Aren't like 90% of the people there fishy?

IMO you shouldn't care.

Yes, you should avoid intimidating him if possible because your +EV line now becomes less profitable if he doesn't want to play with you, but I'm still always going to try and play with whales when possible.

Yeah I guess maybe tone it down a bit vs the reg fish. But vs a big rec fish/whale that doesn't play often, he's getting hunted. I remember a couple weeks ago there were two friends at my table who were so LAG and bad we were getting probably 1/2 the volume but just about every pot was three digits which is huge for 1/2. Would've been criminal to not seat select then.

I really doubt not bum hunting to preserve long term EV vs someone who plays once or twice a month is worth it. Probably as important as balancing your range at 1/2.

Is 1-2 Nl really that tough where there is 1 big fish and 7 other tough spots where you cant beat the rake against them so the only winners are people with good seats?

I've never played the game but get the impression that this is not the case.

And if this was the case somehow, why are you entitled to always have the best seat and not the other 7 equally talented pros that choose not to seat change?

I still seat change sometimes, but usually to stop other people from doing it first. If nobody ever did it and just let seats open up randomly it would be better for the games and fair for everyone (except bum hunters that would be forced to quit becuse they can't beat somewhat tough games without bum hunting and constant seat changing).

Why would you tighten your range against a station? Wouldn't you be better off raising thinner, as they will be calling thinner? (Honestly asking, as maybe I am missing something obvious)

Because you're not going to have position in most of the hands you play.

Personally I'm more concerned about having position on the better players, not the worst ones.

True, but if they are flatting wide, that makes it even more exploitable.

Bingo!

You've seriously never played 1/2 NL??

No.

No it's not that tough at all. And no I'm not more deserving of the best seat at the table than anyone. But if other regs do not take advantage of a better seat I definitely will. I don't go to the casino to make other regs happy. I go for a good time while trying to put myself in as many +EV spots as possible which position on a fish allows.

Think about it this way. Say you have a hand like 66 in the HJ. If you raise with a 70 VPIP fish on your direct left you're probably getting called. And a few people behind might feel like they are getting pot odds to call whatever junk they would've folded like Q8s if the fish had folded (lol live logic). So all of a sudden instead taking down the blinds or getting a heads up pot in position you're in a bloated multi-way pot with a hand that's toast on most flops without a 6.

Now consider the same hand/position except that 70 VPIP fish is on your right and limps. Some people are gonna say over limp but imo iso raising is definitely the way to go. Now you can iso the fish who's gonna have a huge junk range in position and maximize your EV based on the board run-out. You can even get multiple streets from ace high/draws vs a lot of stations as well as setting up a lower SPR making it easier to stack the fish if you do hit your 6.

Also you can still cbet/double barrel air on good turns vs that fish heads up. But five way? Good luck trying to bluff.

Why? Are you afraid of them? I'd rather have the regs on my left cause they're gonna be tighter and allow more of my raises to get through or get me a heads up pot in position. If you get flatted by a good reg in position then just accept the fact that vs your overall range in a vacuum you are in a -EV spot and play accordingly. The huge +EV spots you get in position vs the fish are worth occasionally putting yourself in situations like that.

I don't think I've seen 7 tough regs total, much less at the same table.

Do you see the problem if 7 other people feel and act the same as you?

I do. But that applies to games that revolve around one or two fish, not 1/2. At a 1/2 table there's usually one OK to good reg, a few break-even/slightly losing regs and the rest are fish. If the other winning reg chooses to not exercise his right to maximize his EV I will.

First, note you have a finite amount of play time in your life. If you run good, it's limited by you dying. You may choose to liquidate your bankroll to start a business, or circumstances may choose you, like finding out your son has to have open heart surgery and needing to pay $30k out of pocket. You may fall in love with someone who disapproves of gambling, or you may simply lose interest.

Maybe you're content to pass the time at what amounts to a minimum wage job. But for most people who bother posting, winning money is a big part of why they play.

Your goal should be to become the biggest winner at the biggest game that's regularly available to you. If you consider the total amount of time you have to play times the highest winrate you'll have, that's the cap on lifetime winnings you will have.

Every minute you're not playing at that maximum win rate, your lifetime cap goes down. Every minute you dick around at 1/2 is one minute less you have to play 10/20 down the road. If you spend a year playing 1/2, sure, you win money, but you lose a year times (winrate at 10/20 minus winrate at 1/2) in opportunity cost.

When you're at a table with 7 fish, what is the difference in win rate between the worst seat at the table and the best seat at the table? $2/hr? I doubt it's even that, pretty much everyone sucks and every seat is left of a fish.

Now, what if by ACTIVELY SEEKING the worst seat in the house, you could identify leaks in the other "good" 1/2 players, learn how to crush them OOP, and then feel comfortable at a 5/10 game where there are 7 players like that "good" player and you can't seat change because you're too far down the list? Consider the "anti-seatchange" as cheap practice for the next level up. The 1/2 shark is likely the median 2/5 player, so get used to being OOP against him.

Table changing and seat changing are like training wheels on a bike. When you suck, they keep you from doing too much damage to yourself. When you can actually ride a bike, all they do is slow you down.

While I agree with your point that your ultimate goal should inevitably be to make as much as possible, I think BR restrictions are what limits many players from being able to make psychological jumps in improving their game. If you have a 20k roll as opposed to a 5k roll, you can start Vbetting thinner, try floating more, squeeze pre more often -- things that might be profitable but high variance, which many players never quite get comfortable with. There's plenty of examples even if its not those specifically.

