2/5 = sweetspot? im getting that feeling more and more based on recent discussion re. this

Tough to make a living at 5/10? Making $60-$100 an hour(for a good player at least). That's a typo, right? You meant tough at 1/2?

Just repeating what Limon says - it was bike games but pretty sure that was his implication - that 5/10 games arent that good and there are not many people paying there way with high rakes and bad games.

It might just be 5/10 bike regs are bad in his opinion.

So not my view just - passing on what I know of a very experienced live pro with Limons rep.

No need to answer if you'd rather not, mpethy, but how old are you? And how many years have you been playing NL?

Actually you're talking about his interview with Bart Hanson on the DC podcast right?

He was saying the 10/20 game is usually terrible, and the 5/10 game is great, iirc.

Either way, don't wanna hijack this thread. There's already a thread on winrates and stuff.

Mpethy wont mind me hijacking his thread

Yeah - maybe I misremembered - but he did kinda point out how there are not many winners in the games.

Every time I have played Venetian 2/5 my tables were like this, if not rockier. Hence I have not played much 2/5 at the Venetian.

You may want to try the 2/5 at the Wynn or Bellagio too. I think the Wynn games are capped now, so I don't know if they're as wild as they once were.

For drunken fun, should you want to try that again, find the 4/8 Limit mixed games at Venetian (I think) or get one going at 2/4 at Treasure Island.

Reminds me of one of my favorite Far Side comics.

I am 46. I have been playing NLHE for 5 years. I have been what I consider a decent player for only the last year+.

You have a standing invite to hijack any thread I create, Digger.

I don't know who Limon is. And i do not have enough hands live under my belt to have a firm opinion on the rate at which 2/5 or 5/10 are beatable.

One of the things you have to be careful about is that different people have different opinions on what it means to "earn a living." The 2+2 standard definition of "earn a living," seems to be something between "step onto my yacht, my good man," and "Everybody's flying to Paris on my Lear tonight--you wanna come?"

My idea of earning a living is quite a bit more modest. I am confident that I could earn a living at 1/2.

______________________

So I played another 2/5 session at the Venetian tonight. My table was much more like what you guys usually describe when you talk about the 2/5 games. There were about 6 loose passive players, me, and two loose aggressive players.

I experimented at doing some limp calling, and it is what garnered my profit for the night. I limp/called with pocket 3s, flopped a set, and stacked a 80bb stack. Most of the rest of the night was more card dead break even stuff.

The very next hand I had to fold a turned set of Jacks (Board ran off AK8JQ--I folded to a river value bet after calling a turn raise I probably should have folded to), and gave back some of what I won with the 33s.

I played 3 hours and finished up $210.

KurtSF had been grinding Aria all day, so it was a good opportunity to go see that new room, so I drove over. The room was ok. The seats are a lot more comfortable for me than the seats at the Venetian, but the room feels a lot smaller and more crowded, and there are no cup holders in the table. The cocktail servers didn't look as good as at the V, and the masseuses were not in the same league as that gorgeous tall brunette masseuse that works the V. the chips at Aria are far superior.

I was feeling guilty for only putting in another 3 hour session, so I decided to sit in the 1/3 game at Aria (protecting my winnings from the V, yo).

Whole lotta nothing until this hand comes up:

Young woman who has just moved to our table from a table that just broke has the God seat on me. The only read I have on her is that she had her choice of three seats and she took the one to my immediate left, and she has a full stack.

I get AK, raise to $10, she calls, one other player calls.

(~$30)
Flop is K 4 2

I took a long time to make my flop action. I knew I was going to bet, of course, but I figured if I hesitated a bit, it would look like my decision was not necessarily the mandatory bet I had.

After about 30 or 40 seconds, I bet $25, she raises to $90, other guy folds, and I tank. Online this is a pretty easy fold at .5/1 or 1/2 against most players, but I don't really think I am going to fold to just the flop raise. I took a long time to make a decision. I did think about folding, because she raised with two players behind her, but, in the end, the thing that took so long was to decide whether to shove or to call. I figured her for a 4 part range:

44 and 22
Flush draws
Worse kings
Air.

