I played live for the first time in about year - 7 handed 1/2 game. The play was still splashy but the players seemed a little better than what I normally see.

Has anyone noticed this as well or is it just me putting too much stock in a small sample size?

Lol no

Have no way to tell. My casinos are still closed. Playing on an app with a few friends, and fortunately, there is only a few of them that know what they are doing. So i'd say no as well.

the players arent better. Fish to reg pool might be a little tighter since I'm sure some lost their jobs making the games ever so slightly tougher but not enough to even concern yourself with.

Games in my area have been tougher as well.

I've not logged many hours during this but
when I did games were much better(juicier) as a lot of the OMC regs are staying away

I logged 1500+ hours in 2020, most of them in the homegame/underground scene-and my experience is that they are not tougher. If anything, they are softer because people cant travel anywhere and spend money, they are mostly stuck where they live with nothing else to do than gamble with their money. The summer was madness when people got paid summer bonuses and so forth+ the borders being closed so no summer holidays to spend money on, travel away with family++no nothing.

Countless of the games i attended in 2020 was through the roof good.

The words 1/2 and "hard" should not be in the same sentence.

i must have zero talent then. despite having a fairly high iq and strong math skills, i just cant figure out how to beat 1/2 even after some time spent reading and studying books and videos online. in 2/5 i actually perform better at around breakeven just because im very cautious and play tight at those stakes, plus the better rake structure vs. size of pots in that game.

i guess some people are just born to be below average poker players like me. i am good at trading though and consistently profit, but it took me a while and a decent series of losses before i pulled through. overall i would choose being good at trading over being good at poker if i had the choice anyways.

reading people's analyses of hands here, talking about "not liking the middling size of this bet on the flop" is downright intimidating to me. i like brad owen's videos and can see myself thinking and playing like him after some more studying, although he's not a top tier professional and makes mistakes in each videos usually. also hes a bit tilty sometimes. hes still a winning player overall in 2/5 and 5/10 so i find him a respectable source for learning poker.

I've always been moderately surprised at how much Brad Owen and Andrew Neeme seem to win in 5/10+ games. Especially Brad -- I enjoy the videos, but when he presents his thought process when narrating a hand it seems incredibly straightforward. And yet he wins something like $100/hr at 5/10 (he mentioned his winrate in a video but I forget the exact number). I haven't played any 5/10 so maybe the games just aren't as tough as I think, but I've always been surprised by this.

Not too surprised by me (not sure about Andrew Neeme as I dont really watch his videos but will now).

The amount of time to do the amount of thought in these hand analysis threads would be quite long. Probably like 30 seconds+, and if everyone played like that in live games, people would only be able to legit play 10 hands per hour. Most of people's thoughts at the actually poker table in practice are based on heuristics and shortcuts.

Like I said, a lot of stuff here is legit in theory, but how well can it be applied in real practice? I think there's a lot of mental masturbation here, as I have not seen one poker pro narrate their hands in live poker like this. Someone like Brad Owen I think is doing a bit more thinking than most players.

you give live players too much credit. Usually their thinking is "hm **** boohoo what now he always has it wait he never has it and last year I was not so fat as I am now during quarantine you now what **** it I call"

I don't know man, if it were that easy to crush them, a lot of people here would have a lot of money from crushing them. Remember that a lot of other players think these players in general are terrible and specifically go to these tables to harvest cash. I've encountered numerous players over the course of playing 1/2 nl that just aren't easy to beat.

I am not particularly smart. In fact you can ask any of the dozens of 2p2ers that I have met irl. Most players simply can not figure out how to "crack the code" of llsnl. I promise you it aint rocket science (because I figured it out a long time ago and have shown a lot of dudes some of the "tricks". If you put in the work and treat it like a job you will go from your screen name to well above avg.

I've been studying maybe 2 hours a week seriously lately, and all I've learned is that poker is way deeper than I previously thought, and I already thought it was very deep beforehand.

Perhaps you are not giving yourself enough credit?

I believe I will crack the code eventually, but what I want to do is learn how to play like a top tier pro like Isaac Haxton or Jason Koon, and then remain at 2/5 or 5/10 in Vegas just crushing the absolute crap at those games. It's not likely I will ever get to that level, but if i could become similar to a mid tier pro, I wouldn't complain.

