GG, you make a good point in that if the rake is high enough, the game could simply be unbeatable, or not beatable for a significant winrate. However, I don't think anyone is arguing against that.

What's absurd is your claim that because no one else has posted a higher winrate over 4000 hours at $1/2 that's not possible or that you must simply be playing a style that maximizes your winrate. Do you honestly believe that you are playing every hand in the most profitable fashion? If your answer is yes, then you must believe you are the best player in the world, which would be lol. And if the hands you get can be played in more profitable ways, then logic dictates that a higher winrate than yours is possible. It doesn't take someone actually playing that many hours at those stakes to prove it.

You cannot have it both ways, and say that you aren't a great post-flop player, but your style somehow maximizes winrate. That would be claiming that you can't possibly do better, but clearly if you played better post-flop you would have a higher winrate. This is simple logic.

I really don't see it that way. Our Villains are bad, so some of us can win quite a bit measured in bb/hr at the low stakes. I wouldn't want to compare my skills to higher stakes crushers.

It must be refreshing to learn that you the top crusher in your room (or just short). As GG explains elsewhere itt, 10bb is Sasquatch territory, so your 7.5bb winrate is just short of the max. Kinda depressing that even if you chose better times to play, table selected more aggressively, studied the game more away from the table, and only played when you're very awake and alert, your winrate would only go up a smidge. bummer.

Just tallied my results for my first 1200 hours of live 1/2 and 1/3 and my winrate is right around $21/hour. The bulk of the hours were at 1/2 (maybe 80%) but a decent amount of 1/3, I don’t have an exact breakdown.

A few caveats and notes:

1. I played live poker maybe twice a year for about 8 years before this but I never tracked those results so not really my first 1200 hours but close enough.

2. The first 600 hours were exclusively at 1/2 but a few hundred of those were at a game with a $400 cap. Most people bought in for $200 but I bought in for $300 and would often top up to $400.

3. While I was just starting to learn basic strategy for the first few hundred hours, I played almost exclusively on nights and weekends which helped my winrate. I definitely also ran hot for my first 200-300 hours. It’s a damn shame I didn’t know what I was doing then...so much missed value...so much.

4. This figure does not include my 100 or so hours at the 3/5 $200-300 cap game in Commerce which will lower my hourly slightly (a dollar or two). It was just a shove fest, about 16-20 of those hours I played with a guy who shoved 90-95% of the time preflop without looking at his cards. Sometimes he would just make it $50-100 pre without looking at his cards.

5. There’s a sprinkling of hours in there at 2/5 $500 cap where I probably made more than 20/hr but not by much and not very many hours. I would be surprised if it changed the results at all.

GG, lurker here but have read your posts w/ respect for a long time. But I disagree with you here, and I think you're being stubborn.

My major issue with your argument is that it's based on the premise that no one ever shows up with receipts for a 10bb+ winrate over3000-4000 hours in 1/2-1/3.

But there's a reason for that: reverse survivorship bias.

Survivorship bias is when people get the wrong idea about what's possible because they only hear from the survivors.

In this case, anyone who could prove that 10+bb/hr is possible over a long term "dies" before it's possible because they move onto more lucrative opportunities.

In other words, most people who can make 10+bb/hr for 1000s of hours in 1/2 move up.

Some examples:

Say you grind 1-2 for 1000 hours at 10bb/hr. You now have 20k roll, which is good enough for 40 BIs at 500 cap 2/5NL, or 20 BIs in a deep 2/5 game with a $1000 cap. Anyone who can beat 1/2 at 10BB ($20/hr) can beat 2/5 at 4bb/hr and make the same money with way more upside. So they move up.

That leaves three groups of people who could possibly play 4000 hours at 1/2-1/3:

1. Losers.

2. People with smaller win rates who aren't losing but aren't making the $$$ necessary to confidently move up.

3. People who can't move up because there aren't bigger games. Or the bigger games don't run every day.


You are in category three, it sounds like. You're not alone -- I live in a city which runs 1/2 every day but 2/5 only once a week, on a weird day -- Wednesday. The consequence of this is there are more good players in the smaller game because they have no options, and that will also supress win rates a little. (Honestly this isn't really an issue as the best players just play long sessions of the bigger games when they run and travel to other places with bigger games when they don't).

