Nice run! 80hr breakeven stretches are pretty standard, dont let that deter you.

Way to smash your goal. Good luck moving up.

Play good run better.

This is a Hall of Fame worthy post


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Poker is an amazing Game and it's wonderful in so many facets but it will destroy you if you're not honest with your self.

And the easy thing to forget is that for every 1 story of a 'successful' poker player on this board there are 20+ that tried, failed, and just never posted, or posted/bragged/gloated and just disappeared.

Don't stop trying if you like the game and want to learn and play well but don't delude your self into thinking it'll be an easy 50k+ job a year with no effort / no studying.

So if I'm reading this correctly you made 10,500ish in 211 hours? So 50$ an hour at 1/3 300 max? I would be prepared for some runbad.

That is correct. I've been on a heater granted my game is pretty soft, but I've had some epic heat.

At live low stakes games, I find it hard to believe we get more than 28 hands per hour.
You have dealer changes, bank refill, slow players, drunk players, players who don't pay attention & unaware it's their turn, players taking 15 seconds to decide whether to call $3 preflop, etc. etc.

If the average rake per hand is $4 & they rake $2 for the BBJ that's $168 per hour going off the table. Plus your wannabe 10BB winner per hour is $198.

The BBJ isn't really a rake to me, because if I play 1450 hrs a year & win an avg of 3 hands per hour, that's $4350 in BBJ rake out of my pots. I've been playing ~1400 hours since July 2014 & have never won less than $3k in promo money. I've already won $4.2K this year due to being at a BBJ table where I got $3.2K after tipping the dealer.

I have a friend who plays full-time & chases the best promo in the 3 different casinos & won over $6K last year. That is $4.00 an hour playing 1500 hours a year which is about what he does, as he has rentals he owns & other life responsibilities.

I have another friend who puts his promo chip winnings in a sock at home & it finances most of his Vegas trip every year.

So the BBJ rake really isn't much of a rake for those who play a lot of hours.

Promo-drop is value neutral or a little bit -EV in jurisdictions that let promo money be used for marketing as well as going back to players. On the negative side, you are very likely to never reach the "long run" in promo money, especially if the promos are only hard to hit BBJs, and not high-hands, hot seats, etc. On the plus side, promos and giant BBJs draw in bad players and help off-set the drain.

Agree you won't get all the BBJ money raked from your pots. I didn't know they could use it for marketing. It was my understanding it had to be returned to the players & that the promos they had was the marketing.

The casinos in MD are putting less in the big BBJ & more for monthly promos. Also, at MGM if you have AQ vs. JJ & board comes QQQJJ, that's the big BBJ because AQ used both cards, so the pot doesn't get very big. It use to get up to 200K at one casino & I've never seen it above $75k at MGM.

Anyway, I'm going to Detroit next month, going to get my quad 2s cracked by quads, take my $300K+ & run off to a country that doesn't have extradition agreement with the U.S. Suggestions? U.A.E. is too hot for me.

They can't use the promo money to spend on marketing, but they can market the fact that they have good promos to draw people in to play.

Depends on the state. Some allow them to use that money for specific other purposes, others require it all to go back to the players, others allow them to keep "admin costs" out of it.

The loser only gets 40% there. You'd get about $250k right now.

Also, you're a bit late to the party. The last jackpot hit in January at a record high.

BBJ: $1,068,590.80

Loser of the hand (40%): $427,452.52
Winner of the hand (20%) $213,712.76
Table share (40%, split 4-ways): $106,856.28

Also, your promo win-rate will never be realized over your lifetime. The variance of a BBJ is ridiculously high. You're lucky to have won any money from the BBJ at all. You should get at least a table share about once every 100,000 hands, which is more than a lifetime of live poker for some people. Even for a full-time player it's about two years to expect it to hit, but you could easily go a lifetime with nothing.

If you're only getting 28 hands per hour, your dealers suck. Count the number of hands for a few sessions. Ive counted many times and the avg is right around 40. A little higher when theres no action. A little lower in the evening when there's more big pots.

In my room, I'm told the fastest dealers go 18-21 hands per 30 minutes. Still, $1/$2 NL plays slower than $2/$5 NL.

