I usually only put in one or two session in a week. My normal is Thursday from 3-9pm, and it’s crazy. There’s never as many tables running during the week, but the player pool seems more favorable overall than on the weekends.

Nice results as always GG, although I don't know how you don't get super bored being a super nit.

Interestingly, I filtered my weekend vs weekday results and this is what I found.

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays
Winnings: $11380
Hours: 697
Hourly: $16.33/hr

Mondays to Thursdays
Winnings: $18600
Hours: 786.5
Hourly: $23.65/hr

Below 1000 hours in each group so probably not statistically significant. But I can see how less grinders during the week can actually make certain weekend games worse (especially with poor seat and table selection). However this is 90% 1/2 and 1/3 and it makes sense at those stakes cause it's near impossible to grind those stakes long term for a living. At 2/5 and above I would imagine there would be MORE grinders during the week because it's their job for a much higher % of the player pool.

GG, have you found you enjoy the game any more or less since switching to your uber nit strategy?

I used to play every Sunday from 11a-5p. Not a lot of traffic, but I'd play mostly 1/2 against OMCs and a couple of recs running on 3-4 hours sleep looking to play a little more poker before heading home. The play was so straight forward...raise limpers in LP and take down dead money, open almost ATC when folded to me in LP, squeeze when favorable, then bank on an extremely high c-bet success rate. I had a couple of years where Sunday was a consistent ~$8/hr better win rate with very low variance.

my year was meh. capped it off with losing 3k in the last week of the year.

1/2: 16 sessions, 21.28 hours, $1,107

1.33 hrs/session, $69.19/session, $52.02/hr, 26.01bb/hr

1/3: 43 sessions, 166.55 hours, $4,901

3.87 hrs/session, $113.98/session, $29.43/hr, 9.81bb/hr

2/5: 30 sessions, 148.40 hours, ($3,542)

4.95 hrs/session, $118.07/session, ($23.87/hr), 4.77bb/hr

Overall: 89 sessions, 336.23 hours, $2,466

3.78 hrs/session, $27.71/session, $7.33/hr. overall 4.4bb/hr

---------

typically i would only play 1/2 while waiting for 1/3 or 2/5, which is why the hours/session are so low.

the plus sides for the year were:
- hit my goal of 250 hours.
- pretty happy with my 1/3 play. i feel confident when i'm at the table and rarely feel like i'm put in tough situations.
- it was a profitable year.

the cons were:
- idk what is going on at 2/5. the players have such glaring leaks but i feel like i am card dead every time i play. eventually that turns into me spewing my stack off in an obviously bad situation. definitely something to work on when i play more 2/5
- due to life factors, my BR is pretty minimal, so i'm not even sure when i'll play 2/5 again.

^ JOTS, Sugar 2/5 just isn't that good imo. There are Friday and Saturday nights where there is 1 freaking table going. In my experience while the game can play deep you've got a lot of decent TAGs on the table and it kind of leaves you at the whims of variance. There are always spots but I felt the same as you just couldn't get in profitable situations with them. I started mixing in Sands which probably isn't feasible for you but the action is much better and table selection is better. And ofc Parx. Do you ever play there?

yeah, i've kinda felt like that too about the SH 2/5. i've been playing less 2/5 there as the year went on. i'm about 80/20 SH/Parx. Sands is pretty much impossible for me right now. trying to get Borgata back into a regular mix cause i can take the family (is it weird that my 5 y/o consistently asks to go to a casino?), but thats all dependent on comped rooms.

on the other hand, the 1/3 at SH is typically very good and is typically comparable in number of tables as Parx, which is why i continue to go there.

have you gotten back to Parx? i haven't seen you at SH in a little while.

If any Sugarhouse players want to chat hands or meta sometime, feel free to reach out.

I think I find solace / satisfaction in taking a very long term see-if-my-method-works approach to the game and find a lot of the enjoyment is simply seeing my lifetime graph continually move upwards (which is something very few players in my room can say). So I find it satisfying that my Super Nit strategy at almost 1000 hours has so far improved my winrate by 50% over the one I produced the previous 1300 hours over an ever increasing rake (although admittedly lags way behind the one I produced over my first 2000 hours, but conditions are different, imo).

So overall I find the game slightly more enjoyable since I know it's producing slightly better results than before, but the time at the table I find pretty much the same enjoyment-wise (a night out, some laughs, playing cards, this is hardly a bad time).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I can't filter for specific days in my app, so take what I say with a grain of salt and realize that I'm going by intuition.

