Ya my unscientific biased guess is pretty much this.

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I love you all, but I would be deeply skeptical of anyone claiming to have an expected hourly rate of more than 7bb/hr in a full-ring live NLHE game.

Remember, the distribution of players who run hot and attain 10bb/hr over a 10k hand sample is *vastly* larger than the number of players who run bad and attain 10bb/hr over a 10k hand sample. 10bb/hr which is like 25-30bb/100, is at the bleeding tail of attainable winrates over reasonable samples in full-ring NLHE (after rake).

Back of the envelope I'd guess there are at least 10,000 5bb/hr winners who attain 10bb/hr over a large sample for every 15bb/hr winner who attains 10bb/hr over the same. This is just due to the priors on the distribution of player skill, and the realities of fighting the rake. (And yes, I do believe that the ratio of 5bb/hr winners to 15bb/hr winners is somewhere around 10,000:1, or worse).

A 95% confidence interval weighed against those kinds of priors is absolute horse****. If I told you you had a disease that afflicted 1 in 1,000,000 people, but my test was 5% likely to give a false positive, you would rightly insist that you *probably were not sick*.

This **** is hard to reason about correctly, especially when egos and $$$ and internet dicks are on the line, but having played professionally (online) for several years, retired, and come back to play casually, I've made my peace with certain statistical realities.

edit: just to be clear, I used to make a living playing poker, I know for a fact that it's a very beatable game. I absolutely believe 7bb+/hr players exist, but there are a lot of reasons that they are rare. I'm not skeptical of a skilled player reporting a 5bb/hr winrate over a large sample if I know they know their game. I have a pretty good feeling for a realistic crushing winrate, and how likely it is to find a player that actually puts in the hours of study and practice to sustain one. Anything in excess of 5bb/hr is *very* strong. You need to be playing very deep, or short-handed, or be a rare player to blow past that. That doesn't make it impossible, just significantly less common than you would think from reading these forums.

SRT, you need to understand that comparisons of edges live and online are apples to oranges. I beat $5-15 SNGs for a decent, but not amazing, ROI and never beat $10NL over a significant sample size pre-Black Friday, and yet whenever I played live $200NL, I was far and away the best player at the table. Hell, back then I actually played, for significant money, against players who didn't know basic rules like "only best 5 cards count" on a pretty regular basis.

Live $200NL isn't that soft anymore, but it is still way softer than $10NL was pre-BF. I mean miles softer. I am definitely not some amazing player, and I don't study other than ITF (though I participate in strat ITF more than the average bear), and I can duplicate many of the WRs reported ITT. Of course, it's possible that I've been running hot AF for years, but I certainly haven't seen an WR well over AI EV-adjusted. I think live just offers much bigger edges than most online regs can imagie, especially after one realizes that almost no one is exploiting you and you start playing super exploitative against the massive leaks of so many live players.

How many hours have you played live? Im guessing not very many.

So, I'm actually 100% willing to believe you. I started playing poker when the moneymaker money started to dry up, so my views are a little colored by the fact that I'm used to playing against tight-passive players, and all my baselines are derived from trying to apply uSNL and SSNL logic to live (I try to divide stakes by 10 to get a plausible baseline), but I'm willing to accept that if that's wildly inconsistent with the experience of most regs, I have to be the one who is incorrect.

The reasoning about there being exponentially more lucky meh-winners than unlucky exceptional winners is sound, but I probably need to shift the baselines around substantially with more experience :/

I'd guess around 250 since I moved to Washington (because it is profoundly illegal to play any other way). The games here are ape****, so I'm willing to listen to reason and update my baselines.

I have played something like 10,000 hours of poker in my life, which isn't a ton for a professional, so I'm rusty and not used to live, but I'm not exactly new to the game.

A few years ago I was beating $60 SNGs online and started to play a lot more live.

I found live my hourly was much higher, plus I was enjoying poker more.

Live poker I could slack off and still win a ton of money per hour compared to online where I had to be thinking constantly and had to put in huge volume.

I didnt mean to imply you were new to poker or weren't good at it. I could just tell you haven't played a ton of live poker. The players are so much worse live, its hard to even put into words so I think you are underestimating live win rates. Especially if you play mostly at peak hours.

Ive played a few times at Muckleshoot. They are just as bad there are just about everywhere else Ive played live.

I will take this wager...and I will do it at 2/5 with a 5+2 rake where they rake preflop

It has to be a large bet - I am talking 50k+
we have to escrow
we will have an auditor
My hours will be evenly split "no cherry picking prime hours"

I would take this bet also, but we both know its a stupid bet that will never happen. You would have to play way too many hours for anyone to actually sit there and watch closely enough to audit anything.

I was wondering when somebody would do a bet.

7bb/hr is not really impressive for 2/5, but if you got the grapes to bet it's not possible ,pony up to a bet.

I'd be interested in doing this @ 5/10

Again beating a dead horse but the stakes matter and live stakes are misleading. For example the game squid is referencing is hardly a 2/5, but when measured in $5bb shows quite the impressive wr.

I also don't know how people can come in here and say that a wr is not possible citing math without understanding the inputs into the formula. (Straddles, stack depth, table vpip, skill level) I get that you can kind of have an idea of upper bound with experience and/or some napkin math of loss rate per table but yea.

All of that said, 10bb/hr is very large, and I'd guess over 100K hands, very rare. I'm saying that with an understanding of the inputs in the formula.

How can you do a bet and make sure the results are legit? Theres no tracking software like online, and seems way too easy to cheat. Not that anyone would cheat, but thats a lot of money to bet without knowing for sure.

I would presume you would simply rake a % of the total prize pool and use that to pay someone to painstakingly watch or find a place where you could live stream.

Which is why the bet would have to be astronomical if it was the first option. You would have to find a place where you could live stream and there has to be stipulations in place for chip dump, and with all that, it's too easy to cheat.

$14/hr is absolutely achievable in probably any live 1/2 game

I think they're talking about if $28/hr is sustainable.... hopefully

No hes saying 7 big blinds.

I think that would have been be my initial take on things too...

But then maybe one 5 bb/hr winner per table isn't as outrageous as I originally thought?

Course, the game and situation just constantly changes, so it's hard to get a handle on things. My guess is eventually pools will all shrink to where you'll have nothing but 5 bb/hr history winners sitting at the table who will all of course become losers moving forward sitting together at the raked table.

GlivingonborrowedtimeG

I realize that the bet is most likely not going to happen. But I honestly find it beyond annoying when this thread is littered with people coming out of no where with all of their pie in the sky comments on wr potential and what can and can not be done. I have said it countless times I am no wizard. But for some reason I do in fact have a skill set that has enabled me to beat these games at a clip well above 7bb/hr year in and year out...and I am in fact willing to put my money where my mouth is with regards to that statement.

Are people really saying $14/hr @ 1/2 and $35/hr @ 2/5 is not sustainable? I'm so confused... you guys are debating $28 and $70 right!?

No, they are definitely debating the former.

We're in a NL forum. bb means "big blind", and BB means "big blind but I held shift". They're talking about sustaining $14/hr @ $1/2 long term. Which I think it possible, but requires work and some game selection.

Obv rake is a big factor. Saw some talk about $10-$15 max rake at 1/2 which is nuts. My main casino has 10% $5 max (might be $4) +$1 for bad beat. I'd argue that closer to 20bb/hr is sustainable in that game. Don't think that 7bb/hr being sustainable at 1/2 can even be debated.

7bb/hr ($35/hr) is not impressive. I feel like im in the twilight zone. Who the hell would bet against that?

I think a lot of "winners" greatly underestimate how well they have ran over their career.