All these games kept me out of the mixes for a while but I had to accept that I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to play.

Super Razzdeucy is pretty interesting. I was so stoked to finally start with a 3c2c-4c last night only to remember we weren’t playing Super Stud 8 on 4th when I caught the Ac.

I’m having a blast playing these games though. Sean Snyder seems to suggest there’s a lot of luck involved - and he’s not wrong - but I’ve seen so many plays being made that are clearly bad in multiple variants. There are definitely edges to be had. At least at the 20/40 level.

Favorite play from last night: I open UTG in 2-7 TD, lady cold calls next to act, both blinds call. We all draw. She stays pay. I’m already chuckling inside my head. She obv has a T or 9, maybe even worse. LOL @ flatting and trying to fade three players drawing.

But wait! It gets better! We are all still drawing on the last draw. I have improved to a one card wheel draw and one of the others is drawing one also. The last guy has a two card draw.

We all draw and check to her. She bets!

One player calls and she turns over a T9. Well played.

As I was typing this I started to wonder if it could be correct to play a pat wheel this way? But really, you shouldn’t have a pat flatting range from UTG+1, right?

Mixed Game line up from last weekend:

Hidugi, Flacey. **** just got real.

Lol were you in that game? I was the only player who had played one of the games before and managed to lose 24k. I suck.

General comment: people either think “this game sucks I don’t know how to play it well” or they think “this is great nobody knows how to play it well”. I love any new game. But agree super razzdeucey / razzdacey suck.

Also if it wasn’t obvious she did not win with her T9 hand.

I posted this on Facebook the other day:

“Didn’t think it was possible but mix game players might be as annoying as no limit players.”

So definitely not #3 for me.

Seems like “prefers limit games over big bet games” should be an option?

Edit: this was in response to a Sean Snyder post that looks like was deleted?

fwiw I am a bit biased as I believe that all limit poker played in a live setting is a complete and utter waste of time compared to big bet poker. Aside from the great social experience, I have nothing but regret wrt my decision to uproot my life to go back to LA to play 200/400 mix when I could have just stayed in San Diego playing 5/10 NL or PLO up to 3 days a week and 10/25+ NL up to 2 days a week.

Yes, sorry I deleted the long post.

Shrug. What are the best players at $3/$5 NL making an hour? 10bb/hour?

Yeah, but take that per hand edge and multiply it by the hands per hour and see how that compares to say 5/10 NL.

And then on a broader level, consider how much time the game runs. Like even if you were the world's best triple pinemaha player in the world and made $100/hand, you might not make enough in a year to support yourself.

So along with that comes the variance problem. With so few hands/year, it could be calendar years before your skill edge becomes statistically significant. If you were to introduce the world to open face deuces wild calliholdem, a calendar year from now it's possible if not probable that both most long-term winners are short-term losers and most short-term winners are long-term losers.

I signed up for the mix then played LHE while I waited. I checked in and magically move from #2 to #5. Checked in again a whillle later after a shift change and I learned there a seat was open for two hours. Didn't want to play two new games tilted

Sean, I really get a lot out of you sharing your personal experience:

So thank you. But that seems like only mild support of:

(Let's take that to mean "generates a substantially inferior winrate.")

First, aren't those very different stakes? I don't have any experience above 2-5 NL but would speculate

• 5-10 roughly equates to 60/120 limit (in terms of swings)
• 10-25 NLHE or 5-10 PLO might be 150/300, perhaps with deep stacks 200/400.
• And apparently you were playing 25-50 NL or higher in SD, which would be much bigger than 200/400

So weighting by availability of games, seems like playing 200/400 [every day?] would be higher stakes than that portfolio of big bet games.

So it's not noteworthy when higher stakes have tougher players, but it may be noteworthy if 10-25 or 25-50 NLHE games are softer than 200/400 limit. Is this just true of SD or true everywhere? SD games might be a fair reflection of 10-25+ games in general, or they might not be, so I'm curious if that was your implication.

Couple more questions, detached from my previous question, just topics that piqued my interest.

