Rick's Cafe? Say hello. He can hook you up.

Sounds bittersweet. Play nitty and give it a shot if the action is good. Imagine the rake when u scoop a 200bb pot and they pull $180 out. Urrrgghh

Hehe, well I'm applying for a job there, so the answer may be yes in a couple of months...

Yeah, it hurts of course... I know this topic has been discussed a million times, but does anyone have a link to some serious analysis about live rake, including uncapped rake?

I've heard a Limon podcast where if I recall correctly he mentions private games he played in with even more outrageous rake, that were still profitable, so I guess that with the players my friend described to me, the game should still be interesting. Maybe a regular player can cut a deal with the casino to get some form of rakeback, not sure.

3 percent uncapped... hm, being on the other side of the table is pretty cool

Yeah, most games I play have people who buy in for around 50bb on average, with quite a few 20-30bb ranges too. Less than 1/4 actually buy in full.

The 2/5 table was just dreadful today so I played 1/2 and did well. Seems I have done well at 1/2 so decided to check my logs. 80/hr over 18 hours since September, with only one non-trivial loss in 20 "sessions" (most are <1hr as I wait for a 2/5 seat). obviously not sustainable but it made me wonder just how much of an effect game selection has. There is no game selection in the 2/5 here (usually one table, if there's two it's a must move) whereas there are usually at least 4 1/2 tables. I rarely see the mythical drunken whale donating money but I pick the table with the most money on it and that's almost always the right choice.

Made me curious what my true 1/2 hourly looks like too (I do have past data but I don't think it's relevant as I'm improving) I wonder if I should be choosing to play 1/2 more than I do, I kind of assumed it was just a rake trap but 20/hr is probably doable. Rake is 10% to $5+1 here fwiw.

I always see short-stackers and nits at 1/2

or limp/callers who fold everything post-flop

It just sucks and its very boring. 1/3 is so much better but tonight the 1/3 was bad, I stuck with it, though, even though I probably should have looked for some 1/2 games

It's a rake trap. Where do you usually play?

/derail

I just hit the bottom of a 10 BI downswing in about 70 hours of live play. While I am rolled for the game and not concerned about the money in the slightest, basically this has made me a breakeven player over the last 250 hours. I and my other poker friends (including a live 5/10 pro) believe I'm a winning player (because of a winning past 700 hour sample and general HH reviews.) Of that winning 700 hour sample, 500 was at 1/2 and 180 was at 2/5, and now because of recent events, I'm exactly a breakeven player at 2/5.

Are 10 BI downswings common for a winning player? Does a downswing hourly of -$71 (when a winning rate is ~$25) mean anything special?

I'm basically trying to figure out if 2/5 is too tough for me for some reason or if I'm just experiencing a side of variance I haven't before. Just getting kinda sick of this losing thing (or breakeven thing) and want it to stop even if it means I have to move down. Again, money isn't an issue, I'm rolled for the game and life roll is entirely separate and secure.

Any tips or sympathy? Feel free to point me to BBV if this isn't specific enough. Jus

a=So youre down about 5K in 70 hours. Typical SD is probably around 600/hr or about 5K/70 hours

If you figure to have an expectation of 40/hour, your expectation for the 70 hour period would be 2800. Your results are about 1.5 standard deviations below the mean, which means that its around 7% for any given 70 hour sample to be as bad or worse as them. SO not especially common, but nothing really special. Kind of thing that hapens every coupla years.

You would have had to have lost about another 5K to really have something meaningful to talk about, or to deserve sympathy.

Sounds about right, it's not the worst beat ever, but I'm really trying to reconcile losing this much for this long to the concept of me being a decent reg at the games I play. I'm still fairly new to poker <1k hours live, and don't have a good feel for what the swings are.

Any other viewpoints on this are welcome!

Not to sound like a dick, but what do you think? You're playing the game. Does it seem tougher? Do you look around at the table and think - he's better than me ... he's better than me ... he's a fish?

No matter what the numbers say if you aren't comfortable at the $2/$5 table - and I'm not saying financially - but from a talent perspective, then, yes, move down. If you're questioning it, there is probably some validity to it. It's in your mind. And that will have an impact on your play.

I lost $2800 in 76 hours playing $1/2 once. In a single month. That was part of a $5k downswing over about 230 hours. Mostly $1/2 or $1/3 (little bit of PLO). So a 10BI downswing over 70 hours doesn't sound that unreasonable. It does suck though.


