If you've like, never gone above 25k net in your entire life, you should really reassess what you're doing. What are you going to do another 20 years from now when you're very old with 0 savings?

You should try cutting down expenses and actually working on your game and give yourself a chance to either exploit fish more by being over-rolled or play some 2/5. I mean, I guess having sustained yourself for 25 years without a job is certainly nice. But I can't imagine it's a super happy life to have "just enough" and be forced to grind 1/2 all the time, worrying that homelessness could be just around the corner.

your logic/discipline is completely outta whack.

Assuming that you play perfect blackjack and count perfectly (which is highly unlikely). Your biggest edge is gunna be close to 5% and you are willing to piss away 20-25% on your roll on that small of an edge - if any at all, and it is highly unlikely that you are paying any attention to Kelly criterion. Yet you will work your ass off grinding while never taking shots at higher stakes and play under 50bb poker at 1/2 (based on posts in other threads)

You are not getting any younger. You seriously need to stop playing playing blackjack

Not sure if you're comment is directed at me or OP but yeah obviously grinding 1/2 with no income, backup plan, or safety net isn't smart. Him saying "forget my situation" makes me think we aren't using his situation. In my own situation ruin wouldn't be ruin and absolute worst case I'd still have a perfectly fine poker free life

Good to know. Bellagio and CP have been my go to spots on Vegas trips so I might have to venture over to GN.

$2500/month expenses is way too high to be playing 1|2 for a living. Earlier you estimated that your win-rate was $12-$20/h. If we take the conservative side, you need to be playing ~208 hours per month just to cover the cost of living. To have a reasonable RoR you need to play even more than that. Even if you manage to play 250 hours per month, which very few people can do, your adjusted win-rate is only $2/h, and with a $13k roll your RoR is going to be too high. I'm also guessing you're not paying taxes since you didn't mention that in your expenses when it should be one of the biggest ones.

Also, you should not be playing blackjack without a strong understanding of how your bet sizing should depend on your bankroll. Do you know about the Kelly criterion?

This is spot on to how I would approach that situation. Must always have the fish covered but no reason to match the stacks of the pros

Not to mention, if you are counting well and using a large enough bet spread to get a reasonable edge, the casinos will spot it immediately and back you off. I'm hardly a blackjack savant, but it took me 6 months to get backed-off from every casino in Vegas, including downtown and off-strip. And one casino trespassed me for it (SLS).

I know a place like that. 1/3 tho.

ive been banned from playing BJ or allowed to only flat bet a few places in my life. but often i try to make it look like im martingaling and i only play shoe games instead of 1-2 deck games so it makes it harder to tell im counting. the thing is im flat betting the min in negative counts and only jacking up the bets in the good counts.

i know im only supposed to bet 1-2% of the roll according to kelly but i have a bad tendency to overbet when im stuck too much. plus sometimes u end up with multiple splits and double downs when u bet 1-2% which makes the total bet much higher. especially when betting 2-3 spots.

most of the past 2 years ive been between 13k and 25k but not ALL of the time. for 3 weeks or so i was briefly just over 40k. then after dropping 25% of the roll twice in a month, i was back down to under 25k. never went back over since. this was late jan-feb in reno of 2017.

but to be honest the reason it got so high in the first place was a very lucky BJ run in downtown vegas in january 2017 right before i went to reno. most of it wasnt from poker.

@sevencard2003 you should really take squid's advice seriously. the guy has been gambling for a living for a very long time.

i also agree with GG's assessment of deepstack poker. it's sexy to be playing deepstack poker, but most people def overestimate their skill level, myself included.

people are 100% more willing to punt stacks with shorter stacks obviously.

If you rarely ever lose 5-6 buyins in a row, you’re certainly not playing properly, and you’re winrate growth will stagnate very quickly. I’d rather play smaller, but in a style that wins more money and teaches valuable skill, than nit peddle at a higher stake for slightly higher winrate. If the games don’t change more hourly is good, but games don’t stay the same.

If you’re not ready to lose a sht ton of buyins, you’re not cut out to move up, and you’re not cut out for staying a pro for the long haul.

I suggest always having 20 buyins for the next lower stake if you want to shot take, and 30-50 buyins if you pay rent and so on, or can’t move down.

