I always buyin for the max. Usually that's $200 but at the other room I go to it's $300.

Open size depends on the table, it varies. But I'd say $10 is the standard open. Sometimes I'll get tables where $5 or $6 works, other times it's $15 or more. But $10 is my go to size until I feel I need to change due to table dynamics. There's often a lot of short stacks at the table. Min. buyin is $40 so lots of young guys will buyin in for that over and over.

Ok. 20 buyins... sheesh I really hope I don't hit that. Thanks for the info.

Thanks! I will check out that thread. The experimentation started before the downswing but you bring up a good point. I probably didn't go back to my standard play-style soon enough.

Thanks for the info it's very helpful

ishflop:

It's really easy to tilt off a couple of BI with bad plays when you start adjusting your game. Very rarely will it be the big plays either. It's $5 here and $20 there making bets or calls that you shouldn't. Then when you DO get into a good spot you're shorter than you should be and lose out of potential gains.


Take some time off, then simplify your game back to what was working before. Add in changes slowly. I've had some terrible runs where nothing goes my way for months and most people can't just "play through it" You need to reset.


Thread:

I'm back!

When the plague hit and everything shut down I basically didn't play for a year. Dabbled a little bit with some of those online club things with guys in my local home game circle, but really hated those things. In the past couple of months have hit a couple home games to warm up, then back to the casino now that the masks are off and the drink service is back.

5 sessions over 26 hours for a whopping -$80.

Felt terribly rusty in places with leaky calls or bad value bets into better hands. But not too bad overall.
The goal is to get in 200 hours this year. Ideally with a profit.

Now for the key causality of the pandemic, my BR tracker

For years I used an ancient website where I could log sessions. It's gone now. I'd periodically downloaded the session data (to generate some of those fancy plots), but it didn't let me archive session notes. Somehow I lost the downloaded copy of results from July '19 to March '20 It's only about 200 hours and I have my monthly aggregate sheet.


Either way ... I need a new tracker. I'm searching through the thread for apps, but you know how that goes.

What are the current suggestions?

Anyone have a good template for google sheets? Something with filtering and dynamic plots?
I usually use fancy software for analysis at work and never mess with phone compatible stuff.

Thanks guys.

I've been using Poker Income Bankroll Tracker from the iOS app store since 2013 or so. Suits my needs well.

Cracked the 2000 hours mark.

90% 1/3 and 10% 2/5

15% of total hours in Vegas rooms, the rest in $300 max homegame.

Total Hours
2024.34
Total Profit
$109,253.00
Hourly
$53.97



Graph is just 1/3

Who is donating all the money to your game?

Also, nice results!

I think home games can be gold mines. I recently joined a private online home game. It's only .25/.50 or .50/1.00 blinds.. But mostly only .25/.50 played. I've got 118 hours tracked, and $2354 profit. That's $19.82/hour.

26BB an hour, if I'm generous and just say I'm playing the two limits equally.

Sure sure. Except in your example people are losing maybe $50/$100 per week. He took $100k out of his home game. That's 5k per person, per year. And that's if no one else is winning.

My game is generally all tech professionals. It's easy to believe there are other home games playing bigger stakes, with people dropping 5k+ per year without really caring/noticing.

We only play weekly, and it’s been largely the same group of people for the last 7 years or so.

Being significantly younger than the average in this group, I think it’s largely a testimonial to what DGAF talked about in his 2k thread - winning in a game like this primarily comes down to staying on the invite list. You can’t be a nit/grinder and squeeze every dollar out of every situation. Keep the game fun and humor people. Gamble some.

They know I win but don’t care. We’ve had other winning players get invited then not get invited back the next week.

My win rate is actually a bit higher in Vegas/casinos than at the home game, but not a significant example at 300+ hours.

Yeah, DGAF for sure knows his shyt when it comes down to maximizing EV and winrates longterm by cultivating fun gambooly games that people want to sit in.

300 hours isnt telling anything, and can be skewed very hard either way by shortterm variance- i am sure you know that but just making it clear.

Wow, great job Donkey, looks like about ~18 bb/hr over ~1.8K hours? I don't recall seeing anything posted in here nearly that good, especially at a low steaks 1/3 NL 100bb capped game.

I'm assuming decent rake / !BBJ / tip conditions or ?

GcluelesshomegamenoobG

Of course.

GG, the game rakes $20 off of each players first buyin to cover house expenses. That’s all.

Yeah, pretty sweet.

So if you put in a 4 hour session, that's $5/hr, which would probably be something similar to a poker room raking a maximum $1 (or perhaps closer to $0?) + $1 BBJ drop + $1 tip. Disgusting how much actually goes down the tubes in a poker room environment!

Still, awesome results!

Gplaynice,soundslikegoldmineconditionsG

sweet giraffe donkeycopter. Well done and great job implamenting the DGAF principals of keeping it fun and not trying to squeeze out every ounce of ev which does obviously doesnt matter based on your w/r cuz u are crushing it!

congrats

Can someone please refer me to this DGAF thread/post that’s been mentioned a few times here recently? I checked the best of thread but couldn’t find it. Thnx

It got removed. DGAF has a podcast and a website where he's reposted all of it. Just search DGAF sessions on your pod provider and he talks about his website info.

