Yeah I think that anyone who grinds a lot in vegas has at some point played with me being that Ive played nearly every stake/location/tourney in town at one time or anther.

If you want to grab a beer this week shoot me a pm. I am going to do the same with some others who have hit me up.

No doubt that downswings are inevitable and over a bigger sample size I will run into it & my graph will reflect it. Ive already learned that as i have hundreds of thousands of hands logged in HEM from pre BF. All the things Ive listed have helped me avoid what would have been big downswings. Sometimes they are avoidable and I have been able to navigate around those. This year i haven't run into the set over set, kk vs aa nonstop for a week kind of thing that will eventually happen to everyone.

apparently not why don't you explain it to all of us.

ok with pleasure sir.

Ev is higher at 5/10 (which i will play when games are good). However, there are more pleayers that are skilled and fewer complete droolers. Sooo you are forced to take many more coinflips etc. this makes your variance go through the roof...which is annoying as hell. B/C my veriance is so much higher at 5/10 my ce is not significantly better than my ce at 2/5.

Also and most important I do not get nearly as fatigued playing 2/5. The reason bieing there are not nearly as many difficult spots I am being put into - so I can log a ton more hours which = more $ with less swong.

The gambooling landscape has changed significantly in vegas over the past several years. Poker has no room for ego (what i mean is "well I crush 2/5 so I need to play 5/10 or 10/20). I know my capabilities and what I can expect from a game. I have seen a ton of people come and go from the gamboolin scene over my career and wanting to play bigger and not really understanding where the $ comes from destroys lots of players

For these reasons my mainstay is 2/5 with a very strong w/r

You can take two different 2/5 players winning at $40/hr and they wouldn't necessarily have the same EV at 5/10. It is possible to be really good at extracting value from fish. It is possible to be good at staying neutral (or better) EV with the pros. It is also possible to be good at one but not the other.

what you say makes total sense and yes, I do understand this, I think my point was taken out of context. I suppose what I should have said was, "you should TRY to move up", or you should be "working on the next level" something like that.

I certainly wouldn't double back though on the thought that if you can beat 2/5 for 40+/HR you shouldn't be at least spending time at the 5/10 tables, if not more carefully picking your games/spots maybe?

This is true. There is a similar adjustment between 5/10 and 10/25, and between casino vs. underground NY games, etc.

My own records are upside down. . . I have been hugely profitable in the tougher/bigger games, and net loser at the softer/smaller games.

This is over only about 450 hours of combined play, fwiw, so sample size is an issue. But I'm sure part of it is me not adjusting well when I play smaller.

I have just over 1k hours logged since I started playing days at Parx (2/5 $1k BI) and am at $53.xx hourly. The end of May brought a $3k down swing which was also my largest in the past few years. I have played 10/10 when there is more than the main table of regulars and have done well...sadly that table doesn't go often during the day.

So it appears that the general 2+2 opinion is between $25-$50 for 2/5. That works out to about max $400 for an eight hour session on the high side (8 x 50). That's less than one buy-in for the usual max $500 2/5 game. It's not unusual to see guys with 4-5 BIs ($2000-$2500) sitting at the 2/5 table. I guess those are the outliers or very volatile LAGs. I would have thought poker pros would look for a 2-3 BIs as their goals for the day.

4-5 BIs is wishful thinking on a regular basis. With my $1k BI i'm happy with a double up playing 5 days a week 7 hours a day...but I don't expect it to happen every session. My "typical" big cash out days are usually $2.5k-$3k with some higher outliers....but don't forget the days where I'll lose $1k-$1.5k. I'm more than happy making $50ish/hr.

Sounds logical. Aim for 2-3 BIs. Hope for occasional 4-5 BIs. Keep the 2-3 BIs loss from occurring too frequently. Most days, you are +/- 1 BI. In the end, it should work itself out to 0.5-1.0 BI average. We are talking daily (8 hour) result.

You shouldn't analyze your results on a per session basis. Obviously take a close look at your big hands after the session but you shouldn't go into a session looking to win anything in terms of buyins. Just play well and whatever happens in one session happens.

Different table conditions will give you different expected winrates. After 1,000 hours or 200 sessions or so you can start to deduce what your winrate is within a certain range.

new to 2/5 NL....took a shot cause 1/2 was boring for obvious reasons. ran 2k into 12k in less than 100 hours. Two 2.6 and 2.7k sessions along the way, out of 20 only 3 losing...-800 (bluffed 1.1k into nuts), -300, -95.

So now I have a decent roll for 2-5 which is purely for poker and don't plan on taking money out, unless I hit back down to 4k then I ll stop and use the money to cover the costs of me playing poker while I could have been earning money.

My approach is similar to fullyfocused...LAG, not a lot of show downs. I understand I am running super good with 100/hour+. Had few cooler nights but managed to break even or even + because of the other player's skill level, fish mostly.

Any suggestions on the down swings? I can easily take a break for a week+, I can even lose 5k and still have +50/hour so I am okay to let even that much money go.

My mind set every night going in for 4 hour sessions is at least +300-400, good = stack someone for 1k, and 2.5k I don't expect anytime soon again.

Downswings will happen. The problem is that they are unpredictable. You might get 3-4 smaller downswings over a time period or you might have just 1 mega downswing that kills any interest in playing poker ever again. Believe me, I know people who this has happened to. It's not always about losing your bankroll. A lot of it is about losing your confidence and interest in playing poker.

Stay focused, keep playing, and see what happens. Every session is independent of the ones prior to it, unless same players involved, so play knowing this.

If you had a good or bad session last time, forget it and start from zero with a clean slate every new session.

Good luck and keep running good.

Posting my graph to illustrate the point about downswings.

I am a winning recreational player.

My games are generally about 50% 5/10NL and 10/10NL at the Borgata and Parx, with some occasional 2/5NL mixed in here and there when I see a good game or the list is too long for the bigger game. The other 50% are various NL and PLO games in Manhattan, at buy-ins from 2/5 - 5/10 (these games generally play much bigger than the corresponding casino games.)

I got the iPhone software, and started religiously entering ALL sessions. Of course, I immediately hit a horrible rough patch. This was true variance, and I was beaten up every way imaginable: set-over-set, flush-over-flush, and lost coin flips ad nauseum. After every session I would analyze my play, and rarely found situations that I feel worthy of even posting here for comment.

However, I'm now on the rebound and my hourly rate is about $45 after 300 hours, including the downswings. Based on past years, I believe my true win rate is much higher, but I'm in love with the software and anxious to keep it "pure" and let the results play out as they may.

Graph: