Hey guys, sorry if this is in the wrong forum, please move it if it is.

I've been grinding Bellagio $5/$10 for the last 3 years. For the last 12 months I've put in 1648 hours and I've averaged only $14/hour. The previous two are above $50. So my question is have you noticed anything about the games getting worse? I've noticed a lot of reg fish moved down to $2/$5 or disappeared altogether. The games are rarely good anymore. The recreational players who do play are pretty tight and generally know what they're doing.

Generally, I'm seen as a good player by peers. But I don't know, maybe I suck at poker I'm wondering have you guys noticed anything similar or I'm just making up excuses for my pathetic performance?

Probably just variance. I doubt games got tougher in last year. But if that's all your beating it for you have major leaks in your game.

I went to Vegas and played that 5/10 game for a week straight, because it was the only one that consistently ran and I liked the $1500 cap.

It seemed like a beatable game but not one you're ever going to get a large winrate with aside from trying very hard to be exploitative.

Everybody is super ABC standard TAG, I noticed very few spots, and like you said, the recs were mostly just tight. You might be better off playing a deep 2/5 game that has more action and less regs.

Games have been above avg IMO

Games are pretty hit-or-miss these days. Only put in 20 sessions so far this year, but rarely thought the game was out-and-out terrible or unbeatable. I've also quit a few times due to game toughness or bad stack positioning or tilt. Maybe a quarter of those sessions there was someone really tradging it up for heaps "good old days" style and reloading.

OP, 1648 hours in 12 months strikes me as a lot. You're prob not playing 4 hours a day every day, so during long-ass sessions maybe you're autopiloting, or not paying a enough attention, or steaming, or [insert any number of leaks here]. Prob running bad too.

That should actually be a pretty standard amount of hours, but I see your point if you're putting in full-time hours you have to make sure you're always trying to play your A game

Haven't played there since May or June but it's amazing how many of their regs

1)will sit in a **** game all night. and not in a **** must move game or waiting to transfer to a good game but when there's 4 games running that are all ****.go back 10 hours later after a great game at the aria and 27 of the 36 players are still there but now it's 3 tables running instead of 4.

2)will leave a great game. bc they have so much to do at 4 am on a tuesday.

3)i never ever saw one time in any other casino (there must be about 20 of these amongst the bell 5/10 regs.)
I mean I don't even live in Vegas and even I could find my way over to the aria wynn or venitian- or gasp even a deep stacks 2/5 nl game at those places.

Like it's a badge of honor to be a reg in that piece of crap poker room.I bet some of them even mention that as a pickup line.

One i even ran into at chipolte- but nope never another poker room wtf.

I mean how is it possible I've played probably 500 hours in that hell hole in 5/10 nl and probably another 1000 hours in other Vegas rooms and this is the case.

4)some are very nice but a decent number are either completely anti-social or dicks. and then they wonder where the fish went. some also need to take a shower once in a while and stop discussing strategy at the ****ing table.

5) NEVER adjust their game at all. I mean i'm no poker superstar but why the hell would they play the exact same strategy no matter who else is at the table (at least half of them do this)

Oops, I realized I wasn't clear. It sounded like my winrate for the last two months is over $50/hr. What I meant to say is that it's over $50/hr for both of the previous two years. And it's only $14/hr for the last 12 months.

you're looking at only 50K hands or so, it's probably not even that big of an outlier to run $30-35/hr under ev for a year

I think you're assumption has some validity to it, but I'm only speaking from observation. I'm a rec player and used to play mostly 5-10 during my trips to LV. But in the last couple years, the games have been much less fun, full of regs/non-action players, so I gladly hopped down to 2-5 and found plenty of action and fun.

And I hear the same thing from my rec player friends. We'll hit Aria or Bellagio, take a look at the 5-10 table and just shake our heads hell no. Or we'll give it a shot, but always end up moving back to 2-5.

And my hourly at 2-5 has been much MUCH better than 5-10 over the last couple years, though previously, 5-10 was juicier for me.

Along this line, I also wonder why so many "pros" sit in bad 5-10 games for hours when there are (what appear to be) more profitable 2-5 games running all around. Is it an ego thing, does it really make more $$ sense to sit and wait for a rec fish player like me to show up?

Anyways, I've been wondering about OP's topic myself for a long time. Anecdotally he seems to be correct.

And I should have mentioned this... Since I travel frequently and play at casinos all over, I'll run into LV 5-10 regs who are playing 2-5 in other towns, and they'll tell me that they are in those games because of the higher fish concentration and action. And it's definitely true. LV games are much tougher for me, and require more thinking and strategy.

From a market research standpoint, this could indicate that your "customers" have more options and are taking their business elsewhere, meaning that you're playing more against your competition than before. Or maybe like a worsening real estate market, where there are plenty of sellers but you're simply in a rough market with fewer buyers than before. Idk, just a thought.

100% ego.and some people think poker is like having an edge at blackjack in that your hourly expectation is the same every hour. so they think if they make 50 bucks an hour on average sitting in the game for 8 hours will make them 400 on average regardless of how bad the game is.plus like i said they think being a bellagio reg is a badge of honor.

Not to mention how much variance there is in live poker. 2 so so regs may both have an expectation of 40 a year but one runs hot and makes 80k while the other breaks even. the guy who broke even likely drops down and works on his game. the guy who ran hot continues to sit in ****ty games with his overinflated ego.

And for the op- I doubt even half of those 1600 hours were in good games worth playing.

