.

I assume you're playing 100bb max? And pretty nitty? Cause an $1800 pot is just KK vs AA happening pre with 200bb stacks and happens not infrequently.

This sounds absurdly, incredibly soft. Someone is folding a set on a board with that many draws versus you, you clearly don't bluff enough (or you're crushing the game by bluffing a lot and people just never adjust). Soft doesn't just mean never folds; over folding is hugely exploitable.

On average, the game I play in is 7 nits, one loose player, and myself, and the average pot is $40. But some days it is 4 loose players, 3 nits, and myself and I get to blow up pots again and again and steal some and win some and the nits just fold and get out of the way, and the average pot size is $150, and sometimes much larger.

It may be me; I both play very loose and aggressive, and I'm a woman, and I show my bluffs, and men don't like getting bluffed. I've played 2k pots where I had a 6 high gutshot versus the nut straight, and I've played 2k pots where I called an all in with AQ versus someone's TT who got sick of my threebetting and four betting. If you aren't playing many 2k pots, and you're at a table where most people have $1000 stacks, you aren't bluffing enough.


To go directly to winrate chat: most people don't see how much variance there is in this game cause there aren't enough hours and the game moves too slow, and winrate is highly dependent on who is in the game when you sit down. I played with a guy who was raising to $100-$200 blind every hand for two hours; I won $3000, and my friend who is at least as good as me lost $7000 in those two hours. If we could sit with that guy for years we would be millionaires, but instead we only got those couple hours, and only cause we happened to be at the casino on Saturday at 9am the one time a year he shows up. I got a nice boost to my yearly winnings and my buddy got a big drop in his yearly, and it's about as random as hitting a minor BBJ.


EDIT: I want to be clear - I don't hate you at all MikeStarr. I find your posts entertaining and informative at times. I would also guess if you asked traveling pros where had the easier games - South Florida, or the Philly/AC area, they would say South Florida. I have no idea, cause I just play here, and the games seem plenty soft to me

You've gone and made your reply unquotable. Good move, Mike.

If you want to ban me, then ban me. I didnt say anything about Browni's skill level. I happened to have played with him before. He doesn't know who I am but I know who he is. He's a good player for sure.

I just said that win rate absolutely is a measure of skill level and if you dont think so, you are lying to yourself. If that's ban worthy than ban away.

With the understanding that in live cash games, the long run is actually quite long, that it takes about 2000 hours before you have played enough hands for an online grinder to actually listen to you before saying, "Yeah, I'm crushing at 7bb/100 over my lifetime, and I have had downswings that lasted longer than that."

Traveling pros would most likely be traveling to S. Florida in the winter. It would make no sense to come here during the summer. The weather sucks.

Im pretty sure that is why people think the games here are soft. As Ive said before, they are much much softer during the winter.

Ive never seen a guy come in raising $100-$200 blind and playing huge pots like you describe so I guess I have no frame of reference for what that does to your win rate.

My games are 200BBs max but Id guess maybe only 10% of people buy in that deep and there are hardly any deepish stacks playing big pots against each other without nutted hands. Set over set or whatever.

People say that deeper games (for good players) are much more profitable.

Assuming that's true, your win rate will be higher if people are deeper and are willing to play bigger pots. You could have more variance but that just means "long term" may be longer for you than someone else....but "long term", win rate is still best the barometer of skill level.

Ramma,

Maybe if you play in mostly nitty games but every once in a blue moon some wild guy comes in raising blind, you should separate that session out and put it in a "gambling" category. Because if you win $5K or lose $5K, that's not really a reflection of your poker skill. Its more luck, while having an obvious edge. If it skews your results that much thats what I would do.

Talking about long term on this forum is dangerous.

It’s true that WR reflects skill on the long term, but the problem is that most live players never reach the real long term on poker.

And by that I’m talking about many and many hands... I would say that long term on Poker couldn’t be less than 200.000 hands.
Some consider that 100.000 hands are good enough of a sample for the long term, wich I disagree, but let’s make an exercise with 150.000 hands.

It would mean ~5.000h playing live (30 hands/h, that we know it could be something less).