@browni3141: The BBJ is already up to $661K & I did not know losing hand only gets 40%.
I agree you'll never recover 100% of your promo money raked from your pots, unless you have losing hand in a big BBJ.

@MikeStarr: I've played 2/5 at 3 different casinos & the players DO NOT take 15 seconds to decide & then toss in $5.00. They know when to act & usually do not delay the game for bullshytt reasons. The good dealers tell me they average 18 hands per table. They also say the high stakes PLO games play faster than many 1/3NL games.

I play at the same casino as ZuneIt and the hand speed is just about 30-35 hands/hour at most $1/3 tables. And 35 is probably the upper range.

Although if it does slow down due to drunk people and people on their phones not paying attention, they usually get reminded by the table to speed that **** up.

I'd love to play where the average is 40.

When it comes to speeding up cash games I want to find the person who first started circulating the strategy that you should wait until its your action to look at your cards and tell them to go die in a fire.

Most people would use their time machine to kill hitler but I would probably use it for that guy.

+1

I know a guy who does this, however, he is paying attention to the players behind him while trying to watch those in front of him.

Then, when it's his turn, he already has his cards in his hand & it doesn't take 3 seconds to look/fold.

Why is that? Because he doesn't pull them up & when he sees the ace of slowly squeeze the 2nd card out from behind the A like it's some kind of exciting event.

That's right folks! 2-3 seconds to look/fold.

And, since he pays attention to the table, instead of watching sports/reading facebook, etc., he knows what he will bet based on action in front & those behind him when he has a playable hand.

That person is ZuneIt

P.S. I would use my one-time in a time-machine to go back to my senior year in high school & have a condom in my wallet instead of having to say "no" to a fine young lady who refused to go out with me again because she was so embarrassed.

Yea just look at your cards before it is on you and play faster, it's better for your image and the your winrate.

Enough on the look before or not derail!

what about zuneit's time machine strat? I honestly think his heart is in the right place and its a +EV move. However, I think that is is really really weak overall. And he is most likely a fish when it comes to Timemachine play...and would b considered a very weak nit in virtually any timemachine lineup.

I've counted a couple of times in the casinos around me, and I get about 16-18/down for a half hour down of $1/2 with a reasonable dealer. The slow as dog**** ones get 12, and the fast ones get 20. Average is little over 30. Call it 34.

I wish we got 40/hr.

Ha, I was kinda thinking the same thing. When I would go Vegas in the 90s on business trips I seem to recall 7 card stud as the game of choice, but I mean I didn't really look hard for anything else (I had probably never even heard of Texas Hold'em at that point) so maybe it was around. And I definitely don't claim to be an expert on Vegas games in the 90s because I played liked maybe half a dozen times, but I'm sure others here are much more in on the know.

Gclueless1/2NLnoobG


If I've read things right, he's at $80/hr for his first 130 hours and $0/hr at his last 80 hours.

Gcongratsonyourfirst210hours,imoG


In smaller rooms that have a limited number of tables, this actually has a negative consequence in that BBJs often attract all-day grinders grinding the BBJ, which fills out the max tables and prevents randoms from passing by the poker room and getting into the game.

GimeG


My guess is that style of game (i.e. super loose preflop, lots of chips going in to take / make change for, and longer streets postflop with more cards to deal / chips to deal with over multiple streets, etc.) has a much bigger affect than dealer skill.

My test from last year had our room at ~30 hands an hour (but then our dealers also have to handle cash-for-chips transactions so that definitely slows things down).

GcluelesshandsperhournoobG


If everyone took 2.5 seconds to fold preflop (instead of the ~0 seconds it takes me to fold since I've already looked at my hand), that would add 2.5 * 10 players * 30 hands an hour (or approximately 12.5 minutes to each round). (I mean, my math ain't exactly right, but you get the idea)

Gpleasedon'tdothis,imoG

holdem was common but cash was mostly limit. I dont think low stakes nl was a thing. That was reserved for some high stakes cash games or tournies. Maybe Im wrong though, Im just going by what old timers told me. I started hitting casinos in late 2004 and limit was still about half the cash games, and the old timers said the nl games were new, especially the 1/2 games.