You keep saying "sasquatch" -- but you're the one demanding the sasquatch: the crushing player who chooses to make less money when, with no effort, they can usually double their earnings by moving up after 6 months of grinding the bankroll to safely do so.

sorry man, these rates are too close to Sasquatch territory to be believable. See the last few pages itt for the full explanation.

And again we go in circles.

GI'veaddressedallofthesepointsbeforeG

My guess is that your answer 3 applies to a lot more people that are given credit (I've addressed all this earlier in this thread but don't want to rehash that).

And of course, there's also a 4th answer: Why would anyone crushing these games to the tune of $30/hr (= 10bb/hr winrate at 1/3 NL) want to move up? They're making pretty decent coin simply doing what they are doing at fun stakes. Yes, there will be those will have the opportunity to move up and will take it as a challenge to themselves to do so; fair enough. But poker is notorious for attracting the ez-money-route people; I have a hard time believing there wouldn't be a bunch of people in the why-don't-I-simply-play-this-for-fun-and-crush-it category; but then none of those (not a single one) shows up to brag about their winrate (because no one likes to brag about their winrate)?

GcluelesswinratesnoobG

Lol, I know you are being facetious because I have been following the discussion. My two cents on the topic:

1. A good player can definitely make 10bb/hour, but few do because as has already been pointed out, most people move up. I am a somewhat competent player, but by no means would I say that I’m good. Yet, I’m by far the best player at pretty much every 1/2 and 1/3 table I sit at. I would guess that if I play 40 hours in a week I’ll run into one player who is better than me. I would guess in an 8 hour session, I run into one, maybe two players whose game I respect.

2. It’s a silly discussion in a vacuum. A good player, playing in a good room, with a good structure, playing only on weekends, should be making substantially more than 10bb/hour. People are going to have different views on this topic because everyone has a different poker experience based on when and where they play.

If I've read things right, sounds like he has a solid ~300 hours under his belt at 1/2 100bb BI.

Gcongratsontheresultssofar,imoG

Nothing wrong with a little **** waving every now and then

Since I am the #1 crusher in my city, I've decided to learn PLO to increase my WR. I'm only down $2000 this year so far playing it. The investment will pay off soon!

Even if you pulled out the $1/3 and $2/5 (should be easy to filter, no?) I'd expect you to be at or above $18/hr if you're keeping a similar bb/hr. The higher cap you have for some of it will help your WR too.

Sounds like a good market/game ... where is this?

There are definitely a decent number of people in category 4 as far as I can tell. Partially laziness, they'll get a $1/2 seat before the $2/5 seat opens and they stay instead of moving. Sometimes the $1/2 game has bigger donkeys than the $2/5 game that has attracted all of the "good" players that want to 'move up'. Sometimes a player moves up, gets smacked around a few times at the higher stakes, and stops bothering taking shots.

But that doesn't discount the fact that a lot of good players do seek out and play the larger game quickly.


How? I don't see that at all. It's at least 600, and probably closer to 1000.

I didn’t use an app, I usually just wrote down how long I played and how much I won and I didn’t always write down where I played. The 1/3 is in another city a few hours away though so I have some idea. I could probably figure it out precisely but I just don’t care enough.

So the 1/2 was mostly at Horshoe Hammond ($200 cap) near Chicago in Indiana, but a significant percentage was at the Rockford Charity game ($400 cap) which is usually in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

Horshoe Hammond is an awesome game on weekends but weekdays it is very often a short stacked OMC game. It’s easily beatable for a decent rate on weekdays during the day but it’s hard to crush. RCG is a pretty good game but it’s hit or miss because it’s harder to game select and only runs until midnight. It’s also completely dead on weekends.

The 1/3 was all $300 cap and was mostly at Potowatomi in Milwaukee but I also played some 1/3 at be Bellagio, Aria, and 2/3 at the Bike. I always prefer to play 1/3 if I can but Potowatomi is a 2 hour drive.

@Gg and Angrist. I would say much closer to 600 than 300. I would guess 650ish plus or minus 150.

