I understand how bad it can get. I had one of the worst years ever in online MTT's pre black friday. (it's completely diff but I know what the world is against you, **** is hitting the fan, punching walls/monitors variance looks/feels like)

I haven't had a year under 7bb/hr at live cash in over 10 years. It's still not some insane sample but its truly surprising what others are saying... dreading possible regression toward the mean :/

+1

As someone who ran average to good my first 1000 hours followed by unimaginably horrendously bad for the next 2000 hours, I can reasonably say a 1000 hour sample size is still fairly meaningless for determining your sustainable or true win rate.

There are just so so so many ways to run good that most people overlook as "just playing my A-game," and the inverse and seemingly innumerable number of ways things can go against you.

I have no idea what my long term sustainable WR is, nor do I really care anymore. I stopped meticulously tracking my WR, only the P&L. I've got all the data to eventually retabulate but it's just not that important IMO.

I'd say throughout my poker time, I've logged around 5 million+ hands between online and live @ a minimum.

If you don't think I understand what running bad is, you're mistaken.

How many hands online have you played?

Obviously the bulk is online. It's too hard to accumulate those numbers live.

How many years did you play online full time for?

I've always played part-time. I've played online seriously for maybe 2 years. While taking off at least an entire month once a year every year.

5,000,000 hands in 2 years?

Part time?

You would have to be 16 tabling

11 months per year
3 hours per day
60 hands per hour
26 days per month

and still not have 5,000,000 hands

Sorry, but this claim is pretty high on my BS meter.

Well, I played more than part-time, never considered full time and I was certainly mass-tabling. Name of the game in SNGs. And there was definitely streaks where I played 7 days a week. I just operated an at home business in which I put time in. I split more favor in poker in time at the moment because it just required a lot less. But, to be fair, I don't really care what you think.

That's cool, but you're clearly "misrepresenting" something. First you said you always played part time and now that I called you out, you say you played more than part time.

Anyway, it doesnt matter. The point in claiming 5,000,000 hands is to show how much experience you have. Playing tons of hands you pick up betting patterns and sizing tells. You see the same situations over and over. You get rock solid reads on certain players and certain type players. You get invaluable experience.

Anyone 16 tabling isnt "playing" 5,000,000 hands. They are on auto pilot. You're doing none of that playing that many tables.

I should Also note I have played poker Since pre Blackfriday, however that volume pre bf was not large but I have played the poker post Black Friday quite a lot. The bulk came in those 2 years I was mass tabling every session.

You attempted to call me out, I never considered my hours full time as I had 2 jobs but feel free to be anal about the hours. Sure you could say full time but it never was that way.

Claiming 16 taboes is auto pilot shows your disrespect. I Will say when opstarten to Maas taboe it was certainly autopilot and I missed out on Money but as you play more and become familiar with the speed and players, you certainly dont autopilot.

There is def a breaking point for every format and player on tables.

I was playing a long time 9 mans

Mike, he's not saying he played 5m hands in 2 years. He's saying he's played for 10+ years, and only 2 of those years were full time.

When did we go from the consensus that good players can average about 10bb/hr for 1/2, 1/3 to people claiming it's unlikely even the best can average 7bb/hr?

Two things are happening: Players are vastly overrating their own skills w/ regard to LLSNL. Players are underselling just how bad a majority of the LLSNL player pool really is.

And again, comparing LLSNL to online poker is like comparing apples to oranges. There is no real point to it.

Where do you get that from this quote of his

"I've always played part-time. I've played online seriously for maybe 2 years. While taking off at least an entire month once a year every year. "

An experienced online player with very little live playing time said that its unlikely even the best can avg 7BB/hr. He was clearly speaking about something hes unfamiliar with.

Simply to play devils advocate, I belive SRT was using his experience with win rates from an online background as a guideline for what can be achieved. Meaning, even in the glory days of online poker, 30bb/100 would be rather exceptional.

So it truly is the upper bound, and it can be compared to live in the sense it was a time when games were at their peak / people were all bad / everyone limped / everyone sized bad / everyone stacked off with tpnk.

