You know this is all bad right? Unless for some magical reason once you get up more than $250 you start spewing chips everywhere. The reason its bad is because if your winning your probably in a good game and should stay. If your losing/breaking even and need to put in "overtime" your probably in a bad game. This strategy ensures that you spend most of your playing hours in bad games and leave early when your in good games.

not to mention being deepstacked w/fish is where the real $ is made

Yeah that's also part of it, but it still applies if everyone is still only 100bb deep. If he really wants to stick to a particular strategy it should be I feel I play well for 5 hours then play 5 hour sessions win or lose. Don't play longer to get even/meet a particular winrate. Only stay longer if you are playing well and there is a mega fish that is giving away money.

Flop K9 on k95 board bet turn 3 bet river Q bet. Guy has KQ down 70 first hand lol.

Sounds like a cheap escape to me... how did you only lose 70 with 4 bets going in?

limped pot?

Yeah limped pot. No raise haha.
Well my whale is here. Lawyer Phil.
I'm ready to win a grand.

I consider myself one of the best players in the room. The first time I experienced a swing of that size I struggled a little with accumulated tilt. I wasn't used to losing big sized sums of money and didn't handle it well.

But the second time I experienced a swing if that size, I believe I played well through the whole thing. I've gotten good and not checking results in pokerjournal, so I got out o it daily quickly.

Also provide your hourly. Sure I could probably play the most conservative style of poker and not experience a 10k downer, but my hourly would probably be about $25/hour.

And by the way your statement of not going on a 20 buy-in downswing is only temporary. Because if you continue to play, you will eventually hit one and my guess is that it will scare the blank out of you.

i think its more of an inexperience with board texture manipulation amongst other thangs

Edit oops wrong forum. Stupid phone.

obviously we all only "lose" 2k then tilt off like 4k

With the pace of live players, live dealers, and life, how can these winrates be anything but *interesting*. In my span of playing live poker, some of the regs I used to play have died. Some have gone to jail. Others have moved up in stakes. Some have gone broke. Gotten married. Had kids. Switched jobs. Quit poker. Started alcohol. etc.

I've been reading quite a few pages, and think this thread could be a quality reflection between fellow live players, if there was a little less vitriol. And since it's live, it should be more on the "how do I capture my best /next/ 500 hours" based on what you know and what he's experienced.

As a personal addition, my highest winrates have been in private games. It is a performance equity advantage for the disciplined pro to go where the alcohol is flowing, friends are out to get eachother, and you can "join in the fun". These games are rare and hard to find, but much better than anything you'll find in a casino.

The max I can buy in for is $500 in my 2/5 game.

I can get up to $500 quickly even if I buy in for $300.00. All I have to do is establish my tight image and then 4 bet the right ****ty lag all in for $300 and take down $100-$150 dead in the middle or get paid when I do have a good hand and raise/cbet.

Buying in for $300 doesn't hurt me that much.

After a couple hours of establishing a tight image and getting to a 100-200bb stack then I'll open my game if I feel comfortable. If I don't, I'll continue making $$$ off ****ty LAGS and fish. I stay away from most players I respect. I have no ego and I don't feel a need to prove I am the superior player at the table. I am happy folding to people I feel are better than me. There's enough $$$ to be made from the fish and ****ty LAGS.

ALSO, I DIDN'T SAY that I get up $250, then leave if I am 1-2 hours in. That would be a MANUFACTURED WIN...if I am up $250 after a hour, I want to be up $1,000 by 5 hours in....

Also, I don't think any game is "bad".. it's only "bad" if I can't figure out how to adjust to the table dynamics to make some money.

I've found a strategy that I am comfortable with and I am going to keep applying it.

I remember when I was a ****ty lag that bought in full all the time...lol...that sucked.

Stick around long enough, and you will see some of the damnedest things happen, both good and bad.

*) Roulette (a game I seldom play) at the Hilton: Buy in for $35, and bet $5.00. Betting on black when three reds hit. Change over, and hit 14 reds in a row. The last two or three are table max $1000 bets. That makes seventeen running reds total. (34925.5 : 1 against)

*) Pai Gow Poker at the Sahara: Buy in for $20, and play for the $5.00 minimum. Hit a run that escallates the betting to the $1000 table max. Hit that final win. The next day, the Sahara drops the table max to $500.

*) 15/30 Seven Stud at Caesar's Palace: Get dealt rolled up deuces twice in a row from two different decks (so inadequate shuffling doesn't explain this) and lose big pots both times. Once, deuces full to tens full, and once quad deuces to running queens on 6th and the river. $500 buy cut down to $9.00, and have $7.00 left after the ante, and get dealt split nines with an ace + two flush. Raise AI for $2.00 on top, and get one caller. Four cards don't improve the hand, but the nines are good. This was the beginning of a $900 turn around.

*) 1/3 Seven Stud at El Cortez: Start with $50 buy, and lose nearly every hand until down to last $1.50. Raise AI with kings. Cash out $257 profit. Another big turn-around.

*) 1/4 Seven Stud at the Tropicana: Seen from rail: player running extremely good. Hits four sets of quads within a half-hour. Shown trips, he shows a straight. Shown a straight, he shows a flush. Shown a flush, he has a full. Shown a full, he has quads. He cashes with six racks of whites + change. Never seen a case of rungood like that before or since.

