Im gonna go out on a limb and make a bold statement. This wont be a bold statement at all for S. Florida regs. It will be rather obvious.

Ive played over 2000 hours of live poker in the last 18 months. Ive played in 21 poker rooms in 8 states. The Isle is my main poker room. The results in my app are separated by poker room. My win rate in all other 20 rooms combined is 43% higher than my win rate at the Isle. The assumption in the poker world is that S. Florida poker is soft....and it mostly is....BUT

My bold statement?

The Isle is the toughest poker room in the US.

Im gonna go out on a limb and make a bold statement. This wont be a bold statement at all for S. Florida regs. It will be rather obvious.

Ive played over 2000 hours of live poker in the last 18 months. Ive played in 21 poker rooms in 8 states. The Isle at Pompano Beach Florida is my main poker room. The results in my app are separated by poker room. My win rate in all other 20 rooms combined is 43% higher than my win rate at the Isle. The assumption in the poker world is that S. Florida poker is soft....and it mostly is....BUT

My bold statement?

The Isle is the toughest poker room in the US.

Do you play the same games at the same times everywhere else as you do when you're home? If you're playing day time/weekday games at home, but when travelling play more weekends/nights because you're on a different schedule, you should probably expect to have a higher win rate elsewhere.

Ive played a variety of times in other places as well as at the Isle. Obviously nobody can ever prove which room is tougher, but when you play as much as I do, you can pretty quickly get a feel for which tables are softer than others. S. Florida games are soft as advertised, except for the Isle. Its like night and day.

My statement is based on win rate but also on clear observations. I just happen to live pretty close to the Isle and the convenience of there always being a game, short waiting lists, good service, well run games, high end environment and good comps keep me coming back.

Just because you're winning 43% more in all other rooms, this does not at all mean the Isle is the "Toughest poker room in the US".

There is not one player who can look at their results and say the room where they made the least money and/or lost the most and say that particular room is the "toughest room in the US". Don't you see how illogical this is?

Haven't played the ISLE in about 8 months, but I'm not sure "tough" is the reason your win rate is lower there. I found the regs there to be rocks, and for the most part the game played smaller than other casinos with same structure. I played 2/5 and 5/10 and found this to be the case in both games over several different times. I also found a great affinity for 'run it twice' which may lower variance, but will also lower winrate.

If that is your home game, then probably the best example I could give you is comparing the ISLE 5/10 game to the PBKC 5/10 game. To play ISLE 5/10 I would feel comfortable only having 1 or 2 buyins to play my best vs that table. At PBKC I would want to have at least 3 maybe 4 buyins with me.

Maybe the game has changed since I played there, but that was my take.

My time at the Isle is strictly in the 1/2 nl, but that game is just as soft as anywhere else. Granted, it's 1/2 and those games are pretty soft everywhere in my experience.

Thank you for not starting a where's the softest poker room thread at least. I think we have all had about enough of that.

43% is a pretty high number .. good job and enjoy the spoils for sure.

I just want to reinforce how tough this game is when your opponents know your game 'maybe' as well as you do. Anytime you could be 'leveling' with an opponent I think it adds an aspect to variance. Plays that are ABC plays against an unknown can become blurred against regs.

I think the one thing I do like about a 'home' room against regs is that since you know the players then you know how to size bets for max value based on history.

1) Did you feel pots were larger 'on the road'?
2) Did you feel you could bluff more early in a session since there was no history?

Never been to 'your' room, but I have constantly put in my posts that I 'always' do better away from home or at least when I see opponents less frequently. GL

Looking at your winrate is a really bad way to determine which room is toughest.

If you play 1,600 hours of NL with the same strategy against the same lineup, the error bar on your winrate is about +/- 4 bb/hr. That is, if you've actually won +10 bb/hr, there's a +/- 40% error bar on your winrate and if you've actually won +5 bb/hr, that's +/- 80%.

To get your winrate to something like +/- 10%, you need a stupifying number of hours (~25k for a +10 bb/hr winner and ~100k for a +5 bb/hr winner).

It gets worse when you divide your hours (that is, to tell the difference between home and away, if your total hours are split 1/2-1/2, that error goes up by sqrt(2). And if you are prone to tilting (so your winrate is not independent but varies as a function of whether you're winning), your aggregate variance will be even higher.

You will get a qualitative feel for which rooms are spftest/hardest (how many exploitable mistakes are your opponents making) long before you get a quantitative confirmation by statistics.

If you really think this room is the toughest room in the whole country, why are you playing there so much?

.99 cent shrimp cocktail

What stakes are you playing? For 2/5 I feel like Coconut Creek, Hollywood Hard Rock, and Mardi Gras are all tougher games than the Isle. Gulfstream's 2/5 is pretty soft.

But, then, it all comes down to the style of play that suits you, right? Roger Federer would probably say that playing tennis on red clay is the toughest surface to win on. Rafael Nadal would say that red clay is the easiest surface to win on. And both of them would be right.

Variance.

Mohegan Sun Poker Room. All nits.

2000 hours is nowhere near enough to draw such broad conclusions even if this was divided among two or three casinos, let alone 21. That's under 200 hours per casino on average. What happens over 200 hours has a HUGE amount of statistical noise. The fact one casino your results are 43% worse is completely meaningless.

Could it be that the players in your "home poker room" know your play better than those at all the other poker rooms? Might affect your win rate there.

I would say there are other factors contributing to lower win rates at the isle. I rarely play cash there anymore, not so much because everyone there is a wizard but simply the games just aren't as good.
The average age of people at the Isle is older than most other rooms and play on average is nittier, of course you can make money at nitty games, it's just harder. People simpyl aren't just blasting off stacks at the isle in the same manner as they are in other casinos.

At 1/2 the min buy in is 60 as opposed to 100 at many of the other rooms so there seems to be less money in the games. Not that these can't be beat it's just they aren't nearly as juicy as many alternatives in the area.

2/5 buy in aligns with other rooms in the area but from my observations even the 2/5 games seem to have less money on the table than other rooms.

I have played in some juiceball 2/5 games at the Isle but during the day you have the be very aggressive in game and seat selection as your edge will be very small unless you get lucky and get a fish at the table. If you are able to playing only nights and weekends should be your policy. I haven't encountered any real wizards in that game but almost everyone is competent and the weak players during the day just aren't that bad. I have only played about 200 hrs in that game and though my wr is low I attribute it to small sample, learning the player pool and game texture.

This is pure blasphemy, Sir.

Maybe to you, but it has tremendous meaning to me.


Jesus! You guys take this stuff way too seriously.

Yeah, the 1/2 at the Isle is a joke....but you should play 1/2 at the Creek. Its hard to keep from laughing at some of the things you'll see. However, I cant take the smoke there so that place is off my list.

Its only 15 mins from me.
I get $4.32/ hr in comps
The place is upscale compared to most others
Food is pretty good
Its run very professionally
Its very large so there's 2/5 and bigger games virtually always
Ive never waited more than 15 mins. to get a seat.

That probably is a factor.

Those are major factors for the room being tougher than most, right? People arent blasting off stacks easily. Players are nittier. Less money on table in general. They all lead to a lower win rate and tougher room. You made my point for me.