So, I have been recording the results of all my sessions for about 8 months now. I exclusively play 1/2 and some local small buy-in tournaments and I have only managed to turn $200 into $3800 over the course of 8 months.

I have read that you should be making around 10 bb's an hour to be considered a winning player. Well, my poker app told me I was only making about $11 an hour. I then had two *REALLY* bad sessions where I lost almost $2000.

I literally stopped playing for a week and just watched videos, plugged hands into Equilab, and did reading, reading, and more reading. I was having a ton of trouble understanding what my opponents' ranges actually looked like.

So, I decided to do an experiment. I was going to target a single player at my table and I was going to record every time they folded, every time they called preflop, and every time they raised pre flop. I did this over the course of 4 1/2 hours and recorded exactly 100 hands. I view this player as a typical 1/2 player who plays *WAY* to many hands but this particular player seems to be on the more aggressive side of things.

And here are the results:

This players VPIP / PFR is...

66/22.

I immediately raced home and put this in Equilab and... wow... how do I ever lose a hand to this player. A 66% range is laughably bad.

More importantly, the player's raising range of 22% includes a TON of garbage that you should not be raising with. Now, I know that I should be including position and things like that but I feel this gives a good overall picture of this player's frequencies. It is essentially any pocket pair, any two suited cards, and nearly all Axo, Kxo, and Qxo hands.

Has anyone else tried something like this for live?

The next time I play, I am going to target a "nittier" player just to see what their range looks like.

The "eye-opening" thing for me was when I plugged some flops into Equilab. I looked at an 8% range and told myself I am sticking to that from no matter what position (I know, that is nitty and bad but I wanted to do this as an exercise to understand more about ranges, frequencies, flops, equity, and all that jazz). I took my 8% range and I plugged in flops that completely whiff my hand versus this player's range (for example, flop of 962 rainbow) and I still had 62% equity because their range is so bloated with trash.

Not sure why you've read that. Any time you're making something greater than zero in the games you're playing you're a winning player. If I was only making $19/hr in your games I wouldn't be crying about it.

live players are usually absurdly bad preflop, but they tend to make up for it by being a bit better postflop (than their 60/20 counterparts online). One big mistake many players make is just assuming that you are gonna print money vs certain players simply by having big preflop range advantage on them - unfortunately, you also need to be decent postflop.

I just read that somewhere. If you were making $1 an hour at 1/2, would you consider yourself a successful player?

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I mean, the equity calculator doesn't lie. On boards that miss me, I am still favored because of the trash they play. But, yes, I see where you are getting at. Don't just spew because I have range advantage.

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You listed a winning player, i.e. one that is not losing. Making $1 an hour is not losing and would easily put you in the top half of all players

Probably the least reliable information on the internet is people's self reported win rates in live poker. Note that even for yourself, you reported 5.5 BB/hr rate before two bad sessions. Others only start recording after a good night. Some with just not add in the drunken spew fest they had since "it doesn't really count."

Before Black Friday, the online world was filled with people claiming to make 10 BB/100. After PTR started tracking micro stakes games, the top players were shown to be making 4-5 BB/100.

I'd use 10 BB/hr as a goal, not what people really do. The one thing I am absolutely sure about is that if someone really was winning 10 BB/hr in a game, they have a huge leak. They are playing too small and need to move up to make more money.

One thing I have noticed is that when I play live 1/2 the games are a LOT softer than online NL10 and even NL5. It isn't unusual to have players whose VPIP is 50% or more at a live table.

Some people drive for an hour or two to get there, and they simply aren't going to drive that long to fold hands like J7s or T8o you know?

I agree that 10BB/100 should be used as a goal. Over the long run it seems most pros are making a bit less, but they do play in tougher higher limit games.

Good luck with the reading