Obviously you’re not hoping to lose a lot, but if you play with the goal and/or expectation of not losing a lot, you’re almost certainly going to play subpar poker.

Also in terms of optimising buying size and EV and risk, 60-80bbs is far superior to 100-150 bbs for simple +EV poker.

I agree for most 2/5 and above games but because of the excessively passive nature of 1/2+1/3 games I think losing 5+ buyins in a row at those games should absolutely be a very rare occurrence. People just don't play back enough or call with strong enough equity for variance to allow that.

Like in a 1/2 game people bluff or call with <20% equity all the time. In bigger games the bluff and calling while behind equity is much higher on average.

I've seen some pretty crazy 1/2-1/3 game, even in America. When the money about isn't as huge, there are people who just don't care as much and just put the money in. I also think when people are so loose, you end up having to value bet a lot thinner and just have a higher bet frequency in general.

In games where people have weak ranges, you should be over betting or barrelling a lot more. Again, people don't "never fold anything". If they really never fold anything then you should be value betting extremely thin to the point where you could get value cut fairly often. The reality is that sometimes people will have a weak hand, and they'll want to call, but there's often a size that if you make it big enough they will fold. That size is often about 1.8-2.2x the pot.

I'm not saying that's a thing you should be doing a lot, but if you think there's no way to adapt, then you're just not looking enough. If you think the game is such that overbet bluffing has no value (and by no value it merely means that a 1.8x pot doesn't have 2x the fold equity of a 90% pot bet, which, let's be honest, there are DEFINITELY spots where that's true, you're just not looking hard enough), then surely you should be able to find lots of spots where 1.8x potting for value should be your best line. You can't really have it both ways, from an exploitative standpoint, unless you think they're playing perfectly against that sizing.

Of course this is just a basic example, but if you think there's nothing you can do to expand your strategy at lower stakes just because people are bad, you're making excuses for yourself. Players being bad ADD more ways in which you can deviate from solid strategy, not take away. It's vs good players where you shouldn't be trying funky stuff.

I guess Im not playing properly. My win rate would disagree, but I guess that doesnt matter.

I have experienced this as well. In 1/2, my hourly is around $30 and my 2/5 is around $45. The biggest difference is the swings are much larger in 2/5. At, 1/2 I won over 80% of my sessions where in 2/5 it is only 65%.

Sol, what is your biggest downswing in buy ins live and online (at one particular stake of NL)?

I agree with what you're saying, just curious what you consider normal from your own experience.

I consider 10 live and 20 online to be pretty normal, but if it contiues its dipping into tilt/leak territory.

I just means you're probably playing better than other people who play worse than you. It doesn't mean you're necessarily achieving your full potential. No real point arguing beyond this hypothesis, but the majority of players who are thinking deeper than you probably aren't staying at those stakes or posting their thoughts on a public forum, so there's a lot of confirmation biases here (and it works out both ways of course; I'm aware losing players are less likely to post up results also, so you're left with the middle bunch).

10-20 being the average big downswing (with some rare bigger ones) sounds reasonable. It depends on a LOT of factors, like how big the game plays, how big you or other players buyin.

Like, back to the point of a 5-10 buyin ds being huge: if you haven't played in a game where you're 500-1000bbs deep, then you're probably not maximizing (and this include games with 150bb max buyins; if you haven't tripled or quadrupled up in a session and kept playing because it's good, you've either not played enough to find a crazy table, or you haven't taken advantage of those spots, or you quit games too soon). And if you have 500-1000bbs on the table, all of those chips better in play, or you're, again, not playing optimally. If you're telling me you're like all the vegas nits who sit ridiculously deep, but only put the money in when you have the nuts, then you're CLEARLY not playing optimal, so what are you saying?

And therefore: if you a) play in games where you eventually get deep, and b) try to actually play correct deep stack poker that puts your money at risk in a +EV way, then we can deduce that a 5+ buying downswing can happen... in ONE HAND, much less over a few sessions.

To think that, if you're not tilting, you're unlikely to have a few big losing sessions strung together, is absolutely gamblers fallacy. If your chance of having a bad session of 3-5 buyins is 20%, then the chance of having that again next session, assuming same mental state and game conditions, will be another 20%, and I think we all know it's possible to lose 2 flips in a row, believe it or not. To think otherwise is gambler's fallacy.

