Hi everyone, I think this is my first post. I have been playing live poker for about a 11 months now and I wanted to share what I have learned. I play 2-5 NL at MGM National Harbor and sometimes sit at 5-10. There is a huge lack of information on life poker advice so I wanted to share what I have learned in the past year. I have won a little over 100k in 11 months, I have attached my graph for the last 300 hours or so. I lost the previous data when I lost my phone. I have probably average around $100(20bbs) an hour which is probably partly due to running good. Anyways, I believe most of the online coaching out there tend to not help with live poker results so hopefully someone can use atleast one of the following tips. None of these include strategy stuff just general stylistic principles that I think will improve results.

Here are some of the principles that I would reccomend:

1) Try not to isolate the best players at the table with weak players left to act especially with mediocre hands. On the hand, isolate weak players with good players left to act, even with mediocre hands. This is a well known principle but I see most pros violating it and I think it is very important.

2) I don't table change a lot nowadays but if you are trying to grow you roll definitely be aggressive selecting tables. Don't be set back by constant mocking by other regs who eventually do the same. Try to treat all players with respect and create a good environment, but there is nothing wrong about changing tables , in fact it is a humble move. Don't do it too much though and try not to sit change and ruin the game for recreational players.

3) Try to practice hand reading while not in a hand. Hand reading is very important in low to midstakes because it is possible to do it with precision. In higher stakes, ranges are wider and betting lines don't narrow ranges as much so it is much harder to do.

4) Try to play more when you are winning and play less when you are down or on a downswing. Part of the reason downswings tend to linger is because one's level of play declines when one loses. On the other hand when one is winning mistakes tend to get diminished. Ofcourse, It depends on your mental game. But in general try to play more sessions when you are on an upswing even though it is easy to get lazy when you are winning.

5) This is important. Underbluff! There is a common inefficiency in most midstakes live poker games and that is people call more than they should. The main exploit to that is to have more value bets than bluffs. Do not fall for online bits that tell you to balance values with bluffs, and to be creative with those bluffs. Those advices come from a very efficient highstakes environment where people are less exploitable. If you balance bluff and value it is like throwing 1/3 Rock 1/3 paper 1/3 scissors (GTO solution) when opponent is always throwing paper 80% of the time. It is far from optimal.

These are some of the main things I could think of but I would be glad to answer some questions. Good luck

It is harder than I imagined to post a picture but my graph result is only for 300 hours anyways. I averaged 137/hr but about 20 hours was at 5-10. My results before I lost my phone was in the mid 80s /hr for about 900-1200 hrs.

Thank you
especially like #3 #4 #5

That is a really small sample size but I do agree with everything youve posted. #1 is arguable in certain situations but most things in poker are.

Yes the sample size is small and I agree there are exceptions to most principles in poker. Anyone playing with fixed strategy is losing so much value...

Good post. I especially agree with #1 and #2. Regarding #5 I do agree that you should underbluff in live poker. However, I'd also say that there are a ton of bluff opportunities in live low stakes that the vast majority of grinders don't even see.

Congrats on your success and thanks for the post. What were some principles that didn't quite make the list?

1) I agree and I think it should even be extended to postflop. Especially at 1/2-2/5. People often seem averse to multiway. Multiway helps you beat the rake. I find it easier to hand read and easier to deceive, while Vs often become worse and hand reading and play more ABC. When hand strength/player strength are fairly even between you and 1 V, you let the bad hands/players in and you chop up the dead money.

2) This is a weakness of mine. Particularly bad since I'm in Vegas and can just walk to another casino. Good to be reminded of it.

3) Same.

4)Mainly agree. This is one reason why I think "always top up" is macho BS even for most winning players. I'd just say, winner's tilt is real and hard to spot. Also, there might be certain gameflow and BR situations where it is good to end a session once you're up a lot.

5) Yes. Especially when the bluff is in a really straightforward spot. Though I find that more creative, high leverage bluffs work pretty well. e.g check to PFR. He c-bets. 1 caller. You CR-bluff. As opposed to, the pot is heads up and you are going to bet/bet someone off a pear. Another reason to allow pots to go multiway.

I agree multi way pots are very profitably especially because people have dominated ranges. And for #4 and #5 ya these are just tendency suggestions not guiding rules. I would always stay at a game if it is good even if I am down couple buyins. There are definitely good opportunities to bluff at. For instance, I tend to attack spots where the pot is multi way and a small bet gives us good price but tends to work on dry boards. Plus I would recommend cbetting and delayed cbetting hands that have equity to not be denied equity with later bets. For instance aqo on j74r should be a clear cbet in position because we wouldn't be able to call some board changing turns lik 8,9,5,6 and others. When I say underbluff I just mean do it less than a standard game theoretic approach would suggest, especially on the river.

