games are pretty soft i guess. average 1/2 i guess. i play in a few different casinos - the one i spend the most time there are a lot of loose passive players so that leads to high variance in spots but run good = insta-stacks. the game with the 500 max buy in is the toughest. it's a "home game" with a rake and a couple really good aggressive players there. there's still money to be made but it's a grind.

You are really taking a flyer (meaning your risk of ruin is pretty darn high regardless of how you play) no matter what so may as well go big or go home and buy in for max. I'm assuming you are single and living a very modest lifestyle so you are not at risk of hurting other people.

just stick with 200. if you're a winner in the game I think about 2k is good enough to start off with for 1/2 only bc its so soft and low variance.

I'd stick with $200 until you have $2K. Then I'd go up to $300. I wouldn't even consider $500 in the more aggro (and therefore swingy) game until you have $5K.

Having a bad month. -$3100 most of it coming from a super long super tilting session where I dropped $2K in the softest 2/5 deep stack table assembled in the last couple years (couple NFL players, 2 women that didn't fully understand hand rankings, rest of the table cold calling 3bets with 710s type hands). Everyone had over 300bbs, didn't even make sense. Ugh.

On a positive note this was on a Wednesday night with not even 1 average reg. Might have found a new spot to grind hopefully.

^ right there with you.. just had my biggest BB losing session in a year at 600 BB's. lost the maximum or near max on every hand while winning zilch

^ yeah it'll get better. Hoping to finish out the month by playing well.

I'd be buying in 80bb until you have about 4k and also grinding on the side delivering pizzas or something.

You could buy in for 200, and if your roll drops to 800 then cut it in half so you have 8 more bullets.

1 you are building a roll with no other income. Are you a winning player?
2 if yes what is your poker resume
3 if you have no live resume get yer ass side income pronto

the reason for 3 is in my time as a gombooler I have seen many winning online players have difficulty transitioning to live... you may not fall into that category...but imho you have 2 things going against u (no live experience and short roll)...this is not generally a winning combo

Starting a bankroll of about 1.5k for low NL games, had a question about game selection and blind structure.

I just got a new job and luckily there is a cardroom about 5 minutes away, unfortunately the smallest NL game has a 2/2/3 blind structure with 100bb buy in cap. Basically I am getting blinded as if it was a 2/5 game but less deepstacked. The other options under an hour from me are a 1/2/3 100bb game, 1/1/2 100bb game, and 1/3 $3-200 spread limit game with a buyin cap of highest stack at the table. The best players are in the spread limit game by far and the other three NL games have typical 1/2 & 1/3 donks.

In order to find a normal 1/2 & 1/3 game with >100bb buy ins its over an hour drive for both and I find this commute hard to do on days that I work. I feel these games give me the biggest edge though.

With the extra blind on the button I feel I'm paying about ~$10 more per hour with this structure and the games don't allow me to be as deepstacked. Does anyone have experience playing in games with an extra blind in on the button? I'd like to play multiple days a week but don't know if its worth it in the long run to play with the triple blind structure... right now I'm trying to limit myself to one long weekend session but occasionally play during the week at one of the closer places... and when I do it's at the 1/2/3 place

A blind on the button shouldnt necessarily impact you negatively. Other players have to pay this blind too. Its not like the blind on the button is going directly to rake, which is what affects your winrate.

The only thing I'm going to simply note here is your sample size hours (you've mentioned ones of 230, 52 and 34). I would go so far as to say these sample sizes are so small that they are almost completely meaningless, and probably couldn't even conclude whether you are a winner in the game based on them (let alone for how much).

Ggoodluck!G

I've got about 400 hours at 1/3, about $19-20/hr, usually only play Fri and Sat nights. One thing I don't see is the massive swings some people report. My worst (say 6 hour session) is prolly about losing 2 buy-ins, and that happened like twice in say 70 sessions. I know his sample size is not big, so I try to see spots where there is variance, and I don't really see it. I kind of think of a model that reduces my sessions to about 3 medium size pots and 1 big pot where if it were heads up, I'd be about a 60% favorite. So I don't really see the potential for big losses.

Then again, maybe I'm leaving money on the table. I raise quite a bit preflop, but don't 3bet light much and don't really find myself c/r much after the flop. I feel I do pretty well at things like knowing when a turn check can gain me a river bet.

IDK, any comments? I'm just trying to look more qualitatively since my sample size is kind of small. Is there a metric I could track that could give more insight into any leaks?

