Just getting back into poker! Id love to get some opinions on the Oaks 6-12 and some of the other Limit action around the Bay. I prefer Limit to No Limit. I am not trying to play for a living. Im playing for fun but would also like to turn a small profit, since ya know, poker is a lot more fun when you win. If I could play a few nights a week, and make somewhere around $15/hr, Id be pretty happy with that.

Anyways, I realize the drop is the biggest enemy. Right now at the Oaks we are looking at a $4 drop plus another $1 for the BBJP. The players are mostly bad. Im not the greatest, but ive read the Small Stakes book by Ed Miller, and understand all the key concepts. That alone probably makes me better than some 80% of the 6-12 players out there. I do have some holes to fill, and I figure just playing and lurking around here I can fill some of them. Some weaknesses: Inability to pull the trigger on thin river value bets; probably not raising quite frequently enough Pre, particularly in the blinds (probably not 3-betting Pre enough either). I don't think I raise the big streets enough either, rare is it that I will raise with less than two pair on the turn or river. So yea, aggression in general needs work. Ill try to post some hands here.

Now I would like to move up and would not mind playing higher right now. However, the game after 6-12 is 30-60 (looks like 15-30 is no more?). Id be willing to play up to 15-30, but wouldn't think it would be worth it to drive the extra distance (I live in Alameda), and I might not currently even be a winner in that game. I realize as you play higher, you do need to tweak your game a bit (i.e. - bluff sometimes, never limp pre 1st in, etc)

So it would appear that the Oaks 6-12 is my best option for now? Worth it to drive farther to play higher? Or is Limit a lost cause and learn how to play No Limit?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Meant to post this in the Small Stakes section, if someone wants to move it. Thanks

Whether switching to NL is better is up to you. The Bay Area has had a history of having a better LHE ladder - at one point you could play 1/2 LHE (with 50 cent chips!) up to 80/160 regularly but even 5/10 NL was sporadic or infrequent. I don't know if that's changing now. I think LHE is more fun but that's totally personal preference.

Oaks is definitely the closest place to play. Cal Grand is always fun and it's probably not too bad of a drive if you live closer to the Webster tube than the airport. Palace is in Hayward with uncapped NL. Lucky Chances is across the bridge but timewise it may compete with driving down to San Jose.

$15/hr is probably unfeasible at any 6/12 game these days. I would check the rake too - I thought it was 5+1 instead of 4+1, but I could be wrong.

Thanks for the response Callip. What limits does Cal Grand spread? I probably wouldn't be down to drive there during the week due to traffic, but I could see heading out there during certain weekend days when I have more time. Ill have to confirm the drop at the Oaks, a blue chip ends up in every pot so I assumed it was odd number.

I played last night, didn't do well but I overheard an interesting development. Starting next Monday (2/5), Oaks will be spreading 20-40 and 40-80. I assume they will eliminate the 30-60, but im not positive. I could see taking some 20-40 shots at some point, certainly if the games are good. What I would really love if they started spreading 10-20 (or even 8/16), those games would likely be beatable, especially if they eliminated 6-12 and all those bad regs started playing that game.

A decent player can expect to make $10/hr at best playing 6-12 w/ that rake/bbj. That's not bad if you're playing for fun just don't expect to be making a lot of money.

Edit: yes, its beatable, rake is not nearly as big a factor in lhe as split-pot games

Comparably 6-12 o8 is much tougher to beat

I feel like 6/12 is the first bearable limit for a recreational player. I am guessing a solid player can beat the rake at 4/8. 3/6 I feel is impossible at least with my rooms structure

Yeah I mean $5 leaving each pot is really not that bad by 6/12 standards. Given how horrible most live 6/12 players are, I do think you can beat it playing a good strategy. I wouldn't exactly go pro playing it though.

Post hands. Be humble and receptive to feedback.

Owning a TwoPlusTwo book is awesome, but there's a huge gap between understanding the concepts on the pages and being able to apply them every time all the time.

Focus on playing correctly preflop. These are your most common decision points. Far too often people get stuck in a spot postflop because they took a weird or bad line on a prior street.

Focus on putting people on hand ranges, the narrower the better. When people showdown hands you didn't expect, revisit your assumptions.

When someone plays a hand differently than you did, ask yourself if they played it better or worse. Ask why they played it that way. You can play bad and run good. You can play good and run bad. Know the difference.

The games get more aggressive as you move up. More people limping and coldcalling raises with speculative holdings = great game. More people folding and playing solid holdings = bad game. Know the difference and why.

Good luck and have fun!

6/12 is definitely beatable.

At Canterbury Park in MN, the regs and fish were so soft that the variance was so much lower than 8/16 or 15/30.

Don't remember the rake structure at Canterbury but they did have $1 BBJ so I think similar.

