LMAO. Quite an analogy.

Hey man, thanks for the post. What has been your biggest downswing at 2/5? I have a bankroll of about $15k, would you say that this is enough for a professional player?

Strategy for live play: Show them the best hand.

Secondary strategy for live play: Show them the best hand.

Stop all thoughts of trying to represent, balancing ranges, floating, all that other crap. You will win money by playing ABC poker and showing them the best hand.

Don't attempt to represent hand's that beat TP or 2pair or a straight when the board flushes on the river etc

How tight do you play?

Good post OP. I played live for today for the first time in a long time. People are lol bad. I was wondering about over shoving OTR with the nuts. If they call a cbet OTF a bet OTT and have 3 or 4x pot OTR, can we just shove vs player type 3 and 4? What is the best time to go to the cardroom? Friday and saturday nights obv. On a weekday should you wait til 4 or 5 so all the recreational players are off work?

If you can adjust your style, playing during the weekdays against the OMC nits can actually be steadily profitable. You're not going to be winning monster pots getting it all in and doubling your stack like you would on friday nights vs. the crazy drunk spewtards, but you will be steadily collecting their limps and their check/calls as they chase their flushes and straights.

I'd say if the variance of live poker bothers you, consider playing during the weekdays with the blue hair crowd. It's not exciting, you'll be bored to tears, but you can win slowly and steadily. it's like the live version of grinding the micros, lol.

^^^ lol bluehairs

i ran some numbers for my live NL game 2/3 300 buy-in. drop+BBJ+toke is $5. at 33 hands/hr that amounts to rake per player of $18/hr. So one would need to crush these live guys for 30 big blinds per 100 hands (10 big blinds/hr) before rake just to break $10/hr. thoughts?

I'm not sure if this is doable. Like I've said earlier I'm primarily a limit guy

In response to - "Can you bluff?":

Yes:

1 - Bluff the nit-donks and the soul-reading donks all you want.
2 - Bluff the calling station donks off of missed draws on river. The problem is that, for example, if they're chasing a flush and spike their high card - doesn't have to be the ace, they still may call. If they have Ax, Kx or Qx hearts, and spike that pair, they're going to call on the river. But, yes, if you're on one draw and they're on another draw and you both miss, you'll likely be able to get them off of it.

But you shouldn't find yourself in that situation that often. Yes, it may come up where you're heads up with a calling station donk and you're both on draws, but calling station donks don't typically bet with draws, so you were the one betting big with a draw yourself - not a line I typically prefer to take.

The more likely scenario would be a nit-donk betting fairly small relative to pot with top pair, calling station and you both calling with draws. You need a scare card to hit to drive nit-donk out, and you need said scare card not to hit calling station (and that includes spiking a pair of T or higher).

In response to the line of how I'm over-exaggerating, yes, I fully admit I am. I wanted the post to be entertaning in addition to insightful. You're not going to get a table that's literally THAT obvious - 2 nit-donks, a soul-reader, 3 calling stations donks, 2 drunk aggro-gambooooool fish and you. You will end up with one or two other good players. And yes, these players are bluffable, although don't bluff too often, and also, know that if they're good enough so that you can float and bluff on later streets against them, they're probably capable of doing that to you.

Finally - remember that as easy as I portray the game, it's still not THAT easy - not because the players don't suck (they do), but rather, because although spelling out how to beat this game is easy, it's a lot harder to do when you're looking at 30 hands an hour. Between variance of the cards (calling station calls you down with a gutter ball and hits - remember, gutterballs on flop are going to hit 16% of the time, that's not THAT infrequently), and your own self-restraint, both in avoiding "boredom tilt" and "suck-out tilt", the game is still a challenge. Yesterday I took 3 ugly suck-outs early and got a little loose in my range and started forcing the action pre-flop - exactly what I said not to do - it added some extra loss to an overall down session. It happens.

It's very doable.. As noted pots in live are much bigger and most people are super impatient.. Just adjust to game and play it right..

Player specific and hand specific. If he hits his draw but your hand is still better, a shove can definitely work. If you're trying to get value from say, middle 2 pair, I'd stick to 50-75% pot on river.

