You're right. It is crazy. Good players do not lose 50-100 BI playing low stakes online.

It's PLO. Good players probably never go broke in NLHE, but many will in PLO.

Good players don't go broke at all? Or they dont go broke with 50+ BI? I'd have to disagree strongly with the former.

1/3 NL
124 hrs, avg session 2.5 hrs
6.32$hr, 2.1BB
Definitely not playing my a-game, you can tell just by the graph. Nearly every losing session has an equal winning session after it.

I’m sure I’ve asked this before in the past but there is a new roster of posters ITT so I’m curious if there are any new opinions.

Any good rules of thumb for deciding if a heavily raked game is profitable or not? Obviously this is a rather complicated problem to tackle with various variables involved but in just trying to get in the ballpark

If my only option is a heavily raked game at a card room I'd check Meetup to see if I can find home games.

There are about 2-3 games a night in my area ranging from 0.25/0.50 to a big 2/5 ($500-$2000) all with no rake. That being said we don't have a casino and non raked home games are legal here.

Also know that you are paying for less rake in the form of cheating, potentially being robbed, etc. So you need to be very conscience about what's going on.

OK here's an update everyone.

1,250 hours, 61% cashed, 4.26 bb/hr., std. dev. 75.09 bb/hr., 1/3 $8.4/hr. (987 hours), 2/5 $69.2/hr. (133 hours). 125 hours/10% is a mix of 5/10 (1hr. -$85/hr.), 0.25/0.5 home games (18 hrs. $30/hr.), 1/2 (50 hrs. $4.2/hr.), 3/5 (6hrs. $142/hr.), and 1/2 PLO (52 hours -$25/hr.).

Monthly breakdown:

2018

July: $17.1/hr. (62 hrs.)
August: $24/hr. (154 hrs.)
September: $19/hr. (98 hrs.)
October: -$1/hr. (155 hrs.)
November: -$10/hr. (211 hrs.)
December: $27/hr. (120 hrs.)

2019

January: $17/hr. (117 hrs.)
February: $17/hr. (151 hrs.)
March: $28/hr. (163 hrs.)
April: $58/hr. (15 hrs.)

Anything to be said about two of your most played hours months being your only two losing months?

If somewhere close to 75 bb's an hour are being taken off the table, I would say its close to unbeatable. Maybe even closer to 60.

My 1/3 NL game has a 10% rake to a max of $8, plus a $1 BBJ drop, and of course most people tip $1+ per pot (although pots taken down preflop aren't raked). $400 max BI, although most BI for much less (ex. I currently only BI / top up to $200), although you can get decent stack sizes at some tables. At 30 hands an hour (which is what we were getting when I did some tests last year), I would guesstimate that *easily* $200+ (66bb+) is coming off the table per hour (it may be worse, I admit I've never done an actual rake tracking test). And yet the game is also still easily beatable (although not for anything remotely in unicorn ranges of 10bb+/hr, although obviously others will disagree).

Rake is obviously a *huge* money suck at these limits / BIs (and vastly underestimated) but it doesn't make my loose / aggro games unbeatable... yet.

As to where the line-in-the-sand is, I don't know, and is probably game dependent.

GcluelessrakenoobG

Overall you've beaten the rake and are up money, so nothing to get terribly upset at.

In the end, it's an incredibly small sample size that really doesn't tell you a heckuva lot.

My first 103 hours this year I cruised along at 8.9 bb/hr.

My next 55 hours this year I'm doing the opposite at -5.8 bb/hr.

Both samples by the exact same guy playing the exact same method in the exact same game. And both samples are almost completely meaningless.

GthelongtermwilltelltheonlystorythatmattersG

Good observation, but see February/March 2019 (lots of hours, good results). I played much shorter sessions on average these months....

Fall 2018 was runbad/playbad times, likely burnout as well. I was playing much longer sessions on back then. Also, I just wasn't quite as good at poker as I am now.

November was also when I took two weeks to play in Vegas (PLO and NLHE). The games I played in sucked and I ran like a$$ in PLO.

For sure game dependent as always. 95%+ games just aren't good enough to overcome a 66bb+ being won by the house.

I know you have over 4k hours so it definitely means something, however the reality of the situation is ~100k hands is just not enough to be considered 'long term'. Also I know your games have been increasing in rake over those hours, so that's another thing. At one point there wasn't that many BB's being taken off.

Will we ever REALLY know? Probably not. Players are bad but to justify a table with that much being taken off still having long term winners is....tough

With a standard BR for the stake, a good NLHE player shouldn't go broke. Not 50+, but 20 or so should be enough.

Yeah, without a doubt my overall winrate has gone down over that ~4400 hour stretch (and the more I play the more I realize what a lol small sample size that is too). Definitely the increase in rake has been a big part of it (among other things).

Still, if you're sitting in a game where most pots reach maximum rake thanks to 7bb preflop raises being called in multiple spots with 66bb stacks, the game will be profitable. Once that stops happening, then it could admittedly be a different story.

Ggoodlucktousall,imoG

Nice run, looks like you activated beast mode in December and haven't looked back much. I have volume envy.

Yeah, Dumbo definitely puts in the volume; he'll get the same amount of hours in ~2-3 years that will take a rec player like me ~10 years.

GcluelessvolumenoobG

Same, it would be cool if I didn't know he had a full time job. That's the kicker for me. My goal for the year is 400 hours, and I'm not very optimistic about that lol.

I'll get in my typical ~550 or so. Lately I've been more and more curious as to where that would put me in my local player pool. The more I see, the more I think in the bottom % but it's sometimes tough to tell.

GcluelessvolumenoobG

Thanks for the encouragement! Beast-mode lol.

I don't have a full-time job. That's why I can put in so many hours at the table!

This is incorrect. It is absolutely enough to very confidently say that GG was a winning player in his games. It is not necessarily enough to say that he will continue to win because game conditions change, especially with his low volume, but that's quite likely as well. The standard error on his win-rate over that sample is only like 1BB/h.

What is your basis for claiming these games are unbeatable?

No prob, trending well is trending well...

Thanks for the clarification. That makes it still a little less.

It's not. It's absolutely enough to say GG is one of the best, if not the best in his player pool. But the reality games that rake THIS will not be beaten after a real sample size, which 100k hands just is not.

If a game is taking off 66BB per hour, and you want to have a small winner or two, that means you have to have 7-8 people losing an average of 10bb/hour every time you sit down. Sure, most players are bad, and losing, I can agree. But they are not THAT bad.

Err...you underestimate how bad players at low stakes can be. I've seen absolutely horrific, terrible, insane play at the tables. There are definitely huge losers, and it's my job to play with them as often as humanly possible!

How do you have a feel for how much losing players are losing? I would assume that most regs aren't losing at 10 BB an hour but some may well be. Especially at the smaller games like 1/2 or 1/3. Loosing $25/hr for 4 hours every couple of weeks may not be that big a deal to a rec player with a full time job. Many players come even less frequently and may only play once a month or a few times a year. I feel like you are just guessing. Can you back this up with anything solid?