Private Club
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Very Soft Games (Always)
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Very Decent Treatment
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Freerolls, High Hand, Bad Beat
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$1/$2 - $300max ($2 Jackpot, 10% $10max minimum $20 pot)
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$2/$5 - $500max ($2 Jackpot, 10% $20max minimum $20 pot) *$1000max once a week
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Opinions?

Rake on that is way to high especially since its capped. If you're going to play I'd stay away from the 1/2. Dont you have Casinos though? Depending on how long the drive is it may be a better play to stick to the casinos because

A) Rake is less
B) Bigger player pool
C) No risk of getting in trouble with the law

Club is 40min closer to my house. Player pool is defiantly bigger at the casino, rake is definitely smaller (10%, $2min, $5max but BBJ is coming in the New Year) and there is no risk of legal troubles (although a couple years ago a friend of mine was in a club that got busted, they took his name, made sure he had no warrants or wasn't on probation and they let him go.) He lost $300 that he had on the table so there was a downside. I also leave my watch and wallet in my car and bring 2BI inside just in case they get robbed.

Awful rake. If I read that correctly, you're looking at a maximum of $12 or $22 being raked out of pot, with $4 coming out in a $20 pot. That is a maximum of about 3.5BB being raked out each hand more than you'd usually face at a casino. Assuming you can win $20/hr at 1/2 and $35/hr at 2/5 at a normally raked game, I'd say you can probably beat the rake at 1/2, but probably do no better than BE at 2/5.

Of course, the ability to play more frequently and have less travel costs could make it closer. At the same time, there is a small but real potential cost of having the game raided and losing your entire BR (the police are not the only ones who would be interested in the game).

It is like Monopoly, you don't lose it just because you passed "Go."

I may or may not have an experience with such clubs, you can pm me though if you have questions, rather not talk about it openly (aka pm me). There are always risks involved. Sounds like your taking precautions so thats good. Downside of it is of it gets raided or robbed money all gone. Plus side though- these are generally the softest games ... Although you do find a lot of short stackers there. Thats my next question. How many people are short stacking? If its like 60%+ thats going to be. Hard game to beat because of rake / stack size ratio.

Bvb4l moment- I have a stock program at work. They give you a 15% discount on the lowest lrice at the beginning or end of the enrollment period. I generally just look at it as a savings account and every six months i cash it out with a slight gain. Last time I made like a couple hundred extra. Its small time but w/e its easy money. Will from the last period until now the stock has risen over $5!!!!! Ahhhhhh!!! Could have been ballin. Beat

Thats the crap part. The good part is that I am still enrolled and i think the stock was like at $5 sumptin at the beginning and its now over $10. I wi get it for the $5 sumptin plus 15% discount. Thats the brag

Variance- I never change my % and its pretty smallish. Oh well, gonna have a very nice bonus come Janurary from this stock, bonus they are giving out ($1500 or $2200 depending on goals met) and taxes.

Jamaica here I come mon. Lord have mercy.

wish me luck guys headed to biloxiiiiiiiiiii


results incoming sunday night

one time

Good Luck!

And in the words of a Hall of Famer, "May your draws be live and your pots monsters."

I have just started reading in here because I'm fairly new to live play and I would very much like to develop my game properly as I go! I'm a bit too shy to post HH and such yet, but I have found the two stickied threads (and the links inside) very helpful!

I've noticed I seem to play more passively live than online and I struggle a bit post flop, so I hope getting more comfortable + learning to make better decisions will help.

wooooaaaah i made a questionable call for $420 into a $90 pot and sucked out big time OTR. 2-outers FTW

aww fack wrong thread

This may see like dumb question, and that it doesn't deserve its own thread, so I put it here. Actually it probably appears so dumb that it might seem to need to be deleted, like so many noob theads do.

Last night at my tables everyone was playing so tight. It was like everyone was just there to flip for coolers. (Many tables are like this these days, as you all know, and many were like this in the past. In fact, I'm sure Ivery played at some of these back in the day...)

Question: Do you feel like you have an edge against 9 tight players, who are just looking to make big hands, and who don't put money into the pot w/o one?

Or, is your primary edge table-selection: Looking/waiting for a fish, or an overly aggressive maniac?

Or...is there something else?

It may seem like a dumb question, but like I've said, I'm trying to become a poker-god. This is a very important question to me ATM, and it has either:

1. A simple answer;
2. A complex answer;
3. No answer.

What do you think?

I think Harrington said it best. At a tight table, LAGs make money. At a loose table, TAGs make money. At an evenly mixed table, the loosest TAG and tightest LAG makes money.

Your edge should be to adjust to the table conditions and exploit it.

"Shy" is not the adjective I'd search for in describing you.

Anyway, welcome on board.