But that's also a fairly deep-stacked game. A raised pot pre, let's say opened for 5BB (I'll use 2/5, so $25), 2 callers. So 15 BB, $75 in there. 3/4rs sized-pot, I'll round to 12BB ($60) sized bet on flop, called by one, so 39BB/$195. 3/4rs on turn, so 30BB/$150, now you're at 99BB/$495 on the river. Pretty rare for stacks to be such that both players have $1500+/300BB. Does it happen? Yes. But it's not that common.

Even in a limped pot, let's say 5 limpers, that's 5BB, a pot bet on flop called by two people means 20BB total, then a pot bet on turn, if called by one means 60BB, so on the river, 3 or 4x pot means they started the hand with 180 to 240BBs.

In most situations, if you pot the flop and 3/4rs pot the turn and get called, the river bet is going to be a shove. Now, before anyone asks, why did I pot a limped pot but 3/4rs pot a raised pot? I potted the limped pot because calling $25 on the flop is nothing to people, even over-potting wouldn't be horrible - if someone's calling $15 or $20 on the flop, they'll call $25 to $30. But the difference between a $60 and $75 on the flop may actually matter.

That's the one thing I wish I had stressed more in my initial post - bets are viewed in absolute terms, not relative terms by the vast majority of donks. A $25 bet on flop is treated the same whether it's into a $25 pot or a $75 pot.

$30/hr isn't sustainable longterm in most 1/3 or 2/3 games. For a few months for sure but not for a year or two. Those games require tight, ABCish poker and there are gonna be some long card dead/bad beat stretches that kill the winrate. In bigger, deepstacked games a very good player can make a killing without having to make any hands.

Nice OP, lots of solid advice!

A couple of things to add:

Tells are a huge part of live play. I strongly believe anyone who says different just isn't good at spotting them. Nothing you can read on them is as valuable as experience, but there are plenty of good books out there to get started. I've read 20 some poker books but the two that have helped me the most are by far books on tells. Joe Navaros Read 'Em and Weap is invaluable and Caro's Book of Tells is old but still has loads of good advice.

Trying to spot tells is a great way to keep yourself in the game as you try not to gauge your eyes out from the mind numbingly slow 30 hands/hr. Don't view tells as some magical way to read people. First, once you find a tell try to confirm it. You do this of course by paying attention as much as possible. Once you have a good idea of it's reliability use it only after you've considered all the other info you have to make your decision.

The "don't worry about your image" advice is gold. The vast majority of live players pay no attention. However, it's much more likely that they will play back at you if you've been aggro recently. Usually they will do this by calling or over-shoving (rarely 3 betting cause 3 betting is scary). But no worries even if you just folded every hand for the last 2 hours you will still usually get action. Don't fall into a trap of trying to set up a image when no one is paying attention.

With that said the younger you look the more likely you are to get action. As FTS said "they didn't drive all this why to fold to a twerp in a hoodie". If you pull of the 'hey I'm a young punk internet player look' you will get plenty of action. Of course the opposite could be true, the more conservative you look the less action you will get, but I wouldn't count on that.

lol ban for lying/ false advertising/ being stupid

Good stuff FTS... Sticky worthy even!

So these books suck? Have you read them and maybe a reason why? If not thanks for your useless advice congrats on your +1 you've added to your post count.

Lots of useful info in here.

Few Questions to players who play majority live.

How many donks does it take for you to stay at a table? Is one huge one enough or you usually looking for 2-3 before you switch? I'm in Vegas so prolly have quite a bit more selection. Assuming you been here how many would you look for.

I've noticed Venetian Wynn Bellag don't have the juiciest games. The mid strip crappy rooms seem to offer more. PH Hard Rock Flamingo.. Which rooms do you prefer.

When is the best time to go? Are the tourist from out of country more likely to play really late seeing how there's a major time difference? I wouldn't think they would be able to switch to our time zone and have a "standard" schedule as most people living in America.

Obviously weekends are best. What days are the worse? Do you stay away from certain days/times? Do you grind a regular schedule say 8pm-2am every night etc..

What are the most rewarding spot on tells you've come across?