Squid, thank you. You're a legend.

Awesome graph Donkey - looks like you found a great game and crushing that hard for that long while still being invited back is a massive skill on its own. Nice work!

Congrats Donkey

$20 x 9 players = $180.

$8 per hand x 30 hands per hour = $240 rake/jackpot.

Most rooms rake/JP drop more in an hour than that room does for a whole night.

If the private game runs 5 hours in every one of his sessions, it is literally leaving about $1,000 on the table every session when compared to a typical card room.

~1,800 hours in that timespan is roughly 360 such sessions, or $360,000 that the card room did not rake/jp from the player.

In other words, relative to an average casino reg, no one would really have to lose nearly as much money for Donkey to achieve that WR.

It's a decent accomplishment, but if you account for rake, drop, tip...the WR would be much much lower. Just like your WR would be much higher if you play in a similar game.

Average session length is 5.4 hours and average number of hands per hour is 24.4 based on the 20 hour sample I kept track of.

The other factor is this game plays much bigger than a typical 1/3 $300 max because no one leaves when they bust over those 5.4 hour sessions, or when they're winning. This means more money stays on the table compared to casino game or other conditions. 53/337 sessions in my 1/3 sample, I've won or lost over $1000. The game plays closer to a 2/5 I think despite the $300 max.

In my ~300 hours of casino 1/3 or 2/5, I'm not paying $8/hand rake. Most of those hours are at Bellagio or Aria. These days I'm paying time rake in casino games at 5/10, but I didn't include those results in the original post.

All to say, for sure favorable rake and tip conditions have a big impact, especially when compared to the typical "professionally run" homegame raking $10 or more per hand plus tips.

My guesstimate is that every $1 of rake costs us ~about 1 bb/hr off our winrate. I'm guessing this guesstimate is fairly accurately as the maximum rake remains small (as most pots reach that rake) but gets slightly less accurate as the maximum rake increases (as not as many pots reach that rake). Guesstimate perhaps (?) may get less accurate as stacks increase and becomes a much more deepstacked game (where I don't think rake will have as much an overall affect, although it's possible I'm wrong on that as it is still the same amount of money taken out of play?).

So if DC's average session is 5.4 hours, and he won an average of just 2 pots an hour, in a typical casino environment he'd be giving $1 BBJ + $1 tip x 2 pots/hr x 5.4 hours = $21.6, so about what he's paying now (i.e. which would be equivalent to playing in a casino game with $0 rake, although you could argue the $1 BBJ is a deferred cost that he's supposed to eventually partially recoup later). So if you compared it to a maximum $8 raked (~typical for 1/3 NL?), my guesstimate would have his winrate of ~18 bb/hr dropped to about ~10 bb/hr (obviously I could be off by a bb or so either way, kinda just spitballing here). A puke-inducing reduction, although still an overall crushing accomplishment, imo.

Gkeepyourmoneytreewellwatered,imoG

I hope this is an appropriate place to post these questions. I don’t post much at all.
I would like to know what a typical winning player’s sessions logged at 1/2 commonly look like. Particularly players who are winning near the 10 big blinds an hour mark.
I’m wondering if most winners at this rate have a similar “look” to their wins & losses that may give insight into a most commonly effective style. I suppose it’s possible that they will each have styles of winning that are equally represented but I suspect most winners will have a similar look. Of coarse this probably doesn’t mean there is only one way to maintain this rate but I think its an interesting clue.
Do these players win most sessions for modest amounts & lose very few for modest amounts? Do they lose half the time for an average of a buy-in but then win very large amounts in their winning sessions? Do their sessions play out pretty break even but with occasional windfall sessions? (Please don’t tell me “it’s one big session!”) I think you can get the idea.
I’m also curious how these winning styles change at higher stakes if at all.
I think many players at this level fixate on win rates because it’s the closest thing to a metric to measure how well they may be playing. Not so much as a factor for figuring out bankroll management or fantasizing how rich they’re going to get!
On a side note about bankroll size. At these beginning levels of 1/2 for live playing, normally the lowest you’ll be able to play, wouldn’t it make more sense to talk in terms of a “poker budget” than a bankroll?
Your a average 1/2 player is never losing a bankroll, going broke, & getting a real job never to play again. At 1/2 isn’t it really just a bankroll that if you lose, you wait a few weeks for some extra cash & play again? There are no lower stakes to go to rebuild & avoid “going broke”. Unless people are trying to quit their jobs & live on 1/2 which seems crazy to me. I just assumed most 1/2 players have other income & may aspire to move up & then possibly live only on poker, in which your 2/5 or 5/10 bankroll actually matters. Just a thought.
Thanks for any input!

Hey Clide,

My girlfriend Street Poker Chick (SPC) both have a pretty big sample of 2/5. My w/r is a bit higher than hers but I think shes better at poker than I am - we both win over 10bb/hr

She plays a more Laggy style than I do

we both win about 2/3 of our sessions
our big wins dwarf our big losses. Both of us believe strongly in playing longer when we have that winning image and when we are winning we tend to play longer.