Most 15/30 games you play have a 2/3 SB. I've seen a good amount of decent analysis on the changes from a 1/2 SB structure. Are you indicating that a 1/3 SB is more "normal"?

The big issue with dropped games is that you need big pots to overcome the rake. They're taking almost an entire Big Bet if there's a flop? If you have a lot of $100+ pots, it doesn't matter. If people play tight/solid poker, stealing the hand HU on the flop is a huge money loser.

Notice how little difference this drop makes in a 15/30 or 20/40 game? When $300-$400 pots are normal, $5 doesn't matter a lot. That's why people are going to tell you to move up as quickly as possible. In one way, the bigger small blind is good; it encourages one more person to play the hand and makes a large pot more likely. The rake as a % of the pot size is what will determine whether or not it is profitable to play.

It makes me wonder if they upped the SB in 3/6 when they increased the drop to $5. If they drop with or without a flop, you'd need $5 in the pot in case it folds around. Not sure if that's the case, but it sure would be brutal. You're in the BB, it folds to you, and your whole blind is dropped with no recourse. Doubly bad if you've got AA.

Hey guys. My friend plays on pokerstars 1/2 limit and beats it for 4bb/100 or 400$ over the last 10,000 hands. What would this be comparable to live? For an online player beating 1/2 what could this person possibly beat live or be playing live? Thanks for any comments!!!!!

I can't answer your question(s), but stats in LHE are usually measured in big bets (BB), not big blinds (bb). So you'd have a +2 BB/100 win rate.

What one should be playing live is probably a function of where the person can play. Most places in the country don't have enough rungs on the ladder such that a game can be picked with much precision - you might have to choose between 3/6 (lowest limit) and 15/30 (next lowest limit) if you're not in one of the poker hubs (from what I can tell, Vegas/LA/SF).

Bankroll will also be important.

Thank you for your answer. She plays in a casino with 4/8(that she beats) and they sometimes have 8/16 but always a 15/30 game.

+2BB/100

Your friend has a very respectable win rate (2bb/100) for on-line play. Unfortunately, the sample is quite small and precludes making any definitive judgement as to her poker prowess.

As a very general concept, many folks consider a multiplier of about 10x to compare on-line to live limts. IOW, 1/2 ol "should" play at about 10/20 live. However, a word of caution to your friend in this circumstance is warranted. At 1/2 ol there are still a fair number of inexperienced and/or fishy players that may be responsible, at least in part, for your friend's win rate. There may not be as many in a 10/20 or 15/30 live game and your friend may find herself against tougher opponents for much larger stakes.*

Many experienced live players can also "smell" scared money and will mercilessly pound the weak-tight play that is associated with it. Be sure your friend is adequately rolled for whatever stakes she chooses to play.

She might be better served to move up a level, then another, in her on-line play before getting into a 10/20+ live game. If she's still winning at at 2/4, and certainly at 3/6, I think she'd likely do fine in the 10/20 or 15/30 game.

My $0.02.

*This is especially true if those are the highest limits being spread at her casino.

I have an additional worry. I agree with Doc, 10x the OL limit is the rule. However, 1/2 is a pretty specialized, nitty limit. How does she do at no-fold'em? It is possible that your live games, even up to 15/30, will have a lot of 4-6+ way pots. For an online only player, the change from 2-3 way pots can be quite shocking. While you may have some live players with a clue, the majority of these players can be loose/passive calling stations. This may be especially true in cold-calling raises. Some OL players can't handle relentless cold-calling. Typically, these games are very well described by SSHE; a re-read of the book might be a good idea.

Live players who raise the turn are mostly beating TPTK.

Maybe I didn't make my point well; position is far less important in this sort of game.

Pre-flop position matters in a normal game b/c you'd like to know what is going to happen before you decide to play your holding. In a game like this, you already know; there will be 6-7 limpers, the SB will complete, and the BB is going to knuckle the table. You know that on the BTN; you watch it unfold. You know it under then gun; it happens every hand.

Post flop, position allows you to make/save extra bets during the course of the hand. In very loose/passive games, once you are the pre-flop raiser, the action is going to check to you. The only bets that go in are the ones that you make. There might be one bet or donk in the hand; once you raise, you've got the lead throughout. I've played in some really loose games where most pots check down unless I bet them.