Before reading any of the thread, Do not become one of those idiots complaining after suck outs. "You got your money in so bad. You should be ashamed of yourself you only had 3 outs..." This happens everytime I've ever met someone in a casino who also tells me they use 2+2.

PLEASE DO NOT TAP THE GLASS.

The fish scare easily. They rack up and table change or go home.

I've played both live and online equally so I like to think I have a good grasp on what makes the bad live player tick.

One huge one will usually do and there's usually one or two others who are bad enough to make it worthwhile. When I first started playing mostly live, it actually didn't even occur to me to go ask the floor to switch tables. If you don't feel as if there's enough money on your table or enough bad players, walk around for a bit and go check the other ones for open seats when you aren't in a hand at your table.

Now, I don't live in Vegas and have never been there so I wouldn't know how much this applies there, so on weekdays, I like to get to my room between 4 and 6 p.m. This is when most people are getting off work, obviously and I especially like to play them. Why? Because I remember now how bad I played when I went to the poker room after work. A) I was beat down from the job and B) I knew I had to go home to a woman I couldn't stand who hated that I played poker and C) I was on a timetable because of B. This combination of factors made me not able to focus 100% on the task at hand. Consequently, I could be taken advantage of in hands that required a lot of thinking because believe me....my mind was elsewhere.

How do you know they're just getting off work? I try and take note of everything about everybody. Do they have a shirt provided to them by their job, like "Bob's Heating" or something like that? Do they have an ID badge clipped to their belt? Khakis and a button down shirt? A wedding ring? These are all dead giveaways that they are there to play recreationally.

By the way...ditch the headphones. At least some of the time, anyway. Talk to people. Find out how long they drove to get there. Ask them if they play online. Do they bet on sports. Etc. Along with the working-Joe info, I put all this stuff in my mental data bank about people. There's a big psychological element to the live game and just like you worked on the fundamentals of your MTT final table closing or what-have-you, you have got to add that skill to your repertoire. Once you find out a little more about what a person's about, you will be more able to know how you have to play them. And incidentally, this will help BIG TIME with your level of impatience.

Oh and the best live physical tell...there are a few, but the one that's most consistent to mediocre live players is that if they're all in and they lean back in their seats and/or cross their arms...they've got the nuts and you need to fold. Sometimes I'll even do this when I'm facing a player who I know is somewhat paying attention and has a general idea of what the heck's going on. And another thing...you guys who are used to mostly playing online? You're going to have a lot of tells when you first move to to the live arena. You won't even realize it.

But I will

I'm one notch smarted than a f@kin monkey and I regularly beat a $1-2 game that drops $5 at $46 in the pot and a $2 jackpot every hand. I make about $20 pr/hr profit on top of that and I make about 7/10 online at $.02-.05

And one more thing guy was talking about the blue hairs...Tht is a great way to easy into live go to the room about 1pm and play with all the old guys who grew up playing limit. I did this last summer when I first tried to transition over and the only time I was raised in a pot was when they had a monster. These old guys would check call the **** out of me but I was patient and made them pay with their pensions

You guys are claiming these obscene winrates but what kinda samples do you have? 100hrs is lol small.

Yeah, because there are no good live players.

Looking forward to meeting you and your preconceived notions someday.

I usually don't bluff much since most people will call you down with crud as OP points out. The flip side is since I'm 41 now, I have found that I can bluff most younger players who ID themselves as online players or play LAG. They think I'm an old donk as OP describes and when I bet the river "I must have the goods". (board and bet pattern dependent of course)
That said, it ain't 2004 anymore and I really think the level of play has increased through the years. The good thing is that you can ID solid players or bad players rather quickly if you pay attention.

Live players are terrible.

The good ones are terrible as well.

Great post by the OP!!! This advice should help me out a lot as I made a living playing $2/4, 3/6 six max NL online. Now, looks like it's off to the local casino to play $3/6 full ring for 12 hrs/day haha.

I have a question about bluff frequencies. Are most weaker live players going to bluff 3 streets with say AK or any drawing hand post flop as the PFR if they are OOP? I would imagine they might check back a lot of boards then don't hit on flop or turn if they have position on you.