I have been invited to a private game where they either play 2.5/5 with a rake of 3.5% uncapped or 5/10 with a rake of 3% uncapped. Stacks are mostly pretty deep and players are bad. There are jackpots paid for from the rake pool (any full house KK over JJ gets a high hand bonus), also there might be a rakeback deal possible if I play enough. The games are full ring 90% of the time, but sometimes game gets short and people continue playing.

Does this sound like a beatable structure? Looking at my online db, it seems like the average pot in a FR game t is ~18.5 bb, so at the 2.5/5 game that comes to an average of 3.24 /hand and at 5/10 it's 5.5/hand. So that's probably beatable because the local 3/5 game drops 5/hand except where there is no drop and the 5/10 is like 6/hand, and those are definitely beatable.

Am I missing something?

i'd be shocked if a private game has ****ty 185 dollar average pots in 5/10 nl

This. So much this. Especially with a ton of bad players preflop can easily get to a pot of 150 plus. Wanna tell me where it is?? Lol

I think it Is beatable. Good luck.

I'd expect it is beatable, but impossible to say without knowing exactly how big your edge is (i.e. how bad the players are). Regardless, the high rake will incentivize a tighter preflop strategy.

I think the bigger concerns when deciding whether or not to play in private/home/club games pertain to personal safety and if the game allows credit. In my experience, the action in private games is naturally better than an average casino game of similar takes, so finding a beatable game is usually pretty easy. The drawbacks are the possibility of the game getting robbed or the host not having the cash to pay out at the end of the night because of sloppy books.

I play almost exclusively in underground games. I would encourage you to accomplish a couple things immediately:

Make friends. The better you get to know everyone, the more info you'll have about the history of the game and the security of the players in the room. I've been in rooms that were robbed (twice), and just had to accept that whatever cash I had on me was gone. I never went back to those games.

Pay attention to whether or not players exchange cash immediately for chips or if they rebuy on the books. If the books are usually heavy, you run the risk of the host not being able to pay you when you cash out. My policy is to never play in a game again if I'm asked to wait more than 24 hours to be paid for a winning session.

If the game isn't playing big enough for your liking, I highly recommend you read DGAF's thread in this forum. He has offered some invaluable advice on how to pump up the action in a game that's slow/nitty.

It depends on what your definition of "beatable" is. Beatable for a dollar an hour or beatable for 60?

If you win a 1.5K pot you're handing them $45, which is a little under what you would make per hour on a standard rake.

With that said these games are the juiciest games you will ever see (my exp any way) but you can't nit it up or they start complaining and you won't get invited to keep coming back.

If you have good games it's worth an extra drive if that's possible but just my opinion.

I beat 1-2$ deep stacks with 5% no can in moscow for a long time, with weak players

Отправлено с моего Redmi Note 4X через Tapatalk

This sounds absolutely beatable. Private games with bad played and 3% rake, sign me up. The uncapped kinda sucks but still, deep stack with fish at 3% is golden.