Get back on track folks. Not the sports thread.

Say not a sports thread and then tells us to get on the track. smh

So what is the benchmark of good players these days, in your opinion?

breakeven or small loser, IMO.

depends on many, many things. Buyin structure, player pool, hours played etc.

I play in Vegas in 200bb games mostly, so in that setting (Vegas is notoriously more difficult than every other locale imo) I think anyone making 5bb/hr is a decent enough player.

This will probably be laughed at as a benchmark cause everyone is the best at everything on the internet, but this is a realistic benchmark in my opinion.

My real answer would be the good is so subjective and putting a concrete number out there serves very little purpose, but I know no one wants to hear that , so I'll go with 5.

Some things transfer over. I find it really hard to believe a grinder can make 30bb/100 over the course of their career if they don't even have the technical ability to win at something as low as 25nl.

The skill sets needed to beat live or online are vastly different.

Survivor vs Chess

I've been reading this thread for a few days... I've seen this statement made, the statement its in response to, and then the follow up response a statistically significant number of times, and therefore know that the rate at which it appears is sustainable.

so you need forensics?

I'm not talking about being able to beat live. I'm talking about a grinder being able to crush it for 10bb/hr long term.

Sorry but you don't cruise along at 10bb/hr forever by just flopping sets and never tilting. It comes from having a sound poker theory base.

And the live crushers that just silently disappear and are never heard from again don't have the poker theory. Not even enough be beat 25nl.

Same goes from many guys who continually ask questions / post threads in what would be very abc straight forward if they took the time understand theory.

but the people who can beat 25nl+ have a big edge over guys IF they don't have huge live leaks which many online players obviously do

Has money in three years

No amount of crushing the 25nl game (which on Bovada isn't even much tougher than 1/2 live btw) is going to prepare an online player for what it's like when he raises 10 bb and gets called in 4 spots.

I don't think anybody is suggesting a player who is unable to beat micros online could step in and make 10bb/hr in live games.

A lot of things do transfer over, yes. (I was an online guy who worked my way up from .10/.25 FR [~2bb/100 wr] to become a 6max 2/4 reg [3bb/100 wr], if that adds to my credibility). There are a lot of us on llsnl that beat both, I'm probably the worst player of the group (and definitely think my game is several degrees worse now than it was pre BF, playing llsnl has made me dumb).

The online guys that get in trouble live are the ones who only know how to play the standard online playbook. The playbook doesn't transfer over to llsnl.

The other things that don't transfer over are the social environment, the speed of play, physical tells, lack of software aid, etc.

maybe, but crushing 25nl and playing live poker for 100ish hours will

Confirmed. I played 100nl 6max bovada and started playing 1/2 live. Took me about 30 hours to adapt. I am now crushing 2/5 live and am playing 5nl 6max online at bovada.

Jeez just hopped on Bovada after 6 months of live. Hahaha that place is like a machine. Can you get stats on anyone?? I always thought that was kinda cheap, i thought i read you could turn privacy on or something to hide that info.

I'm about to unsubscribe from this thread because it's bad for the mental game and very rarely contributes anything of substance. If you follow what's being said here, basically you never will know if you're a winner, regardless of your win-rate or hours played live.

How does it help anyone who puts thousands of hours into the game with 5-15bb/hr win rates to tell themselves they could just as well be fish?

There's the occasional strategy post in here, which is nice, last one I read was Bip's post about a table line up, and how sharks go from targeting whales to mediocre weak passives to tag-fish, but there's hundreds of negative posts for every positive one that basically says,

"No, you could just be on a heater".... which translates to, "You just suck".

Imagine if you put a sticky note on your bathroom mirror, and everyday you got up and read it aloud, and what it said was, "Don't think my success means anything, I could just as probably be on a heater", "Don't think my success means anything, I could just as probably be on a heater", ... , "Don't think my success means anything, I could just as probably be on a heater".

Imagine reading that to yourself everyday for years... That's what reading this thread is like.

It's getting to the point, that the only empowering posts in this forum are hand analysis posts; which is unfortunate because I would love to just chat up with fellow poker players and feel good about chatting it up with fellow poker players. Chatting it up with an arbitrary 2p2 posters makes me feel unconfident and ****ty, which of course takes me out of the zone.

I've made a few friends here who I skype with daily and we help each other, but still too few for how many of us partake in this community.

Yeah this thread has become a trainwreck

Not sure why you're sooking.

Anyone who puts in thousands of hours w a 5-15bb/hr winrate shouldn't care what other people tell them. They're a winner. They might be a fish in a different game but it's irrelevant if they're not going to play it.

People saying other people could easily be fish on heaters is for the guys who haven't logged thousands of hours.

You should absolutely not put much weighting on ANY results before you get a reasonable sample size. Dude winning at 20bb/hr after 200 hours IS probably A FISH if he's losing after 3000 hours.

Also, this thread isn't for empowerment or "feel good" posts. If you're so emotionally fragile that "chatting" it up with people who speak the truth, even if they dont tell you you're a 10bb/hr crusher just coz ur on 2p2, takes you "out of the zone", then you don't have the resilience needed to win in poker.

To get some conversation going here I have a question:

For those of you who have logged considerable hours in Vegas AND other locations, what differences in WR have you had at the various stakes and would you care to post your data?

Someone got too many participation trophies growing up me thinks.

I take it more as the guy who is break even after 200 hours shouldn't sweat all the reports of crushing - things can swing the other way rapidly.

Certainly don't want to say that 200 hours means nothing... because 2k hours has to be made of 200 hour stretches of something.

Just don't sweat results too much too early

Yeah, exactly. 200 hours is actually not a horrible sample if you're playing a relatively low variance style too.

All I'm saying is, there are too many people sun running for 100-200 hours, saying LLSNL is EZ crushable for 10bb/hr when in actuality, it's close to impossible to sustain that.

I think, actually, if you're a very good player (a lot better than most of the regs in this forum), AND have a room that doesn't rake an arm and leg AND has multiple tables running allowing you to select decent games, AND allows deep buyins 10bb/hr is reasonable at 2/5. But this is a very small % of casinos and an even smaller % of regs.

You are someone who has failed multiple times at online poker and you also live in Brisbane where the live scene is almost non existent. Who made you the expert on live poker?

Winning at these rates is possible even in casinos with obscene rakes simply because there are almost no good players in LLSNL. Even most of the regs are terrible.
But it is not easy
You need to sit through hours of card deadness while still making accurate reads
You need to not spew while still picking up the pots that no one else wants
You need to maximise value while at the same time making some hero folds and avoiding certain "cooler" type situations because 90% of the player pool is basically playing their hand face up and take the same lines with the nuts time and time again.