all NL games are 100 max. buy in. They have 1/2nl, 2/5nl and 5/10nl. In the 2/5nl the average stacks are 200-500 once the game gets going and often some people will have 1k or more. No betting caps its no limit at hard rock but some tracks have 3 raise max even on NL games. Hard rock is where the action is tho. 50 tables and usually 10 or more 2/5NL games.

good advice about abusing particular players... some players are so absurdly spewy and horrible that you know they're gonna drop a few buy ins... no matter how lucky they get, guaranteed.... you need to get into as many pots with these players as possible

seeing flops with marginal hands in position is key, people play so bad and spewy post-flop, and especially if the game is deep, the implied odds are so huge hands like 97 off are definately playable

Generally, you need to exploit your opponents' bad habits on a strategic level (not just a tactical level) if you want to increase your winrate significantly enough to crush 2/5 NL or 5/10 NL. You have to notice what your opponents' STRATEGIC weaknesses are, and then you should plan on forming your STRATEGY on exploiting those weaknesses.

Some opponents are ridiculously weak-tight, so I would be looking to bluff these people often whenever they don't have the nuts (which is 99% of the time). When I bluff these weak-tighties, I never show the bluff because I don't want them to start calling me down lighter (their bad habit is playing too weak, so why should I give them a reason to adjust?).

Some opponents are loose calling stations, so I would make a lot of value betting, but I would almost always show a bluff against them early in the session. Obviously, I am not bluffing these calling stations often, but showing just 1-2 well-constructed bluffs against a calling station will "train" him into being your personal ATM machine for the rest of the session with any bottom pair and/or any gutshot draw.

Sometimes, I will be playing at a table where people are making ridiculously small PF raises with their premium hands. Obviously, I will be limp-calling with many more semi-trashy and even trashy hands like 53s or even 42o to bust their AK/JJ+ hands if they aren't smart enough to punish my limps by raising big enough preflop.

Sometimes, there will be tight players who like to overbet their TT-QQ hands preflop (making ridiculous 8-10BB preflop raises with only 1-3 limpers in the pot). Against these idiots, flat-calling or limp-calling their overbet preflop raises with KK/AA is effective when you are confident that the flop will go headsup or 3way. As long as the flop comes raggy, these idiots will go nuts and usually stack off their TT-QQ in a ridiculously bloated pot without even considering that you might have slowplayed KK/AA (It's so funny when someone stacks off JJ for 130BBs on a 9-high flop because you flatted his 10BB preflop raise with AA).

In any case, I could go on and on on how to exploit your opponents to crush low limit NL games, but the real key is to dominate your opponent strategically and not just tactically. Tactical knowledge on how to play preflop and postflop is always important, but STRATEGIC knowledge on how to exploit your opponents' STRATEGIC weaknesses will drastically increase your winrate.

Nice post. Lots of questions.

Agreed. Live players have such broad and general leaks that you should deviate from game theory optimal decisions drastically.


These are metagame considerations that are probably more important live than online, since everyone is paying attention. My skills in poker are more in the logic and math side of things, not so much the psychological skills... Maybe you can help?

How much money do you invest in bluffing weak-tighties? How many streets? (i.e. how does this depend on board texture, position, stack sizes, pre-flop action, etc.)

And when you want the station to become even more stationish, how much do you invest in it? Are you sure it pays off more than the bluff costs? If they're already a station, do you really need to push them farther in that direction?

Lastly, what % of 1/2, 2/5 and 5/10 players are the weak-tight or station type?

What kind of hourly rate can a tailor-made-for-live-poker strategy at 1/2, 2/5 and 5/10?

We bluff the weak-tighties because it is massively +EV to bluff them (their fundamental weakness is that they are easy to push off a medium-strength hand). It is not a metagame investment at all. In limped pots, it is definitely correct to float a weak-tight player with little or nothing as long as you don't expect anyone else to overcall behind you. There are so many times that I have floated or OOP floated a weak-tight player in a limped pot, and it is so easy to take down the pot by betting heavy on scare cards. Even if the weak-tight player calls your turn barrel on a scary card, you just have to fire another sizeable river barrel to push him off his flopped top pair. Because these weak-tight players would never semibluff the flop with a flush draw (they only bet for value), we can always float them and represent the flush with impunity. I would often float these types of players with bottom pair or a naked gutshot with the intention of taking the pot away on the turn the vast majority of the time.

