The higher your winrate (relative to size of game) the smaller the volume you need.

That said its moot; you should be able to estimate your edge by spotting leaks.

never posted in the br thread so here's a little background before i show numbers from the last 3 months.

got fired from my job last feb & decided to give da pokahs a try full-time. there were several reasons for this, not the least of which was the imminent opening of a new room in our area that promised to be a fish tank.

i played on my own for a couple of months making ~$20~/hr, then picked up a backing deal from one of the most respected players in our area. in my first 4 months playing on the stake i made $22/hr over almost 600 hrs. a combination of running bad & playing bad from aug.-oct. cost me the staking deal. i got my game turned around mid-sept. but the variance train kinda ran me over after i started playing good again.

i played a few hours in november but nothing to speak of. i spent most of the month reading as much llsnl as i could & took some time away from the game trying to get my head straight. i'd done a little reading on some sites & watched some videos, but had received most of my coaching via the staking deal. anyway, i found the llsnl forum here to be extremely helpful & started fresh in december playing 2/2nl w/a $1k br. i was buying in for $100-$150 initially as i sought to build up my br. at the start of dec. i had about a month's worth of expenses in the bank & a monthly nut of ~$1800~, so this was pretty much my last chance to stay in the game without finding a real job.

december
total sessions: 26
wins: 13
losses: 13
hours: 99
biggest win: $610
biggest loss: $485
profit: $1450
profit/hr: $14.65
profit/session: $55.77

january
total sessions: 23
wins: 15
losses: 8
hours: 99.25
biggest win: $815
biggest loss: $700
profit: $2380
profit/hr: $23.98
profit/session: $103.48

february
total sessions: 24
wins: 18
losses: 6
hours: 132.25
biggest win: $845
biggest loss: $1200
profit: $2240
profit/hr: 16.94
profit/session: $93.33

i started taking some shots @ 2/5 in late january buying in @ $300. the 2/5 games are often better than 2/2 but obv the variance is way higher. i was crushing the last 2 weeks of feb winning 9/10 sessions & lost $600 in 3 hrs on thursday.

i'm hanging in there for now & hoping i can keep playing 2/5 but am prepared to drop down if i take too big of a hit to the br. feel free to blast away at me for playing too big on too short of a roll.

I'm a live poker noob and definitely don't know as much about the game as others in this forum, but shouldn't you play more hours in order for it to be a job? Obviously February was over 40 hr/wk.

possible math noob as well (4 weeks in feb * 40hrs =160 hrs)

that being said and all snarkiness aside he should really be pounding pounding out the hours in order to grow his roll

i agree that i should pound out the hours. my goal is to increase the number/length of my sessions as the br grows. when staked last year i was playing 150-190 hrs/month.

Quick BRM question. I just started playing 1/2 semi-regularly with a BR of $2k. I have a full-time job besides poker, 2 kids and a mortgage, etc., so "semi-regularly" here means once a week so far, with hopes of getting that up to 2-3 times a week at some point. That $2k is completely separate from our family finances, so there is no "real-world pressure" on it, but there's no refunding that BR for a long time if I go bust with it. My short-term goals are to learn the game, play a lot of hands, and ya know, hopefully not bust my BR, since the wife has made clear that there's no more where that came from. My long-term goal (talking about 3 years down the road) is to have enough of a BR and enough confidence in my game to be playing at least as a serious-paying avocation, if not my main job, say at 2/5 or higher.

I thought the cap on the 1/2 at the casino I had been playing at was 200, so that would've made 10 BIs, which I realize is probably the absolute bare minimum of what I need to begin a venture like this. I found out the 1/2 cap is actually 500, which means I just pretty much can't buy in full there at this point. Should I find some place that does cap the 1/2 at 200, or should I just buy in 200 at this 1/2 500 cap game?

$500 cap at $1/2! Nice, where is this?

Since you didn't notice the cap right away ... does that mean that most players are still buying in for $100-300? If that's the case then I wouldn't worry about it and just buy in with $200.

Yes. I didn't even think to look until I saw a few people buying in with $300.

I've got two other options in reasonable driving distance from my house. One is capped at 200 and was super soft when I played there this Friday night, but they've gone from having a room of 11 tables to having just three tables out on the casino floor (think slot machines going off all around, very loud), only one of which is 1/2 NLHE, with the other two PLO. I waited an hour to get a seat Friday night after driving 35 min. to get there. The third option is a total unknown to me, as I've never played there. But it's in driving distance. I've heard from others that it has a reputation for having a lot of people who like to gambool.

Having people occasionally buying in for $300 shouldn't change your table dynamic an awful lot from the more common $200.

The second room sounds like a disaster. I hate burning 1.5 hrs before even seeing a hand, so unless you can call ahead and get on the list to cut down the wait I'd skip that room.

Go try the third room and see how it is.


I've got 3 casinos 35 mins from my house, 3 more an hour away (each in a different direction), two charity rooms 5 mins away, and another dozen or so charity rooms within an hour. The best advice that I could give on room selection is to go and try as many rooms as you can, at least twice each, and see which ones you like the best.