@biz dude

Your w/r is nice...as you said your sample size is small. I have had 200hr b/e stretches. I have also had 400hr stretches where I can do no wrong

The best thing to do is find a poker buddy and really discuss hands, lines, sizing etc.

We all have leaks. It takes a lot of work to realize what they are and to focus up and plug em

400 hour update, all since May, 2016, and all at 1/2 cause that's all that runs in my city

hours: 398.5
profit: $8258
$/hr: $20.72

I suck at graphs and cant get the x axis to make the hours show up, but here's what I got:


I've definitely made a lot of mistakes during this period, but rarely big ones. I've pretty much learned that if I dont think I'm running badly, then I'm probably running pretty good. So I probly got some run good going on overall in some way. Hoping to be at >$15/hr though long term.

Nice 11 game winning streak.

Any time your giraffe moves up at a near vertical angle you can be assured you are running better than "good."

You can go back a year in this exact thread and see how oblivious I was towards variance. The subsequent 2000 hours have been life changing and are steering me back towards full time employment as playing poker full time with advanced degrees is unequivocally the nut low.

Hey guys, there is a really soft 1/2 game in a casino where I live. I have played 4 sessions and made a profit in every session, won like 500euros.
Obviously 4 sessions is nothing and variance happens, but there was always atleast 2-4 old guys that had no clue what they were doing at the table.

rake is 5% capped at 15euros. The casino is 25km away from me and I need to pay to park my car (something like 1$ per hour capped at 6$ so I never pay more than that) . So considering my travel costs and parking costs....is it worth ?

I'm not trying to live off poker or aspire to be a professional, I just love to play and some side income $$ would be nice obv, probably I will only play 2-3 days/ week (4-6+- hours per session) , because of studying and my work, unless im on holydays etc..

The min salary wage at my country is like 530$ , so anything like 1k+- $$ per month of winnings wouldnt be bad. Considering my travel expenses and time available to play would it be worth ?

Also there are some live mtts from time to time that seem profitable, that I would like to start playing ( the weekly 100$ mtts, I dont really care because of the small prizepools) but sometimes there are 500$ big ones that pay 20k$ to first and there are satellites , so binking one of them wouldnt be too bad. For instance WSOP circuit is coming to this casino for the 1st time here in May and I assume the main even which is 550$ will have a nice prizepool , probably will play.

What travel costs do you have outside of what essentially amounts to around $1/hour parking fee? If you have a car, it's about a 15/20 minute drive, right? Doesn't seem to be a major issue there. Plus I assume you enjoy playing...?

If the game is soft and beatable, seems pretty reasonable to me. My costs to get to most poker games are higher than $6 and it's a total non-issue in my book.

This is really a bankroll question. But of course it's worth it (if you do have an edge over the table). Parking and gas should be 10 BB tops = 1-2 hours of play.

If you enjoy playing and just play for fun then it really shouldn't matter as it's just entertainment. Even from a pure financial aspect, I don't think there's much overhead for you to get yourself into the game. A 50km round trip probably costs you 1-1.5 gal. of gas (or we'll call it 4-6 liters since I'm guessing you're in Europe). I'm not sure how expensive gas is across the pond, but that can't be more than 10-15 euros right? Tack on a few bucks for parking and I'd assume you're looking at 15-20 euros total. I've spent more than that to get a seat in a bad game, let alone a soft game .

Yep it's 15-20 minute drive plus 4-6$(euros) to park car , well all the 4 sessions I had there was always atleast 2-4 spots at the table. And fridays / weekends lot of ppl that go gamble at roulette and casino games etc play as well so....well see.

I currently saved 2k so 10 Buy ins just for poker. I am going to add more (+200) this month.

As I said I am not trying to make a living out of it , just some extra money ( 1k +- per month would be nice , anything more is an extra) and I enjoy playing live , so worth to try I guess

Well GL, hope it works out for you. I'm glad to hear that you don't have aspirations of being a low stakes pro grinder and you view the game as a part time hobby to make some extra money. Sure there are plenty of people that grind low stakes for a living , but I've always thought that a large portion of them would be much better off both in the short term and long term to find themselves stable jobs that offer healthcare and pensions, and use poker as a part time job for secondary income.

Of course many people desire to play poker professionally to avoid the 9 to 5 and live life on their own terms, but at the low stakes it can be an unhealthy and degenerate way to make a "decent" income without benefits.

It's live $1/$2, you don't have to run that good for it go up like that. Whether he's a consistent 10bb/hr winner, I have no idea.