Not bip but 50/50 imo.

Hmm... we just need to swap action in those months. I crush summer/fall and get destroyed in Feb for some reason

Feb is the equivalent of August down under. It must be a late Winter thing

Obvious answer is to become a touring pro and follow the sun

I'm a good player, but I don't consider myself a great player. I know I have leaks to plug. I'm improving and getting better all the time - thanks in large part to this forum - but I just don't know how much to read into these results. I know the sample size is small.

A local cardroom moved back in June of last year. I played at the old location and have the following stats:

Hours: 239 (from March 2012 to June 2014)
Total profit: $6,179
Winrate: $25/hr

When I first started tracking my results there, I was not as good of a player as I am now. The games also tended to be shallower - 1/2 only - with a max buy-in of $100. It got bumped up to $200 at some point midway through the time range above.

After they moved to a new location they started spreading 1/3 ($500 max buy) regularly and 2/5 ($1000 max buy) infrequently. I only play 1/2 if I'm waiting for a 1/3 seat to open up. I also played one 2-3 hour session of 1/2 PLO in which I booked a $1000+ win.

Since June 2014 to present:

Hours: 108
Total profit: $4,119
Winrate: $38/hour
* also the rake at this location is $5 + $2.

I'm not sure I can sustain that winrate, even though the player pool is terrible and I can only think of 2-3 players that I think are at least as good as I am in the whole casino.

From the more experienced players with 1000+ hours of live results, what kind of variance can I expect? I wouldn't be surprised to settle around $30/hr given enough hands, but I'm just guessing.

Apparently my post was deleted when your post was moved to this thread but essentially what I said is that 100 hrs means nothing. $4k means nothing. All that matters is that you are one of the best players as you believe you are. If $1k is from PLO, you could go on a 5 hr heater at 2/5 for the other $3k. It happens.

You're off to a good start. In a 1-3 game with $500 buyin, I'd expect good players to be winning $25-$30/hr and excellent players (few and far between) to be between $30-$40/hr. Excellent players at 1-3 are unicorns. You may see one once or twice a year but typically they will move up or move onto something more profitable fairly quickly.

Expect the downswing and don't let it mess with your head. Everyone runs bad at some point in even the best games. Look for recent posts by gobbledygeek and see how his recent downswing affected his results; he's still managed a great winrate in spite of it since he'd be the first to tell you he ran hot for the year prior to it and he was probably expecting his results to normalize at some point.

Variance is such a bitch, one of the fishy regulars has been on a massive heater where I play and was up to over 2k on a 1-2 last time I saw him and up around 1k a bunch of time before that.

You could probably put 100 of his hours and make him appear like a winner... Yet he's a huge loser. Oh variance.

Am myself on a massive heater, probably hit around 10 sets saturday lol.

My original response to his question was lost, but I'll retype it...

Basically, what NeverLoses said (i.e. 100 hours ain't nothing). I'm sitting at $26.92/hr over 2154.5 hours at 1/3 NL, but my last ~110 hours I've crushed it for a mere $2.78/hr. And if I took out my single session from last week (where I booked my 2nd worse loss of all time), that winrate over the last 100 hours would increase 4.3x as much, plus add 50+ cents to my overall winrate. Even just a single bad (or good) session can vastly change a shortterm winrate, and for us lowly total hour rec players, the shortterm can actually drag on for a really long time.

Gconcentrateonplayingwell,imoG

Thank you for the reality check guys. I'm going to hate life when the normalization hits.

What is a good hourly rate for 1/2 if there is no rake?

Positive.

(more important than the rake is the buyin structure, how much the other players lose, how many tables run, whether there are other options nearby or if it's the only poker room for 100 miles)

There are a lot of differences between games of similar stakes, so there isn't really a universal good number to aim for. If you're really curious, find out what another player in the same game is winning (if he tells the truth.) Or look at your winrate and ask yourself if you could be playing even better (well, maybe not, it's hard to do this objectively)

That depends. How many pots an hour do you win? No rake will have a much bigger effect on someone who plays 40% of their hands vs. someone who plays 10% of their hands.

If we assume a standard TAG who wins 3 pots an hour and pays ~$12/hr in rake, then you're looking at a 6 bb/hr boost. Figure a 'good' hourly rate for a 1/2 game at 8 bb/hr and it's going to be a significant increase.

You know, the chance you run extremely bad next week is the same even if you ran extremely good or extremely bad this week.

You're crushing, aslong as you learn along the way you'll be fine. My game are very soft so I like to think I just destroy souls but in the back of my mind I know I'm running very good and damn, still feels good man.

It does feel good. I took two bad beats last night and still booked a $227 win in 2 hours.

The Seminole Hard Rock in Tampa seems to have five tables of 2/5 NL running pretty regularly throughout the week. Max buyin is 1K.

I read that 20 BI's is recommended, so I should have 20K socked aside just for this game if I want to play for a living (it seems many other locations cap the buyin at $500 so people usually go with a 10K roll)?

Well you can choose to buy in for $500 if you want. However, playing for a living, I'd definitely want at least 40 BIs plus some 6-12 months of expenses. The stress you will have with only 20 BIs will crush you imo.

Also make sure you have a good winrate over a large sample before taking the leap. Good luck.

+1

Personally I wouldn't make the leap without at least 20k and a large sample size of you beating 1/2 at a good clip.

One thing you should consider to is if you can sustain a living and continue to grow a roll at 1/2.

Bottom line it depends on how good a player you are. Do you have a lot of past results? How many hrs have you played in the past and what was your biggest downswing?

If you're new to 2/5 buy in for 500 not 1k

Had my first grand day at 1/2 NL in a very very long time last night. The key hand was a $1,500 pot with A 3 on a final board of A J 3 4 J. When the river hit, I thought I was dead but my opponent had shoved the turn with K Q and managed to push out the other player who folded a bigger Ace. Whew!

My games have a $500 cap and some of the, uh, most casual players around. I'd put the ceiling in these games for an expert player at $40/hr and a solid player should be earning $20-$25/hr. Deeper stacks mean more chances for players to make bigger mistakes later in hands where they're not used to having lots of money behind.

If you don't already play deeper against poor players at these levels, I highly recommend getting more comfortable doing so. You're missing out on some very profitable situations and if you hope to move up, you'll soon find yourself in games where you'll have to know how to play deep. Best to learn those skills at the small levels where mistakes aren't so costly.

Another benefit of deep stacked play: The rake goes from being significant to a minor annoyance. You pay $0 in rake for any money that goes in after the first $100, why would you not want to do that as much as possible?

That's all, carry on.

on a sick heater right now. up 16 buyins at 200max over 40 hours. 8 sessions at 5 hours a piece. 8 winning sessions in a row also. Just like stated above I should not put too much stock into this correct?

Important thing being that I am playing solid, feeling confident and getting my money in good against droolers.

Congrats on your heater.

Your probably a winner to have this sort of swing but its hard to really say. 40 hours is like nothing.

Hey minvalue, GTFO out of my part of the forum.

I believe you meant to direct this at those CoC Poker Degen fellows, I will forgive the slight

solid

yeah 1/2 500 cap sounds pretty juicy. 1/2 here is 100-300 and that can be plenty profitable. When picking a table I first go for the one with the most money on it. It's almost always the best.