Going back a bit, I'm not a pro but I thought poker BR and living expenses were supposed to be kept separate? This discussion has allowed the OP to conflate the two, which if my understanding is correct, that's insane. Only LRR and one other person mentioned this. So I'm just wondering if I have misunderstood the concept or if this conversation just passed over it.

It's a somewhat controversial topic on whether there's any relevance of keeping them separate. It mostly comes down to each individuals situation.

For me a few years ago, I had basically no expenses so there was no point "separating" my total net. When I bought something my net went down, simple as that.

If you do have bills, then you should likely always keep a "reserve" of 6-12 months living expenses that you'll never have to dip into.

The general idea is that you're never playing with your rent money AFAIK

Sol, correct me if I'm wrong, but if based on this giraffe of winning $45K at 1/2 NL (although I don't understand if that includes the little downswing part after the star which looks to lessen this?), and an overall of a *very* impressive 22.5 bb/hr, does that mean you've played about ~1000 hours of 1/2 NL?

Any concern that it isn't a significant enough sample size to really know much? I mean, not in respect to whether you can beat the game handily (obviously) but rather in terms of the confidence level of exactly how much you can beat it by?

For instance, I'm coming up on 4000 hours of 1/3 NL, where it'll show that my first 2000 hour sample was approximately twice as good as my second 2000 hour sample size. So you can understand if I kinda have mixed feelings over exactly what can be concluded over "just" 1000 hour segments. And from the looks of your giraffe, it looks like you've even experienced the extremes of this in your small sample; from eyeballing things it looks like you were at $75/hr over your first 400 hours vs $25/hr over your last 600 hours (although, admittedly, if the worst you are running is "just" 12.5 bbs/hr then still very impressive).

Gstill,veryniceresultsG

Adding on to this, I believe increasing your buy-in size or moving up to 2|5 would actually decrease your chance of ruin if it means you'd make more money. Your expenses are currently likely eating up way too much of your income and it's important for you to make more money. A low rate of bankroll growth is just as detrimental as high variance.

However, reducing your expenses dramatically and staying at 1|2 would be the best way, if possible. $2500/month is ridiculous. You should be able to get at least one meal per day comped and cook the rest at home, never paying to eat out except the tip. You should not be using Uber (wtf??). I know Vegas is a cheap place to rent so you hopefully aren't putting more than $800-ish into a place per month. You should only rarely be doing things for entertainment, if at all.

At your level of bankroll, growth is really the only important thing. Your life should be poker and you should not be doing much other than eating, sleeping and playing. Once you move up to 2|5 you can have more breathing room.

well if u read my blog, u would see im living out of a hotel and its not the same one i originally lived out of and when checkout happens again tomorrow ill just leave town. no more unsafe weeklies for close to $300 a week. thats too expensive but ill be damned if i rent an apt in a bad neighborhood for like 650-800 per month thats not safe. the only thing safe is a nice hi-rise and that too is like 1200 a month. and i damn sure aint renting a room in someones home i havent known for about 20 years, that too is unsafe. and ive no credit or proof of income and my bankroll isnt high enough to prepay 6 months.

using the bus after dark isnt safe either and i never was able to learn to drive due to aspergers, so i gave up about 20 yrs ago trying to learn how. so i spend about $500 or so per month with Uber. to save costs i need to be able to walk to a casino poker room.

$2500 might overestimate the costs, but including cell phone, internet laundry, etc not by too much. sometimes i want a safer place to live and then i spend about $1800 a month for a better hotel with a better kitchen and better wifi.

isnt the quality of life important too? this means housing where u are entirely alone and dont worry about someone breaking in, or dealing with riding the bus instead of Uber

Quality of life is important.

But I'd rather deal with it for a year then go broke and have to deal with it forever.

Also important to recognise the value of playing a low variance overall strat. I didn't play a HUGE live sample, but in my last 1k hours, biggest downswing was 9 buyins. But variance was seemingly not an issue in the slightest. I think I could attribute some of this to my play style. (obv lolsample is lol too)

Yeah, that's why I'm saying, live results are rarely going to mean much. Even in this sample, my game was different in different parts, and obviously the game was softer early, and later on I was game selecting much less since I was playing in between bigger games, which, it turns out, really affects your results.