Are you good at playing deep? At the deep place do people play aggressively?

If you are ok at playing deep then go there, buy in for 200 and see how it goes. The great thing about deep games is that a lot of players are quite capable of playing with 100bb but make huge mistakes when deep. If you have aces and are playing 100bb there isnt much you can do that is that wrong. Getting it in post is never that bad. Now if stacks are 200effective then that is no longer the case and if you can flop a set vs someone who cant fold big pairs 200bb deep it is a goldmine.

Okay, I'm looking for anyone who has played a decent sample size at the 400 NL at commerce. 5-10 blinds. What do we think is sustainable at this game for an hourly?

I venture to say the best players in this game can beat it for 70-80 per hour, possibly more depending on the crowd.

Probably 60/hour for the best players at the 400 cap 5/10 NL.

Never played at commerce but I would think it would have to be quite soft to get 60 $/hr

Hey fellas. Is there any merit to thinking of your winrate in terms of BB/100? I was figuring it out last night to try to compare it to online play, but I'm not sure if it makes much sense since I'm estimating hands/hr. It was a ridiculous figure BTW.

A good estimate is probably 28 hands/hr

I went with 25 since my room tends to be slow, but i'll recalculate using the 28 number. It's kind of comical. Live pokers. ha.

The room I play in was very busy Saturday night, even by Saturday night standards. A player at the table asked one of the dealers what was going on and the dealer said "First weekend of the month. Also, tax season."

I have only been keeping a log since August so I can't go back to prior tax seasons, but I did a quick analysis of my data looking at the first weekend of each month. I found that my win rate is about 2.5 times greater the first weekend of the month than the rest of the month. It is only eight months of data and 52 hours on first weekends vs. 258 for all other weekends but it's a pretty stark difference.

What do other people with data find on (a) first weekends of the month vs. rest of month and (b) tax season (say, mid-Feb to mid-April) vs. rest of the year?

Set two personal records on my Saturday session.

Record#1: Longest NL session, booking 13 hours 40 minutes. I've only ever booked one other longer poker session, a 14 hour 20 minute 2/4 Limit session (where I booked a sweet profit of $11, oh. yeah.)

Record#2: Biggest fall from grace within a single 1/3 NL session and yet still booking a win. Halfway thru my session, I was sailing along at $1210 profit, playing at great tables, and eyeing the real possibility of booking my all time biggest win. In the end, I only booked a $222 win, so a $988 drop within the session (which, had the loss part been a separate session, would have been my second biggest losing session ever). Dropping 3.3 BIs within a single session is quite something considering the biggest overall downswing I've ever booked in my 1000+ hours is only 4.57 BIs.

Cliffs: Booked a $222 win and it felt like the biggest loss of my poker life.

Gthat'sright,I'mcomplainingwhenIwin,cuzthat'showgo odIrunG

Anecdotally February was a busier month locally.

My guess is that this could just be statistical noise and unless you really put in huge sample size that it's probably meaningless to attempt to analyze.

As an example, my January of 2012 was the worst month I've ever booked. But my January of 2013 was the best month I've every booked. Obviously lol small amount of hours booked in each month due to only going out once a week. But still, a pretty good indication that I can't draw any worthwhile conclusions based on such small amount of hours, and I'm guessing that applies to your case as well.

GbutI'mnotastatsmajor,sodon'tquotemeonthatG

No, I think you raise a fair point.

I am not looking for proof that first weekends are better but knowing that it be taken as gospel around casinos that the start of the month is better than the end of the month because "everybody just got their checks", I was hoping to crowd-source some data and see if others who track their play see similar patterns. But I promise not to publish the results in the Journal of Poker Statistics.

P.S. GG, you were obviously a fish in January 2012 and were a world class player in January 2013. That's what hanging around llsnl does for people.

Standard info for a gambler. Missing sessions on the first threw third is losing money. Never miss the 15th, Never miss a friday, all those days are mandatory.

What are you talking about, I'm still a fish!

The funny thing about the January 2012 horrible month is that I was coming off an 8 session win streak to end 2011 (which was my record session winning streak until just recently). Then I have that terrible January 2012 and start thinking all kinds of things. Did the fish stay away from the casino due to having Christmas bills to pay and being short on cash? Did they all make New Years resolutions, one of them not to gamble, and hadn't broken them yet? Etc., etc. The great January 2013 month leans more towards the real reason, which is it's just a bunch a random/variance **** that happens and there's no real rhyme/reason for it.

Hi guys,
I got a question about rake.

I am playing 2$/4$ nl live cash. Rake is pretty awful, 10% capped at 13$.
Considering that there is no tip for dealers, I am strictly following BR management, and the casino is like 5 mins from my home place, which means zero expenses.
I've played like 10 sessions, I know it's tiny sample but anyway.
In these 10 sessions I made 2500$ in like 42hours.

This game is extremely juicy!! Especialy on saturday's nights it is not uncommon to meet ppl who don't even know basic rules(winning combinations).

Is this game beatable for long term? I really looking forward to play it regulary(30 hours per week).

Cheers guys!