Yup

$2/4 is right at $32/hr over 379 hours. I feel like I'm improving, but even yesterday I made an embarrassing mistake. I'm just inexperienced I guess.

I think the determining factor should be time of day. If you can play the 200bb game between Friday night and Monday morning, you can expect it to be softer than it would be on a Wednesday morning. If you can get the Jesus seat on the 200 cap game, always play in it (assuming you're rolled etc). If you're going through a downswing and want to reduce variance, play the 120cap. If you're on a heater, play the 200 cap. A lot of what you do should come down to your bankroll. But also you should be looking to improve to the point where your EV$ in the 200 game becomes notably higher than it does in the 120 game.

It's true, even downswinging I've had some rungood - was down $2200 in a 2/5/10 uncapped game, then had someone check/raise the river as a bluff to $1420 vs my quads, was down $1700 another day then won a $750 flip, etc etc.

Could easily be down much more, live variance is huge, etc etc

I think at low stakes being the best player at the table is important. I'm afraid I don't have any stats to back this up, just gut feeling.

If you think about it, so much money is taken off as rake relative to the stakes that a lot of people must lose a lot of money to keep the game going. This leaves few people who can be winners and little money to spread amongst them. If you don't have the lion's share, you don't have much at all.

This is why we hate tight low stakes games -- folding every hand is a huge improvement over what most players are doing to lose so much.

There's also the part that most of my poker angst comes from being put in tough spots, which happens more often against tough players. When you are angsty you play worse, or you don't want to play at all, both of which cost money.

I don't mean to say it is the most important factor, just one of many things to consider.

Here is a tip. If you see a small capped game with a lot of money on the table, it is almost always a fantastic game. Because for that money to get on the table, there must have been many large pots, and the most likely cause of that is people piling in money loose. Now you have players who are spewy to begin with and they have deep stacks they don't know how to play. And the best part is most of the "better" players will ignore this to play the higher stakes game even if the smaller game is playing like it's one level up.

Hey y’all. I just reached 1,000 hours of LLSNL. (1,001.492 to be exact, and that’s time that I’m getting cards, not on break.) It’s a milestone many of you have passed long ago & I just wanted to thank everybody for sharing all you gathered in your life of grinding and studying poker. I wouldn’t have been able to eek out any sort of profit were in not for 2+2. (Although, LOL 30k hands aint exactly ****) I feel indebted to anyone who’s taken time to respond to one of my posts and everyone else who post their hands or just comments as it helps me process my own outlook.
Anyways, it’s not much, & not all that impressive either, but here’s the graph of my first 1,000 hours.




The first half (474 hrs) is all at 2/3.



Lots of really, really, awful play. Too much passivity. Too much spew. Too much forgetting to bet. Also, took longer than it should have for me to realize that 3betting ranges in LLSNL are generally much tighter than online. All in all, still proud for one reason; once I seriously began examining my play, seeing nothing but stretches of break-even, I calculated the hourly I’m paying the house. There’s no rake, but a flat drop, and it’s the same at 2/3 as it is at 5/5. **** LA. Anyways, the house takes ~$170/hr according to my calculations and what I had heard from a house player turned trainer. That’s basically $19/hr per player, so that $3.80/hr in profit aint that bad considering how ****ty I was playing & how much I was paying. Honestly, from my experience going through 2/3, $100-300 BI where the average stack is ~60bb, I think the best strategy is to nit it up & use that image to punish people with fold buttons, which I’ve noticed do exist, even if in modest numbers at the lower stakes. Also, unless you wanna break even for long periods like I did, don’t pay people off. Large bets on turns and rivers usually have 1P beat when coming from non-maniacal villains.


Anyways, in the beginning of 2017, I figured I had enough saved up to play some 5/5. It just didn’t make sense for me to continue playing in a game where the rake’s nearly impossible to overcome for a worthwhile reward. After all, I am in this for the cash maneys.



