Correction: Multiply winrate, not divide.

I wasn’t saying your play was good or not, I just thought the never limp thing was funny given that thread. I do disagree with your position but this isn’t the thread to debate it.

I'm pretty sure I'd do perfectly fine if I never raised a hand preflop < CO.

There's lots of different styles that can win.

Git'skindatowardswhereI'mmoving,tbhG

Totally agree. I've started limping a lot of my EP raising range as well (10s+ AK), particularly at active tables. This allows for profitable squeezes for value. At passive/nitty tables, I am much more likely to raise as I will be heads up most of the time.

If I limp, I will always limp/rr if someone raises down the line. If it happens to limp preflop and it's multiway, I play cautiously unless I flop a monster (set or 2p+).

I raise my entire CO and BTN range when folded to. If multiple callers before me, my range tightens up significantly to AQ+, JJ+.

I can't see any way to exploit that.

I do see some merit though in a limp only in EP strategy at a table where there will be a raise preflop most of the time.

Also you're telling me if three people limp in you're gonna limp behind on the button with TT and AJ?

This is the winrates thread, not the "how to play LLSNL in general" thread.

Please stop derailing.

How about a bankroll question? Anyone have recommendations for a good fire safe? I hate going back and forth to the bank/ATM to play poker, so I've got a couple $k pile of cash on hand all the time to cover BI's for a while. It would be nice to have a place to put that (and some other paperwork stuff) that *might* survive a fire in a condo with a sprinkler system. Bonus if it's something that can be somewhat 'secure' in a burglary.

Finances? Anyone know if it makes a difference how I allocate assets between a Roth IRA and a 403b/401a account? Since they're both tax advantaged I don't think it matters.

Roth uses post tax dollars. You can pull out contributions, but not gains, at any time with no penalty. Also, being an IRA, you have all investment options available to you.

A 403b is pre tax dollars. Pre vs post only matters if you have real strong takes on your current vs future tax bracket and/or current vs future tax policy. Otherwise, diversify between the two. Being an employer plan, rather than an IRA, your investment choices may be constrained. You may have a poor provider who only provides high expense ratio funds.

All else equal, most would recommend contributing to 403b up to any company match and invest remaining in the Roth IRA. If you still have more after maxing the IRA, go back to the 403b.

Yea, I know all of that. Likely maxing both regardless. Employer plan contributes 10% salary to my 5%, which is crazy good. Also offers a full slate of options through what's basically a regular brokerage account.

The issue is more of where to put different classes of assets between the two. Stocks vs Bonds vs something that generates a lot of dividends. Can't tell if the Roth/Traditional or IRA/40x matters for those kinds of things. Can get effectively equivalent funds in either

PLO is covering pretty much all of my incidental expenses and food recently, so it's time to crank up the investing.

The first consideration is age/when one will begin withdrawing. As a general rule, a longer investment horizon, the higher the equity allocation should be. One obviously needs to consider their individual risk tolerance.

Most dividends are taxed at long-term capital gain rates: 0%-20% depending on taxable income level.

Interest from bonds and banks are taxed at taxable income rates, generally higher than long-term cap gains rates.

In general, the answer is no. It does not matter whether your stocks are in one and your bonds are in another.

Since you can get equivalent investments in each, the only consideration becomes if you want to use the Roth as a backup emergency fund. If so, you can park your bonds and other less risky holdings there. Otherwise, it doesn't matter.

Thinking about when to move to 2/5.

I’m a rec player who thinks about the game (a little), reads books and listens to strategy podcasts, but doesn’t “study” in any real sense of the term. I am gainfully employed outside of poker and have no delusions of going pro. (I might have delusions about augmenting my income with poker in retirement.) But I’m competitive and like to win.

Reasons to move up:

20k roll (no life expenses come out of my roll)
Beating 1/2
Boston-area casino will open in a year and games should be good for a while, get my feet wet at 2/5 now

Reasons not to move up:
Much (60%?) of the roll won in super soft private NLHE games that don’t run anymore, and a soft dealers choice limit home game
Beating 1/2 “casino” (& NH charity room) games for (cringe) just over 3BB/hr (1150 hrs), this probably sounds like torture to a lot of you but i enjoy myself
2/5 is the biggest game in the NH rooms currently available to me, so presumably where all the best players are
Losing bums me out and I will probably lose for a while, at least

what say ye all?

hey hotrod,

Beating 1/2 is a great start. 3bb/hr aint much BUT you are doing better than 95% of the players out there. I personally think you should start focusing up on improving your game right now with the plan of being ready to take pokes at 2/5 within the next 6 months so you will be fully prepped to destroy the boston 2/5 games when the casino opens - cuz its gunna be a bonanza

You have been a member here since 04 yet only have a handful of posts. I would highly advise posting up 1/2 hands that you are having issues with. Also start participating in other peoples HH's. There are some fantastic strat threads in the best of llsnl that you should definitely read and try applying to your game.