Of course our mental game fluctuates, and for most people, to be sure your mental game not being impacted or having an impact on your downswing is delusional, but the role it plays can be relatively minimal. I've been in big downswings, I think we all have, where I was not playing well, and I knew it, but the biggest pots I've lost were all completely standard hands, and the hands I misplayed were the small to medium ones, and only made up as maybe 10-30% of my losses or winnings I missed out on.

My personal biggest downswing is hard to say since the game gets straddled a lot usually in these big downswings. I had a 60k GBP downswing last year November (after a 90k upswing) where I was playing some 10/25, but a lot of it was 5/5/10. Even if we say average blind was 20, that's a 3000bb downswing.

That said this is PLO, it's a lot easier to play NLHE without your stack at risk. I've had -3000bb downswings in NLHE a couple of times in the past also (probably happened in every stake I'd played large volume in, 1/2, 2/5 and 5/10), maybe twice a year or so, but I haven't played NLHE recently. I would guess nowadays NLHE is played more passively and that will be a lot rarer than 3 years ago, but a 10 buyin downswing would probably occur once every 200-400 hours if I had to guess.

I'm not going to pretend that during my big downswings I was not on tilt. I'm pretty much always on tilt to some degree, like, tilt isn't a binary, everyone is suboptimal, so obviously I'm not ever going to be perfectly zen, but of the times I was on a downswing, the chances that I was -EV in the game due to tilt has got to be below 10%.

Since 2017, I have 2 hour 45 minutes average sessions (due to jumping tables and stakes a lot) but on my tracker I only win 63% of my sessions (if you group the sessions together then the winrate would be higher since chopping up sessions on the same day increases frequency of losing sessions). Over entire sample, I average 5.6bb/hour winrate. Life time: I have 22.5bb/hour winrate at 1/2 and at 2/5 and 5/10, I average 14.6bb/hour.

I would hypothesise if you plot all breakeven or winning players' winning session % as y-axis, and winrate as x-axis, it's going to be some kind of lopsided upside down bellcurve.

THAT SAID, some games are just so soft that it's very tough to lose, and I certainly agree that I'm much more likely to have a losing session at a higher stakes game than a lower stakes game, but if you're moving up, and you're infatuated with not losing, you're seriously hampering your potential for growth.

I've played in 5 US cities, and around 20 poker rooms, and the 1/2, 2/5, and 5/10 is pretty much all fairly similar with few exceptions. I would say that for the most part, if you are averaging more than 70-80% winrate over 5 hour sessions, there's no way you're playing anywhere close to optimally. If you're playing optimally and still losing so infrequently, the game must be amazing, there's no way your winrate isn't some ridiculously huge number. The other alternative is if they literally just fold every hand very very slowly so you basically pick up the blinds 3 times an orbit and you play 2 orbits an hour or something.

Focus on what makes you the most money. Reducing downswings help you tilt less and IS a factor, but the majority of your work should be playing the highest EV poker you can.

You're talking about deep 5/10 games, 10/25 games and then you throw in PLO. Thats completely different than what was being discussed and what I responded to when I inferred that its nonsense to think you arent playing properly if you rarely lose 5-6 buyins in a row.

I included 1/2 NL stats, as well as 2/5 and 150bb buyin 5/10 in commerce.

Last year of 5/10 commerce NLHE.



1 10 buyin downswing, 1 6 buyin downswing, 1 9.5 buyin upswing, over 150 hour sample.

Lifetime-ish 1/2 NLHE.



2x near 30 buyin downswings, many smaller ones I'm not going to count, over 900 hours.

How does this prove your point? Your 150 hour 5/10 sample has a win rate of $14/hr
There's certainly no proof of optimal play there. Just lots of variance.

Your lifetime 1/2 sample ($50/hr) is very impressive obviously, but my lifetime 1/2 sample is about 650 hours at $40/hr and I have zero large downswings. So how does that fact that you have two 30 buy in downswings mean your playing more optimally than I am?