It's possible I've read too much into caveat 2 (where a few hundred of the 600 hours were played at a higher BI game) and not estimated the correct number of overall hours.

Still, even if it 1000 hours, the overall point remains.

Gnicefirst1000hours,imoG

Sounds qualitatively similar to the casinos and charity rooms near Detroit then, especially the hit or miss game selection.

Even if I was recording everything by hand, I can't imagine not using Excel or google sheets to record/plot stuff.

I did play a few hundred hours there at the start but then mostly stoped playing there. Games stop at midnight, uncomfortable chairs, no food or drink service, no WiFi, so hard to grind there day in and day out.

So again, this is just an estimate but let’s say

280 hours RCG 1/2 $400 cap.
640 Horshoe Hammond. 1/2 $200
140 hours Potowatomi. 1/3 $300 cap.
100 hours the Bike, Bellagio, Aria. 1/3 $300 cap.
50 hours 2/5 at Elgin and Hammond. $500 cap.

lol, you act as if $30/hr is super lucrative. Those who are smart enough to crush aren't looking to grind out 50k/year, especially if they have any background/education.

It honeslty baffles me how you can't see why people would want to make 100k+/year

If I thought for a second I was capped to 50k/year I would insta quit poker and go back to school.

I've grown weary of shooting down all these Sasquatch claims. It's clear to me that 10bb/hr is fantasyland.

I'm gonna go grab a copy of that hot new book PNLHE, creatively misapply a few of the concepts but otherwise adapt my entire gameplay around this groundbreaking tome. This should put me near Sasquatch territory if I run good, and, you know, that's really the best we can do these days.

I'll check back in this thread once I've sustained a head injury significant enough to forget why I unsubscribed.

glgl

FWIW I'm of the position that 10bb/hr is MORE likely to be achievable in the high rake environments because the quality of play is so much lower.

But often this 10bb/hr thing comes largely down to structure. I'd be willing to bet my left nut that no one on earth could win @ 10bb/hr at Crown Melbourne 1/2. My left nut.

10% up to 15AUD, is that correct?

II said this earlier, but I don't think a top notch player's rate should be much different between 1/3 and 2/5. Because:

Rake is lower. 2bb/hr in your pocket.

Game moves faster.

Players sit deeper.

You have more winning plays. Meaning, there are plays that are losing or break even due to rake at lower stakes, that become profitable when you move up.

Fair to say all of the above is worth 5bb/hr, all other things being equal? So, if the players were otherwise the same, you should be at 22bb/hr.

We're not even accounting for the fact that this great player will most likely continue to improve his game.

Now, all things aren't equal. The players at 2/5 are generally a little better. But someone at the top of the food chain shouldn't have all that much problem with them.

Anyway, let's assume for a moment that someone really does have a 17bb/hr true win rate at 1/3. What would be a reasonable, expected win rate for him at 2/5?

Or, just in general, how should win rates translate?

$20 cap on this game, for some weird reason. And I'm pretty sure the max buyin is 40bb, could be wrong though.

Why would we assume anyone has an actual winrate of 17bb/hr? That seems ridiculous - MAYBE achievable in the best structure - i.e. deep game with low rake. But you'd need to be extremely good still and there probably just isn't many extremely good people playing 1/3 a lot anyway.

Some of the arguments being made in this thread are as bad or worse than the strat advice given out in the strat forum. Im literally sitting here shaking my head in amazement.

Well, there seem to be 3 camps. GG doubts 10bb/hr. Actually, reading about his game conditions, I might believe this is true of his games.

Camp 2 (where I live). 10bb/hr is obtainable with excellent play in decent conditions.

Camp 3: You should be able to fall out of bed and make 10bb/hr. I could make way more. (17 was thrown out.)

But, we can go with 10bb/hr or whatever. Let's assume you are really beating up 1/3 or 1/2 and are one of the very best players in the pool. How much should you expect your rate to go down, if at all, once you find your sea legs at 2/5?

Players are more than "a bit" better at 2/5 in today's poker economy in most locations. I'd be surprised if you could sustain the same BB/hr at 2/5, even with less of a rake effect.