For what it’s worth, when I started playing again last year, I took a super aggressive stance on BR management. I basically decided i’d start playing 1/2 and take a shot at 2/5 as soon as I won $1600 at 1/2. If I lost money at 2/5, I’d make sure I covered that plus some at 1/2 before moving back up.

Out of well over 1k hours I’ve logged, I have a total of only 47 hours logged at 1/2. I’ve probably won a bit over expectation, but my results are a little over +$1700 for a winrate of 18.1 BBs/hour. (I had actually moved up to 2/5 about 5-10 hours of play before this, but ran flat since - only play 1/2 rarely when I’m waiting for another game)... Yes I know this is a meaningless sample size - the point is that I moved up ASAP, so I will never have the amount of history GG is looking for.

After doing well at 2/5 for a while, I now mostly play 2/5/10 and 10/10 NLHE, and occasionally play 5/5 PLO (which is bigger than a $10 BB NLHE game), and have taken a couple bigger shots at 10/10 PLO and 10/25 NLHE.

I know that 1/2 games are generally much easier to exploit than 2/5 games, and 2/5 games are generally much easier than bigger games (mostly because of the other good players/pros at the table who will dig in considerably to your WR). Because of this, I have no doubt at all that well over 10BBs/hour is attainable at most 1/2 games... But you have to exploit exploitable spots.

Oh, I have no doubt variance is a stone cold *****, and I definitely am not saying that any one person is not an outlier. I'm just saying that it's not meaningless. The abyss is as likely to hit at the beginning (in which case someone stops playing) as at the 2.4K hour mark, or in a bunch of crevices.

??????????
You don't think anybody makes more then 6 figures???
Obviously not at 1/2... im saying crushers arent playing 1/2 bcuz they want to make 6 figures.... and you're saying... nobody in poker is making that? lol ok yeah youre trolling

GG also keeps asking for a graph/proof when we've had MULTIPLE great answers as to why that won't happen from various people.

He just doesn't care, so yeah I'm out of this convo getting dumb at this point

Hello guys I play 1/2 300 max (I always buy in 200$ tho) (rake 10% up to 5 + 1bbj) in the last 7 months I record total 319 hours and my win rate after rake,tips to dealer and coffee is 5.07$/h. Already had a big 6buy in downswing and not too long ago started winning again! So I was just wondering.. What do you guys think about my winrate? Is it super terrible ?

Too soon to say. You're winning though, which is better than most players. Keep it up!

I’m not talking about the abyss. I’m talking about meaningful sample sizes.

You get set over setted every 15,000 hands. If you think you can have a 95% confidence interval expected win rate at 2000 hours which is 65,000 hands than I say you are out of your mind, inexperienced or some combination of the two.

Since I know you are not inexperienced I don’t know what you are basing your numbers on.

His "challenge" is so specific that it borders on absurd. I live less than 1 hour from probably 8 rooms and I'm not sure a single one of them would meet his conditions because their max buy ins at 1/2 or 1/3 are > 100bb and they all run stakes higher than 1/3 typically. I feel like the only way that this "challenge" could be met is by playing in some podunk room for 2-4 years that is super isolated from the poker community so they never change anything, which sounds awful.

Obv no real player is going to give it a go unless GG offered like 500k against the prop, because the amount of lost wages would be staggering

It's higher than probably 80% of the people in the room you play in. What I like about this thread is that it gives you an idea for the typical winrates that people are achieving, as well as the types of downswings experience. Maybe you're a it on the low side, but you could just be running bad over the 319 hours. Or you're not good and you're running hot. Just focus on learning from us here and on playing good poker.

As for the GG/winrate discussion, he plays 1/3 right? How much different is 1/2 from 1/3? One thing I've noticed is standard raises tend to be the same for both structures, and the increased bb doesn't have as big of an impact on game size. 1/2 games tend to play "bigger" in terms of blinds than 1/3. The buy ins are deeper, with the typical buy in being $200-$300 regardless of structure. So a 7bb/hr winrate at 1/3 would equal a 10.5bb/hr winrate at 1/2?

