By about 1-2% of the poker playing population. If hes asking, he probably cant do it.

Mike, did it ever occur to you that some people don't live under circumstances where they could even attempt to play full time/high volume hours at non peak times? I also think you're the last person who should be saying who can and cannot attain certain winrates, considering you've posted some questionable strategy to say the least.

Thanks for the response Squid. I've grown curious about this, because of some online statistics I've seen recently: that the only hands you'll make 100bb/100 hands with are AA-QQ. A live winrate of 10bb/hr is approximately 30bb/100 hands. Assuming a pretty high full-ring VPIP (20%) you'll play 6 hands an hour. That means you have to make an average of 500bb/100 hands for each hand you play.

I'm not calling anyone a liar over their winrates. I myself have had good numbers over 1000 hours of play at peak times at my local casino and during extended trips to Vegas. However, after seeing this math, it's really difficult for me to wrap my head around how, statistically, these winrates are possible.

I know that live players are worst than online players, but wow those are some staggering numbers. I would be interested if MPethy had any input on this. I remember reading posts in the past where he had tracked his performance in the blinds and compared it to online, finding that he was actually a winner in the blinds in live poker. Such a feat would be impossible at all but perhaps the microstakes online.

Of course most people cant play at non peak times. Most people have a real job. All I said was that almost nobody can make 10BB/hr unless they are playing evenings and weekends and even then I doubt more than 4-5% of all players can do it. I estimate that 85-90% of all players lose. How many do you really think are winning 10BB/hr or more?

As to the second part of your statement, I consider it a badge of honor when people here say that my strategy is questionable because most people here suck at poker. Just like most poker players suck in real life. Im not saying you suck. Im saying most posters suck.

I know what my win rate is and I know that very few people have that high a win rate, so when these same people with lower win rates than mine tell me my strategy is questionable, that's all I need to know. A lot of terrible players here just dont understand the lines I take and I really dont give 2 ****s what they think. Some good players here question some of my lines also and I pay a lot of attention to their advice, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

MikeStarr, TBH, only thing you got going for you is your claimed WR and you pretty much use that to justify every one of your positions.

I still have 13 BI.


Winrate since returning is $58/hr at 1/2.


Approx. $232/100 or 116bb/100.

Assuming slightly smaller WR at higher stakes so like $150/hr at 5/T.

I got AA aipf vs KK for 250bbs preflop and he spiked an King
How will that affect my 100hr sample? For example usually I win a

Of course you are going to be confused comparing winrates between online poker and live poker given that they are completely different games played completely different ways. You called a 20% VPIP high, but in live poker they'll probably call you a nit if you only play 6 hands an hour. In live poker the opens are much bigger as well which makes the game play larger as well, particularly with more flops going multiway.

I know for a fact that 15bbs+/hr is attainable in the softer live markets. There are players in this thread that have made 10bbs/hr in the toughest live low stakes games in the country.

This might belong in the pro poker thread but the lack of games during non peak hours was a top 3 surprise for me when I took a year to play poker. I ended up playing a similar volume that I was playing when employed, which is one of a number of reasons I returned to work.

As for actual WR, Im guessing my Saturday night WR is close to my Monday afternoon WR. I can look but I doubt I have the sample for results to matter.

Even if that is true, however, the peak games are still where you want to put your time in, and this is best done as part time...with full time cash flow as your main source of liquidity.

I honestly dont know how or why I got off on the wrong foot with people here. I guess I come off as a jerk online but I dont have that problem in real life. Ive met several people from 2+2 in real life and we are now friends. I have several good friends that are top players in my main poker room. We all discuss tough hands by texts during the day and I can guarantee you that my game is well respected. I'll go out on a limb and say that I am in the top 3 winners in my game and its a very big room.

I just happen to have a semi non ABC approach to the game and people here just dont want to embrace it. I play alot more read based poker than math based poker than most people. When my friends and I discuss a hand, I normally ask who the villain was before answering. If its a reg, the advice will often change dramatically based on who it was.

I probably fold the best hand more than anyone else I know. I check TPTK or an overpair more than most people I know. I check raise all in more than most people I know.

Ive been playing for a lot longer than the majority of posters here so Ive strayed from basic strategy. It works for me. Thats all that matters. I used to play very basic ABC and nitty and I won playing like that as I started playing more and more regularly I started adding in a lot more "strange" lines. Since Ive started mixing it up a bit my win rate has soared. What doesnt matter is whether or not anyone else likes my lines or even whether they believe I win or not.

PS...actual success is a pretty good judge of whether something works or not in real life. Anything else is just theory

+1

As a landlord, I look favorably upon tenants who have (what I consider to be good) habits like this. I am willing to cut tenants lots of slack if I feel like I'm not being jerked around.