When I finally thought to break it down like that, the decision became actually pretty easy. A shove would get her off air, some worse kings and some flush draws. Thus, it narrowed her range to one that has good equity against my TPTK, so I decided I would call her raise and then check/call almost anything that didn't complete the flush draw (I may have found a fold if the turn had been a J or a Q).

Turn: 5

I checked and she shoved really fast. The speed she shoved at actually made me question my decision to check/call a brick. I thought about it for a bit, but, in the end, I stuck with my read and called. River was the 8 and she shows 99, and MHIG.

This was the biggest departure from my standard online game that I have made since being here. Online, I fold to the flop raise and don't really give it a second thought against most villains.

I got a few compliments from the table for the play, and tried to blunt all of that by talking about how bad a call it was. I don't know if any of that worked.

Later, as I was telling Kurt that I wanted to leave and get some food, the girl did something that blew my mind--she asked me for her chips back. I wonder if anyone other than a young girl who thinks she is cute (she wasn't, not even remotely) has the absolute lack of dignity to do that. She did it in a cutesy tone of voice that made it clear that she was actually trying to get them back, too. Disgusting.

Also at the Aria at our table was another 2+2er following this thread. i didn't get permission to identify him (I forgot) but he livened up the game considerably by straddling and gambling a lot at a table that had been, up to then, pretty dead.

Finished up at the Aria $265.

I probably won't do this again, but here is how my first week went:

8/20 Venetian 1/2 -$105
8/21 Palms 1/3 +$27
8/22 Venetian 1/2 +$220
8/23 Venetian 1/2 +$171
8/24 Venetian 2/5 +80
8/25 MGM Grand 1/2 +$35
8/26 Venetian 1/2 +180
8/27 Venetian 2/5 +$207
Aria 1/3 +$265

Total for 1st week: $1080, 27 hours, $39/hr

1/2: $29/hr
1/3: $53/hr
2/5: $41/hr

http://www.deucescracked.com/podcasts - episode 37 - limon

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...m-shyt-457839/


couple of links for you MP.

nice thread really love em

/sorry for sidetrack

I'd really like to hear your analysis of playing with this awful rake!!

Wow that's an awful rake!
Isn't there any place better to play? Do the other clubs have the same rake? Is the rake capped at 4+1(jackpot I assume?)

Does the 4+1 drop on the flop effect how you play and others play drastically?

Doesn't it make 1/2 unbeatable?

Do you still tip after the 4+1 rake?

And episode 70 MP

And now you know why live players tend to (over)value top pair so much.

If she was better looking, your counter-offer might have been....?

If you are serious about going FT, then you need to know who he is and what he has to say.

So what is your monthly nut going to be if you move to LV or LA?

Had this one a few times, and not always from women, just as often from men. Generally degens that could not afford to lose the money in the first place. If you are going to be playing FT, better get used to hearing sob stories from time to time.

obv. statistically irrelevant sample size, but your winrates at 1/2 and 1/3 given the tables you have been seeing are friggen crazy high (i guess 1/3 was only the one session but still)

I'm not really planning to play full time. My coaching business is too busy for that. Right now, I am coaching between 80 and 100 hours a month, most months. So that is my main job for the foreseeable future. Playing a combination of live and online is supplemental income these days.

My nut is absurdly low. Just the basic living expenses. Most months my wife and I spend less than $2000--significantly less, tbh, and we waste a lot of that. If all I had to do was pay everybody I owe money to every month and buy groceries, it'd be closer to $1200/month. Not having a mortgage is huge, and we intend to continue not having one, despite the fact that having all that cash tied up in a house is usually considered a sub-optimal use of the money.


