voice of reason

elaborate... except 1-2?

Newsflash: we've managed to uncover an "all live players suck" troll.

Live poker is a lot harder than online, people on here seriously need to get a ****ing clue. First off they have perfect reads on you since they can see your face unlike in online, but they wear sunglasses so it's impossible to read them. Second they raise 10bb+ preflop as a standard raise in 100bb capped games (sometimes raise as much as 20bb), which is def not exploitable and incredibly hard to beat. Third, they are all very aggressive and it is almost never folded to the button preflop (like literally almost never) which makes the table even harder to beat since there are no free blinds.

go away

lol who are u i've never even seen u post in this forum and ur telling me to go away...lol

i loled

i'm one of the 2+2ers trying to improve/learn when it comes to live poker, and i constantly have to deal with this nonsense and it makes it much harder

for some reason there is no seperate thing for it...

Ok since i'm nice go to the small full ring forum (the forum right below this one), people will actually give u advice and u will learn a lot more there and they won't care if u post higher hands there either

i play 1/2 online and 5-5 live (In L.A.) and i can say that the 5-5 game doesn't even compare. It literally plays like NL25 online. As long as you have the bankroll/patience there is a lot of money to be made. Only problem is live the variance is way way bigger. At 30 something hands an hour (If that) its gonna take a very large sample size to determine what your hourly rate is. Over 40 hours (very very small sample size) I'm at 60/h and thats after taking two terrible beat downs that would have doubled what my profit is now.

And hence the problem with live stats tracking. After 40 hours -- representing less than 1200 hands -- a great player could be stuck multiple buy-ins and a total fish could be crushing the game.

The last three 40 hour blocks from my spreadsheet: -$953, +$2359, +2103.

Did I play better the second two blocks than the first? At different times of day? Against different players? At different casinos? No. No. No. No.

No, of course not. Thats why i said its gonna take a very large sample size.

Wow poker has swings and variance? WTF

I know it's beyond obvious. What I'm trying to point out is that the same swings that last hours or days online can last days, weeks, even months in a live game. This is all in response to people claiming live results of 20+ptbb/100. I'm just trying to inject some sanity.

If you notice, most weeks I actually do pull in about $60/hour (about 20ptbb/100). But the down weeks always will pop up -- I'm not looking forward to my first down month -- and just one can drag that average down significantly.

Even with the increased variance, if you ever have a losing month playing live poker, you are truly awful

This statement is simply wrong.

It's entirely possible to have a dominating 10ptbb/100 edge on a game, crushing the game microstakes style, and be behind after a small sample size of 4000-5000 hands (roughly one month's worth live.) Over a long enough timeframe, it's not even a matter of if but when.

Looking at it simply: that edge has you up 800 big blinds in a month on average. An 800bb swing is only 4 coin flips if you're playing 100bb deep; fewer coin flips if you're playing deeper. . . .

wtf are you talking about

Mmmm I wouldn't say you are truly awful but I would say that if you play 20+ hours/week and you have a losing month playing $2/5 or below, you probably have some substantial leaks.

Playing $10/20+ it is quite common for the best players in the game to have losing months playing live.

Btw, lol at some of these hourly estimates, coming from people who have like less than 200 hours playing live. Go to the brick and mortar forum if you're curious to see what people actually make - there have been a lot of posts about this.

There is always room for tons of improvement in live poker, and whatever you winrate is, I'm sure it is possible that it could be a ton higher. If you play your A-game all the time and get really good at reading people, you will make more than you believed possible. Developing the reading skills is absolutely key and is underrated. People like Negreanu playing in midstakes NL games are just not going to be wrong very often when faced with a decision on the river or whatever. That translates into huge profit.

ya i play with a guy who beats the game, definately more than me... but he has so many obvious math leaks

he just rocks and reading people, sniffs out bluffs very well etc etc.... if i could read people like him i definately wouldn't ever think about getting a job in my life

I'll just say what I've made:

At 2/5 over a lot of hours, I had a win-rate of $15/hour. That includes sessions (and months) where I was making stupid experiments, as well as obvious bone-headed plays. I was also playing much too tight, often bluffing ineptly when I bluffed and am convinced (after backing down to 1/2) that I missed an enormous amount of value on missed re-raises (like almost never re-raising AK regardless of reads and stuff like that).