I've got about 3000 hours in my log, as a winning player overall, both before and after the big downswing. It's pretty easy to find 40 hour stretches with 5BI drops, so putting two of those back to back should happen often enough. 40 hours is about 1200 hands. Online guys will tell you how meaningless those samples can be.


These kinds of spots are really good to motivate some reflection on the way you're playing. Keep track of the hands and the sessions, look for leaks. Sometimes a downswing just putting 300bb into the pot on the flop against a spaz when you're holding 66 against his A9 on a 996 board and losing the 80/20. Other times it's a leak like calling turns with draws that you really don't have the odds for and bleeding chips.

My advice is to start a poker journal. Record key hands and then review them. Trust me, players always think they can "remember" key hands, but you can't.

I take notes on a folded sheet of paper. I have a poker short hand that I developed for myself and I can record an entire hand and important details all in 2 lines in around 40 - 60 characters. Meaning that if this paragraph were my poker short hand, i'd have recorded about 6 complete hands.

I would record all my key hands (wins and losses) and I usually would write them down at the table in my lap in between hands. Only takes a minute...

Then later at home you analyze them and you will start to see patterns. Trust me.

Without properly analyzing your sessions, you really can't determine what you are doing wrong. And you can't properly analyze a session unless you record the session in question.

^^^

This +1000

Analogy would be learning all the opens in chess while never studying further to learn the end game. I see this all the time with friends and other people I play with. They get to a level of play, make some $$$, get complacent and watch inferior players that continue to work pass them by. Hand history review is the number 1 tool to continue to improve your game.

Believe it or not, I actually write down entire sessions worth of hands (Anything where I VP$IP) for hand review.

That is really the only thing keeping me from stepping down because I don't see too many leaks (or at least leaks that cost me 70 bucks an hour average). I just never see too much talk in LLSNL for the size of the expected swings and really just wanted to poll the hivemind to see if these are somewhat standard.

FWIW, SABR had 3 months of downswing.

Ten hours sessions aren't common but they will happen

Lol 10 bi down swings

I was going to cite 11t that 10BI DW is standard, but he sucks.

I was in the bay area and able to snap a quick pic of dgi the other day.

fyp

Having played with roughly the same player pool as you before, I went through this too once. You probably should be playing 1/2 more but not exclusively. Since 2/5 plays bigger the question is, "is this 1/2 game twice as good as the 2/5 game?" Sometimes it is!

I had to go through a massive downswing before I figured this out, so you're ahead of the game if that's not what's causing you to think about this.

i was curb stomped at 2/5 last night... a little sobering.

table selection and pure ass luck is pretty damn important.

Since most of the live players (including myself) that post in here play 1-2 thru 5-10, I'll post my updated results at said stakes. I have a droid and these stats are pulled off poker manager

This year I have 1443 hours logged. I have gone thru two extended break even streaks. One streak was 300 hours. One was 450 Hours. Half my time playing is break even? =)

The games I play in have an average stack of 800-1500 most of the time. Basically 2-5. The rake I pay is absurdly high and embarrassing. I calculated that I pay about 25-30 an hour in rake, about double was a 2/5 at a casino is (I think most are time raked at like 6 bucks every 30 minutes) I would guess that 20% of the time is spent playing PLO high only while the remaining 80% is NLH.

I win 64% of my sessions. My observed hourly is $33.28. My sample is relatively large and my hourly rarely ventures outside the 30-40 dollar an hour range. (except during big drawdowns) My biggest drawdown was like 15kish or so. My next biggest was like 13kish.

My sample consists of poker in casinos, cruise ships, dog tracks, and underground local games. The Cruise ships have by far the worst players....like ever...seriously, go on a cruise...Carnival. My last cruise I made 7k in 55 hours in a 1-2 game with a 200 dollar capped buy in. The casinos are hit or miss and very table dependent...some tables great, some suck....recognize it quickly and don't waste time; ask for table change if bad table.

Home games play shallower and are a bit more "gambly" than casino games. The players are normally all bad, but they have to be because the rake will murder you. Average session length is about 6 hours.

Can we see one of these shorthands? We'll try to decipher at first, then you could explain?

Sometimes I'd like to write down a hand at the table, but dont want anyone knowing Im doing that.