In the uber-dooling LP game, one bet per round is going in. Where that bet comes from doesn't really matter. I watched BBB play a HUHU match yesterday with a guy who was about 90/2 with a WTSD of 80%+. These games become a pokerstove exercise. Is my hand a fave over a 90% range? If so, bet. If not, check. Position matters much more when you can't predict future action, especially aggressive action, by your opponents.

Hi all,

I am a purely limit player and love it. I play all games but my question is about Hold 'em. I have gotten very skilled at No Fold 'em hold 'em. Maximizing the value of hands, etc, with 5 or 6 people. I have been working on the more skilled games. I play on Pokerstars now and I am beating the $1-$2 limit game, which is tight aggressive. I am thinking it is closer to the games in Brick and Mortar casinos in Vegas at the $15-$30 level. I always play the lowest limits in Vegas and crush them and have fun making friends but I am thinking of taking the game more seriously and playing higher limits.

Pokerstars is a great training ground to practice higher level poker at lower limits. Does anyone play limit on-line and live? What games are comparable around these levels?

yes many of us play both. if you can beat 1/2 online you will do fine in 10/20, 15/30, or 20/40 live. it's just a matter of being comfy with the money and being okay with the differences in the games.

Hi Everyone! I'm the person that PartyPoker123 was posting about, and he was lovely enough to post the question for me, because I wasn't sure what would be an 'acceptable' win-rate at the 1/2 limit game and didn't want to be laughed at. LOL. I have posted in here in the past and then kinda got into learning NL, but now trying to work on my true roots of limit.

While I only have 10K hands recorded, I have been playing for a long long time, but never had any programs tracking my results until I was convinced to pay more attention to that kind of thing and finally bought HEM.

I find the 4/8 game at my local casino to be MUCH, MUCH easier than the 1/2 online. So I am quite familiar with no fold'em hold'em at the 4/8 level. I have been wanting to take a shot at the 15/30 forever, but I guess when people mention the 'scared money,' I am exactly afraid of appearing that way. I have played the 8/16 at my casino, which happened to end up being full of the 'good' 4/8 players that day, and unfortunately, because it is SO rarely spread, that's what tends to happen. I am partly worried about taking a shot because I know people will see me as a 4/8 girl player, and a perfect candidate to bully.

Having said all this, I have heard comparisons of 1/2 limit online to 15/30 live, and I see that BBB has also said the same thing. The money isn't a huge huge issue, because I know that in taking shots, that you are bound to have losses. I just want to see if it's reasonable to compare 1/2 online to around a 15/30 game to see what sorts of skills I will need in order to beat the 15/30. I have read and ADORE SSHE. I am currently reading a book that is specialized on playing draws in limit hold'em but seem to be stuck on page 30 for the last 3 months, lol.

Thanks for all your responses

I'm pretty sure that people who are honest and earnest are treated well. I'm arguably one of the bigger dumbasses and nobody laughs at me. (Or at least not openly.)

Is SSHE at all applicable to 15/30? (general question for anyone)

I've never played, but would HFAP be more appropriate? WITHG?

SSHE is appropriate for loose-passive multiway type games. There are definitely many 15/30 games that at least partially fit this category.

HEPFAP was appropriate for late 90's/early 2000 weak-tight nitty Vegas mid-limits. Probably at least 25% of it is just plain incorrect in today's modern games.

Appropriate for very tough (relatively) 20/40 games and up. Most live 20/40 games are not going to fall into this category.

But really the thing to get out of books is to think about why they give you advice and then figure out when and when not to use it. Just about every poker book has something of value. The trick is applying it to the right situation. Just my opinion.

A shot = a buy-in or two. If you can afford it, I say go for it. The biggest issue I see is around playing your best game; can you play your best with a rack or two of $5 chips in front of you? If you can, good. If you can't, you may have trouble.

The 1/2 online game is a specialist game. It is nitty. People have aggression, but they aren't good at it. You have to learn to play a little in the blinds since a lot of pots are a pre-flop raiser vs. a blind. A couple limits higher than this and you'd see three-betting for re-steals and better positional play. How much of this experience will apply to your local 15? If you were going for the Mirage 10-20 of old, the game would seem very familiar. The more differences there are between your experience and the game, the harder it will be to adjust.

I played the Bellagio 15 game last summer during the WSoP. It was much softer than an online 1/2 game. People had some aggression, but not very good aggression. There was some limping; not like a live 4-8, but much looser than most 1/2 OL games. I've played a lot of live poker, so I found the transition to be moving to a lol-soft game.

