Used to play the 20-40 and the occasional 40-80 very regularly at commerce and the 20 at HG, from around 2012-2015 On an average Friday or Saturday night there might be ~10 20-40's going at commerce. I stopped in for the first time in months a Few weeks ago and there were maybe 3 tables. I thought maybe it was an outlier, stopped in again a couple of saturdays ago and again 3 maybe 4 tables. Additionally the games didn't have the juicy action they used to have. It was very depressing.

As for HG I stopped in two nights ago, granted it was a Sunday, but they had one table with two props in it at 9pm. From what I was told most of the action players from the HG 20 have moved to their 40 game which is a regular thing now (used to be a rarity) and that has effectively killed the 20.

I haven't been to the bike, is all the action over there? Someone tell me these games are still happening somewhere. I'm really sad

Drop increases happened, among other things.

Don't know, but does anyone know details of the Gardens 40?

Commerce has new management and it's awful.

They charge for water. They charge for food. The jackpot goes down on a monthly basis. (it's 25k today < LOL)
The floor makes bad rulings. They allow the players to abuse the dealers. The players are toxic and create a bad atmosphere. They fire their good employees. All the remaining employees work overtime and are always frustrated. Because of this they have lots of people quit and are short staffed causing more overtime.

Then they increased the rake to 6+1, while reducing the jackpot lol. Fish chase big wins, so big jackpots + payouts really drive lots of games.

TBCH I don't think new management of commerce cares at all about their poker games. It will be a huge mistake in the long run~ Definitely has significant impacts on their asain games.

FWIW, 99% of the playerpool in the current 20/40 field is still a joke.

HG has a good 40 from what I hear.... but it doesn't go every day. Commerce still holding onto their 40s.. usually 1-3 nightly. 1-2 overnight. 1 goes 24/7.
The bike 40 broke. They hold a healthy 1-3 20/40 half kills every day. Their 20s go overnight ~40-50% of the time.
Hustler 25/50 is the yellow brick road. 1 game usually. gets 2-3 sometimes in evenings. Main game can go overnight

The casinos are colluding together to raise rake + lower jackpots etc. It's having a negative affect on live poker overall~
Always keep your head up and be thinking about what's next in life =D Ride the wave while there's still a tide

I think this is pretty spot on. I don't play much anymore and 90% of my play is at Hustler. Main game is consistently good, service is great, and the game culture is way more pleasant than Commerce. (Also, I can take the express lane on the 110, which makes the commute down significantly more pleasant. I know, I know, but this is a real factor when you live in LA.)

The only problem is that everyone knows about the game and the top of the player pool is much, much tougher than any yellow chip game in LA. But it's still a good game.

Yeah, the entire ecosystem is just under a lot of pressure. You've got the upcoming minimum wage increases affecting the casino bottom lines, which forced them to increase rake (I mean, that's their side of the story anyway). The increased rake pisses some players off, drives some players to play online instead of live, etc. Also, without a thriving online ecosystem fewer players are introduced to the game than 10 years ago.

Saying that poker is down from 10 years ago is like people who say the housing market lost half its value in 2007-2009. Sure, peak to trough there has been a huge reduction but the peak was absurdly nonequilibrium to begin with.

We're getting to, but not quite at, the point where poker "salaries" are normalizing with skill.

Tbh... It's been ESPECIALLY entertaining watching the overaggro Lag's that always had huge ego getting absolutely destroyed by variance as the games got competitive.... they just dont put in the work to keep up with the evolving game. Anyone who doesn't study game theory in todays environment is getting punished, hard.

We have probably lost 10-15 "pros" in LA yearly for 5+ years.

I don't understand the glee.

Surely these people make up a significant fraction of your winnings over the past 5 years?

Not so much "glee" as entertaining. The specific ones I'm referring to here were generally very toxic for the game, were caught colluding at one point, and have a "look down their nose" at everyone else attitude.