Between January and June, I primarily played a 1k cap buying in for $800 initially. Quite frankly, I found the difference in the caliber of player much more pronounced than what most assume on this forum. However, it was a pleasure to play poker where turns and rivers mattered. I mean, just based on pf sizing alone & yielded SPR, a 200bb live game is much closer to a 100bb online game in format than a 100bb capped live. Anyways, as you can see, sometime in May I began a pretty brutal downswing. Looking back, a lot of it (maybe as much as ½ if I’m honest) was bad play that I had though I eliminated in 2/3 was creeping back in. What was even worse is that the bottom of that downswing came exactly as I was laid-off from work. However, having saved up enough money, probably the nut low of what you’d want if you had to play for a living, I decided to Leroy Jenkins my way through 5/5 over the summer as I was looking for work. I also began devoting much more time to study & even decided to pay for poker training. Over August, it became clear that I did not want to go back to working for anybody else but myself. It’s really odd to type this out, although I’ve already told friends and family, but I really want to see if I can grind out a bank-roll for 5/10 by spring. Could be just a pipe-dream, but I do have back-up options for if/when things go sour. All I know is that after spending over 2 months grinding this ***** out, I haven’t gotten burnt out. In fact, just the opposite. I spend the majority of my off table time studying, or spewing my current half-baked theories here on the ‘ole forum. Since my leave from the world of HR issued paychecks, I’ve averaged $31/hr at the felt. Puny sample size of 334 hrs, ($21/hr for all 528 hrs of 5/5)but I’m just enjoying this slice of my life too much to consider doing anything else. I know I have leaks to plug & much more brutal variance to experience, but the little gains I have seen thus far are encouraging. I want to reach $50/hr+ at 5/5 before fully moving to 5/10 if I get there. Again, I want to thank everyone on here, especially those who have given me earnest feedback since I’ve been posting on LLSNL. This graph is more of an application of your collective knowledge than anything I’ve brought to the game myself. Thank you.

I like your graph

It looks like you're averaging about 63 hrs/month or about 14.5 hours per week for 2017. Do you basically put in a couple 7-8 hour session twice a week? maybe during the weekends?

I got laid off at the end of June and have been full timing poker since summer.

congrats on getting to 1k - looks like your results have consistently gotten better and you seem to have the necessary mindset/situation to succeed if you stick to it/keep improving. best of luck with the full-time grind and getting to 5/T; part of me is definitely jealous of your situation and getting to take a shot at it - gl!

Gratz on the 1K hour milestone Quantum! Best of luck on your journey to come. I bet that your graph on the next 1K hours will be significantly better. Sheer experience at the tables,plugging the most basic leaks (like fully realizing and adjusting to how ridic tight 3 bet ranges are in LLSNL) and developing your gameflow/table dynamic reading skills is huge.

There's a disclosure thrown in every prospectus when you buy securities that is perfectly apt here:

"Past performance is not indicative of future results."

I stayed in a 1/2 game with a lot of money on the table instead of switching to some dry 2/5 games last night. There was a spewy guy with over $1200, granted he ran awesome. Much easier to extract money from a table with this guy without risking very much as compared to the bigger game. All of us could improve our winrates if we checked for juicy lower stakes games as part of our table selection strategy.

Gratz man. You'll learn a lot over the next little while playing full time. Make sure you note down awkward spots and hands every time they happen and review them incessantly after your session, even if you've played for the last 10 hours and just want to sleep! Do you have a PGC?

I would say deciding to play full time after going on a 15k heater is optimistic but as you say, you have other options so may as well follow the dream while you can!

Had a pretty good year so far, just playing weekends and nights sometimes. Have played around 350 hours this year and have won around 20,000$.
But this weekend at Playground I had a 4500$ downswing over 35 hours playing 2/5. Those 350 hrs are my first 350 hrs at 2/5. Had some bad beats. All in with 99 pre, got called by ace 3 and lost a 1200$. Called a bluff with top pair on the turn and lost 1500$ to the guy hitting a gut shot. Made some mistakes, had some bad beats. Anyways, my question is, playing 2/5 live cashgames, is a 4500$ downswing abnormal. Like I know it shouldn't happen often, I know there are holes in my game just like everyone else's. But is it something that just happens? Also at what point do I see my true profit. I know 350 hours does not show my true profit. Before this I was making 57/hr, I know it doesn't represent my true profit. How many hours do people generally think represent true profit?

I don't do 10 hr sessions, but yeah.. obviously I take notes. Great point on me being overly optimistic. I don't have any delusions about the fact that I can easily fail and that I'm really far from a well tuned robotic grinder. What does PGC stand for?

Poker goals and challenges forum. Where people basically keep blogs of their poker progress.

It is the single biggest collective of information on 2p2 showing you to not go pro.

lol

LOL. Reading every page of Meale's thred right now.

Depends what you are buying in for but if $500 cap a $4500 downswing is pretty bad but not abnormal. I lose $3k all the time.

Id start being interested in someones win rate around 3k hours, and give them the attaboy at around 10k hours if they were still a winning player and hadn't committed suicide.

By my count you still have a 9 BB/hr "win-rate." Needless to say 350 hours is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

There is no true profit. All you have are observed results and confidence intervals. But at the end of the day no two sessions are ever alike and therefore you'll never have an expected wintate.

Games conditions always change ability always changes there is no way to ever know your winrate, just keep playing and hope you do not wind up homeless.

I've had two $7000 downswings at 2/5 $600 cap in around 1000 hours. I still won $45/h over that period. It happens.

Do it! And DO go pro!

Yeah agreed, about 10x the 350 hour sample might give you a ballpark. I don't know of anyone who's logged 10k hours in this game, but if it can be done, I imagine that'll be a fair enough estimate to maybe 2-3bb/hr.