@ Pew:

Again, no one is claiming you need a 5 million hand sample to know your WR live. To reiterate, you mentioned 200 hours. To put this in perspective, this is somewhere around 5,000 hands. I mentioned the number 1,000 hours, which is probably 20-30k hands, mostly because others tend to cite it. I think this gives you an estimate, but obviously still won't be particularly converged or anything. Nothing wrong in using that as an hourly after 1kish hours though imo. You just need to know that your WR will still fluctuate after that point. But it's likely you'll have moved up by then anyway if you're as skilled a player as you say.

In live poker, it's simultaneously about the long run, and not. You can't really get too excited about winning for a couple months or down about losing for a couple months. But also, most people who are skilled won't need very much time to move up (if they have outside income), simply because their win-rates will be so high (in terms of bb/buyins).

@pew- the best $2/$5 $500max winrates at foxwoods are ~$60/hr. In a $1500max $2/$5 game with worse players who actually buy in deep and comparable rake, I could see myself doubling that winrate pretty easily. Your data doesn't mean much yet, but obviously will mean progressively more as time goes on and is fun to watch. 1000 hours WR accuracy +-$10 seems reasonable. 500 hours +-$30 accuracy may be roughly correct.

Poker Income for Android. People say poker journal for iPhone.

What town do you play in? PM it it to me if you want. Don't worry, I'm not moving in (Although I may swing through!)

honestly if you are always only playing in nut games, you never tilt, you table select well, and rake is low in your area i think you can beat your 2/5 for a little less than 100/hr over the long run. especially if it is deep and people routinely get it in without the nuts and you never pay them off when they have the nuts

my area has high rake and games tend to be nitty yet i have sustained fairly high winrates following the above conditions over the course of a the last year and a half playing 25hrs/week

@scourrge: I completely agree with you scourrge, 100 hours is like 2500 hands and obviously a very small sample, especially coming from online. However, with the super low live variance, I feel like 2500 hands live = like 25,000 hands online. Still small, but starting to mean something.

@ECGrinder: To give you an idea, there are no online pros that I have noticed and really no pros at all here. The "good regs" are really just live players that have a decent enough game and understanding to beat the lowest games at 1/2 and play at 2/5. I'll check out Poker Journal, thanks. I'll PM you the town. Middle of nowhere town. Pretty sure you won't be stopping by often.

@CallMeLucid: I wouldn't say these are ALWAYS nut games, but there is often a couple really terrible/ultra bad players. I played there this past weekend and it was super slow. None of these types of players, just regs and a couple shorter stack tourist/newguy types. Despite this, I still walked away +3k over 12 hours. The regs aren't good and are very exploitable. They remind me of 25NL type/level of players. Especially if it gets short handed, they are super easily to exploit, like ATM status. There is usually only 1-3 2/5 tables max, so not a lot of table select although I try to maximize the terrible opponents though by never leaving the table while they are there. Just curious, what is your winrate at 2/5 and over how many hands?

Nobody is beating 2/5 for $100/hr, you guys are nuts. If you really believe that, you haven't been through a significant downswing. $50-60 is much more realistic over a real sample size.

Nobody here blinks an eye at a -2BI session. When a common occurrence like that swings your win-rate by 33% you can just LOL at your sample size.

If you play in great games only during primetime hours, its possible to do so

You don't ever sit at games for hours at a time where you estimate your WR at that specific game to be $100+?

Every once in a while I get that dream table where there are no decent players and like 5 deep stacked droolers that love to gamble and I think to myself "If I could play poker against these guys every day I'd quit my job right now." The real question is how often do those tables even exist to be selected? I suppose some people out there could achieve an unthinkable winrate if they only sat in near perfect conditions and passed on the cardroom altogether when tables were tougher, but they would be sacrificing total profit for winrate, not a smart move.

If you are fine with the ego hit of playing lower occasionally it is definitely do able. (Which is what I see a lot of 5/10 pros doing)

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Home games. =]

Right.

So, the thing here as some people have eluded to, but not really said straight out:

There are amazing tables, where we can win 20bb/hour at them over the long term.
There are pretty good tables, where we can win 15bb/hour at them over the long term.
There are reasonable tables, where we can win 10bb/hour at them over the long term.
There are meh tables, where we can win 5bb/hour at the over the long term.

If amazing tables only exist 5 hours a week, and that's all we play, we will average 100bb/week in profit, and 20bb/hour. (Assume 2/5) We will make $500 per week, and $100/hour.
If pretty good tables exist for 10 hours per week, and we play those and the amazing tables, we will average 250bb/week in profit, and 16.6bb/hour. We will make $1,245 per week, and $83/hour.
If reasonable tables exist for 30 hours a week, and we play those and the better tables, we will average 550bb/week in profit, and 12.2bb/hour. We will make $2,750 a week, and $61.1/hour.
So on and so forth, you get the idea.

So, yes, by playing less we can improve our win rate. But how much money do we need to live? And how much do we want to make? Keeping our win rate in terms of $'s/hour really high is stupid if it means that we are still turning down profitable opportunities on other areas. Yes, our max win rate might be over $100 / hour at 2/5, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to take the $40/hour sessions because they will 'bring down our average'.

@iraisetomuch nice post man. To lazy to do the math for your examples myself, but that's essentially how it works for a full time player

Agreed with this. I work a 9-5 so it works out for me that I get to play at optimum hours (weekends only).