Also GG, do your games allow straddles or button straddles? The button straddle has become insanely popular in my room lately, and depending on table anywhere from 10-50% of pots are straddled in a given night. That makes our deep 1/2 game play more like a medium stacked 2/5 against the same crap players. I think that helps with winrates as well.

Either way, I could care less about the discussion as to what winrates are ultimately achievable or whatever. I really just like this thread up to date with the winrates of grinders so newbiews can learn the types of earnings and swings achieved by us when starting a low stakes journey.

As someone who also plays at MGM NH, how do you deal with what you said? There may be much more loose games available, but at prime times (I have a full time job), e.g. Friday and Sat. nights, there's always a wait list so switching tables isn't that easy.

Also, in your experience, have the games gotten worse once the promotions died down? I seem to be getting into tables with a lot of regs frequently.

This is somewhat offtopic, so if you want to take this to PM, we can. Please don't think im trying to encroach on your casino btw, im not good enough to make more money than my job-job with poker. I would just like to have fun, while beating rake.

Somethings like 90% of people are losing players. Plus you probably are paying something like $16 an hour in rake. Seems like you are off to a solid start but the sample size is small.

I got set over setted 3 times in about 900 hands (25 hours) in Feb.

Cool story Hansel. Has no relevance on the discussion at hand.

It did help me win $20 on my prop bet that you would respond making it about you.

Hansel running so hot right now

i’m with you on sample size and variance, also survivorship bias with people posting larger (for live poker) samples ITT elsewhere

Bang bang

If the only poker game available in my area was 1/2NL with a $60-$200 buy-in, with a $7 rake & $1 BBJ and most players bought in for $100-$150, I would find another hobby.

I would disagree with this. A few thousand hours will very often accurately show the edge you had (or didn't have) over your opponents during that time.

Seems like you feel that overall you ran significantly below EV over a few thousand hours, and you would really like to believe that you're better than your winrate shows.

All you have to do is read some of JohnnyBuz's strat advice and you will quickly see that he takes some insanely high variance and sometimes bad lines. Then he wonders why his variance is insanely high and he thinks thats the way it is for everyone which is just not true.

Anyhoo, no one else has attempted it and I didn't want to leave brown's attempt hanging, so here's my attempt, which will lead to my point.

If like most (say 80%) of pots go to maximum rake, then I initially guessed like 2 hands won per hour for a tight player, so each $1 increase affects the winrate by $1.60.

But then I began thinking about what happens when we stack someone. If they have more than us, only our effective stack is in play, but of course it's $1.60 shorter per hour that we've played (costing us that much when we stack them). If their stack is less than ours and brand new (thus not being affected by rake), there's no extra raping. But if their stack is less than ours and has been at the table a while, it's being raped over that time and now we lose money when we stack them. If mean, if it's been there 4 hours and they are a loose player winning 3 hands per hour then that's another $2.40/hr we're losing when we stack them. But then there stack is only getting raped if they're winning (and yet are shorter than us, which might be difficult); of course, they coulda lost most of their stack to a shorter stack (but then they didn't lose as much due to that shorter stack also being raped). Anyways, I really had the confuses attempting it this way and really had no idea how much to add on for rake raping in stacking situations.

So instead I simply said 30 hands per hour, 80% reaching max rake, our fair share of that at a 10 handed table is $2.40 / hr per $1 increase. Of course that doesn't tell the whole story either cuz as the $1 increase in rake goes up then the percentage of pots reaching the maximum rake goes down. But, all in all, I figured that at for each $1 increase in rake that costs us approximately $2.50 to our bottom line. I can be convinced otherwise.

So, what does that mean for our 10bb/hr crusher at 1/3 NL? Well, if his game moves from a $5 maximum rake to $7 maximum rake, that means he's lost $5/hr off his winrate, which now puts him at 8.3 bb/hr. The 2/5 NL crusher drops to 9 bb/hr. But what about the lowly 1/2 NL crusher? He drops to 7.5 bb/hr. Now of course this might not be totally accurate either as the 80%-of-pots-reach-maximum-rake was dealing with a 1/3 NL example, so likely the 1/2 NL pots won't reach them as often (although if you think the game plays much worse then it might be fairly close).