Either way, would not recommend moving up to 20/40 until you have 300 Big Bet Bankroll at the minimum you are comfortable losing. Not as easy to lose that much live in comparison to online but can still happen when you get stuck/buried and start chasing losses on C to F game.

Taking shots at higher stake game with lower rake is the easiest way to raise your $/hour but not as easy live in comparison to online where there are bonuses, rakeback, and ability to multi table.

300 BB for a recreational player is excessive. On a practical level, acquiring a 300 BB bankroll for 20/40 by playing 6/12 would take 1,000 hours of +1 BB/hr play. For someone who plays 5 hours a week that's 4 years. On a mathematical level, recreational players can accept super high risks of "ruin" because going busto doesn't mean you're ruined.

I suggest this for moving up. Keep a certain amount, like $1,000 or $2,000, as your 6/12 "bankroll" (again, for a recreational player, this can be fuzzy because if you can put in even $100 a month from your job to a hobby, the amount of external money you inject is a significant part of your bankroll growth expectation). Whenever you get to $500 or $1000 above that amount, use it for one buyin at 15/30 or 20/40. Whatever you don't lose goes into a separate account / shoebox as your 20/40 slush fund, each subsequent time you take a shot you can rebuy with whatever is in your slush fund.

Take the time in between shots to improve your game.

Thanks for all the responses, some really great advice out there. I think Ill play 6-12 for awhile before moving up. While I understand most of the concepts, I know I have plenty room for improvements. Ill track my results, post hands and try to make the proper adjustments.

This is really good advice. Even though I am “life rolled” or whatever to play 40/80 or higher, I made myself play 6/12 until I had enough poker roll to take shots at 8/16. Then I did the same thing between 8/16 and 20/40. My play developed enough and my bankroll from poker is solid enough that I am comfortable playing 20 or higher. I’ll even move back down if I am running bad, more for a mental break but also to rebuild my poker roll.

I've been playing at the Oaks for 15 years or more. Like you, I prefer limit to no-limit, and I'm not trying to play for a living. These days my main game is $6/$12 Omaha, but my backup game is $6/$12 Hold'em. I keep records, so I know that both those games are beatable, though probably not for $15/hour. After playing 60-80 sessions a year, I'm usually up $6-$10/hour. That's after tips and meals; I don't drink alcohol while I play.

The thing I like about the $6/$12 games at the Oaks is that the pots are often quite large, for several reasons: (1) the game is 10-handed; (2) the two-chip small blind encourages that position to play more hands; and (3) the player pool likes action, so you often get 6-8 players seeing the flop, often for two or more bets each.

Yes, the drop is $4+$1 in the $6/$12 Hold'em game. But the drop is not your biggest enemy when the average pot size is $120-$150.

I would say that you are your biggest enemy—by which I mean that it's very difficult for any of us to play our "A" game at all times. We get distracted or tired, we get frustrated and annoyed, we go on tilt in subtle ways that we're unable to recognize or admit to ourselves in the moment. We play less than optimally some portion of the time that we play—and we could lose a lot of money during those times.

Yes, the fact that you've read Ed Miller gives you an edge over 80% of the field, but what if I told you that 90%-95% of the field are long-term losers or break-even players at best? You have to study and reflect and analyze your game and your opponents constantly to stay in the black.

As for moving up, back when limit games predominated, most of the Bay Area card rooms had $9/$18 as well as $6/$12 and $15/$30. But those intermediate games have mostly died out. The jump from $6/$12 to $15/$30 or $20/$40 seems intimidating to me—and, as you've seen, the $15/$30 game at the Oaks doesn't go regularly anyway.

But Limit Hold'em is not a lost cause in the Bay Area. If I were serious about moving up in Limit Hold'em stakes, I would go to Bay 101 and play in their $8/$16 game with a half kill. But if your goal is primarily recreation plus a little side income, the Oaks is a good bet. And if you find yourself on the other side of the Bay Bridge, you might also try Artichoke Joe's. They spread Limit Hold'em almost exclusively and often have 3-5 $6/$12 games going.

Good luck.

I'm inclined to agree with all of this. I won't even sit in a $3/$6 game while waiting for something bigger; it seems about as dumb as playing slots. I've beaten $4/$8 Omaha and Hold'em games, but their profitability depends a lot on how loose and aggressive the game is. With too many tight-passive players, you end up with a lot of small pots, and that's no good for anyone except the house.

I hate to say it, but really anything below 20/40 is as dumb as playing slots, and any sort of winrates at 6/12 or 8/16 are almost certainly due to variance and not skill. Theres just too much rake to overcome. Even at 20/40 the vast majority of winnable money in the game is dropped down the chute. Your fighting for scraps while the casino gets the lions share.

Obviously casino rake in california is disgusting and california casinos are greedy beyond all belief.

