Well said.

Bodybuilder, is there a reason YOU haven't moved to $2/5 where they respect your stack size?

Meh, short stackers are usually more helpful than not, so long as there are only 1 or 2 at a table

Anecdotal example:
I'm on an atypical 1/2 table. I'm the oldest person (mid 30s), we're 5 handed, and everyone is talking about light 4betting, ranges, etc. not a lot of flops being seen because people are playing correctly. basically not what you want when you're trolling for whales. Short stacker sits down who straddles every button. Donks off multiple 30bb stacks to everyone. Eventually he does things like blind shoves pre for 30bb and then the miracle triple up and then turns around and immediately donks off of that money.

Tldr; SS donks off multiple 30bb stacks to everyone, takes money from tight players and redistributes it to everyone else.

to find out where i stand in poker, i wanted know if i had a attitude in poker, if not. yes i am ready to quit this job.
i have been playing in live casino for just 1 month.
and a lot of thought passed me.
poker is not that funny thing when it comes to a job.
stress is enourmous if you lose.

small stake. 1-2.
1st day income 900 dallors
2st day income 1174 dallors
3st day loss 200 dallors
4st day inclome 374 dallors
5st day loss 200 dallors
6st day loss 300 dallors
7st days income 174


small stake 1-3
1st day loss 900 dallors
2st day income 700 dallors
3st day loss 500 dallors
4st day income 200 dallors
5st day loss 300 dallors
6st day loss 300 dallors
7st day loss 475 dallors including tournament entry.
8st day income 13 dallors
9st day income 74 dallors
10st day income 135 dallors
11st day income 274 dallors
12st day loss 590 dallors


wow. what a tough job. i should have known earlier.
still one of the best job but not that much that i expected.
i didnt know that much of the variance of poker.

what do you think of my income and loss.
i have no idea how much small stake poker player earn a month.

and so you think i have ability to play poker?
my bank roll is 30 buy in, in 1-3


i think i lost about 2000 dallors by my mistake of not awareness of player and circumstance which is. not inevitable. and by tilt i lost 600 dallors. i have never thought about tilting to me. but yes it exsist.

i know my problem is and i have been fixing it. minimizing my mistake and maximizing my profit.
but i dont know that i am a good player or have ability. i am losing as seeing a month profit.

Ultimately you will do what you want, but the only advice I can give you is to always have a plan B

And dont burn yourself out, it's harder than it seems.

Edit : Btw you should rebuy to top up to 100bbs, it matters.

I've seen a few times where someone is probably playing poker in a casino for the first time (maybe they've only ever played with friends or play chips online before) and they will inevitably get destroyed. Because they almost never bet or raise, they play super passively, and they're just always going to lose like that. If they can buy in for 40bb, it's not a terribly expensive mistake, they might win a few hands or have an all-in sweat without being too far behind. If they're buying in for 100bb+ they're just getting owned. I've seen where 100bb disappears in two hands and it's obvious that the guy has learned his lesson and is never coming back because his money goes way farther at any other game.

By the way the people "too poor to play" are basically 90% of low stakes players, including those that might be winning.

Another thing about shortstackers... This is kinda fudgey because you can never say with 100% certainty, but suppose a player sits with X bb and the way he is playing (and it might not even be shipping every hand it might be limp/folding a lot) you believe he is certain to give it away within Y hours. So ask yourself what's your cut? Sometimes it's a decent chunk of an expected WR.

Raising table minimum only benefits winning players and it significantly hurts losing players, especially the non-whales.

So what ends up happening is that many of them move down in stake or move out of the game altogether. It's the good ol' shear but don't kill analogy.

I obviously rather have more money on the table (nothing beats walking into casino in the morning and see a deep rollover game), but I fully support keeping the BI requirement low.

100BB min is far, *far* too high for many rec players. In some of the rooms around here it's $40 or $50 min for $1/2, so 20/25BB. These guys aren't plopping down $100 to play, and the extra $100 to buy in for the max isn't "nothing" to them. Sometimes it's the total, other times it's the single bet loss that bothers them. They'd rather buy in for $50 4-5 times and lose only that $50 each time they shove with trash, than burn through $1000 making the same plays.

