The fact you felt the need to list everything you're awesome at, along with newly minted account made me think immediately this is just somebody trolling under an alt account.

Then I read your follow ups and you seem serious. I'll proceed under that assumption.

Max possible winrate is probably much higher than people think, under the right conditions such as doing most or all of the following:

Bumhunting whales
Only playing during peak hours
Quitting if there are no super squishy tables
Moving to get favorable relative position constantly
Not tipping, ever
Not tilting, ever
Having an expert understanding of body language and verbal cues
Angle shooting constantly
Having a world class technical game
Having great charisma and ability to encourage action
Table hop without using the transfer list
Illegally add chips to match the big stack
Look at people's hole cards when they aren't properly protecting them
Play a few hours at a time so your concentration is maxed
Take ADHD meds to max your concentration

If all these things are true my guess is you could triple or quadruple typical winrates.

But...in order to do all these things you would have very low volume and end up disliked by regs, dealers, and basically everyone at the casino. Might get a lot of 24 hour bans also. And you'd be a scumbag. But you'd have a huge winrate.

But your win RATE is not really the important thing. If you play in the softest game of the month for 3 hours you won't make much money even if you're making 70 dollars an hour.

What's important is maximizing your earnings and that means playing in a lot of suboptimal conditions. Doing that 10 to 15 max BB an hour maybe 20 to 25 if you never tip, angle shoot and engage in other scummy behaviors.

It's much better to play 200 hours a month at 20 dollars an hour than to play 80 hours a month at 30 dollars an hour.

Total earnings are more important than winrate but it's always winrate everyone wants to compare.

Sorry Garick, I started writing that before you posted and I'm using the Tapatalk app and can't see the thread. Please don't ban me

Daygrindmike, read the thread. Search for winrate or "max winrate" etc. I'm sure you'll find zillions of posts.

Meh, you didn't troll, imo. That's all I meant. Not that "read the thread" is the only allowable response.

I’m on a massive 50-hour heater and I am only at $82/hr. $80/hr in an uncapped game is unrealistic.

iIRC I ran hot in March 2014, the last month I worked and won like $95/hr over 113 hours but some of that included $1/$3.

For the record I know a few people in Vegas who are in the $30-$35/hr range.

You cant go through 4 down swings in 100 hours...

Hi all,

1/3 (occasional 2/5) player considering mixing in some PLO. Just need a change of pace once in a while. After grinding $1/$3 for almost a year I need new scenery.

Anyone winning at NL make the move to PLO? Results? Pitfalls?

My casino offers $1/$2 five-card (plays like a $5/$10). My BR is $5,500. I played a couple times and the players are hella bad calling stations who play ATC. If I play super tight can this be profitable?

Watching JNandez for basics and reading stickies in PLO forum. Just bought Hwang's book.

Or is this just a bad idea? The pots get massive pretty quickly and the casino only allows players to run it once. Last night all three of my flopped sets got outdrawn....

Thanks,
DT

DumbosTrunk, I have been playing a 5/5 round-by-round NLH/PLO game and in my last two sessions I've dropped 4k and 3k playing pretty darn tight but getting sucked out on in literally 9/10 big pots played. PLO bankroll requirements are nuts.

Yeah my sucksouts were kinda brutal, but only lost $450 as I was short-stacking. Having played NL, where flopped sets are only sometimes outdrawn, getting all three beat was a wake up call. PLO =/= NLHE.

Can you run it more than once in your PLO game? Our "lowest stake" PLO game is $1/$2 (bring in $5, so really it's a $5/$5 game), it's not time raked, so we can only run it once!

I've been playing a lot of PLO in the last year or so as all the local home games have gone to that. $1/2 with a $2 bring in, but often straddled, potted, and repotted preflop. Not uncommon to see a lot of multi-way all-ins early in the night, or $4k stacks later in the night.

PLO can be a completely insane game, because it's easy for a lot of people to think that they have monster hands and pile all of their money in. Sometimes they're right, or they still have 30% equity, and then some of them will be drawing dead. As a result you can have completely ridiculous swings, +- $2k in a night isn't rare. Your BR requirement is easily twice the next higher stake NHLE level, ie double the $2/5 NLHE BR for $1/2 PLO. I'm not sure how that would change for big-O though.