I'm curious, for those playing for a living in Vegas, obviously the weekends will be the juciest games but what about weekdays? On my few trips there, I experienced juicy touristy weekend games, but also many businessmen playing on the weekdays. How does your WR compare on weekdays vs weekends?

California better for poker 10 months out of the year.

Weekday afternoons and graveyard are the best times to play in Vegas IMO for a weekday

Interesting. Where in CA exactly? And why is this? Just more pros in Vegas?

Guessing LA.

Guys is 5% rake capped at 50$ for 1/2 beatable by any chance in the long run? Even under the most optimal table conditions, droolers, deep stacked (200bb+ for majority of stacks)

Or does the house just rape everyone regardless

Ill try again since I really need to know

if this isnt the right place to ask these questions please let me know

As for bank roll, that's pretty standard.
~25 buy ins of 100bb each is considered pretty acceptable.

If you can replenish your bank roll from life money, then less is obviously fine if you are a winning player.
If you can't, then you should have more. Like 35-45 BI.
As for win rates, I dunno, because I live in America.

Depends on what sort of rake structure the casinos have.

The house does a really good job of raping everyone in the long run.

If the aveage pot is 50bb, then the average size is $100, and the house takes $5. Not so bad.

But when people are getting AA vs KK AIPF for 125bb each, that's a $500 pot, and the house will be taking $25 out! That's pretty massive. And the more fishy the people are the more the house will be taking as the pots will be bigger.

I'd think that a top winner in this game could still make a decent hourly if the games were always really good, but the better the games are (i.e. the bigger the pots are) the faster the casino is going rake away all of the money.

In most places, because the rake is capped at $5 or $7 the house stops taking a piece ~40bb into the pot. Sometimes less. So when the pots get bigger than that their effective % goes down. In a 200bb pot, the house still only takes 2.5bb. So, essentially 1% of the pot. But here, the house is always taking 5% of the pot, up to $50, which won't happen until the pot is a whopping $1,000!

The money will quickly dry up without whales that are continuing to bring more money into the economy or some sick promotions that will give some of the money back to the economy.

What is it about weekday afternoons that you find to be profitable? Are there not more grinders?

@iraisetoomuch

So there's a twist in the story. I've been offered a "rakeback" deal by the host. The offer is 7% of net profit by hour.

So for example, if he runs the game for 15 hours and rakes 3.5k, after paying the dealers plus players food and drinks and transportation rebates, he's left with 3k profit. Which comes down to a profit of $200 per hour, of which I will get 7% for every hour I've played. So my hourly "rakeback" for that session would have been $14 per hour, and if I played 5 hours I would get $60.

How does this change the outlook for me? Is this a good deal? (All the above is for a 1/2 or 2/2 game, obviously examples are just to make calculations easier/clearer. I don't know how much the average rake of 5% capped at $50 would be per hour.)

Think about it, if you're really getting paid $14/hour - out of all the rake, ie it's not contributed rake - then you could literally play zero hands and profit, right?

Presumably, you can always play AA profitably (shoving all in preflop would always pre profitable, at minimum). Presumably you can also play KK profitably. So then let's assume there are some hands you can always play profitably. You just need to find the right balance. But the $14/hour is always going to outweigh the cost of the blinds around the table (unless you're playing like 4 orbits/hour).

tl;dr
With some basic assumptions, it's beatable with the rake back, esp if you can play nitty. But there's a lot of details that I'd want to ask him before I agreed to play.



So I think that there is a few things to consider here:

How much are the perks worth to you? Do you expect to get value from this 'transportation rebate', do you expect to be eating a lot of the food? Do the drinks help people to play worse?

Also, is he offering you rake back so that you will be a consistent player in the game? So that you will bring other people? Does he have any expectation on how much you will play? Does he expect you to be laggy? If not, this deal is likely pretty good for you as you can play pretty nitty and still make a nice profit on the side.

Also, will he be paying you that day, or will he be holding your money until some later date? Are you worried about the legality of this deal? Is home poker legal in your state? (I doubt it.)

I know these are a lot of questions, but I just want to give you the tools to help you analyse your situation and the possible outcomes.

Having said all of that: The average casino deals 32 hands / hour. (Including chops, hands that are raised pre flop, and no one calls, and everything else.) So, we will assume that your home game will only deal 25 hands / hour.
If we assume average pot sizes of 100bb (which seems a bit large, but whatever) that means that we are seeing ~$2,500 in hour being wagered. Host takes 5% (since it's pretty unlikely that a pot will grow over $1,000) so $250 / hour in rake. If the game runs 10 hours a day (6pm - 4 am), he's taking in $2,500 in rake for the day.

Dealer is getting $20/hour if he's not getting tipped, $200. Drinks are going to cost $200 or so. Food will cost $200 or so. This transportation cost whatever it is will likely cost $200 or so. So, now we are down to $1,700 in net rake. Your 7% take? $119. That's $11.9 / hour in rake back. Not a bad deal.

So, if you are a winning player a normal casino making 5bb/hour which is a true win rate of 10bb/hour (5bb/hour * $2 + $10/hour in rake) you are making $20/hour from your skill in the game. In this game, you are still making $20/hour - $25/hour in rake + $11.9/hour in rake back = $6.9/hour or ~3.5bb/hour. Seems like it's beatable, but will give you a worse winrate overall.