I think my win rates are being propped up by the fact that I have been running seriously card dead since I got out here. I haven't had enough good hands to experience a routine run of bad luck with them, lol. I have had aces twice and they held and won the pot both times, I have gotten kings at expectation, and all of my beats with KK have been easy to lay down--mostly ace high flops in 4 or 5 way pots. I have only had QQ once, and I have been missing most flops with AK and AQ--currently 2 for 18 hitting flops with them--so it has been nearly impossible for me to get into trouble with the big hands that are usually responsible for big swings of bad luck.

On the other hand, I have won the only all in with cards to come I was involved in. So all in EV-wise, I am definitely running hot--I'd say my EV adjusted win rate at $200 is only about $19 or $20/hr. (I shipped a $200 win all in on the turn with 17 outs--so something like 30% equity in that hand.)

The biggest pots I have lost have been 50bb pots or so with light 3 bets that missed.

I've been reading the forums for a while, but never registered. I wanted to register and thank Mpethy for this thread. Great effort and information put here, and I anticipate reading more of it.

mpethy, really enjoying this thread. I was very, very suprised to hear about the girl asked for her chips back, since I have never run into anything like that in nearly 10 years of live hold 'em play.

At least in my experience no one has had that "absolute lack of dignity". If anyone else has run across this, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In any case, looking forward to your next session post; been great so far.

how does live coaching even werk?

But your home is not in Vegas, right? So you're going to have a housing cost there, unless you can tow your home to Vegas.

It sounds like most of your pots have been fairly small? Have you seen many bigger pots, like over $500 at 1/2 or 1/3?

I have had several instances where someone has asked for their money back. Most of the time there is a sob story to go with the request, once nothing, just "give me the money man...". Most of the time its something "Oh come on, my wife is going to leave me if I lose this", "That was my rent/mortgage", "I needed that to buy food".

If you play long enough, in enough different settings it will happen to you too.

Scariest one for me was playing 3/5-150 at CAZ several years back. There was a hot table with a deep table change list. By the time I got my crack at the fishy he was down to about $1K. I ended up taking his last ~$400 with top set versus two pair. The guy looked like he literally just got out of prison, jail-house tatts all over him, those funky "here ya go" clothes.

I am stacking chips, he is sitting in the 9 seat and I am the 6 seat... Dealer is starting to deal the next hand, gets to him... "Sir are you in...", "Sir are you in..." all the while staring at me hard core. He looks at me "Give me my fcuking money" in this dead pan voice that was cold as ice. I keep my mouth shut... Dealer hits him up one last time "Sir are you playing or leaving..."... He slams his fist down on the table, kind of comes out of seat leaving over towards me... then in this soft dead pan voice just as smooth as slik..."Give me my money, man...". I continue to ignore him, he stands quickly sending his chair flying backwards... And I am like "OK, here he comes, get ready, watch out for knifes, your life is at stake here..." and he turns and walks behind the dealer, kicks a drink cart into the walkway, points at me with looks that could kill, turns and walks out...

Security assured me he was gone and would not be coming back. Not sure if I believed them or not. Yet another reason to valet park at any poker room IMO.

You play together in the same game, or the coach sweats you. You get together and talk about poker. If you do not live in the same area, you use normal communications methods, and try to get together for a session or two when you can.

Most of the people that seek out live coaching are not looking so much for strat they are looking for other elements, like spotting leaks, stopping bad habits, learning to read people/situations better. Trying to get a better overall handle on themselves in relation to poker. Sure it all starts out with "How do I beat the X/Y game?", but sooner or later it goes from strat and tactics to dealing with ones self and improving ones soft skills.

would the coach sweating you simply be him sitting behind you at the table? can you keep showing him your cards? (i can't remember if my local room allows that). that would be kindof ridiculous

If you're paying for coaching, you should have advanced beyond the "what hands should I start with?" There's probably no more than 1 hand/hr that is of any significance that you'd want to review. The coach could simply tap the student on the shoulder, move away from the table and ask, "What did you have?" Most of the time, it will be fairly obvious if the coach is familiar with the student's play already.

Does CAZ let you carry in the casino? The last time I was there I don't remember seeing that it was posted.