Anything can happen, and if you hang around long enough, you'll see it happen. I've had extended periods of rungood where it seemed I could do no wrong, and periods of runbad where I could do no right. This past year and a half have been pretty lousy. Ridiculous beats like getting it all-in with paired aces, get called by pocket kings and have the board run out with running diamonds and his king high flush wins. Top set over second set, and he nails his one out on the turn during a massive donk-a-thon that should have been worth over a grand, but that one cost me $21. (And I didn't hit my caser to take down a bad beat jackpot that was over $100,000 at the time.) Two $600 losses during insane donk-a-thons where thousands exchanged hands earlier this year.

If the donks "think" it's worth it to call your AI to draw to two outs, and they get there, nothing you can do about it. I've had players beat me with deuces full made on the river because the player always takes pocket deuces to the river no matter how much he needs to call. Or your opponent rivers tens full because he called a raise UTG with a T because he always calls and takes any hand with a T to the river because it's his "lucky" card. And, yes, I know both these mega-fish, and they are telling the truth about this. Of course, they always remember the big wins, and forget all about how much this insanity costs them over the long haul.

That donk who pulled over $600 out of a game where you can bet no more than $4.00 at a time? You can bet the mortgage money that he still recalls that massive win to this day even though it happened 25 years ago like it was yesterday. How about all the losses that come to much more since then? He's forgotten all about that. The fish will reemeber that "big night" when they defied the odds and spat in the faces of the Gods of Probability and will come back and back, chasing that dream, for years to come. That's why they are fish.

Did you even see the part of my post where I said "If you play like sabr you can go on downswings of 4k.

You play a very aggressive style. I have a very get memory I know how you run. So I would expect 8 buyins could be lost in a day with your style. Then you will get it all back lol.

Oh right the Sabr clause.

LOL, now we have two:

1. If you disagree with SABR in a strat discussion, you have just found a leak in your game.

2. If you play like SABR, you can lose 8 buy ins; otherwise, it's unpossible.

FWIW, I subscribe to only one of these.

I was in Vegas this summer when a roulette wheel hit 19 seven times in a row. 1.2 Billion to 1 against. No one could remember this ever happening in Vegas and there are pictures taken of the board all over the Internet.

Point being crazy improbable crap happens.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...203237524.html

1)
Come on mpethy, in ilcds original post, I had leeway to spew 8bis too.

2) When ilcd gives clearance for my downswings, I should prob retthink my game.

Its about how aggressive you play without nutty hands. If you play aggressive with the medium part of your range you are going to have big swings. It also include huge upswings as well.

If you are a tight player your swings won't be huge. This goes for up and down. So its all based on style of play.

Usually the good players that lose big have bigger wins to counter it. Those type of players have the psychological and emotional state of mind to play long hours and very deep stacks.

I don't have that mind frame yet, but I want it. I'm just vulnerable money at the moment so I take the low variance approach to lowstakes.

They say its impossible for a few reasons.
1). They have a bit of a warped sense of reality. They are accustomed to living in LA and enjoy nice things and for that reason they need more money than average.
2.) The rake structure in LA. They said it was possible to beat the game at the $5 blind levels, but you can only beat it for a moderate amount.
3.) Cost of living/inflation goes up but winnings don't. Say you play 2/5 and win a decent amount that's good, but what happens in a few years as cost of living goes up as well as inflation.

To sum it up yes you can beat the game at the 2/5 level, but it's not a great living. You need to have higher aspirations than that.
When you are playing 2/5 you have no health insurance, no 401k, no paid vacation, no Christmas bonus or annual raise. You are stuck struggling to make the same amount as the games get tougher.
Basically if you have aspirations of playing 2/5 for a living for a long period of time my advice is to marry a nurse or a doctor (like limon).

Maybe they're simply accustomed to a certain level of living, and to them, $5k a month is not living.

Medium household income in US is ~$45,000 in 2004, which is a tad less than $4,000 a month for an entire household. If one person making that much money isn't considered making a living, then I guess it isn't.

They're also probably saying that if you're playing in LA, settling at 2/5 or 3/5 is limiting yourself.

SeaUlater, the only difference with that is the guaranteed income/benefits/raises that go along with that job. In poker there are no guarantees as well as the games getting tougher.

Yeah I remember the Limon and Bart podcast. What they where saying was; if you are playing low stakes for a living its hard to save and live life.

Which is true, I been a 4 year grinder in LA. I make money but my bankroll never grows. I make and spend. Something always happens. I save then boom run bad or something with life.

At the 5/10 levels you can make enough to live 3k+ and save what ever you make after cost of living. I would say 6-10k a month is pretty standard for a live 5/10 grinder.

At the 5$ blind level, a 5k month is great. I try to reach for 3 or 4k a month. I spend about 3k a month. So even though I'm a winning player. My earnings rarely exceed my living expenses for the month. Unless I have a good one. A good month is rare for me. But on average I say one good month every 2 months.

That podcast still haunts me to this day. Since I'm stuck in lowstakes.