Yes rake is high in cali, and yes you're fighting for scraps, but this is BS.

If a square foot of building space in SFO is worth 20x that same space in OKC, maybe the Oaks rake is a huge deal?

Thoughtful and rational considerations have no place in this conversation!

In LHE, particularly 4-chip/8-chip format games, a one-rack 'swing' (variance) in any given hour is well within possibility...without digressing into a long diatribe about statistics, a rack can represent anywhere from a one to two sigmas, even for a solid player (Google 'bell curve' and 'standard deviations').

While $6/$12 is often spread in a 3-chip/6-chip format, one rack is still very possible despite the 25% difference as the number of pots being contested multiple ways, very often by 4 or more opponents all the way to the river.

A 4+1 rake and PSJ structure represents 5/6 of a big bet leaving each pot (assuming the respective rake collection threshold(s) are exceeded most hands); a 5+1 structure is one complete big bet. If you factor that into your EV calculations, you'll see it's a huge drag and can possibly require you to adjust your strategy (the philosophy of money 'belonging' to the pot during the play of the hand doesn't account for 'when' the rake is collected and many books on pot odds also do not address this effect; I include it because it factors into the size/amount of the pot when it is pushed to me).

[I've omitted discussing the implications of dealer tokes, as the topic and its effects are widely debated across the forum; you could also possibly disregard intra-session food and beverage expenditures if you feel that you would spend the same or similar amounts when you're not at the casino.]

In order to beat this game, your skill advantage has to be SIGNIFICANTLY greater than your opponents and you would have to play your "A" game nearly all the time in order to have any expectation of [consistently] positive results...even then I wouldn't expect more than $6-$8/hr and that doesn't include when you re experiencing a streak of negative variance or are wild swings of volatility.

[I'll also disregard the effects of a 1-chip or 2-chip small blind; it is my belief that at lower limits its effects are negated by skill level of the average player as well as the corresponding percentage-wise effect of the rake; I admit at higher levels like $30/$60 both the skill of the players and widening spread of big bet size/rake ratio come into play.]

Lastly, I came up playing poker on the East Cost, before the fall of Atlantic City. $10/$20 LHE was considered by many to be the first level where successful small-time grinders could eek out an existence from poker.

Good Luck and Good Hunting!

I lived and worked in San Jose for a few years some time ago.

I started off playing the $8/$16 game at Bay 101 back when Rhea was the brush for the High-Limit area (before she moved to Livermore) and Dominic would put you in the best games at Garden City on Saratoga Ave if you dropped him a $10 spot while signing up and maybe a few $2 green chips more after a good session.

In just over a year playing 3-4 nights a week and averaging right around $20/hr due to the half-kill, as well as taking the occasional shot in a $20/$40 game, I was able to double the $20K bankroll I arrived with.

I now live in an area where $20/$40 is reliably spread and by most accounts I am adequately bankrolled for it, but I still opt for $8/$16 or $9/$18 games that are available to me as I find the games at these levels to be softer and my results to be more consistently within a narrow positive range with less overall volatility.

I am not a full-time player and I do not rely on poker to pay my bills, but I use my winnings to supplement my income and often I am able to buy things separate from and outside of the budget I have established for my job's salary.

I do not know if I could have achieved the same kinds of results at $6/$12, but I would say that if you are a skilled, winning player in these games and you can get yourself comfortably into any game from $8/$16 to $10/$20, that it is possible to grind out a decent amount of extra cash.

In LHE, particularly 4-chip/8-chip format games, a one-rack 'swing' (variance) in any given hour should be well within expected possibility...without digressing into a long diatribe about statistics, a rack can represent anywhere from a one to two sigmas, even for a solid player (Google 'bell curve' and 'standard deviations').

While $6/$12 is a 3-chip/6-chip format, one rack is still very possible despite the 25% difference as the number of pots being contested multiple ways, very often by 4 or more opponents all the way to the river.

A 4+1 rake and PSJ structure represents 5/6 of a small bet leaving each pot (assuming the respective rake collection threshold(s) are exceeded most hands); a 5+1 structure is one complete small bet. If you factor that into your EV calculations, you'll see it's a huge drag and can possibly require you to adjust your strategy. The philosophy of money 'belonging' to the pot during the play of the hand doesn't account for 'when' the rake is collected and many books on pot odds also do not address this effect; I include it because it factors into the size/amount of the pot when it is pushed to me.

[I've omitted discussing the implications of dealer tokes, as the topic and its effects are widely debated across the forum. Also, I'm gonna ignore intra-session food and beverage expenditures as there are different debates as to whether the casino front door or your home front door should be the point of reference to determine whether you have more or less money than when you started, especially if you were gonna get something to eat or drink outside on, say, your way home.]