So like I said it's just an example. All I can say that this instance of a graph with a very high winrate involved high variance play and downswings. If it helps, I know 3-4 players with 1k+ maybe even 3k volume at 1/2 and 40-50+ hourlies, and they are all very aggro players with big downswings also. I don't know any 40+ hourlies that are tight and have few downswings.

Granted you can argue that it's probably players who run good and have better results who are more willing to play aggro, and maybe the players who play tighter actually are just as talented and maybe their winrates are actually very similar.

But, taking a step back, don't you think it's kind of ridiculous to be up 40-50k at 1/2 over 1k hours and still be playing 1/2? That's why you're never going to see a large sample with huge winrates at 1/2. Most people with that sort of results would have moved up. The only reason I kept playing 1/2 is because in many parts of my sample, 1/2 was the only game running a lot of times, but in america where 2/5+ is usually available, that's not the case. Otherwise I probably would have half as much volume as I even have now.

Also, agreed, being a pro at 1/2 in vegas seems really tough. Seems much easier if you're in an area with fewer pros and so on and where you can live near the casino cheaply. I don't separate br from living expenses, but doing so make sense. Ultimately any separation is in your head only, so separating br is really really not that different from requiring a higher bankroll before taking shot, but including expenses into your br.

Get a roommate. The trooper has tons of space. Seriously, there are tons of nice rooms to rent for single people for less than $500 a month. I have a wife and 3 kids and our budget (with a $900 mortgage) is $2500 a month.

I mean, i totally understand where Sol is getting at-even if i (naturally) dont agree flat out with everything that he writes.

To me, what he is argueing due to not playing optimally and maxing out your EV if you never go on decent downswings- is similar to what Ferguson said once in a quite famous quote: "If youre not getting all your chips in the middle from time to time with the worst of it you are simply playing too tight".

Its about pushing your total edge, pushing your equity, pushing your fold equity in certain spots and so on. I can stand behind Sol that if you have the typical grinder focus of simply not having losing sessions, you are very likely not maxing out your EV potenial. You just arent, because you are very very likely passing on +EV spots that possible is high variance one way or another- simply to avoid risking to book a losing session.

Limon said in one of his podcasts about a similar topic that if all you focus on at the table is to make the correct play/move/exploitative adjustment in a certain situation: you will be unstoppable and people will not be able to handle you. Some opponents will view you as a maniac (because you barrell/semibluff alot against nits to max out fold equity), some will view you of capable of doing "anything", some will view you as a rock (because you always show up with the goods against non folding callingstations), some will view you as a steady grinder and so on-and at this point in my opinion you are closing in on your full potenial.

this is a good way to get yourself killed if u dont know how to fight. especially if they know u have money and keep it all in your checking account, they will kill u for your atm card and pin. would anyone be willing to take a stranger into their house and rent to them dirt cheap, not worrying about their own safety unless they planned to be the villian themselves?

i only stay with people ive known at least 20 yrs. and no responsible person would do the same, unless they knew how to fight if attacked in someone else home. with the exception of very naive kids 18-30. no one gets roommates once they pass 40. women lose all respect for u when u dont have your own place.

i would never trust anyone i didnt know without first browsing their facebook profile and finding out who they voted for and how they feel about certain moral and social issues. if they a fraction of the inch to the left of me, (and im on the far right on about every social issue) id be scared to risk trusting them, for fear they would hate me for holding different views. some would feel theyre doing the world a service by killing a conservative.

Like i know several grinders who are so damn risk averse that they are capping their own winrate.

Lets say you have a maniac sitting on $1000 in a 2-5 game. Maniac is on tilt and have announced he is blind allin pre, before cards are dealt. His chips is already in the middle across the betting line before cards are dealt, so its no angling possible. These risk averse grinders will literally fold hands like AJ or AQ off in this spot, because they think its too much to put in pre and too high variance against a blind hand. Even though youre obviously destroying maniacs range of any two cards with those hands. What many rock/grinders want if possible is _variance free money_, and this attitude is having an impact on their whole view on poker+ how they due to risk aversion pass on quite alot of decent spots.

no one any good at poker will fold this when they are last to act, but they might if there are people behind them.