Bad shortstackers are important for driving the action at a lot of LLSNL tables, just as much as the "whales" are. In fact, some of the whales are exactly these guys that re-buy like mad and ship $50 quickly. They make the same plays after shipping a pot and sitting on $200 as they do in the first orbit.

I moved to 2/5 a long time ago, but the 1-2 game is still very important to the health of 2/5. If there are no 1-2 players that want to saddle up some money to play 2/5 then pretty soon the 2/5 game will die when all the fish regs get beaten badly enough. If 2-5 goes away, I think we can officially say that poker is dead.

You already see many casinos where a 2/5 game doesn't run, which means you are forced to play 1-2. The only way you are going to make decent money playing 1-2 is in a deepstacked game, and the games only get deep during the graveyard hours.

Obviously, it is better for the casino to have 10 tables of 1-2 running rather than 1 or 2 tables of a 100BB minimum buy in game, but I would expect there to be enough players who actually value their time and want to play for decent stakes.

By the way, 100BB is only $200. Someone buying in for $50 and shipping 4 times takes way too long to get their money. It restricts your starting hand range to the top 10% and often times you'll find yourself flipping with a hand like AK versus their 22. Plus you have to sit and wait for the degen to take up a seat while they go to the ATM, or go to the cage, or wait for the slow dealer to count their money and give them chips, etc., etc. All of this dead time affects your bottom line.

Nothing will be changed, but it appears that a lot of the winning players are content to make 10 bucks an hour and to be playing against people who are flat broke. This style of poker will not attract any new money or younger generations into the game.

I don't blame poor people for buying in for the min, or the casino catering to this clientele. But its kind of a joke when a casino can get 10 to 15 tables of 1-2 running for every one 2-5 table that runs. There are plently of slightly winning regs that could go play 2-5, but they are happy to just take money from a broke life degen then they would play at 2-5, when there are just as many exploitable players playing in the 2-5 game.

Luckily, 2-5 will be very healthy, but only in the biggest poker markets. I would hate to see the 2-5 game shrink the way the 5-10 game has, and it inevetiably will, when you have decent enough players that continue to only play 50BB 1-2 games.

I wouldn't blame you to not move up if you were making atleast $25 an hour for 40 hours a week at 1-2. But, I can assure you, that will NOT happen if you play a long enough sample. You will be lucky to make half of that hourly rate, and it comes at a significant cost to your health and career. I mean at what point will the stakes become too low for you to say to yourself "this isn't worth it?" Do they have to drop the blinds to .25 cents and .50 cents before you start looking for a bigger game?

I agree with a lot of this, but this sort of exclusivity adds an "allure" to the game. If you were a single guy and brought your gf to an average 1-2 table and she watched you sit there and (correctly) fold almost all of your preflop hands in $3 pots, she would get bored fast and probably think you were a pretty big loser for doing this professionally. If you brought her to $2-5 and she routinely saw 3-bet flops of $75 and 4 bets to $200 she would probably get really excited and nervous and ultimately think your a boss when she sees your stack grow to over 1.5k or if you routinely shrug off a bad beat and plop out another 500 to rebuy after getting coolered.

You may not think this stuff matters, but this is what makes poker attract new players. The reality is, its possible that you may only make the same amount playing 2-5 as you do 1-2, but atleast you are contributing to a higher stakes market and getting less of your EV taken by the rake. It's a better game and something that rich whales could actually get addicted to playing. If their only option is to play 1-2 and sit with the life degens, then they will rather spend their money on baccarat or do day trading, with poker continuing to decline in its popularity.

You must have misinterpreted my initial post. Nothing I do at the casino is fake. I don't fake laugh at jokes, and I socialize with everyone. The regs, the recs, everyone. It's not forced social interaction, I'm a social person in general. I'm not "acting" a certain way to entertain. But by being non-stand offish (I.e not wearing headphones and hoodie up) it creates a much more positive social environment for the recs to enjoy.