Although, no too long ago, one particularly good tenant wanted to prepay a few months. I said sure, but let me ask you a personal question first -- do you have an emergency fund, and how large is it? We talked about it a bit and I suggested that instead of paying me first, he could take that $$$ and put it into the emergency fund to pad it a bit.

~~~~

As for myself, all my utility bills have positive balances.

E.g. my electric bill has a credit equivalent to 4 months of charges.

This is in addition to my personal emergency fund.

They will. You just have to get creative.

1) You can probably pay your mortgage bi-weekly (or even weekly). Because of the amount of principle involved, you save a massive amount on interest. You can turn a 30 year mortgage into a 25 year mortgage in this way.

Bi-weekly Mortgage Calculator.

2) You can setup a separate online checking account with automatic bill pay and just keep pouring $$$ into the account as possible. In this way, you need not even really think about the check writing.

If you don't escrow your taxes and insurance then you can make a yearly lump sum payment for each which is nice for a full time poker player.

He doesn't want to pay it bi-weekly or weekly though. He wants the opposite. He wants to make payments every 6 months and receive a discount for doing so. My understanding is that you will not save on interest by doing this with most mortgages. You would need a simple interest mortgage that allows you to make payments well ahead of time.

He will save interest if he specifies that he wants the advances payments to go specifically towards principal.

That wouldn't constitute a monthly payment. He would still have to make monthly payments which is exactly what he doesn't want to do.

Hmmm, you're right. I guess we need to know what hes trying to accomplish other than flat out save money. Saving money and cash flow issues are 2 different things.

The guy paying 6 months rent in advance to save money still has to take the rent money out of his bankroll every month and put it in savings. Otherwise at the end of the 6 months he will have no money to pay the next 6 months.

See step #2...

He needs to save the money for sure but he doesn't have to do it on a monthly basis and thus short term fluctuations are not going to affect him as much as someone that has to pay rent every single month. Also, an added benefit of paying upfront is that if he does experience a short term fluctuation, it doesn't affect his ability to pay rent because he can still just make a normal monthly payment rather than paying the entire 6 months.

This is perhaps an extreme case, but when I was first playing I had $12k+ in property taxes to pay every year. If that was escrowed I'd be paying $1k a month in property tax a month. However, since mine wasn't escrowed I paid it in one lump sump, after the year in question. For instance, 2016 taxes would be due on January 31st 2017 but I could pay them as early as November 2016. So for like 7 months of the year, February through August I didn't really have to worry about property taxes at all because really if I can't come up with $12k in 5 months playing 2/5+ then I should probably just quit poker.

If I ran real good in October then I could just go ahead and pay my taxes off in November. If not, I'd still have a few months to come up with the money. Paying off early is not the ideal decision financially but may make sense for piece of mind (and for over-spenders).

$12K in property taxes? Jeez!

Yeah but unfortunately most professional poker players aren't disciplined enough with money to make that a good fit. A lot of them are over-spenders, or shot takers, or have other leaks which makes money over and above their roll disappear quickly (sometimes their roll disappears too).

I can't recall: what is your overall sample size, and especially the size of hours since you adjusted your game from nitty to more "strange"?

GcluelessnittynoobG

Well, I played over a million hands online back in the day and played mostly ABC, set mining type nitty style. I dont remember what good online win rates were back then, but I remember mine was probably 75% of what top players were reporting. I was still winning but I was struggling a bit when everything went to 6 max and everyone was hyper aggro. Nittiness wasnt working that well because I was getting run over.

I decided to use everyone's aggression against them and started short stacking 5/10 games and made an absolute killing. After a while that got boring and I stopped playing altogether a few months before Black Friday.

Recently I moved to Florida and have played fairly regularly and have about 750 hrs where I have slowly but surely started taking more "strange" lines or playing "trickier". Whatever you want to call it. Its mostly player dependent.

I know lots of people who have played a lot of hours think 750 hours is nothing, but my results have been very consistent most of the time. Ive had one 100 hour break even streak. Ive had one stretch of 70 hours where I won $125/hr. The rest has been a very consistent steady win rate.

Ive had a max of 3 losing days in a row and Ive had a max $2000 downswing.

I just think alot of people come here to get advice and they all end up reading the same advice and all end up playing alike and its very easy to read. As soon as I hear someone at the table use phrases like "ship it" or "Im at the top of my range", I know they are most likely 2+2ers and I play accordingly. I do alot of things that people here think are stupid but it works for me so I keep doing it. That tells me its probably not as stupid as people think.

I limp a lot if people behind me let me get away with it.
I buy in short a lot depending on who is at the table which goes back to my shortstacking success.
I flat call raises with big pairs more than most would say is correct because thats exactly what people dont expect.
I check/call a lot if Im confidant Im ahead and the guy will keep betting.
I fold to a lot of raises and Im sure I fold the best hand a lot

^^^^

I don't play 2/5 NL (which I think most of your posts are from) so unlike others I'm not going to dump on your strategy.

The only thing I have to note is the 750 hours, especially if only a part of that you've moved away from your original more nittier strategy, so what, we're talking about a 400 hour sample size now?

I ran extremely consistently using my style for my first ~2000 hours at ~9bb/hr, and yet I've run at 43% of that my last ~860 hours. The more hours you play, the more chances you have of evening out rungood with runbad, plus having the game you play in change, etc.

Anyhoo, sounds like you are in an envious financial position so it doesn't really matter if things go sideways, so good luck.

Ghopeyou'restillpostinghereinanother2000hours,it'l lbeinterestingtoseewhatyourgraphlookslikethenG

Are you sure you are playing the same in those 860 hours as you were in the first 2000 hrs? Sometimes its hard to see the forest for the trees. It has to be pretty hard to remember exactly how you were playing a year or 2 ago. Maybe the games have gotten tougher or maybe youve become robotic after playing so long? Its almost impossible to know. I doubt your win rate dropping that far is because you are just flat out running that much worse than before.

All I'm saying is that you *might* be singing a different tune when your ~400 hours of this new crushing-amazing-play-the-man-etc. strategy hits 2800 hours.

In my case, there is a very good chance I ran extremely well over my first 2000 hours (but given enough hours we should probably all luck into some rungood, so I'm not dismissing those results completely outright), it's *possible* I've run bad the last 860 hours (meh, I'm not too convinced either way, I'm guessing I've run pretty normal but hard to tell), and the games are *most definitely* a lot lot worse. And easy peasy, shipping at 43% of prior winrate; it doesn't take much.

GI'llletyouknowhowI'verunoverallinmyseventhlifetim eG