5.000h would be 3 years of full time grind playing 138h/month, all 12 months of the year.

That’s alot and I guess we can count in one hand the number of players ITT that have such a sample.

And remember... I, personally, don’t even believe it could be called long term for Poker.

So yes.... I agree that WR is a sum of skill+how you run on our discussion.
More than many could even imagine.

I don't see how it's controversial to say that winrate is a measure of:

WR = Skill + Game Conditions + (rungood/samplesize)

The same player with the same skill level will win different amounts in different games (or w/ and w/o snowbirds for example). While the short term rungood or runbad goes away as we collect a larger sample.

Here's a graph since I feel like I contributed to a bit of a derail. Each point is a different session, 80% 2/5, 5% 5/10, 15% 5/10 PLO
$89,343 won, 1417 hours, 63.04 hourly. Pretty sure I'm running above expectation by a decent amount

That's solid. Well done, Ranma.

How did you handle your break-even stretches/"downswings" in between the rungood?

Looks like maybe (1) 200 hour and (1) 250 hours breakeven stretch? That's nothing to worry about. Also, hardly any downswings of note. Great graph, Ranma!

Personally I dont like graphs with different stakes grouped together though. Especially when things as different as 2/5 HE and 5/10 PLO are in there. That could drastically change a graph if you run really hot or cold in the bigger game.

Not meant as a critique, just looking for input for the rest of us when our graphs inevitably begin to plateau. A big part of winning poker is coping with these stretches.

Nope. browni said he doesn't use winrate as a reflection of skill. You told him that he was wrong to say that winrate isn't a reflection of skill. He told you that he didn't say that it wasn't and you quoted his post which said he didn't use it that way as "proof" that he said it wasn't a reflection, which is, exactly as he had claimed, not what he said.

Not only do you have reading comprehension issues, you love to argue and love to claim that you're not. We're done with that.

Are we really going to debate "use" and "is"? Whatever. He can use whatever he wants for whatever he wants.

At my best? Focusing on playing my best, taking mindfulness breaks, and tightening up a bit to avoid second guessing myself in close spots.

At my worst? Saying I'm terrible at poker, not playing as much, calling bets when I shouldn't just to see how bad I'm running.

It helps to look at my current winrate and calculate how long I'd have to break even to drop down to $35/hour, which is my target number for poker to feel 'worth it' to me.

IIRC I've got around 4 100-150 hour breakeven runs. I agree that having things mixed in is weird but I don't have the energy to make a better graph (it's just excel sheet). FWIW, all the 5/T PLO is at the end of the graph

This is a bizarre post.

How could you have played 6000 hours at 2/5nl and never play a pot over $2500?

I’ve played way more than you live and online, and don’t think I’ve ever seen someone fold a set to a single turn check raise on a board without str8 possibility.

And it happened to you a few days ago?

You don’t realize the insanity of someone folding 66 there?

And you’re trying to make a point that your games aren’t soft?

You made two statements that are both very hard to believe. While also disproving your statement that your games aren’t soft.

Definitely bizarre on multiple levels.

That's actually a great metaphor. ERA isn't at all the best reflection of pitching skill, that's why advanced pitching metrics such as xFIP exist. It throws out factors outside the pitcher's control, such as fielding, park factors, and some of the luck as well.

Very true. Some pitchers have a big advantage if they pitch in large ballparks. Looking at ERAs only in away games is a better way to compare but nobody does that.

It reminds me of everyone saying the Patriots have the best defense possibly of all time without looking at their schedule which was the easiest 8 game stretch of games Ive ever seen. They played just about every inept offensive team in the league...until tonight and they got exposed by the first good offense they played.

.

This ****ed-up way of replying inside the quote makes reasoned debate a lot harder.

Sorry. It quicker and easier to answer multiple questions clearly that way.

"Easier"

If you can put in two Bold tags, you can put in two Quote tags.

I just played 30 hours in Vegas at 2/5 (Bellagio $500 max buyin) and I saw 5+ pots of $1800 or more. I was involved in 3 of them.

Don't most people say FL games are way better than Vegas, much less the shallower Bellagio games? Not saying you're lying, it's just shocking.