This isn't pre-2010, these things just don't happen anymore. Very few "new" players would bring their GF into a poker game then attempt to run the table over.

Obviously there are varying opinions of what qualifies as whales, but I do not think whales would find 2/5 to be much more exciting than 1/2.

Essentially you are arguing creating a gap between 1/2 and 2/5 and, IMO, if your pool is not huge, eventually most people would just gravitate toward 1/2 as winning players continue to take money out of pool.

But how many people out there are naturally sociable like you?

Probably 3.50

FWIW, he's not talking about you, but people in general. Most people can't hold a conversation even if their lives are on the line.

So the suggestion that winning players have some sort of duty to be entertainers isn't practical.

This depends an awful lot on the players. I see plenty of rooms with $1/2 only, not super deep ($2-300 stacks + some shorties) that are still very profitable. Also depends a lot on your definition of "decent money". But for most *recreational players*, they don't need or want a super deep game.

I would say not. Look at how many people buy in for the min vs the max. There isn't a market for a 100BB min game. If there was it would exist.

I don't know where you're playing, but dead time is NEVER a problem. The guy blowing $2-400 in small buy ins has a wad of $20's in his pocket and is re-buying at the table. He's not going to the ATM. You also don't have to restrict you hand ranges as much as you think, because they're not playing a "correct" short stack strategy and putting too much money in with trash anyway.

Min buy doesn't mean flat broke. Sometimes it does, but more often it's the guy that likes playing $20/hand blackjack sits and wants to play poker for $20-50 a hand.

How could a whale not find 2/5 more exciting? The sheer fact there is more money on the line makes it more exciting. This is why the rich flounders play the WSOP main event 10k buy-in and not the daily turbos.

The blind structure doesn't matter to me as much as the amount of $ that is in play. I would rather sit in a 1-2 game with 500-800 stacks around the table than a 2-5 game with 7 stacks of $300 or less. That's why I argue in favor of a mandatory 100BB buy in, but I know it will never happen so its not like I expect that kind of change.

What I would expect is that other players would naturally want to play for more money. I'm asking a serious question, "Why are there so many adult poker players that are willing to play a card game for $10 an hour or less?"

I'm not talking about the delusional fish that desperately gamble hoping they go on a massive heater. I'm talking about 2+2 posters, lurkers, and other regs who have been around the game for a long time and have been through all the variance, the upswings and downswings.

You missed my point about a guy bringing his gf to watch him play. There are millions of guys who play fantasy sports, tons of guys that major in business/ econ/statistic/ finance related majors, and many young viewers who find poker on TV or over youtube. This is a huge potential market that poker SHOULD, but isn't able to capture because of the atmosphere of live casino poker. The young male demographic is not going to sit in a poker room with 55 year olds who are sitting on $100 stacks and only playing premium hands. He is simply going to be bored with all of the small pots and the lack of excitement in the room.

Once you have seen greener pastures, you can never really go down in stakes. I guess I was blessed/cursed to begin my poker career in deep stack gamboool style games played at strip mall card clubs. I was literally shocked when I travelled to other places in the country and saw how the 1-2 games appeared. It honestly didn't even feel like the same game.

If you look at what CA did, they basically made 1-2 a joke for targeted specifically for all of the slot machine players (100 MAX buyin LOL WTF). They basically make it to where anyone who was even halfway serious about making $ at poker had to play 5-5 (with a $300 mimimum buyin, rather than $200). I don't think it would be so bad to see this change adopted all over the country in order to adjust for inflation and as a rebranding effort to either get more people to put more $ on the line or to go to play slots and video poker instead.

I agree with your statements wholeheartedly. I am proposing that maybe, in 2017, we need to "up the ante" so to speak? If, at the very least, to adjust for inflation?

If you look at the difference between what a WSOP main event buy-in was worth in the 1970's, to what it is worth today, the numbers are staggering.