If you're in the blinds and the weak-tight player limped in EP on a ragged flop or a ragged paired flop, then you can always check-raise bluff or OOP float (check-call flop, lead turn big, bomb river) from the blinds if the weak-tight player bets the flop and everyone else folds to you. This check-raise bluff or OOP float (check-call flop, lead turn big, bomb river) represents a ragged 2 pair on a ragged flop or a slowplayed trips on a paired board.

Now, against calling stations, we will be scaling down our marginal bluffs a lot, but we will still bluff in obviously good bluff situations. For example, if a calling station calls our flop continuation bet on a 9-high two-tone flop, and an offsuit K hits the turn, I would definitely fire a large second barrel on the turn because even a calling station will often fold because he put you on AK high on the flop. Of course, our bluffs will not work on calling stations as much as they do on weak-tight players, but we should still bluff in situations when we still think that we have a high % of success.

Then, we always show the bluff to the calling station whether or not we win the pot (if the calling station catches you bluffing, DON'T MUCK YOUR HAND...show him that he made a good call and that you had 8-high). Don't be an ******* about it though -- just say something like "I had to bluff there because it was the only way to win." Whether or not your bluff was successful, you want the calling station to see that you were bluffing because your primary strategy against the calling station will be value betting him to death. I know certain calling stations that will fold a lot against the rocks, but they will rarely lay down any reasonable pair against me because they consider me a "bluffer." 90% of the time I am value betting the calling station, but they always remember the 10% of the time when I was bluffing, so they call me down far more often than they should.

I think this thread is really great, and sums up the way I try to play 1/2 Live though I use more of the loose for small amounts preflop and better hand reading/value betting post flop than the super LAG strat.

I didnt see this mentioned in the OP and I thought it is important, these adjustments are really only effective as the stacks become deeper, I think sometimes in my own game I see alot of flops I prob shouldnt just becaue the players in the hand don't really have enough money behind to justify playing the hand even if they are terrible. The same goes for the bluffs on later streets thing since so many hands are mutiway the pots are often quite large on the flop so when we take a pot sized stab on the turn with say only a 100bb stack to start the hand we are commiting alot.

the only part I disagree with is the slowplaying sets part, IME live players ranges for rasing preflop is small but tend to commit postflop with way to week a hand or draw without the correct odds. Betting and rasing usually gets the money in IME. and since the pots are multiway I think you are just giving too much equity to draws buy not bettting.

This is a great post/concept. 1 quality I've noticed in these guys who regularly get the huge stacks at low limits is they have the ability to induce all kinds of spazziness from even nits. It's not even necessarily a verbal thing but their general presence at the table, bet sizing, and other factors get all kinds of players to play back at them and try and outplay them in really bad spots.

Although deeper stacks do matter, there's no exaggerating the fit-or-fold nature of many of the 1/2 players. They just don't understand that calling 40% of your stack HU and OOP with 7-6s pre-flop, then playing fit-or-fold is horrible. Against these guys, raise and take them to death.

Don't slowplay sets in 7-way pots, but if it's 3-way, I think slowplaying is often fine at live 1/2. If you have 6-6 on a 2-6-9 board, you're just not getting much action, but a a T, J, Q, K, or A turn could get you tons.

QFT

bump

For those who are interested, a similar thread (same OP) is live and well on CR-Brick and Mortar.

This post is just what I needed. Thanks to all the posters.

Live full ring NL is a game I haven't really taken a stab at yet just because I don't know the best approach to it. I sat down once and I was totally confused by the play.(I play 10/20-20/40 Fixed Limit Live and multi-table .5/1-1/2 NL 6max online.)

I'm going to a B&M next weekend and want to try something new since my choice limit games have dried up (leaving only very hungry sharks).

I'm going to print this out and read it again but it seems like the general idea is to play a 6-Max NL preflop range and play post flop as if it were a loose/passive full ring fixed limit game (Value bet with medium strength hands, draw with implied odds, hammer away at weak-tights). I'm sure the translation isn't perfect but thinking of it like that helps point me in the right direction.

Thanks again!

PM me a CR's password?

.....you big tease you

Ok, the sign in name is "gullible" and the password is "falsepw".

Try it!

I TRIED IT FIVE TIMES AND NOTHING YOU MOTHERF*(&#%*(&)@



thx for pm'ing me the real one

worked for me, thanks

i think at uncapped games a bigger winrate is attainable, because bad players make bigger mistakes - on the other hand, usually only the bigger (mostly tougher) games are uncapped (5/10+ at my card room).

another thing:
i think you mentioned it in your op, live players often play similar hands in a similar way, i.e. there are players who would never raise on a draw, or players that will always have a premium hand in early position, and so on.
so if you can adjust really well and really soon there is a lot of potential.

another (very small) factor is reads: you might get a strong read from time to time that others dont see. example: at my room there is a guy who when he goes all-in always throws his 1€ chips in when he has a big hand and doesnt throw them in when he is on a draw (the 1€ chips technically dont play in this game, but its not enforced so he thinks he is smart and gets more money out of it with his big hands i guess )

No one is beating 5/10NL live for 200k/year and your post claims that you are able to do by claiming you make $140/hr.