As for other principles:

6) Have a strategy and plan that you believe in; don't follow rules blindly. This is probably complicated to explain but I guess an example would it. There is a tendency recently that people tend to play most of their hands from SB as a 3bet. This is partly because most GTO solutions would suggest it as those solutions rely on range advantage and the SB should play few hands so has range advantage plus you shouldn't give the BB good price to squeeze. However, none of these things apply to the live games we play as far as I have seen. I truly think over 3betting the SB live is a mistake so I stick with a very strong range when I 3bet from SB. I actually don't mind inviting the BB anyway. It isn't uncommon to see a reg punt in a multiway 3 bet pot with ajo or something like that in the SB.

7) This is also important but I forgot to write it last time. Play more hands when there are weaker players at the table. For instance I usually would fold j9o or even j10o on the button to a raise in most games but if it is a weak game even hands as bad as j8o 67o can be profitable in position. The main deciding factor should be position and opponent strength. On the other hand, if the game you are playing is tough don't be scared to play a tight range and punish regs for their loose openings.

8) Try to optimize how you play hands like AQo, Ako, JJ+ preflop. Don't be scared to be exploitable. But a good chunk of the profit in live poker comes from how well you play those hands preflop and postflop so work specifically on your plan with those hands. Try to understand what you are trying to accomplish with every line you use. Again, don't follow online rules blindly.

I actually heavily dispute the last point. Semi-loose passives that a prevalent in live mid stakes poker are the easiest people on the planet to run it against.

Maybe they aren’t as prevalent in DC, but I see this player type a ton:

- Somewhat big VPIP/PFR gap (like 32/12), mostly due to their propensity to call open raises

- On the same token, they rarely three bet

- They don’t like playing big pots without big hands

I think this situation will arise a lot where they’ll make their degen call of a $15 raise preflop because it’s “just $15”, call the $25 cbet into $45 with a weak top pair, call the $65 into $95 turn bet, and when the other guy bets $185 on the river, suddenly shrivel up.

Forget pot sizes and ranges, $185 is a lot of money. Maybe they’re only up $100 and calling means they’re losing. Maybe they only brought $500 with them to the casino.

Obviously this isn’t hard set (like probably don’t bluff the dude with an expensive watch who just cold called a three bet with J9s because gamble), but these profitable bluff situations present themselves whenever someone defines their range as weak. Condense a lot of these SLPs ranges to one pair holdings, shove it in.


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This is a good one that I sometimes forget about. And another reason to go multiway. People lose track of or are indifferent to pot size and you can make criminal underbets and overbets.

To a certain degree, you can't even blame Vs. You have 9Ts and flop is Q23off. Someone bets 1/4 pot into you with one or more players behind. You kinda just have to fold.

6) Yeah, that's a good point about the SB. I think I've been too aggo there because I'm supposed to.

7) Agree, but you have to be disciplined and realistic. Both winners and losers tilt will tell us we can outplay these clowns more than we can. Also, at lower stakes you usually have to toss out the weaker hands like J8 and 67o because of rake, imo.

8) Excellent point. Hadn't thought about it that way.

$127/hr at 2-5? BS

And how can you not figure out how to upload a picture? Just go to imgur, upload it, and paste the link here. There is literally no simpler explanation than to "upload it". If you cant follow that I dont know how you manage to run a poker app to track your results.

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I was just a bit lazy to figure it out. But here you go. The data doesn't contain significant hours anyways. Plus, I don't believe my true hourly is 137. Over the past 11 months it is probably a little over a 100 but given that I might have run good it might be between 70 and 100. My hourly shouldn't change the validity of the principles though.

What app do you use to track your results?
Can’t find any that good.

I used poker manager pro for awhile because it offers free cloud storage so you can recover your stats to any device just by logging in. I eventually tried a freebie called PokerBase for both iphone and android. It's a really polished clean intuitive UI. Not sure how totally reliable it is in the long run but I really enjoyed using it.

I only know 1 other person to break 100k at 2/5 and his hourly was $65 and even that is basically the highest of crusher status. For you to just double that like no big deal is astonishing. I honestly dont even see how it's possible unless you were playing in an invite only homegame with deep players punting stacks for lulz.