1. Are there not comparable $5-10, $10-25, or higher NLHE games; and $5-10 or higher PLO games in the LA area? Or are those games much tougher than SD?
2. Given the proximity of LA--esp the cardrooms--to SD, could someone reasonably move to a point between the two and have their pick of the best games? Granted, commute time is a major quality of life issue, but my impression is that 1-2 hour commutes each way are not considered all that remarkable in Southern California.

That doesn't mean that anyone likes those commutes.

edit:Never thought I would consider a 97 degree southern Arizona summer day as beautiful, but after two weeks in Vegas, it's friggin' gorgeous.

You index your urinals with the closet one starting high?

Facing the urinals, you enter the room from the right?

1-5, left to right. We entered closest to the rightmost urinal.

This makes sense. Now I can sleep peacefully once more.

I don't really put that much thought into it but depending on various factors, I'd estimate that a big bet game will play anywhere from 5x to 20x its limit stakes. Not counting permanent straddles.

Not really interested in getting into what I think winrates in general or mine specifically may look like but a very big and simple part of it is what someone mentioned earlier and that is that even a robust bb/100 isn't particularly impressive in bb/hr in some games. Additionally, it's not that unusual to sit in a $5 blind game that magically becomes $20+. I'm not going to sit in a 20/40 limit game, but if I do, it's never going to magically become a 1/2+ game.

If I just played 2/4 mix every day it would likely be bigger than playing various stakes big bet but playing as big as I can is really not my concern in life. If it was, I'd have regularly played significantly higher than 2/4 when crypto was booming, I was feeling good about poker and able to turn over winning hands, and there were bigger worthwhile games available. I quit online last year with the honest intention of just playing $5 and $10 blind nl and occasionally $20ish. As much as I'd like to retire, all I really need from poker right now is to be able to generate enough income to enjoy my life. From 2014-2016 that was accomplished by playing mostly 1dollar/2dollar NL online with meager volume so it really doesn't take much money. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to avoid it, I am a degenerate and playing gamble games with cool people for lots of money is fun.

As far as the SD vs LA thing, it's pretty simple for me and really not about money either. I was living in a hotel and am now renting (splitting with one of my oldest real life friends who works at an LA cardroom) a house in LA and I own a house in SD. I have good friends in LA that I enjoy seeing, talking to and hanging out with at and away from a poker table, but my preference is always to be in SD for my own life happiness. I briefly forgot that when I was winning every day and that's how I wound up with the 12 month lease up there. While I do hope that my game in LA gets lively again after people are done in Vegas, I'm fine staying in SD if it doesn't. There are plenty of other games available but I'm not in a hurry to have to be in LA to actually play them. Down in SD yesterday and my poker day was playing a few minutes of 500 NL online and eventually heading to a casino and drinking to excess playing 2/3 (turned 2/5 and then 2/5/10) all night. A lot of my friends think it's weird that we can be playing 200/400 mix or like 25/50/100 nl one day and I'll just be plugging away in a 2/5 nl game the next day and it probably is. I guess I just like poker a lot more than I will ever admit to myself. Gotta grind out that rent money that I have been throwing into the wind for months and bags of kibble for my dog somehow.

Pics of dog.

Wait a minute - do you really want to invade a perfectly nice dog's privacy by blasting its pic halfway around the Internet?

Okay, okay. Put a paper towel over it's face.

My summer in a nutshell:

I’m above average with 25ish left in $585 HORSE @ Binions and about one hour left in Day 1A when this Razz hand breaks out during the 8k/16k limit.

Player A completes with a small card, Player B calls next to act from middle position with a queen up and multiple small cards behind him, and I call with A7-3.

Player A: xx-6T8K

Player B: xx-Q26T-x

Me: A7-35K6-T

4th street: I bet and they both call.

5th street: A bets and we both call.

6th street: B leads! I raise, A folds, and B calls.

7th street: B checks, I bet and B raises.

Turns over A54 in the hole.

238k pot when average stack was like 125k. I busted with 15 minutes left in the day after playing for 14 hours instead of making Day 2 with double the average stack and 80% of the field gone.

Jam 3rd and 5th

I thought about raising both streets and in a cash game I definitely would, but in a tournament I wasn’t sure if pushing an equity edge was better than conserving chips when I brick out.

Doesn't seem like he's a favorite on fifth

Reading glasses are reasonably priced and come in fashionable styles at Walgreen's.