My biggest piece of advice when moving up 2-3 limits is to play normal poker. A lot of people taking shots decide that everyone is bullying them and start calling down very weak. In the more aggressive games, most people have hand ranges. They aren't bullying you with J high, so you don't have to make a hero call with Q high to catch them. Remember that the "bullying" isn't personal. It is just a more aggressive game. If you've played 6m online, they'll seem passive.

Hello, folks!

I have an ok wr of 1,5BB+/100 at 2/4 and 3/6 at FT. Sample size is over 50k (YES, I know it's not too big). Anyhow, I feel ready and prepared for 5/10. My concern about FT is that I was really struggling to move my BR from one site to FT and it took almost a month to move 2500 usd. And you cannot deposit more than 600 per 24h. So, unless there's a fish on a tilt, all the players in 5/10 are going to be winners from 2/4 and 3/6.
It's a well known fact that the rake at 5/10 seems to be pretty even, so it's the question of fishiness and rakeback. Noone can beat IPN there (in terms of loyalty bonus). The good thing about European sites is that you can deposit and withdraw almost as much as you want to (ok, with sooome exceptions), so in my humble opinion, i should make competition easier.

What are your thoughs about this?

(pls move the thread if I posted it in wrong place)

you will get hardly any full ring games on european sites. Its 90% 6max and short handed. You'll also encounter a polarised enemy, either there good players or big fish. Not the steady stream of average to poor players you get on stars/tilt.

I play 6max only

The thing I do not understand is - how can there be average and poor players with such drastic depostit policy

they lose money slowly.

If you want game selection, PS is the nuts.

****. I picked it up a few years ago at a used bookstore and started reading it recently.

Yeah, that's mostly why I picked it up. At the time I wasn't even beating 4/8 so the only reason why I got it was because it was $1 and I thought I could use it in the future. Most of the stuff seemed inapplicable to the games I was playing in.

All of the reasoning about why they chose to do something is spot on. The reads are no longer applicable because people don't play like the conditions described. Just to be clear, HPFAP is a very good book on playing Hold'em Poker. Argue the examples, but the bulk of the book has stood the test of time.

You could stick to online as well, that's what I'm doing now.
Massive downswongs at the local cardroom have forced me into a life of solitude.
Anyway good luck, I would suggest 6/12-8/16 before 15/30 if you've been stuck at 4/8 so far, so that you don't feel too out of your element.

For my own noob question that I know has been asked before, but I'll ask again anyway.
At how many hands do we have enough data to say "my winrate is X BB/100" with reasonable certainty?
Also, how can I calculate my standard deviation?

On HEM I think it's calculated for you, but I don't think that's true with PT3.

HEPFAP is definitely worth more than $1. I'd still buy it at full retail. It was the best book at the time for mid-stakes live LHE, it's just that today's games have changed, so the assumptions it makes about opponents is different than how they appear today.

Every book is geared towards a particular game type:
- SSHE for big, multi-way limped games
- HEPFAP weak-tight/TAG games
- WITHG tough, aggressive LAG/LAGTAG/TAG games

And there's valuable information in every book. You just have to apply the knowledge correctly to the right situation.

IMO, for most players by the time you have a sample size big enough for a decent estimation of your "true" winrate, conditions have already changed and your game has already changed so it's still going to be a hazy estimate. I've played hundreds of thousands hands and I still don't really know my winrate with reasonable certainty. Probably never will.

But FWIW I think 50k hands is a decent start to get some type of reasonable estimate.

I've never used PT3 so I can't help you with the easiest way to get your SD from that.

All you can do is get a confidence interval; the statement would be, "I'm 95% certain that my WR is 1.5BB/100 +/- 1BB in x many hands". The rule of thumb is to not bother looking at stats until about 10k hands. Once you hit 30k-50k hands, you'll start to know something. I don't remember how many hands before a high confidence (say, 90%+) that you know your WR within +/- 1 Big Bet. It is a lot. Also, if your play changes (say, improves) the old stats get averaged in and it takes longer for your "true" numbers to come out.

To get Standard Deviation in PT3, try this.

I dunno, but StatKing is telling me I need about 6000 hours of live play (about 240k hands) to be 67% confident my winrate is within 0.125BB/hr.

There must be a tool out there to calculate confidence based on std. dev., winrate, and # of hands. Statking will do it for hourly winrates.