Poker income. Another principle I’ve learned is that when a card on a later street hits your range as the pfr and a preflop caller donks it’s often because they can beat top pair so proceed with caution.

I was $100/hr. my first 100 hours at 2/5. It’s sunk to $47 at 300 hours. Maybe his upswing just kept happening into the 300s? I mean, run good is run good.

2-5(1000 max) at MGM National Harbor is very good. The games are usually very deep and it isn't uncommon to see regs run up 5k-10k stacks every now and then. I still believe there is a good chance I run above ev and I don't think I could replicate similar results in Vegas or LA. I do believe, however, 65/hr might be too low of a ceiling for the best deep 2-5 players out there.

I used Poker Ledger but it isn't that great. The other suggestions are probably better.

I'd be grateful if you would expand upon point 8. I play a pretty straightforward TAG style but I obviously throw in some bluffs post-flop. I rarely raise with air at 1/2-1/3 from sb-mp. I've been having trouble with capable loose players adjusting to me by flatting my preflop raises (when I have raised with the range you described in point 8) when I'm in sb-mp. I end up oop and I cannot always range them because they're flatting monsters too. So this complicates my post-flop play.

What is my correct adjustment to their adjustment? Thanks!

Well the answer to that will definitely depend on a lot of factors and your playing style post flop and your environment. So I would be doing you a disservice if I gave you guidelines or specific strategies without truly recognizing the game dynamic. However, there are a couple very simple post flop ideas that I thing might be digestible regardless of the game environment that might be useful.

1) Try to understand player profiles. For instance against passive players try to value bet as much as possible. Try to avoid trap ideas like pot controlling (not always of course). For instance if you have AK on kj97 run out . Bet flop, Bet turn. You lose the minimum this way anyways as passive players rarely bluff raise so you can easily fold when raised Same with aa kq or even k10 type of hands. Do not be scared to value bet on scary boards with marginal hands.

2) Learn to count combinations. For instance, there are 2.66 times as much combinations of AK as Aces. Learning to count these quickly will help you understand how wide you should value bet and the frequency of the weak hands people are calling you with compared to the scary nutted hands they would raise you with.

3) Understand your perceived range. For instance, if your image is really tight and you 3bet pre with qq+ and you are getting raised on 1082r board by a competent player, that should give you a pause. Doesn't mean you should fold of course.

If I keep going it will probably be too long and not simple enough. The little details tend to be important so I don't want to give you a blind strategic advice that might not fit your style.

Well my sample size actually a little over 1100 hours. I made around 107k and i basically took a month off in between. That probably puts my 1000 hour sample hourly in the late 90s. But if i had to bet I would bet the under on 100 on my true hourly. On the other hand, I play much better now than my first 4 to 6 months.

Nice results Ekethio! Do you make any unusual plays such as bluff-raising from the blinds against limpers or late-position raises? My 2/5 results have improved dramatically since incorporating such plays into my game. The vast majority of the time everybody either folds, or I'll get one caller who folds to a half-pot bet on the flop.

In general I stick to a tight range OOP and bigger size(which is the standard OOP). I have experimented with raising a wide range from the blinds and I didn't find anything conclusive during the experiment. I gave it up because I didn't think it was necessary and there are tons of better spots. I try to play a strategy that is very simple to follow. But I try to perfect that and play that well. So, if isolating from the blinds is your thing I am sure you can find a way to make it profitable. I do a lot of other unconventional things though.

Maybe you have too many regs in your game? It works great against casual players who have no clue what I'm doing and just fold like dominoes thinking I've got a big pair, or call occasionally and play fit or fold on the flop.

Care to share any of those unconventional plays btw?

Some unconventional things I could think off.

1) Varying raise size per each position. It makes no sense at all to use same raise size UTG and Button theoretically or even exploitatively. UTG ranges are tighter so require lower SPR and at the same time we don't want to encourage profitable calls in position for low amounts.

2) Having leading range OOP in multiway and even HU pots on flop and turn. This is actually the one strategy that I think is the most profitable in this list. The main reason for that isn't really because it is strategically sound although one can balance those bets in a theoretically sound manner but main advantage is that those leads quite often induce spazzes and loose calls. Somehow live players get offended by donk leads or at times are very suspicious of them.

3) Trapping pre when a strong opponent opens. I regularly trap (trapping weaker opponents at the table of course no the raiser) pre with QQ+ when the opener is early and a solid player. However, my reasons for this are highly style dependent. I wouldn't reccomend it if it doesn't fit your style of play.