have been playig in same room on a regular basis for a while and 2) you bumhunt and probably know all the bad/spewy fish or whales or whatever ... Have any of these "fish" ever actually noticed that you follow them to their tables? Have they said anything? Do people get pissed?

I have the feeling that people who make accusations of bumhunting
are somehow in denial of the ineluctable fact that worse players than you is where your profit comes from. It makes it's way up the pyramid as ppl take shots, and move back down.
Even if you're a real genius and insist on playing the best players you can find,
that's where THEIR profit comes from; so when you can salvage some pride and manage to beat the best, ultimately your $ comes from bums, albeit indirectly. It trickles it's way up the poker economy.

Limon,

I have a question for you. I am pretty much a low stakes NLHE player and have been for some time. I'm not a professional, by that I mean it isn't my primary source of income, I do have a job. There aren't too many levels for NLHE, i.e., there is 1/2 then 2/5 then 5/10 and then 10/25 NL. There seem to be many more levels for limit hold'em. Is there any advantage to switching over to LHE in this regard? Is it easier to move up in the sense that there are more choices of stakes and is it more profitable to do so? Do more of these games run at the middle-higher stakes or is it all just what you feel comfortable with?

I have read some of your earlier comments, especially about PLO and Omaha being a very profitable game and that you routinely see a lot of people making 1 or 2 PSB with nothing close to the near nuts. And you are right, you don't see that in Hold'em that much. I intend to branch out more to other games too sometime in the future. But right now, hold'em is my primary game of expertise.

not really. ive only had 1 guy ever say out loud that i was always at his tables on purpose. im pretty much a master at masking it. like today in the 1/2 stud the fish started looking at the 1/2 holdem and asked to be on the list. because i know every fish by name i said, "hey fish does that HE game look good?" he was like, "ya and im running bad at stud". i commiserate, "im stuck too (i was up a rack), floor put me on the HE list as well". 30 min later she moved and...there i was!

imo you should know how to play every game regularly spread at your stakes at at least a masters level. and you should have a main game you are a phd in. you need to be a master to beat the fish for more than the phd's are beating you for when you see a juicy game. like when i jump in a big stud game, even if lisandro or hennigan is in the game i know im beating the 2 fish for more than they can beat me because while i am not an expert enough to exploit the best at their game i am good enough to balance/control/avoid and make myself as in-exploitable as possible. If your in a game w/ fixed position you can just sit to the left of even the worlds best player and negate most/all of his advantage.

by rack you mean 10k (so 100 "black" or $100 chips)?

what are chip denominations @ commerce like. I remember Bart saying in his podcasts that they're all messed up - like yellow and purple.

ya they are messed up. the predominant chip in that game is black ($20 chips) so 2k a rack. in the 1/2 HE purple $25 chips are used. lol.

if NL is the only game you know, what would you recommend as the next game to learn? What limits in that said game would be equivalent to a 5/10 NL assuming you were a winner in both against same level of competition? Finally do you feel its better to get one game to a "phd" level, or spend the time getting a new game to a winning level? I feel like mastering one game would be better short term, but long term getting a couple games decent/good would be better.

For anyone who could make a good guess at this to answer.. How many poker plyrs in the world, online and live in casinos, could consistently make 200/hr if they had to play at least 30 hrs/wk? 100? 250? 500? More?

When you include donkaments the Darvin Moon's and everyone who has spiked a big tournament since the poker boom would be on the list but I'm guessing you meant players who have $200/hr ev.

Yes but not guys that play part-time when fish are playing nosebleeds or only big private games.. Everyone fm ivey to moon has to grind 30h/wk at 10/20+ nl live, 3/6+ nl online, or other games spread regularly in casinos.

you want to get 1 game to a level where whenever you show up to play you can always find a game youre a fav. in even if there are no big fish around. nlhe is generally the best for this because games are always running. then you want to layer on other games, plo first and then stud. you should have been doing this online ! learning a new game live is slow and expensive, online was so easy, i was even becoming a razz expert for no good reason at all. (if there are 2 big fish in a limit he game a winning hi-stakes nlhe player will be able to beat the game w/o ever playing a hand of limit b4 imo. the MAJOR strat changes are logical and can be reasoned out pretty quick and you can angle for a good seat unlike stud)

couldnt you filter one of those poker tracking sites for winning players w/ over 200k hands and get a number for online? im guessing its under 100. live its under 20. i dunno, if youve been making 300k+ a year playing poker over a legit sample (5 years) you are in a very very small group.

so if anyone wants to chime in bc just taking a shot in the dark at my assumptions.. found 72 plyrs on PS playing 400nl+ at least 250k hands since '08 with w/r's of 200+/hr (calc'd using 720 hds/hr). so with like 40% mkt share.. 180 plyrs for nl across all sites, plus another 10% for plyrs that hit this w/r on other games and not nl over 250k hands.. so roughly 200 online cash guys? plus your superelite tourney guys that are 50%+ roi playing 3k of them a yr.. no idea how many deebs and moormans and ajks there are. add-in your live lisandros playing cash and seidels (and not hellmuth even though he somehow runs like god) traveling the world and randoms that could crush games immediately if they played f-t but are doing something better with their lives... so maybe like 300 ppl in the world that could make 300-400k+ every yr without the luxury of reg private games in the pre-bf environment?

im ok w/ that number. i was just thinking NLHE cash. across all games thats prob pretty close.