So, a mere $2 increase in rake (all other conditions staying exactly the same) is annoyance for the 2/5 NL crusher (costs him 10% of his winrate), but for the lowly 1/2 NL player it's devastating: it costs him 25% of his winrate.

Now what about those 7 bb/hr solid players? The 2/5 player loses 14% downgrading to 6 bb/hr. The 1/2 NL player? His winrate takes a 36% loss, and now he's a toiling at a pedestrain 4.5 bb/hr (read some books, amirite?).

The same sorta thing can be discussed in terms of what percentage of the average pot rake makes up. The smaller the game and the smaller the pot, the more damaging the rake is. The lines between crushing vs doing ok vs even beating the game become much much thinner.

This is the only point I'm attempting to state. Having a blanket claim that 10 bb/hr is achievable in "low steaks live pokr" is lazy and misleading (and, from everything I've seen produced in this thread, totally unsubstantiated). What's achievable at a 2/5 NL 200+ BI game isn't going to be close to what is going to be achievable at a 1/2 NL 100 BI game.

That's all I'm saying. Really have no idea why some think this is controversial.

GcluelesscontroversialnoobG

Thankfully how many hours recs are getting every year doesn't have any bearing on the discussion. I actually think many are getting in a lot more than we think, but it's irrelevant.

I've already addressed the fact that many players don't have a "moving up" option. It's fine if your experiences differ, but it's not the same as mine.

Of course I don't expect anyone to grind 1/2 for 4000 hours to prove me wrong; wasn't my point. My point is that no one has proved it can be done (at least based on results here). So why should we take this as gospel? Because some good winning players produced good results over 600 hours 5 years ago before moving up? Heck, if that's the case, I guess just stamp my 2000 hour total of 9.44 bb/hr (or my 12.79 bb/hr over a 1014 hour sample within that) and call it a day?

Will agree that the idea of a "true winrate" is likely meaningless.

Gtheonusisonthosetoprovegodexists,notheotherwayaro und,imoG

Before I played NL, I played Limit. Lowly 2/4 Limit live poker. I actually have 1354 hours of it under my belt (lol, amirite?). If there is any collection of 9 individuals more exploitively brain dead anywhere else in the world than at a live 2/4 Limit table circa 2006, I don't know where it would be. But if that maximum rake in that game is $4, it's ~unbeatable.

Basically see above for (a) why rake kills even at good tables and (b) why your comment regarding 1/2 vs 2/5 games differing (regarding exploitation, etc.) isn't the case in markets that don't have different steaks.

GcluelessLimitnoobG

Doesn't this pretty much tell you that if you were just a little better, or your game sucked a little less, you could get 10bb/hr? You have the sample yourself right there if you squint a bit.

Similar to Johnny's comments to me regarding my vs the forums views on Sasquatch rates (which is a fair enough comment), I'll have to say that while we don't always agree on strat that I believe his assessment of big pot variance / etc. isn't considered enough, imo.

GcluelessbigpotnoobG

How hard do I have to squint at 4000 hours when I'll be at 7 bb/hr?

And maybe I simply ran really good over a lol ~2000 hours or so, especially in big pots? What's 2000 hours for an on-line guy, like, a few lunchtimes?

GsquintingashardasIcanG

yeah lets make everything relative-how convinient.Everybody is just as bad players, or just as good. Everybody have the same skillsets or are just equally good or bad- because we cant get an accurate long term 50 years ahead winrate.

Team delusional.com, and team indenial.com, nice freaking work.

You don't need 4000 hours to have proof that someone's crushing a game, do you even variance calculators?

I have won 16.5bb/hr in 18300 hands with a std dev bb/100 of 210 at 1/2 NLHE. There's a ~97.7% chance I have an EV bb/hr of at least 10. I'm not in the top ~2.3% of rungood and I'm a better player now than I was before so I'm pretty sure that makes me a 10bb/hr winner. I play deepstacked against a fairly small player pool in a somewhat decent game so that is advantageous for me but aiming at >10bb/hr at 1/2 should be a realistic goal for a lot of players.