At the 2/5 I was playing I could see running at over $30/hour with very near optimal play. I'm very skeptical of anyone claiming over $40/hour if they include their bad months and stupid experiments in there, too (or are only counting a really hot run of a few months)--and anyone who is completely immune from those is no longer playing 2/5 imo.

At 1/2 I'm running at roughly $25/hour although the sample is smaller--and since 1/2 is the only NLHE game spread at the local casino, there are some very good players in it (as well as some horrible ones, for sure). But I honestly don't even like the 1/2 where everyone at the table is a complete idiot, although those are probably even more profitable if you have the patience.

On the "down months" issue: I recall that Barry Greenstein in Ace on the River bragged about going 3 years with at most 1 down month. THAT claim sounds credible and very impressive to me.

I also don't think it needs to be a source of embarassment to attribute down months solely to the cards, although they can be a reason for getting started on bad play. I've definitely had more than 1/year for the time I've played. But I'm also pretty sure that all of the ones I've had have been the result of experimental plays that were not good--but I had to try them and feel like I learned from it.

Playing regularly but consitently well for the full month, I think would have had some months with only marginal winnings but probably actually maybe like on average .5/year actually down (and even that probably only just close to break even).

This all rings very true to me. $30/hour = crushing 2/5NL for about 10ptbb/100, which is a sick winrate over any significant sample size.

I don't agree with the phrase "stupid experiments" tho. I think that these should be more aptly called "growth periods." Every (thinking) poker player goes through phases in his game where he's trying new things that he's either thought up, read, observed, or heard about.

Maybe you went through a period of 3betting a lot more, or altering your standard preflop raise sizes, or semi-bluffing less, etc. Some of them work for your style, and some won't, but they all have an effect on your bottom line until you get things sorted out. After you've gone through them, your game is certainly improved, even if the experiments failed.

I personally believe that you can consistently achieve an hourly winrate at $2/$5 live NL of $30/hr-$50/hr with very solid LAG play and good table selection (even if you do make mistakes now and then). I say this because I have been running over $50/hr as my average $2/$5 NL live winrate over the past 1.5 years (half of the time I play $2/$5 NL and half of the time I play $5/$10 NL).

From my own personal experience (playing live $2/$5 NL and $5/$10 NL over the past 1.5 years), you just need to get involved in a lot of big pots and play a lot of hands IP in raised pots against fishy players. This requires you to play LAG or hyper-LAG preflop in order to generate a large number of profitable situation where you can play smart TAG postflop to rip apart the fish who all think that you are just a hyperaggressive maniac.

My personal LAG strategy involves a lot of PF raising IP (with some very large BB steal raises when I read all the limpers for weakness), a lot of light PF 3betting, a lot of continuation bets, and a lot of semibluffing, and almost ZERO slowplaying. I've had tons of people who will play for 100BB stacks preflop against me with crazy stuff like 88 vs my AA, or AQs vs my AKs, etc. just because they get tired of all my crazy bluffing. These people also know that I can and will put over 200BBs on the flop on a flush draw if I think that I have fold equity as well -- which is precisely the reason why I always get paid off on my 2pair/sets/straights.

I probably play twice as many hands preflop as your typical TAG, so I do end up playing many more pots an hour than most TAGs.

At the same time, however, if you play TAG, then I highly doubt that you can achieve more than probably $25/hr unless you have great table selection. There is only so much money that can be made when you are waiting for typical ABC premium hands.

once again dchan... agree with 100% everything you say