Pretty much agree with all of this, including the awesome location meaning that younger fish are on the beach and not wasting time inside with the middle aged. My limited understanding is that every casino has a table cap, and they can make far more money on baccarat/table games in the pit then they can with poker. 2 casinos spread one or two tables of 2/5, and there is one casino with 1/2/5 uncapped PLO. Across the whole metro area of almost 3 million (and as you said, in an area awash with cash), I think there are 24 tables max on the weekends, and that number will go down when one place moves to a new location in 2 months. Weekdays maybe 15 tables running, give or take.

Videos on YT by the vloggers and coaches are always talking about whales and VIPs, they're ****ing unicorns for as often as we see them. The 2/5 table where I play is almost all regs, very rare we get some random businessman to sit in.

I can only compare Van to LV, where I printed money in 1/3 and did fine in 2/5 (small sample for both). So maybe it's rough everywhere, but I doubt it's like here. There are a couple of kids with daddy's money or the occasional tourist, but overall, I don't think GG's assessment is all that far off. I bet we all overestimate our pools a wee bit, but ime GG is not exaggerating as much as people think. We also play 10 handed, so there's more EP for us than most of you. Literally an extra hand per orbit where we should be opening not much more than 10%.

I can't even spell that place, so I can't bluff, "Me too."

All lottery winnings are untaxed here.

If poker is your actual profession, it's prob similar to USA. But I have no idea how the few FT grinders I see play it. Tbh what I see are FT grinders, as opposed to poker pros, if you see my meaning. A couple of actual professionals, but in this market with this cost of living, you are correct that online is prob a better choice than live.

The US pros that moved here play some high stakes online games. I doubt we'd ever see them in a 1/3 $400 cap game. A mid-limit online player like myself would/could/should move to Mexico if that was the route I wanted to go. Only way to save money at my level.

Price of health care alone makes trading citizenships and moving to US a non-starter.

Hmm...if you get raked 7+1 that's probably averaging like $6 a hand? Compared to games in Florida where the rake is 5+2 maybe averaging $5 a hand. Hourly the rakes would be $20/hr and $16.67/hr. Throw in $2/hr for tipping and it's $22/hr vs. $18.67/hr.

Say you play 2000 hours with a before-rake winrate of $50/hr. If I understand correctly, you pay no taxes on poker winnings, so your income would be $56000. In the U.S. the same winrate, after taxes, is $49155, and a few thousand less if you owe state taxes also. And that's not even considering health care costs, which are absurd, particularly for poker players. All things considered I'd much rather be in Vancouver. The US is decent for high stakes live play but otherwise there seem to be better locations. I actually looked into immigrating to Canada but it seemed next to impossible with no job or Canadian wife.

Aside--poker atlas says Hard Rock Vancouver takes 10% up to $5. Is that wrong? Same with Grand Villa. Also I was looking at different casinos in Canada and the ones in Montreal are ridiculous. Casino de Montreal takes 10% up to $10. Yeesh. Looks like there are some reasonable casinos in Ontario though.

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Back to QJs. I like raising it. Our top pairs are often weak but when we don't hit top pair we often have a lot of equity-when-called making it a pretty decent barreling hand.

And if the table is super passive and loose they're likely to call with worse top pairs about as often as better ones, plus when you hit a flush or straight you'll typically be on the higher end and end up coolering other people who hit their draws.

Limping is okay if you have little post-flop fold equity. So it depends on whether this table is loose passive pre-flop but plays fit-or-fold afterward, or if they're more the calling station type. If the latter limping is fine, but I still don't think raising would be much of a mistake as the stations will call down hands like QT and Q9 and JT etc.

With all the talk about rake [which I am highly conscious of during the session] I thought I'd mention a hidden expense: Tips

I am a conservative tipper. No flop - no tip unless I win $30. No tip post-flop unless I win $30. ~$1 per hundred. Sometimes $2 on a $150 profit or $3 on a $250 profit.

I track tips on my session logger. $910.00 of every $10K I win during the year goes to the dealer.

That last sentence makes it sound like I win numerous $10Ks annually playing 1/2 & 1/3NL - that is not the case. I am not a crusher, therefore my win rate is U10BBs per hour.

If I was winning 11BBs per hour, my dealer tip cost would plummet!

This would be a pre-rake (whatever that even means) 10BB/hr at 1/3 or 6BB/hr at 2/5. Ain't me.

Poker atlas is way off, by 2 years at least. Montreal has free croissants fwiw.

Any other Qs you should prob post in the Ontario, Montreal or Vancouver subforums. People will be happy to answer, but this was once a thread about QJs.

/derail (hopefully)

I was just wondering. No need to start a new thread.

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So what are the arguments for limping QJs? Do we limp/call or limp/fold? I like raising it but it could be wrong in some games.

