pretty great thread, would recommend anyone looking to improve to read it

#1 piece of advice in my opinion is to surround yourself with players that are better than you.

I've never been afraid to get in games with people that are far more experienced than I am, and I'm generally not afraid to approach players that are better than I am for tips, help, etc. This is what keeps my winrate and earnings somewhat low- about 18 months prior to my first 2/5 shot, I had a $200 BR and the highest cash game I had played was .05/.10. You can't be afraid to shot take, lose, figure out what you did wrong, and do it all over again until you're comfortable at that stake. Some might call it "aggressive" BRM, and some might call it "stupid" BRM, but if you're really in it for a passion for the game and for a yearn to improve, you won't stay at the same stakes for very long.

The super old men probably spend their social security checks and any retirement annuity checks. Probably have a stop loss of a certain amount everyday.

Other regs have some pretty decent jobs, and dropping a few hundred a week is just like the guy who spends a few hundred on recreational weed, or the bars, or whatever.

had to steal this, i remember this as the first poker book i ever read.

I have to agree, to become profitable, you don't have to be the best player at a given table, as long as you're getting involved with as many hands as you can with fish, you should become profitable.

My road to becoming profitable is still one that is being developed. I'm getting back into the forums. Watching DC videos, playing as much online as i can get my hands on. Heading to the casino and walking away when I feel that my game is declining. In "the poker mindset" they talk about how learning the game of poker is a constant cycle of study. There is no end to the amount of knowledge that can be gained from the game.
They say that if you find yourself plateauing, try and reignite your desire to learn the game. Start learning a different form of poker, PLO or 2-7. Just to keep yourself as sharp as possible. If you're a cash game grinder, start learning tournaments and vice versa. I'm still learning and asking questions, on top of trying to get as much volume that I can in.

I love these guys haha.

I really love this post. Its probably the realist post I ever read.

1. I'm built for this game.

2. I'm not rolled or have my life in order to crush this game. I can beat the game but can't beat life rake.

3. Without the ladder I'm no threat to anyone.

there are a couple things that you are missing.

First, playing non-optimally is not the same thing as playing at an expected loss. Depending upon the game, these super weaktight nits can make money playing llnl precisely because many of their loss passive opponents will pay them off in spite of the fact that they're shameless nut-peddlers.

Second, even in games where they have a negative expectation, it isn't very high. How much do you really think these guys stand to lose playing 4 hands an hour? Most of these guys view the cardroom as a place to come and hang out and get out of the house for the day. They could maybe grab lunch and go to a movie, but even when theyre in games that they can't beat, theyre probably spending less in expected loss by playing all day and getting their lunch comped than they would by doing something else.

Also, these guys are generally pretty good at getting out of games that suit them the worst. When the games get really aggro, or short handed (the type of games where they figure to lose the most, because theyre getting shut out even more so than usual) theyll leave the table like rats from a sinking ship.

Such a great thread!!! Deserves a BUMP!

It being in the "Best of LLSNL" sticky wasn't enough for you? You're only allowed 5 posts a year and you thought this was how you wanted to spend the first one of your third year at 2+2?

Ban for remainder of 2014 obviously.

Sorry, that came off snarkier than I'd meant. Just surprised by the bump under the circumstances.

Damn. My bad. Perhaps the reason for not posting is ass hole comments like that!

+1. 5 great guidelines..... Simple and true

Hahahah

Thanks to all the contributors to the thread!

I'd like to run a comparison with online poker. It seems to me that being better (or at least not worse) than the other regs of the table is way more crucial to beating online than live poker.

Online, even at the microstakes, there are now often 4 regs and 2 fishes per table. If I were beating an online 2-fish/4-reg PLO50 table for (mediocre) 10 bb/100 after rakeback but then started bleeding 5 bb/100 to each of the other regs, I'd be losing, even after rakeback.

At a 6-fish/4-reg live PLO500 table, it would cut my WR for sure, from, say, 20 bb/100 to 5 bb/100 (1.5 bb/hr), but wouldn't make it negative even with life expenses accounted for ($500/month = $4 per hour of play = 3 bb/100), and the game would still be playable due to a big BR.

The urge to be the best is what drives a lot of aspiring poker players and works for some. But it's natural to just want to make money, a fixed sum of money lifetime that 'is needed for retirement' (though even it, in fact, isn't needed for happiness).

[To go a bit OT, I was shocked to learn that insurance companies normally plan to have a finite expected lifetime, going bust sooner or later (as they pay dividends to shareholders every time when their profit exceeds a certain threshold), which is equivalent to a poker player cashing out all the lifetime winnings exceeding the threshold bankroll amount, as long as the player knows how big that maximum bankroll should be to allow him to play as many hours on average as he wants.]

As far as the money-earning objective, I tend to think that live poker is more tolerant to leaks than online one, and to agree rather with GG than with venice10 in this dispute.

Does anyone else think that, due to the increased leak tolerance, transitioning to live bumhunting can be the salvation of the career of a hopelessly breakeven (and 'overrolled') online bumhunter?

Keeping an annual $/per hour average ~$20-$25 for 1/2 300max [live] qualifies to me as a profitable player.

Well, that's not the first time I've read that $20-25/hr is doable (under some conditions, of course, such as sanity and self-development), but, to clarify, being profitable in my perception means having any bigger longterm winrate expectation than life expenses.

I.e. it's all relative. Earning $20 per hour of play is quite necessary to survive in the US with a few kids and a nagging wife, but not necessary in a 'developing' country as a determined single who doesn't want to be a 9-to-6 slave.

So I'm interested in getting to know what it takes to make any profit from the game in the really long run, not necessarily the same profit as most/best regs have.

1. Learn from mistakes but try not to allow what happened 2 weeks ago to influence your decsion right now. Same hole cards, different villains.

2. Listen to your instinct more. You know he is bluffing you but dont want to call off 250bbs with what you earlier thought was the best hand. His shove seems not right even if a backdoor straight could of been made. Go with your instinct to back up the odds.

3. Dont go to war against 1 villain who has castrated your chipstack. He is expecting war. Build up stack against others and get once you have built up a bit if you have a hand or a draw and it hits or is favourable.

I always think about this for both myself and others when they talk about wanting to play poker. Although I don't believe I am very good I have still been pretty profitable in the smallish sample size that I have played. I wasted a lot of time multitabling 10nl and never really got better. I think the best and cheapest way to be able to beat live low stakes would be to 4-6 table 10nl for a little bit until you get a feel for the fundamentals. After that just get equated to the live setting and beig profitable doesn't seem like it would be too much of a stretch.