Ive read about your results and Ive read quite a few of your strat posts. Without knowing you personally or watching you play, Im convinced that your "nittiest low variance style" is what is causing your diminishing win rate over time. The games have changed a lot over the past 3-4 years and super nitty playing style is not going to work anywhere near as well as it used to. Im pretty sure you are smart enough and experienced enough to adjust and open up your game at this point which would probably result in a higher win rate, but for some reason you dont seem to want to.

It's theoretically possible depending on how bad the regfish are.

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It's really just a matter of where the emphasis lies

If your regfish are enabling you to win at 25bb/hr, they're just fish, not regfish. Probably whales in fact.

The biggest fish by far in the games I've played in are regfish. You could also label them whales..regwhales I suppose.

Reg whales have been fueling my win rate for five years.

I think most people would be surprised by how much some people lose playing poker. There's a snowbird who comes down to S. Florida for the winter every year that Im friendly with. Hes not very good but hes not an obvious fish either. Hes a rec player with basic poker knowledge but hes entirely too passive. I would assume hes a small losing player who enjoys the game and being social. The other day he said he was down $38000, playing 2/5 this season (about 3-4 months). That's 79 buy ins! I almost fell out of my chair.

Most of the guys I play with are wealthy or have renewable expendable income. They don't keep track and they don't notice. That's why game conditions can change so dramatically in a short time. Subtract a few of those players and your dynamic changes completely.

Seems like this is a semantical debate vs. WR possibilities

Considering all these terms are arbitrarily applied to what each person thinks is best fit and there is no real consensus as to what defines a fish or a whale, it's really pointless to discussion.

Does anybody here know what an average winrate is for PLO in terms of BB/hour? I understand holdem is 10+/BB is considered very good. But what about PLO?

I don't see too many PLO players post often and I don't check forums (very rarely), so any help or insight on this would be appreciated.

Also, in regards to winrates... I think the best way to determine if you are a winning player is if Villain or another player had your same exact hand, how would they play it differently and who will extract more value? Would you win more or lose less with the same hand?

See in PLO, there are countless of ways to play different hands, so if I were to answer my question, I know for sure I would play my hands differently than most players. I'm not just talking about the cooler pots where you run top set into nut flush draw or any of that, but primarily the smaller and medium pots where you could have more control over the outcome.

Whales are fish only bigger.


Also, I don't think recipricocity can determine if you're a winner against the field. You might be just less of a loser.

Or a smaller fish if you will.

I would think that playing a nitty style would actually increase variance over the "medium term" (think 1k hour segments), as your results are going to be heavily influenced by the distribution of hands you are dealt over that period.

I think a looser and more aggressive style is going to increase variance over the short term (especially within sessions), but decrease variance over the medium term as you are less reliant on making hands to turn a profit.

I don't know what your point is. You're just arguing that by nature, any players who allow you to win at 25BB/100 are notably worse than the hero, which is a ridiculously pointless observation. You going to tell us that things soaked in water are wet next?

I define regfish as regulars of the cardroom/poker, who are fishy, not "bad regs", which is another definition that is sometimes used. Regfish is used to signify they aren't randos, and therefore come regularly and can be a more regular source of edge, and whom allows more creative and exploitative players who read dynamics and history well to get an edge.

Yes, so people should learn to read from context what people mean instead of picking on semantics for absolutely no reason. You could just remove the part about regfish from my post and it'd still make perfect sense.

I don't think 10 big blinds per 100 is good, but per hour is pretty good on average, but it depends on stakes. I think 10bbs at 1/2 1/3 is not great, 2/5 is decent, but 5/10 is very very good. It's too subjective. Each game varies so much in possible winrate counting in that manner is not useful. Being able to win 10bb/hour in one 5/10 game might make you a very good player, but in another it'd mean you're just another boring reg.

PLO bb/hour depends a lot on the hands/hour. Things like stack depth etc matter a lot. The 2/5 where my winrate is really high has 2.5k max buyin and can match half of biggest stack, and also straddles fairly often, making it quite big sometimes.

I don't think that's true at all.

