Serious?

Yes, if you are playing with a 5 buyin roll then I think this is a good strategy.

Depends how good you are relative to your competition and how many hours you put in a month. If you are a huge crusher in soft games and put in lots of hours then I'd say it's pretty uncommon but still happens.

With the variance of omaha if I was running bad I would avoid it at all cost lol.

Complete opposite of most people ITT, may is my best month lifetime.

And june is only gonna get better. Bad news is I can see the games dieing a little more everyweek. The fish I was initially playing with are all gone, replaced by slightly better fish and the cycle continues until I become the fish.. Small city kind of sucks.

stated to perfection - cant simply give this a "plus 1"

There are 6 casinos within an hour of my house (3 in Detroit, 1 in Windsor, 1 in Toledo, 1 in Battle Creek), and a handful of charity rooms closer. I've been playing mostly in two local rooms with the same small player pool for the last year or so. The games used to be incredibly juicy, with lots of money getting thrown around by bad players. Then one of the other local rooms closed and the nitty/better players from that room (awful game there) moved over and strangled the game. Couple that with some of the regs getting better just through shear volume and I think it's time to change fishing holes.

Trick is to become the fish.

One of the worst things you can do is to appear as a constant winner. Good for ego, bad for game.

One of the best players around here appears to be quite splashy because he understand relative value better than most, and to most players, if you win most of your pots with less than premium hands, you are not a good player, just lucky.

And apparently if you spew few times, you are also not a good player.

My bad. I didn't read the op. Yeah I agree for his situation prob makes sense.

In Vegas I would misplay a hand in the first orbit of every 1/2 game to make them think I was horrible. Never failed.

What never failed?

Getting them to think you're a fish?

Or misplaying a hand at 1/2 within the first orbit?

yes

Yeah, I feel like I won't be able to play in my room much longer.. Maybe I'll make a few trips to vegas to see how the games are. There still are some moments tho. Hands of the night:
Citys whale UTG+1. A maniac who never folds and bluffs every hand with obvious sizing tells. Seriously the worst player I have ever seen.
1-2nl, UTG straddles 5, whale raises to 10, everybody folds to straddle who makes it 50. Utg shows me A6s. They're 110~ bbs effective.
Flop A Q T rainbow. UTG cbets 100.
Whale tanks and tanks and calls. Turn is an 8 bringing a flushdraw. UTG shoves for like 60 more. Whale obv calls, shows Ks7s, no spade on the board. River brick and there goes the whale's last buyin.

Not often you see someone 3betting A6s for value. Very nicely played I guess.

I know this is super generic, but how much can a good player make a 2/5 in a given year? How much can a great player win at 2/5 (within reason)?

I am aware this depends on a number of variables, but I play in a huge casino with a large player pool $500 cap and make about $35/hour playing (1.5 year sample playing ~25 hour weeks). What would you consider a "good" winrate for 2/5 and what would you consider a great winrate? I'm just looking to compare to where I'm at now and how much higher I can possibly expect to achieve.

Others would be far more equipped to answer this question than I, but here goes.

To start, I'd suggest going back a few pages and reading a lot, but the answer is it varies by person and location.

In general, a really good player could probably get close to 10 bb/hr in a market that offers 24/7 play of 2/5. We're talking best of the best. Now, anyone that good would also be smart to go somewhere where they could play even higher on a regular basis, because if you're good enough to beat 2/5 for $50 an hour, you're good enough to beat 5/10 for more than $50 an hour, especially when you table select and find good games.

With a sample of 1,500 to 2,000 hours, you have a good start towards a read on your skill level and true win rate. Do keep in mind that adding more hours in the week often means playing at times when your win rate may not be as high due to the lower quality of games at non-peak hours, plus you do need to consider the hours you'll invest away from the table to continue to improve as a player.

You also need to consider what your long-term plans are.

Good luck.

Second question. What do you guys think of players that strictly only travel and play tournaments for a living and never play cash? Can they actually make that work? (I am not at all interested in this method, I just know someone who does and I don't get it). It can't be sustainable right? Even if they binked a sizable one once right? Wouldn't it be wise for them to play cash too? Do you think any of them are even good poker players?

Not an expert but I would say that seems:

- Much higher volatility due to how tournies work versus cash
- Higher cost (cheaper to live in one place)

I find it difficult to believe that many people can make a decent, consistent living on the tourney circuit. You might have a good year or two but you're going to get crushed one year when you lose $15,000 straight of buy-ins on top of $5,000 of living expenses.

I could see this working if you had backers who paid a ton of markup, but otherwise it seems like a crazy idea. At a minimum, you'd have to play a ton of cash games everywhere on top of your tourney play, as that income is more consistent and the games are running all the time.

IMO, you'd be better off living and playing cash in a good market where a big tourney series or two comes through and then travelling a couple times of year to big events than playing the tourney circus.

In a recent issue of Card Player magazine, Bryan Devonshire mentioned in his article that he once went on a 15 month losing streak.

In other words, quit your bitchin' !

Made me lol. Thanks for that.

Just dug myself out of my second biggest downwsing @ 1/3 NL.

As a once-a-week rec player, these downswings sure do take some time to dig out of. Ha, good thing I didn't start like this out of the gate or I'm guessing I could have easily given up before even getting started.

Here's the current one where I just got my head above water:

16 sessions (about 3.5 months), 148:25 hours, winning $24. Whoop. Was stuck $2,309 (770 bbs).



Almost rivals my worst ever (from last year):

24 sessions (about 4 months), 193:50 hours, winning $735. Was stuck $2,866 (955 bbs).




G8.7bb/hrover2,282:30hrs,pokeriseasy?G

Ouch.

It's really hard to get your head around a 3-6 month downswing. At 30 hands/hour with 1-2 sessions a week it takes months to get even a small sample of your play. It can take a toll on your game when every week you lose money for several months. Really makes you question the moves you're making (not that that's really a bad thing).


I'm sitting at -$1528 over 264 hours so far in 2015. Although a *really* big part of that is punting -$1800 trying to play PLO in a crazy stupid game and running bad.

Good to see you out of the downswing GG . Back to regularly scheduled crushing

Time will tell!

The most troubling aspect is this downswing came just ~4 months after I dug out of my other one.

Gnicetobeoutofitthough...butforhowlong?DUNDUNDA!G

I went through the same downswing 3X in succession... that pretty much took all of 2014 . Good news is - once you run hot again there is no lingering effects... it lol feels like you'll never lose again.

Still running hot, sup?!

holy **** last night was a whirlwind. 7 hour session at 1/2. down $600 (in for $800) at the 5 hour mark before finishing up $350 after some well timed aggression, bluffs and adapting to the weird late night dynamics.

and this is why i can't play 2/5 yet because i almost never had the best hand last night and would not be able to pull the trigger with some of these bluffs (yet)

bankroll up to $13,000