Yes there is. Ive experienced it many times, one time the grinder flashed me AJ before folding in a spot like that last to act, and said with a frustrated look on his face that "i dont want to gamble like this right now".

Risk aversion is more common than you would think, even amongst steadily winning players.

Wow. I don't know where to start... So I wont. GL.

This is nearly entirely a function of most people being under rolled for the stakes they are playing.

It's usually not. It's like a 1bb game (if you have 1k yourself) and you're UTG with AQ. You could definitely jam here profitably.

If you're last to act you should be calling waaaay wider than that.

I can agree on that being the case in some instances, (and i absolutely agree that many liveplayers simply play way too underrolled). However its quite interesting that my experience with risk aversion often manifests itself when it comes to grinders with decent or big rolls, not vastly underrolled players.

To me it almost seems like an uncle scrooge concept type of personality thing. Like they have a decent amount of money because they are life nits, and also as a consequence they are allergic to variance in poker- and therefor they try to avoid marginal spots at almost all cost.

We used to have a guy in our game that would occasionally straddle all in blind like that. Often enough that I actually worked out the exact range you need to be favored there. If you're closing the action HU it's *absurdly* wide. Like J3o+ wide to be better than 50%.

Edit: Found it (was ITT I thought):

Hand 0: 41.870% 40.38% 01.49% 553966234484 20410589878.00 { random }
Hand 1: 58.130% 56.64% 01.49% 777024935360 20410589878.00 { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J6s+, T7s+, 98s, A2o+, K2o+, Q5o+, J8o+, T9o}

Note that there are no hands in that range that are behind a random range. That's why the overall range is 58%, because the top end are huge favorites, skewing the average up and hands like J8o and Q5o are above 50%% against ATC, believe it or not.

was super fun during online snapping those hands in sngs/mtts bvb

Would not recommend calling a blind all-in with J3o if it is >9 bb deep.

Hand 0: 45.276% 42.97% 02.31% 10815107388 581140614.00 { J3o }
Hand 1: 54.724% 52.42% 02.31% 13193480184 581140614.00 { random }

Look at the actual range he posted, not the vague memory. Bottom is J8o (actually, Q5o is worse).

Yup. Good catch. We had a bit of a debate about that in the other thread when developing the range and debating what the range should look like with players left to act behind us.


Yea, it's actually J8o and Q5o. I was a little bit off. Although I guess you could argue that there's some value in calling a touch wider to encourage gambly behavior from the guy. Or to get a shot at the money now before someone else calls the next hand.

Recently I completed a year anniversary since my retirement last February. Having more free time allowed me to play more frequently and record some decent volume. My sessions were played in a single room, with a mostly favorable (obviously relative) player pool. I don’t have graphs but here is a summary of the year-long trek in $2/$5NL.

Sessions: 104
Hours: 454
Earnings: $16,453
Hourly: 7.2 BBS, $36.24

Observations:
1. The results of this sample improved my overall hourly by ~23%.
2. There are sessions where the random sample of hands are absolutely the pits. Recently I had a VPIP of 6 over 3.75 hours. My VPIP is 17, raising ~65% of those (17/11).
3. The downswings are indeed very ugly. My worst was a $3.9k downer.
4. I normally don’t count W/L session % but noted that I had lost several consecutively (6). I calculated my W/L at 55%, which is lower than lifetime of 62%.
5. Limiting my losses to 2 BIs helps my hourly dramatically. I find that while my level of play doesn’t necessarily suffer, my mental state has an edge, sort of a “woe is me” tude.
6. While the weekday games are a bit tougher, they are not markedly so.
7. Need to improve my ability to analyze flop textures in pots I have raised pre.
8. Some skilled players can transparently embrace variance, managing table and player pool relationships well. I am improving in this area.

Any, and all comments are welcome. Thanks for reading.