I remember about a year ago when I was first starting to play 1/2 a few months in, I began bumhunting a banker who would come in regularly and just throw money around. I was pretty much a nit, but this one particular night I sat on his left, isolated him every time I got like KJ+ or whatever, and made $1500 in a night. I think at the time that increased my bankroll by almost 30%. Over the next month or so I made a decent amount bumhunting the same player, not necessarily always with position but it def helps.

Point being, after that 1-2 months I was no longer forced to play like a nit and my game expanded because I utilized pokers first goal: to make money. I took the most +EV line and squeezed every penny out of it, and because of it I was able to expand my game well beyond ABC poker.

All of the above. Regs might be good at poker but sheer stupidity when it comes to how the world works is commonplace.

It will be noticed if you are a good player and you change seats to play with someone, no matter what your excuse is. The fish knows you are not really his true friend and are just after his money, despite what you might believe.

I agree with the statement as written but disagree this applies to the people most likely to be affected.

Anyone who considers themselves good either is (a) irrational, (b) scared, or (c) rational. The first group is just assuming they're good without the evidence to back it up. The second group needs a massive bankroll because they don't trust their skills. The third group has won so much money in the course of proving they're a winner that they shouldn't be limited by bankroll.

I'm going to do the math for the second and third groups.

The bankroll you need is defined by B = (z*SD/2)^2 * WR. For a strong 1/2 winner, SD = 60-80, WR = 5-10, and let's use z=2. B is 200-2500, or $400-$5,000, and probably most commonly in the $1,000-$3,000 range. If you need more than that, you either have an absurdly high SD, lower than expected WR, and fall into the first category. If you need $20k (or even $5k) to feel confident at a 1/2 table, yikes.

The longest breakeven stretch is n0 = (z*SD/WR)^2, this works out to 200-1000 hours of play. That is the longest time a true winner of WR should break even, or conversely, an observed winner of WR can be a true loser. If you've proven yourself to be a winner by playing n0 hours, you have won n0*WR dollars. You can go through the math from scratch or cheat by noticing that it's actually just 4*B from what we calculated above. That is, over the course of proving that you're a winner in a game, you should have quadrupled whatever bankroll you needed initially.

There's no person who can rationally say they're a 1/2 winner who isn't overrolled for 1/2. After Black Friday there were probably some exceptions, people who had crushed large online games but had their BRs seized, scraping together bankrolls for live games they're supremely overqualified for. But as a general rule, for like 99% of players, they are skill-limited in moving up, not bankroll-limited.

And this doesn't even go into the fact thay for small games (2/5- NL, 15/30- LHE), a decent job can provide an instant bankroll. In these cases, ROR isn't "risk of ruin" and it's more like "risk of being moderately inconvenienced" and you can deal with z-scores much smaller than 2.

^ Your formula for B doesn't make sense because you're saying the bankroll needed is directly proportional to your win rate when it clearly should be inversely proportional.

Oops, that's a typo in the formula. The numbers are correct.

OP, Your title is horribly worded.

You have large mental game leaks and unless you want to be one of the thousands of identical accounts before you that have come and gone you really need to address these leaks and rid yourself of them.

These are the correct answers.

Its more like saying fold pre

While some folks do it to troll or are perhaps ignoring a close pre flop decision that turned into a difficult post flop decision, very often "fold pre" is quite applicable to many hand histories posted on this forum and the very best advice posted in a long thread of drivel, though it often goes unnoticed.

Back to OP, you need to recognize yourself as fortunate:

Fortunate that a skill based game exists that can be played for money.

Fortunate that a casino provides this game and charges a rake that still leaves the game beatable.

Fortunate that you live in a country with a lot of wealth and successful people and where spending money = entertainment.

Fortunate that these "bum reg fish" keep coming back even after this game's entertainment value has consistently declined year after year (due in part to posts/thoughts/actions like this).

Fortunate that you discovered this game exists at all.

You are entitled to nothing. And therefore incredibly fortunate.

Seat changing, and more importantly direct left seat changing, is bad for both immediate and long term health of the game. I have seen many a good game killed by the musical chairs nonsense.

And while i fully realize no one gives a **** about the long term health of anything, its just something that should be avoided or done very discreetly. There are many ways to do it discreetly and you can figure them out on your own. Otherwise, try not to.

Ive been doing this for a long time, and to be honest I myself played a part in killing it years ago. Now whales text me when a good game is going, and invite me to their family barbeques. That is how this game is won long term. By recognizing that "fish" are people too, many with interesting backgrounds and stories, and often times more financially successful than we could ever hope to be.

Avarita is right. "Fold pre" is exactly what I thought. if you want to play this game for a long time, you must pick your fights well. If you're like me you're already tighter then the average player, probably tip less then average, consume very little drinks too, sometimes its best to leave a little ev on the table for longevitys sake.

Also a factor is the huge turnover in the larger rooms at 1-2 and 1-3. There may be some occasions where a seat change could be a positive move , but the contant change over in players at this level makes it less important. Now in a smaller room with many of the same players session after session and less turnover it makes a little better sense to consider this. At lower stakes in a big room , just stay friendly and don't be obvious. Most of the time the folks you want position on will do it themselves because of the flow of weaker players in and out.

ya'll are crazy if think bad players are aware of 'being on the left' as being a good thing. sure many of them understand position and how it relates to the button, but very few take it to a player level. and to add, being aware of button position and actually using that to make sound decisions don't usually go hand in hand.. we're talking about bad players here.. part of being a bad player is not being self aware.