The goal of this is to bring you up from a marginal winner into someone beating the game for a healthy clip. You definitely have a bunch of leaks (no offense just stating what I believe to be fact). While you are still at 1/2 you can be plugging these and working on your overall game AND continuing to boost yer roll. When you are beating 1/2 for a healthy clip the transition to 2/5 will be smooth sailing imo

Hey squid. You’ve been around the game for many new markets opening so I’d appreciate your thoughts on this... they combo hype of the casino/poker room/market of the Boston harbor encore is unprecedented as far as I k ow. Clearly, there will be lots of new/weak players. But from the talk I’ve heard, there will be a mass influx of pros planning to move/pounce as well. To an extent that no new Poker market has ever seen. Do you think this fact will offset the obvious benefits of the new market?

there will obviously be an influx of pros but the action will be absolutely fantastic. I think the games are going to be off the proverbial hook there for quite some time

Boston is one of the most educated cities in the country. I'm skeptical it will be as soft as people think when all these MIT and Harvard guys come in to help earn money for their tuition...

Then again not sure how much time an MIT student has these days to do anything but study...still, lots of other universities in the area. And even the ones who didn't go to college had the best public high schools in the country.

I play poker with lots of doctors, CPAs, lawyers, and other very smart people and I dont find them any better at poker than the avg player. There's probably more millionaires in my player pool than just about anywhere else but they arent good at poker either. It seems like they would have to be above avg intelligence to have made all that money but it just doesnt transfer to poker skill all that often.

What makes me skeptical when it comes to the new Boston casino being super soft is the fact that those people already have places to play poker nearby. Is there suddenly going to be 100s of new people trying poker just because theres a new room in Boston? Or are the people who already play in rooms around the area just going to have a closer place to play?

I'm not super familiar with the Boston area but I believe that Foxwoods and Mohegan are the only major rooms around. I've played in a super soft charity room in NH that was lol compared to the rooms I play in. FW and MS are probably roughly the same distance from Boston that MD Live is from D.C. And people were saying MGM NAtional Harbor was off the hook

Also, millionaire /= smart.

I would guess new Boston casino is pretty soft at first, solely because level of play for most will have been weak home/underground games

Smart successful people playing poker for recreation are not (usually) putting the same level of effort into poker that they do into their day job. They are playing to blow off some steam and are successful enough not to get too stressed about losing a few BIs.

They tend to be great for the game. Sure, some of them turn into Competitive Recs, but most can't be bothered.

The writer is a Mauldin guy so works for a gold big company. Broken clocks who say “gold gold gold” for all environments.
I realized that to some less trained people their marketing rings true (my British mother in law once sent me a video by some gold bug bc she as worried the financial world would blow up after watching it. I had to explain that this was doomsday marketing and their MO.)


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I've been trying to keep my identity a secret but, being the donkey that I am, I'll at least expose my location! I'm from Boston. We have a bunch of card rooms in NH to the north and 3 casinos with poker rooms to the south currently. And, soon, MGM Springfield will be opening with a 23 table poker room from why I've heard.
I've only recently started playing nl holde m on a semi regular based again, my stats from last summer until now, ready for this, 104 hours with a plus of 24. I don't have my cell with me right now to look at my poker tracker but that should be about right.
So, in other words, I'm not the greatest authority but this is my take.
Foxwoods, an hour and a half drive for me, is by far the biggest room, as everyone knows already. It's infested with bad players but a lot of those bad players have been playing there for 25 years. You'll make good money at 1/2, if you're a good player but for someone like me, it's been a struggle of late.
I can only speak for my game, 1/2 of course.
Twin rivers in RI , which is only 40 minutes for me, is infested with maniacs. You can make a lot of money there but they only have something like 18 tables, dealers and floor stink. I only play there sparingly because I can't stand the variance. I fall in the nitty side.
Probably a big leak of mine, not parking there.
So,yeah, Boston itself geographically is a small city but it's a huge metropolitan area.
Lot's of people who live in and around to Boston, hardly ever took the drive to Connecticut.
I imagine the action Will be HUGE.
So, don't nobody need to come here. Nothing to see, go home folks.

I can go further.
Millennial are the first generation living with a clearly lower standard of living then their parents. This is true for people with degrees and people without. Real wages have fallen since 1980, and that’s true for people with decent college degrees and not just “some college” or the University of Phoenix crowd.

Parts of the economy that used to be a safe haven for the well educated (eg Professorships) are now highly competitive and unstable careers with lower real pay then in previous generations.

Perversely, as the economy has moved against people outside the .1% of wealth, it’s also made it more of a requirement to have a decent degree to get a high paid job, while significantly raising the cost of said degree (famous writer James Thurber worked his way through OH State as a dishwasher—think anyone could do that now, about 100 years later?—and that was before modern college finance so he didn’t have 100k+ in debt)

So it’s not just confirmation bias, in America 50 years ago an able bodied man could go get a factory job that would support a family of 4 in a house w a car. The equivalent of about 50/hr job full time job today + pension. Said same factory work today is 12-18/hr and you’re lucky if you get benefits.



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This sounds about right for best player in room kinda guy.

For even a good player, I think anything over 5-7bb/hr required a very juicy game (eg following the WSOP or moving every few years to whatever the newest major poker room is). In a very juicy game, winrates can triple—I should’ve listened to my buddies telling me to go to FL when it opened up—instead I went to grad school


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Can confirm that 1/3 today looks like 2/5 about 5 years ago.

I was full time live after Black Friday, but I think the recent training site explosions has changed the game more then BFriday did.




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Truth. TAG ABC win rates are now way low.

Benefit? Degen tricky rates still holding up . Team Degen FTW!


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