When you're playing with a table full of ridiculously tight players who only get stacked on coolers, a couple of things come to mind:

- you can improve your game by learning how to compensate. Obviously this means opening up and playing a lot more LAG than what I would guess is your usual style.

- you can improve your financial prospects by moving to a different table obviously.

- So, I guess my answer is that it's good practice for varying up for game and being able play at various speeds and understand people's perception of you. From a winnings perspective, it's obvious that we should look for a table change. This will give you practice in donkaments when you can't change tables.

- My edge at live is being comfortable enough with the game and my reads that I can adapt to whatever the table plays and come up with a plan to how to play each person. That being said, EV[winning from adapt] <<< EV[winning from table change], and Var[adapt] > Var[table change].

Not at all - that's why I've surprised myself in my few forays into live play. I guess some had to do with being self conscious and out of my element at first. Where do you know me from, I've never seen you post until I came here!

Thank you for the warm welcome, it's my first step into the more strat heavy parts of the site.

sht only played 1 30 min session of 1/3 and won 40 bucks. i guess going during halloween and my partys desire to just get drunk at a club superceded my poker. also I assumed the rio room was big but its small and it only had 1/3 as the biggest game running whenever i checked, but i didnt check at prime hours.

man if ur going i still recommend aria as the best place to play, best action, best room, and the casino smells nice.

gl man, i was supposed to go again for my bday, nov 22 and new years, but cancelled both

something ive been wondering, u semi pros and pros out there and even regular regulars, do u guys only play in 1 spot? if not how far do u guys travel? do u guys have a rotation?

Great for a private game. Low rake, and with any luck bad players.

Okay, here are a few of my current views.

At some tables, we can just sit and wait for a bad players to make a 100BB mistakes. This was the case for me last night. I 3-bet PF with AA, flopped a set, and some guy stacked off to me with middle pair.

Now, when playing at a table that does not contain a total ******, things are more complicated. At some tables (and maybe even most tables) players do not just "give you their chips".

If you recall, that is what DN said to PH on a PAD episode when he crossbooked him.

So, what do we do if there isn't a player at the table who is just going to give us his/her chips?

For the record, I don't think it is really a poker game until this situation occurs. If we are just waiting for a fish to donk off his/her stack to us, are we really playing poker? I would say, "No, we are just acting like a kind of casino for the fish."

This is certainly the most profitable way to play at LLSNL. To table select, find fish, and wait. Period. Amen.

However, as we move up, there are less fish who are willing to just give us their whole stack. Yes, they will limp/call PF way too light, and thus "give us" these limps, but they are good enough to not stack off with Q7 on a Q63 board when we have 333.

And, in many cases we find ourselves in NL games where essentially every player knows that they are doing, and won't just give us their chips. In these cases we need a more advanced plan for winning.

So what do we do?

First let's examine the nit. I call a player a nit if he/she doesn't stack off light, who plays a very tight PF range, and who has a very low PFR%. There are many live players whose PFR% is ~5%. These players will not go AI OTF if they have 78 on a board of 78J.

So we can not beat these players by having them give us their money. The only other logic why to win their money is to take their money:

The won't give it to us, so we have to take it.

This means two things:

1. We can take their money by being better value betters.
2. We can take their money by bluffing them: by winning with the worse hand.

The first option is very mathematical. To beat a nit, we have to effectively put together a range for the nit, and determine the percent we are ahead of, and the amount they are willing to call when behind, ect.

A major mistake the nit makes is not value betting enough. The nit is scared. The nit doesn't value bet OTR because he/she is afraid of the CRAI. So to beat the nit we have to extract extreme value to overcompensate for the times they extra value from us.

The bet sizing issue is very important because we should be attempting to bet the maximum they are willing to call when we are ahead. (But remember the nit doesn't call too much money.)

There is more to this, but I'm pressed for time.

Okay, next is bluffing them. By winning more often with the worse hand, we can show a profit against a nit. Actually nits almost never win with the worse hand. They never bluff. And the times they think they are bluffing they actually aren't! They c-bet bluff with AK on a board of 432r, but their villain only had KQ!

They only big bet super-strong hands, and trap. There are a few nits I play with who have a win-at-show-down percent of close to 100%. Yes, 100%!

How do they do it? Not by playing poker well!

They only ship it when they have the nuts OTR. They wait to make sure they have the nuts OTR before they ship their nut straight OTF or OTT. They want to make sure the flush doesn't come, or the board doesn't pair!

This makes bluffing the nit very hard because when they check, or check/call, they often times have the nuts, and they are only not betting/raising because they want to see the turn/river first. However, they will call a ship because they do have the current nuts.

So, it is very hard to put them on a weak hand because of their line!