Compare that with how many people make 6 figures+ in other fields and poker doesn't sound so profitable does it?

Esp these days.. 2 yrs ago it was certainly possible to crush 5-10 for 140/h and 10-20 for 200+, but now and post-bf it's incredibly tough to crack 100-150 playing only casino nl.

Fml.. Why did I leave my job.... (

dirty little secret....POKER ISNT PROFITABLE almost anyone who can beat poker can make more doing something else. LONG TERM, PROFESSIONAL POKER, is the last resting place of people with serious issues which prevent them from working with others. some people make a recovery from their condition but by then they have been out of society for so long they get trapped in poker. Online and live are no different in this regard. almost no-one is maximizing their potential by playing poker.

Online did allow some specialists to make a living for a while, multitabling robots, i mean they really just had an office job. ive done both, its an office job. now that its gone these guys dont have the ability to survive and thats a good thing. there are higher paying, less stressful, office jobs. very few are gonna want to do what is really necessary...learning multiple games, playing live and online and live again and then online, counting cards, finding angles in sportsbetting, true advantage play. always chasing an overlay. all this whining is laughable...wahhhh i cant play online anymore WAHHHHHH. real professional never noticed the difference, we were always doing both, and much more. if they shut down the commerce tomorrow i wouldnt notice, i cant afford to, someone is pitching cards somewhere.

you wont hear this anywhere else because everyone is trying to sell something. it starts with selling a dream. telling the truth is bad for book sales and training site memberships.

i dont think these numbers were ever possible. it was prob 100 and 150+ at the peak in 2007 and 80 and 120ish now FOR A WORLD CLASS PLAYER. not too shabby but it might be 60 and 90 next year. keep those references up to date, dont burn bridges!

damnit limon, is the sky falling again?

What do you think is a good w/r for 40-80 lhe?

how much of this winrate loss estimate is associated with players getting better (by better i do not mean good... just marginally better to the point where it affects very good players winrates) with the aid of live training tools (these include videos/podcasts/pokershows more focused on strategy that cut into the good players winrates)?

and if this isn't a major source of winrate loss, then what is?

Maybe I'm missing something b/c it's late, but what style are you advocating here? I've always thought position/lag would be ideal for live.

Maybe some poker on tv esp the big game and how ***** internet geeky that show was, but I don't think 98% of the fish and nit-regs and crazy asians we play with use any of these tools. It might make some of the good plyrs a little tougher if they do use them (god knows I haven't used any of that online shyt.. not yet anyway), but the w/r loss is prob just mostly a function of the curve naturally being equalized fm playing exp without the addition of fresh fish in the games fm the 2003-2008 pkr boom.

When I played at commerce on my trips out to LA 2 yrs ago, half the guys playing 5-10 were super loose and passive (sometimes midly aggro), and you'd always get at least a few of them (prob the ones that min buy 600 at a time) at 10-20. Those I would consider "super fish" by today's standards, and I salivate whenev I see guys like this at the tbl now. Now it's always some tough plyrs, a ton of nit asians and old guys, occasionally a fish or two, and I dunno if it's the same plyrs fm few yrs ago that just became insanely tight or if all the live ones lost too much and had enuf, prob a little of both. Also the weak plyrs are playing way more aggro too and usu take the betting lead if they're gonna go broke with some pair.

More recently and where I'm fm internet kids populated half the the tbls on off-nights in just days after bf. Gl making a good living in those games.

Poker just gets tougher and tougher and you always gotta stay one step ahead of the rly good plyrs to make good ***** money at this. Poker has evolved after the 2003-2008 boom in that we had a ton of fish playing but they eventually went broke or sig reduced the edge we had over them by learning a little bit of patience and a lot of aggression (mostly fm paying attn in their games, some fm watching tv, almost none of this learned elsewhere like online training), and today's environment I don't imagine is much diff than 15 yrs ago. So prob no effective w/r "loss" if you think about it this way, just going back to what it's supposed to be until we get sig better and devise strats no one's thought up to capitalize on current playing trends (and btw nlh is not "mastered" or "perfected" like many online kids think; also ppl with any decent bluff freq nowadays are habitually limp-raising fm ep light like the rly good plyrs were doing yrs ago so there's obv a rly good counter for that) or find ways to introduce more fish and hopefully a few whales into the game. Also keep in mind 15 yrs ago there weren't as many pros and pros weren't that good bc you don't have online pkr where ppl can get good rly ***** fast, online training tools to learn fast esp if you suck at learning on your own, and a multitude of other pros who you can discuss/evolve strategy with.

Chris moneymaker owning sammy farha was great for poker. November nine tbl full of 20-something internet geeks (god I hope they don't use their stupid internet slang on tv, senti and ching-cheong going back and forth last year about "so sick I crush your range " "no so sick I crush YOUR range" with TT and AK all-in was a good example... do not say "range" when fish are watching!!) talking in annoyingly sarcastic tones like some stupid gay joke will be awful for our future. I srsly hope that matt giannetti or that 1 amateur at the tbl tid.

3-betting (with a stupid Ax "nut blocker") a good plyr's iso of 1 or 2 live ones' open-limps just creates an unnecessary bluffing war and shuts out guys you could be making good money fm...