OP - $200/hr is still sustainable long term in the 100bb 5 and 10 no limit holdem games even in all pro line ups. Looks like you just hit a patch of variance. Go get em tiger!

Funny, my solution when the game gets too tight and nitty is to move up in stakes not down. It's because nitty games play smaller and it means the blinds aren't forcing enough action. So you just need a mandatory straddle or higher blinds. Bellagio 10/20 is a great example, it's usually too nitty and needs bigger blinds to force people to do something. At 10/20/40 or 25/50 it's a little more expensive to be a nit. 50/100 is even better. At 2/5 the blinds might as well be 0/0.

I've been grinding the B 5/10 for 6 months or so now and yeah the games are a bit tough some days. I don't have the sample size to really know what a good winrate is but the regs still make a ton of mistakes and fold way too much. Just get better imo, thats the solution to most every problem in poker.

Still beating it for 70-80/hr but I probably just run good so idk. I would take everything I say with a grain of salt since I have no idea what my real winrate is cuz lolsamplesize

Interesting perspective.

right but for someone rolled for 5/10 jumping into 10/20/40 is probably too big and they will play too tight.
they can easily find good 2/5 games that often have a straddle and outside of the bellagio the 2/5 games play deep in vegas

Poker pros are the only small business owners I can think of who actually discourage repeat business. They know their same day revenues will be ~ same whether they provide good customer service/a quality product (in terms of "customer experience") or not, but they either don't care or don't realize that all the little self-serving/self-absorbed things they do at the table slowly destroy their future revenues/the entire economy (at least for the stakes being played in that area)...

Dressing like ****, being groomed like ****, looking or acting in an intimidating or unfriendly way (backpack, earphones, sitting down with a huge chip stack, etc), being anti-social, talking strat- making the skill gap between them and the recs crystal clear, regular seat changing, table changing, hitting n running, quitting the moment the whale quits, calling string raises, declining straddles or flips or even cocktails (this is fine obv if you can't drink and play, but if you can and it won't effect your life except maybe cost you a few bucks of ev/hour and the fish wants to drink, fu if you decline imo), etc, etc, etc are all a part of the race to the bottom that started with the poker boom, but really only became a problem once the boom was over/the economy went to ****/a huge % of the player pool started looking at poker as actual income (supplemental or sole).

And so in a lot of places these days the stakes at which you could actually make a good living before, you just can't anymore/we are getting very close to the finish line. All you have left is a bunch of pros/aspiring pros, and despite many of them being lol nits and making a lot of technical errors or occasionally coming in wasted or whatever, pretty much any game where all 9 players are trying to pay bills with their results is a bad one...

GJ guys, you managed to ruin Bellagio 5-10 it sounds like, always one of the softest, easy money when you are on a downswing or rebuilding or whatever games on the planet!

i havent played in vegas in years but it sounds like OP is fishy if they are only grinding 5/10 bellagio. higher hourlies could be had in lower games on certain days, and multiple casinos are spreading games that $50/hr is attainable.

Ahhh bankroll management. Something I have never done and would quit poker if I had to adhere to.

Oh come on the bellagio 5/t isn't ruined it's still small stakes live poker and it's still soft as ****. Just a little nittier is all. Everyday commerce 10/20 looks softer and softer

live poker is still a joke unless your playing high stakes.

Your trolling has gotten less personal, so good job there...

But if you think 5-10 is "small stakes", or that games haven't been on a steady decline for a while, or that the vast majority of pros aren't way more a part of the problem than the solution, you are delusional.

You don't seem delusional irl. So why are you detracting from my rant (which is sincere as hell and I think very, very valid) with more troll spew?

Serious question: Do you play poker for a living?

My read is that only someone who gets money from somewhere else- a settlement or a trust fund or something, would constantly troll someone who does a ton to make games more profitable.

This is a great post.
This site has a lot of people on it who are very good at fundamental poker and have little to no common sense.
I've had people on this site tell me fish are gonna play poker no matter what because it's a beatable game or some such nonsense.As though people with money to burn grow on trees and will play poker no matter how boring it is or how bad you treat them.

I'm at kind of a weird age from an online poker standpoint.five years older than a lot of the online kids who tranistioned to live but younger than most of the fish w mkney to burn in higher games.When I started out online people didn't play many tables and there was actually chat going on at most tables.Online poker eventually went from.big edges at a small amount of tables to small edges at mass volume so consequently the younger kids only think about poker in a purely robotic fashion and don't think about anything else.

For **** sake last time I was at the bellagio for a few hours I played with a reg who looked like he hadn't bathed in a month,3 regs discussing strategy including some break even trash giving his dissertation on why Queen ten off is a bad hand,the only fish for berated twice,three or four people on tablets ,half the table wearing headphones.for **** sake I've had more fun at a funeral.i guess none of that is as bad as the time some short stacking nit with less than 1k called the floor bc Jamie Gold bought in for 5k in a game with a 3k max when he was beyond buried.

I've said it 50 times on here but if fish don't have fun they stop playing.and to top it off you also get more action if you're more fun to be around and can even get invited to great rake free home games.

But of course many on here think the only thing that matters in the world is whether or not someone could beat 100 nl on stars for x poker tracker bb/hand.

Vegas regs are the worst when it comes to talking poker strategy at the table

IME its usually the fish who think they're good that talk serious strat at the table. Sometimes when a fish won't stop bothering me about a hand I will give them very basic or intentionally but not obviously bad advice. I can't remember the last time another pro asked me a serious strat question at the table.