Poker was a lot more a game of "balls" and grit then it was simply being about a game of patience and discipline and who can fold the most without tilting. I think the "high stakes" nature of poker was a significant factor in the poker boom (look at the main shows "high stakes poker, poker after dark, and all of the WSOP coverage). Live poker cash games simply isn't high stakes anymore, with pot sizes being too small, risk of losing too small (hey I cant lose my stack if I fold pre right?) All of this, plus the factors I mentioned in previous posts makes it difficult to attract new players (new fish, new money, new generation of gamblers)

Lastly, I disagree that you don't have to tighten up with short stack degens. You cant play suited connectors because they will go all in pre with A6o and small pocket pairs don't get odds to set mine. These guys are toast in a 9 handed table, but it forces you to have to make hands. So its you splitting his stack $100 7 ways between all the other players. When you factor in variance, card dead, hit and run, this just isn't a lot of EV at the end of the day.

You are comparing difference of 1/2 to 2/5 to why people buy in main event?

Like I said, as a winning player, I would definitely prefer more money than less. However, having more money on the table means winners are taking more as well. Unless the pool is big, it will be drained quicker than when there is less money available on the table.

Because there are very few actual winners in the game. Most losers get weeded out as the game gets bigger, and eventually the pool cannot sustain the game. It's a very logical and straight forward concept.

That window has long past. You are delusional if you think there are still a pool of young and egoistic guys with money to burn in poker. Average players are so much better now that those guys don't stand a chance.


You are not thinking long term.

You have to consider that there are other sharks in these games. If game gets bigger, sharks get fatter. It's the same concept as fishing license; overfishing is bad.

IMO, optimal way of running these games is finding an equilibrium in which losing players are replenishing at the same rate as their loss rate. Making the game bigger is a very nearsighted approach.

I agree with a lot of your points RP, but I don't 100% agree. If a fish gets stacked and loses $200-300 in one pot, then the rake taken from the casino will only be 7 dollars tops. But say the same fish loses 3 buy-ins of $100 each all spreading it among the 8 other abc players. Think of all the rake that was taken out by the casino before everyone was able to get the fishes money. No matter what way you slice it, the casino is getting a larger percentage of the player pool's money this way.

I am not blaming the casinos for doing this, but the customers are pretty dumb to not see that they are giving away their money to the rake. There are plenty of regs that could shot-take 2-5 but they are happy being small winners or break even at 1-2 rather than test to see if they could win more at 2-5. These are the players I'm talking about, not the welfare recipients. If they have side jobs, then they can replenish their losses and continue to sit in 2-5 the same way they sit in 1-2. If they are pros, then they are pretty sad to be grinding down the 1-2 player pool making a paltry living.

The customers being dumb is why we can still make money off the game. It's also why casinos make money.

And poker rooms have zero reason to be set up to cater to the small winning regs and try to make them bigger winning regs. They are (correctly) optimizing for their average customer, who is a long-term loser at low-stakes. Unlike Baccarat, the casino doesn't make any more money when the fish play bigger, as rake is largely the same and the casino doesn't get the money the fish loses, and as long as they lose slowly enough, the fish keep coming back.

Bottom line: It's nice to wish that the casinos would optimize the game for your/regs' personal winrate, but they never will.

You completely missed my analogy that there are other sharks in the pool.

If the comparison is do I want $300 from said fish or $200 after rake? Of course the answer is $300.

But there are other winning players, and those guys by definition don't give back the money, just like house rake. So if that $300 money is lost to a winning player and there will be more of them (percentage wise) in a bigger game with smaller player pool, then that money is gone.

I rather that $300 gets spread out in a pool of losing players that will keep the game healthy and give me a chance to win it amongst everyone else.

You totally lost me here. Why would you want other winning players to win more?

Im moving up to 2/5 now, due to my paltry win rates.

Just about anyone can win at poker over 140hrs. That's essentially 1 month of full time poker. That being said, most players are pretty clueless about which players are winners and which aren't.

Good results, but just remember that almost anything can happen over 140 hours.