How do we bluff them? We have to soul-read. At this point we have to put ranges aside, and put them on an exact hand. Or, at least, that should be the goal. We have to poker-god them. This can be down by reading their body language, and comparing it to their past body language. But this can only be done if we "pay attention to everything", like PI says.

Is the person an actor? Does the person sit up when the flop hits them? Does the person STFU when they get a huge hand? Does the person become chatty when behind? Does the person only look at your stack when she/he has a huge hand? Is the person always watching TV when they miss the flop? Does the person always look at their chips when the flop hits them? Does the person always say some thing like "Okay, go ahead" when strong? Or weak? Does the person always say, "Just us?" when weak? ect. ect.

When I first started playing poker, I thought that the reading part was a joke. That it was a joke that a person should be making decisions by looking at the way a person it playing with their chips, or by whether the person is staring at you, or away from you. Ect.

But now, I realize that this is far and away the most important thing. And it's even more important than people realize. At a certain point this should be the only thing that matters.

Most people say, "IDO I play the player." But even so, it is done on a very superficial level. "This person is so loose, so I call. This person is so tight, so I fold." Reading has to be far more complex than this.

And it should go as far as creating a false image of ourselves. Maybe attempting to appear as a super-super tight player. Then, bluffing because I know they think you have an over-pair, ect. Or maybe attempting to appear loose, while only shipping a very tight range.

I was thinking about making a thread where people could post how they envision stacking a villain. (That isn't a fish!)

Some good player sits at the game. You know he his good. What's your plan for stacking him? Or do you just stay out of his way?

(I realize this isn't really off topic chat, but I assumed most people wouldn't think this was thread worthy. I didn't know were else to put it.)

i didn't read everything but i have to comment on what you said about how playing fish isn't really playing poker. i pretty much agree. however, what makes going to play exciting for me usually is having a mix of different types of players at the table, which is usually the case.

if we have a table of 7 fish and 2 good players, ya it's a sea of fish and probably the most profitable approach is to sit and wait for good hands.

if we have a table of 7 regs who aren't LAG and maybe 2 fishy players, we probably have to play tight-table poker, like what you're investigating.

but for the most part i find it's a much more eclectic mix than that. there is a such a broad gamut of "loose" or "tight" or "fishy" or "LAG" players. and when you mix them all together at a 10-person table, all of a sudden you do have to play poker to make the most money. because you rarely find yourself in a hand with 3 pure fish, or 3 regs. it's a mix and you have to account for all of them.

developing reads that are as specific as possible for all the players at a mixed table like this and then trying to use them to our advantage is what keeps me interested at the table. and it's absolutely poker.

IME it comes down to solid play, and lot of which you are thinking about now. But what makes that tight assed table full of more or less capable players is waiting for or inducing discipline failures. They WILL give you their chips when they crack, it just takes longer or finer points to get them to crack.

At a typical 1/2 or 2/5 a "good" play will play solid poker most of their session. But sometimes they crack, they are card dead and tilt, they dont get paid off on a big hand and tilt, etc, etc. The difference between someone cracking at a 5/10 or 10/20 and one cracking at a 1/2 table is more a function of time than anything else. They recover faster too, so instead of a tilt/snap lasting hours, it done in a down or two and it takes them longer to snap.

You can generally count on a "good player" at 1/2 to snap at some point during a 6+ hour session. While a "good player" sitting a 5/10+ game may not snap during a given session, it may take a couple of sessions, or having a bad day to set them off, but sooner or later they will snap and spew.

So what do you do while you wait for them to snap... you play poker. You refine your skills, your reads, your ability to manipulate the other players and the situations, the flow of the game. Find each players "tilt button" and try to get it pushed without screwing up the rest of the game. Its the little things

your question managed to draw Percula out of his cave...

lol but also i'm not sure i agree that waiting for good players to tilt, or trying to make them tilt, is the only way to get their money. i mean, a very good player, ya, you don't expect to make much money off of them even if you are spectacular, because they're good. but a "good" player at 1/2 i feel can often be very exploitable in non tilt-related ways.

for example, there are a few regs in my poker room that are definitely winning players. they are what i would describe as "good" 1/2 live players. getting heads up with them i can often flip the LAG switch and exploit the fact that i have above average FE with these players because they are perceptive of player tendencies and so i know they have a read on me as tight b/c i play tight vs. the typical loose passive players that populate the rest of the field.

tendencies towards tilt, etc., are only one way to exploit good players. i think that, unless they're definitely better than hero, there are often a bunch of other ways too.

if we're playing at a table with more than a few good players that may be better than we are, and no megafish, then a table switch is obviously what we should be focused on

Humm, I thought the question was more aimed towards 5/10+ games. I agree at 1/2 and most 2/5 games it more a matter of tendencies and exploiting them. At the higher stakes its the same, plus snaps and cracks.

Ya been busy, got a few and found this gem