Well you asked for capped sample, and I don't play a lot of capped NL, so that's the only 5/10 sample I have. It's to illustrate that the style that I deem to be best EV ends up with fairly large swings (earlier I said I expect a 10 buyin downswing every 200-400 hour sample or something, and this is to illustrate it). Whether you think my style of play means anything is up to you, but it happens to do okay over my career. This graph obviously has an atrocious winrate, but it is a small sample of almost no game selecting (I only play 5/10 NLHE when waiting for other games for the most part). I'd be surprised to see many big winning players not have similar frequency and volatility of swings even over a sample with a high winrate. In my experience, some good reg in the pool will usually mention that they're going through a 20+ buyin swings ever other week, which consolidates my feelings on it.

(Also this graph in pounds, so it's actually 20 USD/hour but whatever, obviously depending on how I crop it I can show a different winrate, but this is my lifetime Commerce sample, the only place I've played capped 5/10).

On the second graph: obviously when it comes down to it these results are ultimately pointless as I've tried to explain in the past, they can only be illustrative to back up a point.

That said if you think increasing your winrate by 25% is no big deal, then I feel like you've just illustrated my point about people not unlocking their potential by not taking risks. 40/hour winrate at 1/2 is very good, and, variance aside, I assume it comes from a mixture of good play and good games, but I can't imagine conditions of games where being less risk averse wouldn't take advantage of your superior play and soft pool even more to achieve an even higher winrate than you have right now.

All I can say is that, of the people I know who get high winrates (15+bb/hour) at low stakes all of them are very aggro, especially in big pots. Everyone else is at the low twenties at most.

Let's say the increase is 5bbs/hour (you might contest whether the difference is anything more than simply variance, but for this hypothetical let's assume there's some potential high ceiling with a more aggro playstyle). This increase in a 2/5 or 5/10 game where everyone's winrate is much lower, but each bb is worth more, could easily end up being worth more than 25%. (Obv more complicated than this, but you get the point).

Anyway there's not much to argue beyond this point, I don't know how you play, I don't know your games, and vice versa, so all we have are anecdotal evidence and personal experience, so, whatever. You do you, I guess.

Just to be clear, its obvious youre a great player and Im not knocking your style of play at all. Im just saying being a great player and having huge swings dont necessarily have to go hand in hand. Maybe I could increase my win rate a bit by playing slightly more aggro. Maybe you could decrease your variance a bit with the same win rate by playing slightly less aggro.

But trust me, Im pretty aggro a lot of the time.

PS...about two thirds of my 1/2 sample is played during the daytime when there is normally 3-4 $60 stacks. A couple $100+ stacks and maybe 2-3 $200+ stacks. Its definitely not deep and its pretty nitty during the daytime.

Over my large sample there were definitely periods where looking back I'd wish I'd played less aggro, and some of my leak plugging does involve dialing down aggression, so yeah, I think that's fair to say. It goes both ways.

Ultimately it's anecdotal, we don't have quantifiable ways of displaiyng how aggro or not aggro we're being, so we can only vaguely discuss this. Again, I can see certain game conditions where even playing appropriately aggro you'd have a high winrate. I would still tend towards saying that for judging from the game conditions I've seen around the world, it's unlikely there are many CONSISTENT games, even at low stakes, where the very best strategies would leave you with less than 20% loss rate.

I don't know your situation, so I won't insist this applies to you, perhaps you are an anomaly. My main point is that most people obsess over not losing too much, and should focus more on playing well.

There are some games, I think you must agree, where playing well necessarily means embracing variance. How swingy your results are will often be a function of your opponents. When guys are just playing super loose and giving action against reraises and bets, it's simply suboptimal to not put in more money, preflop and postflop, with more marginal hands than usual, even if it means stacking off or putting a lot of money in pre with AQ, TT 99, or even worse hands. If you end up in a game like this, it's absolutely not a mistake to put yourself in a position where you lose a couple of buyins (like my example, what if you triple up, but then have to stay because a whale is still playing, then you can lose 3-4 buyins in one hand).

And between this extreme, and your extreme of a bunch of $60 stacks and some 100-200 stacks who play nitty, well there's a varying degree of expected variance. If you're creating needless variance, yeah, that's bad, but sometimes, more often than most tight regs think, it's part of gaining extra edge.