Your sample size is clearly small and therefore your hourly is not even close to being accurate.

I would guess 1/2NL live is beatable for up to $20/hour by the best players in the games, 2/5NL live is beatable for up to $50/hr by the best of the best in the game, and 5/10NL live is probably beatable for around $100/hr by the best in that game. And in all seriousness, the numbers I gave are probably way to high as well.

i would agree with bbwaamps assessment of possible winrates/hourlies.

I have to disagree.

Come to Vancouver. Play some live NLH with a guy named Felix (not me) and let me know what you think of these hourly rate estimates.

Much of what is in this post is about his extremely unorthodox style of play that just destroys everyone at incredibly high rates.

And it is over a pretty decent sample for live poker, probably 100,000+ hands since I started playing here, plus more if he started before I started playing before then.

There's another really talkative guy named that plays at Edgewater. He's more of the Super System on Steroids kind of maniacal player. He plays about 50/40. He cbets vs <4 players except on the wettest boards and follows through with a triple barrel for your entire stack pretty much every single hand.

You'll recognize him from his extremely LAGtard bullying play and relentless, nonsensical chatter.

When hands get shown down, he almost always has the effective nuts.

Everybody adjusts by trying to flop/turn/river a monster, then folding if they miss, which they usually do. It is not unusual to see him there with a $1.5-2k stack in the NL200 games.

The gamblers and beginners won't pay too much attention to your image. Focus on the more skilled players.

You want the educated players to think you only have half a clue. Once they form a solid opinion of disrespect you can get them to call you loose or convince themselves you only have top pair when you have a set.

These guys might watch for image moves so you have to be subtle. Acting like an idiot one minute and a pro the next isn't going to do. They will have lots of evidence you play ok (somewhat tight preflop, trying to isolate, play much more in late position, etc). They're not dumb. They know you know something.

You need to show the table some very basic mistake without being a showboat about it. Make it look perfectly natural. If someone comments on it you have to manage a response that sounds honest (but misguided).

There's a lot of ways to do it. Call an early raiser with a hand that you probably shouldn't, make a call where your odds are not so good, limp a dominated from early. Look for your chance to do something wrong but don't be suicidal.

Marginal things can be enough to start them salivating.

50% VPIP + High triple barrel frequency + High W$SD = IMPOSSIBLE

He only shows down about one hand per hour.

In virtually every other hand, people fold. They get scared of playing a huge pot without a huge hand even though he's so obviously loose. But it's hard to make huge hands, so practically nobody calls him down.

Anyways, anybody that's played with him can confirm this.

i beleive its possible to beat live 5/10 for over 150K per year.
i have friends who have beaten 2/3 NL live for over 100K easily (40+ hours per week)
that being said, i live in australia and our games have a max buy in normally of 80BB and up to 200BB.



i think the biggest adjustment you have to make is loosening up in position and learning to limp alot more than online. one of the OP's is 100% correct when he says that you have to strategize player specifically. dont bluff or raise/steal in position too much when you have 2 or 3 complete calling stations, just limp and outplay them in position when you hit hands.

whereas vs the nitty rocks just get in position and float them consistently, by representing scare cards and making bets that look like value bets in their eyes. it will get to a point where you will get called on flush/straight boards by over pairs for 200-300BB because the nits are so sick and tired of being run over.

great topic and i couldnt argue with anything written here.
i would add that if you are in a regular game and you know the tendancies of certain players, try and get direct position on the looser ones so you can isolate them post flop. and always consider how big someone's stack and the other players in the pot stacks are before you get involved in a pot with suited connectors and small pairs.

When I mean that he shows down about one hand per hour, I mean actually turning his cards face up, not just finishing the betting on the river.

I understand exactly what you're saying, but you're still wrong/exaggerating. If his VPIP is high and his three barrel frequency is high and he is getting to showdown infrequently (due to the table being exploited and not calling enough) his W$SD CANNOT BE HIGH. It is an impossibility except in the short term. The very fact that he has a high VPIP and three barrel % means he is getting to showdown very weak. You said the table folds to the aggression, meaning they are only getting to showdown very strong. His W$SD MUST BE LOW. This does not necessarily mean he is not making up for the loss elsewhere.