I think the main difference between NLHE and PLO is that hand values change depending on how many players are in the pot, whereas with NLHE it's fairly linear. Good multiway hands are generally very good HU as well, and vice versa. Example: JTs, A5s, AA, AKs, even offsuit AK, at least in comparison to PLO where some hands are good enough to play HU for a 3b, but flatting and letting it go multiway would be very bad

That's not how it works. Playing an aggro style and having a more NSD source of winnings (redline) doesn't actually decrease your variance. If anything, now you play a lot more bloated pots where whether you win or not depends on whether you run into the top of your villain's range, whether they hit the card you bluff on, whether they are in the right mood to fold, etc.

Variance is variance. It's no conclusive, but all the stat comparisons I've seen show that looser more aggro players depend as much as tighter players over large samples on their big hands. If you remove all your AA KK from your database, even the best LAGs with high NSD will often still be losers (don't quote me on that, it's been a long time since I did stat plugging, but fairly certain this is true or close to it).

I believe all those stat comparisons were looking at online poker though where edges are much smaller than in live poker.

Still remember a couple of years ago when I did the M homework thread and tracked hands for a couple of months. Obviously lol sample size for this once-a-week player, but it was still fairly startling to realize how much of my profit was generated from AA and KK alone. M's guess was that AA/KK paid for all our blinds, and how we fared with everything else decided whether we were winner or a loser. ETA: Although I can't remember if M's guess was just for on-line (which I'm assuming all his database analyzing was from) or whether he thought it also applied a lot to live as well (I guess depends on skill level of player).

GturnsoutI*am*justwaitingforAA/KK,thankyouverymuchG

This is an incorrect way of thinking about variance. It’s not compartmentalized over time.

This is true in my old HEM, but as you've said it is much less applicable for live poker.

I've been an online reg at PLO online up to 5/10 on FTP for a somewhat lengthy period and still play live PLO ~2x a week. Worrying about winrates for live PLO is like worrying how fast you could run if you had the legs of a cheetah.

It's really hard to say, and I guess moot, but mostly some food for thought for people who think you can "beat variance" with laggy playstyle. There are many kinds of run bad, and not all of them is about having good hands. Good run outs to bluff on and running into hands that folds vs your bluffs is a huge part of it too.

I do think in live poker because edges much higher, it's possible to win without being on the good end of AA KK, but AA KK would still factor in a huuuge part of your winrate, if you don't win AA vs KK, but lose KK vs AA, or your AA loses to a set or vs KK, etc etc.

{Mod note: antagonistic portions of this post edited out and poster warned}

And my point was that you aren't going to win at 25bb/HR Vs these players. To do that, to sustain that WR, if it is even possible, you need whales - drunks, dealers, rich businessmen, people who have never played before, guys punting off thousands a session at 1/3. These players, while they might play somewhat regularly, cannot be defined as regfish, as per your definition.

You're not my mom! You don't tell me who I can win 25BBs/hour from and who I can't!!!!111

But seriously, who are you, and what do you know about me to be able to make a statement like that.

What is your sample size of the 25BB/hr and what stake? just curious

Sol Reader, thanks for the reply.

That's a great rule you have for a 2/5 game over there where you can match half the highest stack. That can definitely surge your hourly with deeper stacks. Would you mind sharing what your hourly rate is in PLO at 2/5? And if that games usually straddles for 10?

I just don't have anything to compare to so I don't know what a 'good rate' is or ever was.

I didn't have a sample of 25bb/100. I won 70k over 4 months, over about 200-250 hours, where I estimated my actual edge is about that 125/hour. I have a larger sample of about 1500 hours where I average about 70~ hour, and I extrapolated my experience at higher and lower stakes, factoring in rake, and how much softer that period is vs other periods.

This is my point. I averaged about 70/hour, but there were periods during this sample where my hourly was probably 35, and a period where it was 125, and it all probably boils down to an average close to what my actual average was, but there's no way there is a significant enough sample to prove the spots individually since I was specifically talking about a few months dry spell in the games, and then a very good few months (holidays, lots of travels, better regs gone for various reasons).

The thing though is that it doesn't have to be a few months. I could be talking about a specific given session where my hourly was 250+ or something, or a specific session where my hourly was breakeven or even negative. Each session is different, and everything else is just averages and generalisations.

In my PLO, I write down my 2/5/10 at 5/10 and compile them together, so it'll be mixed with my straight 5/10 data. I believe my hourly for 5/10 is 165 or something over 600 hours at PLO.

I don't need to know anything about you to make that statement. It's just really basic stats.