In order to beat this game, your skill advantage has to be SIGNIFICANTLY greater than your opponents and you would have to play your "A" game nearly all the time in order to have any expectation of [consistently] positive results...even then I wouldn't expect more than $6-$8/hr and that doesn't include when you re experiencing a streak of negative variance or wild, volatile fluctuations.

Lastly, I came up playing poker on the East Cost, before the fall of Atlantic City. $10/$20 LHE was considered by many to be the first level where successful small-time grinders could eek out a livable existence from poker if they tightened their belts and had the discipline to not squander money away frivolously.

Good Luck and Good Hunting!

Part 1.

There's no need to wave your hands around some of the quantitative issues.

Your poker winrate can be estimated from first principles. Calculate the EV of every mistake made at the table (including your own) and put it in a pile in the middle. Subtract rake, and then divide the pile equally.

You can calculate something like $6/hand * 30 hands/hr / 10 people (Oaks is 10-handed) = $18/hr = -1.5 BB/hr that rake will take away from whatever you think that an unraked game can be beat for. So if you think that an unraked game can be beat for +2 BB/hr, you are implicitly agreeing a $5 rake + $1 tip game can be beat for +0.5 BB/hr.

If you believe a raked 20/40 game can be beaten for +1 BB/hr, you are implicitly stating your prerake winrate is about +1.5 BB/hr, and that if that exact same game were to run at 10/20, your prerake winrate would still be +1.5 BB/hr but now rake is -1 BB/hr and 10/20 can still be beaten.

As a general rule, believing that stake X is unbeatable but stake 2*X is totally beatable is irrational. There probably is a line where instead of losing a little you win a little, but there's no quantum jump.

Part 2.

If your goal is the make money (be honest with yourself - many people say they play for fun, but what they mean is that they only have fun when they win), the bar for what constitutes a "waste of time" depends on what else you'd do with your time.

If you'd otherwise earn -$5/hr watching a movie, then earning -$4/hr at poker will leave you with more money.

If you'd otherwise sit at home in the dark ($0/hr), then earning $1/hr at poker will leave you with more money.

If you'd otherwise be a night shift Walmart greeter ($10/hr), then you'd need to make $11/hr to make poker worth it.

Calculate what your time is worth. Calculate the "fun premium," which is what loss you'd be willing to eat because poker is fun to you.

On top of this, poker winnings need to be risk-adjusted using a metric called Certainty Equivalent. It's the amount of risk-free money you'd take in lieu of gambling for more.

Imagine a game where you can either flip a coin - heads you get 10c, tails you lose 5c - or you can take a certain 1c. You'd probably flip (EV = +2.5c). Now multiply the stakes by 10,000. Heads you get $1,000, tails you lose $500, or you can take a certain $100. The EV is the same but depending on your ability to stomach a few $500 losses, you may rationally choose the certain payment.

CE depends on your variance and bankroll, but for a typical SSLHE variance of 150-200 BB/hr and typical bankroll of 100-300 BB, CE will be about half (!) of your nominal WR.

CE ~ WR - 0.5*SD^2/BR

So if you have a job where you could get $30/hr in overtime, you'd need to win $60/hr at poker to make it worth your time (minus whatever fun premium you apply).

If you make $20/hr at a job ($40k/year), basically anything below elite 20/40 play will definitely be technically a "waste of time," and if you make $100k/yr at your job, anything below elite 80/160 play is playing "for fun."

Part 3.

Variance can be quantitated, and it's proportional to the sum of each of your session wins/losses squared. At one point MApoker pointed out an error in my formula so I'm not sure this is correct, but I've always calculated

V = sum{ (W(i) - t(i)*WR)^2 } / sum{ t(i) }
SD = sqrt(V)

SD works out to 10-15 BB/hr for most LHE games.

Your swings can be calculated with the formula

B = 0.25*(z*SD)^2/WR

Where z is the z-score of how certain you want to be. z = -1 happens about 17% of the time, z = -2 happens about 2% of the time (and is what most scientists would use as "certain" ), z = -3 happens about 0.2% of the time and would be considered playing it very safe.

So for a player with {SD = 10, WR = 1}, you can expect downswings of -25 BB a lot (z = -1), -100 BB at least once every 100 sessions, and -225 BB if you play long enough. For {SD = 15, WR = 0.5}, those numbers are -110, -440, and -1000, respectively.

(This is where the 300 BB rule of thumb comes from.)

If you're a recreational player, you can add a variance-free winrate to your poker winrate to make these calculations. So if you play 20 hours a month and can afford to put in $100/month into poker, add $5 to your winrate to calculate bankroll (and use z =1 or z =2).

If you're a professional player, you should subtract a variance-free amount for life expenses. So if you play 200 hours/month and need $2,000/month for life expenses, subtract $10/hr from your winrate to do these calculations (and also use z = 2 or z = 3 depending on how bad going busto would be).