Present day, I play FR 10NL online and agree that it is tougher than 2/5 live so it's hard to make any comparisons. That said, I've still had 30bb/100 stretches and you realize they really are ridiculous heaters when you have more of this perspective (from volume of play).

The things that make win rates apples/oranges from online/live aren't the poor play though. It's that the effective stack sizes and raise sizes make them two totally different games. At 10NL, it is very rare to see an open > $0.35. At 2/5, $25 opens are standard and many $30. Stuff like this is what makes the games hard to compare, you are effectively short stacking a higher stakes game when you are playing in a good 2/5.

I'd be curious to see what the longest break even stretches live for somebody was.

Tough to do this though because you need a long term sample size to say you're breaking even and not just running standard for your win-rate.

Mine is 230 hours. That's my worst losing streak and the time it took to get back to even since the losing streak started.

I think some of those who are saying it's not sustainable play in really small player pools. I always thought ppl were using bb as big blind x 2 bc the #s seemed kinda low otherwise. I'm shocked that people are claiming 7bb @ 1/2 $14/hr is not sustainable. I'm pretty sure that the 1/2 in Atlantic City or philly could be beat for somewhere in the $30s/hr by a top player

Comparing say $1-2 NL online vs. $1-2 NL live is largely the difference in skill. Also, your describing a component of the difference pointing to worse play and not a separate issue. There is also very different post flop bet sizing live vs. online, but again this is just describing the details of the bad play vs. a separate distinction.

The point that I was making is that while people view the skill difference in absolute terms (more bad people live, can't be compared) it's the spr difference that separates the games from comparison.

I won't address 1/2 live vs $200NL bc that is obviously ridiculous.

But if we were to find the best comparable to 2/5 live, it would have to be $10NL (I'm stateside, so this is ignition)

Even though 10NL is filled with very poor players, and comparable to 2/5 live in terms of difficulty, the game dynamics are very different. Everyone 3x's and many buy in full. Whereas live everyone 5-6xs and many buy in 60bb. Sure this can be lumped in "player skill" grouping but what I was getting at is the stakes are different. You are often effectively short stacking 5/10 when you play 2/5 live. Then measuring your bb/hr using $5. Which shows a higher wr in terms of bb.

Alot of these people claiming they make 10bb/hr are closer to 5bb/hr when viewed from this perspective. Which is still fine and alot of money, just saying, a 40bb/hr wr in live 1/2 PLO is rather misleading, even if over 2 million hands.

That's exactly where I'm coming from - numbers in excess of 30bb/hr set off giant red flags in my head.

I think this is a super fair point. The stakes may not be comparable because live plays much "bigger" than online. It's completely standard live to see 6 limpers, raise to 12-15bb, and have 4+ people come along. (The $/pot and average stack size are much higher live). The rule-of-thumb used to be to estimate the skill required to sit a live table by multiplying online stakes by 10 (.50c/$1 online -> $5/$10 live), maybe a good addendum is to multiply the effective stakes you think you're playing by 2 when figuring out winrates :P

There's a counter-point to this which is that as the stakes play higher and SPRs decrease, the skill factor also decreases, but the money going into the pot is so dead it's not clear to me how much that would even matter :/

Anyway, I'm willing to extract my head from my ass on the baseline numbers.

I don't see anyone saying that 7bn/hr is unsustainable, except for SameRiverTwice. He was talking based on his experience from online play, which we've pretty soundly indicated has different variables/conditions than a live game.

The consensus is that anything >10bb/hr long term is impressive, as in only a small number of player achieve it. Not that it's not sustainable for a good player.

I'd point out that there are a lot of smaller player pools out there, and that such a game condition is probably more applicable to most posters ITT. I agree that in a larger pool you'll have an easier time getting a higher winrate though.

Some citations that hopefully show that we're pretty much all in agreement here ...

>7bb is sustainable.

If you're claiming that $40/hr at $1/2 is sustainable ... you're going to have a hard time convincing people of that. Especially over a 500-1000+ hr sample. If you're still thinking 2xbb for $80/hr, I have a bridge to sell you (doubt that).


>7bb is sustainable.

Agreed.

Original post kicking off the real debate.

^ whats a standard 1/2 open? Like 6-8x right?