Have you ever played tennis when you were young? The 1/2 live games reminds me of being a decent athletic kid who can hit well, still makes unforced errors, average size, and has some degree of talent. When the 16 year old kid goes up against a 60-65 year old man in decent shape who seems like a shitty player, its quite common to see the young kid lose despite seeming to be a player who can hit better and is way more youthful and athletic.

The old men in tennis who aren't capable of hitting hard shots and are not even necessarily consistent are often hitting unpredictable shots that land on random spots on the court. Their pacing and angling of their shots vary a lot, and its not because they consciously do this like a higher level player would. It's because they inherently just hit weird random shots.

In order to beat them, you just have to become a much better player in lots of areas overall. Some old men are very good at this style and practice it a lot, and they can give 18-19 year old a real run for their money. Low live stakes NL reminds me a lot like this.

The solution is to evolve into a 6'1-6'3 170-190lb man who is capable of consistently hitting 80mph+ groundstrokes with 120mph+ serves, and world class speed and agility (Phil Ivey, etc). Then you can beat pretty much anybody

Avg - I have a very strong athletic background and I understand exactly what you are saying and I absolutely get that.

Whenever I pursue anything I make friends with people who I think are awesome and I surround myself with people who are focused and hard working. I was the US skeleton team (1 man face first bobsled). When I was moving up through the ranks I became friends with the most athletic hard working dudes on the circuit. We worked our asses off and pushed each other, and we all made the team. No big surprise.

I did the exact same thing with pokerz. All my gamboolin buds are super smart and hard working. We talk hands, thought processes etc.

Make friends with dudes that are hard working, smart, and have a desire to kick ass and take names and you will get there.

I haven't played in like 7 years because I stopped. I realized that I just wasn't good enough and that I needed to spend time studying the game seriously before getting back into it. Now if I were to play, I would be a much superior player due to some of the things I have learned, but I want to understand this game on a deep level before I do.

The 2/5 tables to me are different in the 1/2 in that they're almost easier to beat. It's kind of like tennis once again where you have decent players in your age bracket, and all you gotta do to beat them is have a 10-20% better serve, 10-20% better groundstrokes, and spend 10-20% more time on your physical conditioning to beat them.

How much do you make per hour over how many hours? What stakes do you primarily play? online or live?

some of my stats r in the win rates thread somewhere. I am currently in Utah and dont have all my info handy

2/5 - well over 10k hrs winning greater than 55 per

On line i have several mm hands and my win rate is top shelf

is las vegas that much more difficult in live? also assuming people like isaac haxton took 2/5 very seriously, what do you think their winrate would be there?

I lived in vegas for several years right after BF. I thought the games were great. Then I played in the hinterlands and it is next level bad. If you can beat the vegas games you can pretty much beat any region in the usa. I have several thousand hrs playing in Florida and those games are great.

I have met quite a few people over the years and have played with some stone cold killers. Dudes that knew exactly what was going on and were dead on every time. One in particular. He wouldnt tell me his exact win rate but it was well over 75 per and I 100% believe him.

the stone cold killer is what i wish to become. i practice now on zynga poker while studying, but me and a lot of people swear their games are rigged. just hit a royal flush today using two whole cards, and almost all players with 10k+ hands have made a royal

Reminds me of this one really good Korean movie called The Divine Move, where this top #1 ranked Go player is arrested and thrown in jail, and plays against this mysterious player who is considered above and beyond the best player who ever lived. much better than the #1 world ranked player.

the mysterious player is never seen by the #1 player, and they play many games of go together because they are cell neighbors, communicating by pieces of paper slipped underneath the door or something. the world #1 player loses every single game over the course of a year or two or whatever. the #1 player can be seen writing the moves and drawing the game out on his cell wall. when he is finally released at around the same time as the the mysterious player, he goes into the mysterious player's cell to check it out, and is shocked to see that mysterious player has never written down or drawn any of the moves on the cell walls. everything was played out mentally. he then goes nuts in a frenzy trying to look for the guy and thats how the movie ends.

theres gotta be some people like that in the poker world who might not have revealed themselves, keeping a low profile or whatever. i would imagine that its also possible that all of them have been outed as winning a big tournament means having your name publicly displayed on many websites

This thread has the potential to be legendary.

it will be. because i actually made a roblox account with your name a couple of weeks ago and i recently started playing this Laundry Simulator game where i amassed an incredibly high stack of laundry