Against good players limping anything utg is bad
It's always bad to limpfold to anything less than 6x in my mind....can't see how that could be anything but awful
Limping qj can be a reasonable play as we are keeping the pot smaller Vs poor opponents with a hand that flops well multiway.....we have to be ready to ditch one pair hands and keep our Spidey senses tingling though as if we want this to be long term profitable we have to get away cheap.....
Raising has obvious benefits that have been done to death....

I think it's strange in a lot of ways that when you first learn to play limping is terible, and if your new(ISH) to poker I would say limping anything will hurt your bottom line... As you get better and your post flop skills and ranging improves then limping can begin to be used profitability.....

At tough tables I never limp, and will only limp if I believe I have an appreciable post flop advantage.... I often play over 200bb deep also so I am dabbling with 3x opens from EP with marginals with pretty good results at the moment....

One of the reasons I've recently changed my strategy to a "tight is right" is that my game isn't nearly as passive as it once was, in that more pots are raised than they are limped.

I've actually decided to do some tracking of preflop aggression in my games, just to try to confirm. In all my upcoming sessions (until I lose interest in the project) I'm going to track a random hour at my table. So far a very small sample size, just 2 hours, but I'm already fairly amazed at the results. The first time I did this I was sitting with a bunch of other regs and most were the OMC type (with me being the tightest / nittiest of the bunch); if I was to have looked at the table, I would have guessed this would have been a very passive table. No aggrotards, no lags, not even anyone even really attempting to pick on the limpy OMCs; just 5 OMC types, a laggier player when short whose stack was now big (so she tightens up a lot), a guy who could play either way that was playing sane, two low key unknowns, and only one < 35 year old who was more aggro than most but not getting out-of-line due to the preflop looseness of the table. The preflop raise rate in my hour of tracking: 23/34, for 68%. The next session was far more passive at quite an old table, with me being the third youngest at the table (out of 10). But even this "passive" table saw more raised pots than limped ones, at 53%.

Obviously lol sample size, but I've really simply become very aware that my games are not limp / payoff fests any more where I can just limp into a pot for cheap from anywhere and then get some idiot to pay me off postflop. But they're also in a weird state in that they are still very loose preflop, so a raise isn't much better (in fact, I would argue a raise is worse, but I guess it all depends on what you think a good result is). Thus, my conclusion (which has only fairly recently been arrived at) of folding speculative hands like QJs in EP (and even in MP).

GbutyourtablemightdifferG

GG your analysis is what I would expect but your adjustments are incorrect imo. Also a key figure is the table vpip.

If pots are nearly always going 4-6 ways then limping QJs is fine and after about 100 hours of doing it and watching the "best" player doing it Im going to boldly say its optimal.

How did you come to the conclusion that this player is good, anyway?

I would guess this is fine / optimal at payoffy tables as well (heck, it has been the bulk of my strategy). But tables aren't as payoffy as they once were (inb4 "barrel relentlessly postflop", an option I've also considered). And I know I'm sounding like a broken record on this one, but I've really become hyper-aware of the rake now that it has been increased $1 over each of the last two years.

Basically, I'm trying to find where my edge is on the majority of the opponents I play with. And I now believe it mostly comes down to being far tighter than they are preflop and not dicking around in small meaningless rake raped pots.

GnotconvincedmyconclusionismostEV,butalsofairlycon vinceditisstillEVG

Its been discussed at length in tons of other threads and literally 2 people believe me just based on my credibility but after 2.2k hours logged, he just is. Ive seen 2 people that have seriously impressed me and he is one of them.

I've got about 200 hours logged with him now and i have never seen someone so consistently profit 4-6 buy ins. Heck ive only won 6 buy ins a handful of times. Looking at his lines, I dont know how to describe it but being results oriented...postflop he plays his hands perfectly, the ones i see at showdown anyways. It seems like hes being super passive but when i see villains hands its like he played perfectly vs. that specific hand.

If i have to hear small sample one more time im going to strangle a kitten. You dont need 100k hands to know someone plays very good poker. Especially when they are not aggressive, as its harder for variance to swing him one way or another.

I also play 10/25 with him and he (obviously?) never limps which tells me this is a thoughtful adjustment for 2/5, not just some blind part of his game.

I started copying him without understanding but now after playing i understand a bit more and am really enjoying the results.

This is coming from someone who rarely if ever limped 6 months ago. But ive thought alot about it and done alot of work in the lab and i think there are some very specific reasons why it is optimal under the parameters of most live low stakes games.

I don't think it has to be black and white with these non-premium hands in EP. Avg raise size, chip stacks, payoff tendencies of players would all be factors. QJs might be 40/30/30, raise/call/fold.

@Avaritia

Would you mind linking to some of these threads where you discuss the advantages of limping in low stakes games? I believe you but would like to see a more comprehensive discussion on why this is optimal and specifically what hands you recommend limping vs. raising and in what positions.

Thanks