I try to create an atmosphere of fun + gamboool when I sit. Generally looking to give other players a fun/entertaining time so if they lose they felt it was worth it. Those players worked actively to destroy this atmosphere & I do not feel bad about being entertained by their current suffering. =P Justice in poker is rare... but when it happens it can be magical

edit: Just realized: I am rooting for anyone who is bad for the game/atmosphere to lose.... and anyone who is good for the game/atmosphere to win

Completely agree w\ your "Poker is heading back to equilibrium" comment.

Will be interesting to see where it all settles as we get back to something sustainable.

Bunch of bitter old men huddled around a poker table complaining about how life was better before people got those newfangled brain implants.

Kids these days, they just spend all their time in the Matrix. Back when I was young if you wanted to send someone a message you had to physically type it out with your fingers.

Game selection, game selection, study, repeat.

Also, pray that the kids of the Moneymaker generation start turning 18 soon.

Can confirm this, Matt, before he left completely for bigger games, was clearly the best 20-40 player in the LA area during my time in the game, but at the same time was probably the nicest guy at the table. I enjoyed playing with him for the challenge and because he was a rare decent human being in the commerce cess pool.

Thanks dude~ Made my morning <3 much love and gl on the felt

The first time I met him I was a little creeped out cuz he was like 7 standard deviations friendlier than the average commerce player but then I realized that just puts him toward the high end of the real world "normal" range. Then I also realized he was being extra nice cuz I was the fish. Then he told me his wife thinks I'm a fish too.

FWIW, I think the player pool at the Hustler 25 is among the friendliest I've ever played with.

The general tenor of these discussions is correct (yellow chip poker has gotten somewhat more difficult over the last 10 years), but I find the specifics maddening.

No, you don't need to learn GTO to beat 20-40 in Southern California. Nothing wrong with learning it, it will certainly increase your winrate somewhat, but as compared to table selection, seat selection, and not having pre-flop leaks, GTO play would seem to me to lag fairly far behind in terms of "what it takes to win in the yellow chips".

No, Commerce 20 isn't devoid of fish. In actuality, jackpots are higher now than they used to be (though not as high as Hustler or HG). When I regularly played in that game, the jackpot seeded at $15,000.

While Commerce is full of obnoxious people, there are plenty of obnoxious players at every Southern California casino. They all tolerate way too much dealer abuse.

And the fundamental problem that players have playing 20-40 poker for a living is the math doesn't make it easy to play 20-40 for a living unless you combine very strong poker skills with incredible discipline, whereas most local "pros" have somewhat weaker poker skills than they think they do, combined with very little discipline. Indeed, that lack of discipline is what brought a number of them to poker in the first place-- they didn't have the discipline to do lucrative work in the real world.

One part of this thread is absolutely true though-- avoidthe9to5 is one of the nicest people you will ever meet playing poker, whether you are a bad player, a good player, a recreational player, or a pro.

FWIW good preflop fundamentals is optimal from a game theory perspective. Pretty obvious how to exploit the guy w/ a 20% open UTG or a 100% BTN open strategy.

More than that, it's hard to know how to exploit someone unless you know what mistake they're making.

If an opponent semibluffs too much, you can exploit by calling too much or rebluffing too much. If they semibluff too little, you can exploit by calling down too little. But to know whether they do it too much or too little requires knowledge of where the Nash Equilibrium is.

A lot of people are pretty successful at guessing. The LAGs that someone referenced earlier in the thread probably did very well for a while because loose-passives called down way too much so they weren't punished for betting way too much. And TAGs probably bet/folded too much so LAGs could bluff raise too much and not get punished.

There are probably still a few gross outliers - people who you can just intuitively guess which side of GTO Mountain they're on, like nits who never bluff or idiots who raise ATC. But as they get fewer, it becomes more important to figure out whether someone who raises top pair+ plus queen high flush draws is semibluffing too much or too little.

I would agree as well

Lets not kid ourselves -- playing 20/40 for a living is just plain foolish, no matter how much discipline and skill you have.

Much love everyone <3 thanks for all the kind words! #feels

I could see someone living comfortably in parts of the country off a 20-40 win rate but it's hard to imagine someone could survive in L.A.

FYP