The Friday and Saturday night games that I experience tend to be much looser and more crazy. There are more of the "someone raised 10x pre and got six callers." So, SPR can get ridiculous in multi way pots and the swings get bigger.

These games are probably more profitable long term (as if "long term" exists in this context), but they are also going to have more variance both positive and negative.

Basically, I'm saying that Friday and Saturday night games will be more swingy and you may just be running bad.

^ I had a losing Friday AND Saturday in 2017 playing full-time hours and had a solid year. 200 BB cap 2/5. Most questions about what/why can be answered with one word: variance. It plays a much bigger role than most people care to admit.

....and if you're under rolled, you should probably steer clear of those games.

JOTS (i like this abbrev fwiw)

There's gonna be alot at play, noteably your small sample. I've got several multi-hundred hour breakeven stretches.

BUT

1/3 is very often a "better" game than 2/5. Alot of people at 2/5 buy in effectively shorter (many min-50bb buy ins at 2/5, some 100bb, and no +100bb). At 1/3 people often sit with 100bb and sometimes even 150bb if the table max is $500.

For this and other reasons stacks get much deeper much faster at 1/3. I've personally played very little of it but its one of the best variants offered in terms of bb/hr potential imo

Sometimes, the best 1/3 (or 1/2) players in the room are all TAGs, and when the 2/5 starts up, they all flock to it.

When that happens, the 2/5 will be full of the best TAG players in the room (and that game will suck), but the 1/2 or 1/3 games will suddenly be amazing as the other wannabe pros all leave the fish grounds open for you.

OTOH, sometimes the whales who just wanna gamble show up and make the 2/5 game amazing. You just gotta be selective.

GG, what do you buy in for?

50 BB’s and a copy of War and Peace by his side.

What stakes are these hours at if you dont mind?

Just wondering, because I play $1/3 every so often and anecdotally think that a nitty'ish strategy (mixing in some l/a stuff) is not just a lower variance strategy at these stacks, but also more profitable then a l/a strategy that mixes in creative bluffs and a aggressive preflop strategy.

In practice, I suppose I am more of a straightforward nit just because the players are so bad that it doesn't feel +EV to deviate. However, the inner me wants to be more creative and aggressive, which I do from time to time, but I always end up reverting to a nit machine at these stakes.

I watch the 'good' aggro lags (by good I just mean understands the game, not just betting to bet at random), unfold creative (semi)-bluffs that theoretically make a ton of sense (say Hero nut advantage and V capped range, or taking advantage of an exploit on V weakness), but given V's general lack of understanding makes a silly call that he/she should never make. Then I think, wow what a creative/good play by Hero, however, what are you thinking Hero?! This is 1/3 NL and you just 3 barreled a guy you knew had top pair!

Idk, maybe these players get paid off way more when that have good value hands to offset, but don't feel its necessary to do stuff like that and get paid, thus my thinking nit strategy, generally, +EV.

Thoughts? Experience/results to back up one or the other?

If you don't mind me asking whats your standard deviation for these games?
Started grinding more live and so far mine is at 54 bb/hr.

I am trying to run some estimates through pokerdope.com but my sample is only 600 hours and a mix of stakes so not really sure what to put down.

****ing brilliant.

I've legit started to bring books to read during my sessions. Poker is boring as hell, and without books I'd be spending too much time looking at random crap on my phone anyway. I'm not anti-social, but there just isn't that much to do when playing live poker, and for someone who used to 20-table cash online it's just not engaging enough to play long sessions without doing something else.

YES! I never bring headphones to the table and still most of the time there just won't be a conversation and I'll be bored af. I could probably increase my winrate by a full bb/hr if not 2 bb/hr by paying attention to every hand and picking up reads but most of the time I'm on facebook or reading a pdf.

I understand why that might help you endure 1500 + hours a year at the tables but that is really bad for the game and the ecosystem

+1

I’d think at High steaks there would be a lot of social intrigue at play

I don't find that it changes much.

The recs at higher stakes know they are fish, as they are usually fairly wealthy and not stupid. They aren't going to play you differently based on you having a book.

I'm not reading 100% of the time (it's probably like 30-40%) and certainly don't do it as a way to ignore other people, but it comes in handy at certain times.

GG, thanks for the response, it's pretty close to what I was expecting. Good to hear you still manage to enjoy playing and also that it's proving profitable.