That being said, you *can* profit in games like this if you're patient and employ a nit-pot strategy by buying in somewhat short and simply re-potting over everyone preflop with a monster. Or by being very disciplined in EP and folding all those speculative hands to the $10 opens. Or by being willing to pile it in and ride the variance train with $800+ pot bets once you figure out ranges in PLO. (Don't try this right away.)

But to bring this back to BR/WR territory it took me about 600 hours or so to kind of "figure out" PLO (played intermittently for a while) at -$6/hr, and then over the last 525 hours run at +$20/hr.

Not sure I really believe either of those samples because of how few hands we see in PLO in an hour, but it is what it is.

I've been buying in for just over the $200 min ($300) and l/rr my monsters for the most part, potting flop. Given that it sounds like I need at least $50k to play this game professionally, I'll have to wait a while before incorporating it meaningfully into my regular routine and stick with NL for now. Thanks....

You'd probably be better off with the min buy of $200.

Keep in mind - high only 5 CARDS PLO has a bigger variances than 4 cards. I don't have experiences to say what would be a proper bankroll, but play it professionally, I would suggest at least 100 buyins.

I spend about half my time at NL half at PLO. The bankroll requirements for PLO are going to be far higher, I think Angrist is right. I went on 10k swings a handful of times at 2/5 PLO, some runbad some playbad, but it is pretty wild. Plus there's lots of straddling. I think 50 buy ins is appropriate, and maybe even aggressive BRM.

The thing about live PLO is every pot has like 5 players in it, so you make the most money with nut draws, nuts with redraws, top set, etc. Cbetting into the field is suicidal, you will get check raised a lot. If by some miracle you get it HU or three to a flop you can put opponents in some pretty tough spots but 4+ to a flop forget about it.

Exactly. 5+ handed to a flop is really a question of "who has the nuts, who has a good draw to the nuts, and who's the idiot piling it in dead"? In those situations, preflop hand selection and position become super important.

It seems so easy to just nit it up and be a big favorite in live PLO. I'm a rec who does not count on poker money, but does find many useful uses for it. I don't care about moving up stakes as 2/5 NLHE is the highest game that goes and it rarely offers a better hourly than the best 1/3 game in my room. I don't foresee myself ever having a 50 buy-in PLO roll unless I bink a tourney someday.

However, I have thought about playing 1/2 PLO with a $5 bring in 10-20% of my hours. Thoughts? Seems like a decent compromise between chasing a higher hourly without increasing my risk all too much. I'd probably buy-in short, in the 200-300 range.

Seems fine since you don't count on poker money. If you hit a brutal downswing in PLO that makes you feel uncomfortable re total poker bankroll, just take a break from PLO until you replenish.

If you wanted to move close to the best 1/2 or 1/3 games (would need some bigger buy ins, at least 500) in the US for a year... regardless of life outside poker where would it be? vegas for game selection? okla? maryland? texas? louisana? mississippi? also heard good things about Saudia casino in NM... they have match a stack 1/2 and 1/3 i believe

There are a million threads on that subject in Casino and Cardroom Poker forum. If you DGAF about life outside poker, consider WinStar Casino in Thakerville, OK, but if you'd like to discuss more I suggest the "best city for a poker pro" thread in C&CP.

Didnt find any in regards to deeper games... winstar is 100bb

You didn't mention anything about deeper games. Regardless, you can't ignore the "non-poker" aspect of picking a place to play. There's a big difference between paying to stay and eat in SF vs say Detroit or Tampa. So the same winrate goes farther in some places and has a huge impact on your overall profitability.

read my first sentence and part in parenthesis. i plan on strictly focusing on poker for a year and not much social life

Winstar has a very soft player pool and low cost of living. The 1/2 is 200 cap but I think you'd still make more than most places especially factoring in COL. You'll have a hard time finding soft deep stacked 1/2 games.

You still need to put a roof over your head and buy food.

ill van dwell if i have to. i eat meat and veggies!

Not being a hater but winstar was super depressing for me and I was there for fun one weekend with my wife and a friend. I was insulted a lot patrons; one of them wanted to start a fight because he thought I bluffed him, another called me anorexic because I'm skinny. Keep in mind I don't talk **** at the table. Other random snide comments too in PLO8. A few of the guys were very fun though and getting **** faced having a great time. I've never been insulted so directly than at winstar though. It smells like cigarettes and there isn't anything else for miles. It's an enormous mecca of slot machines with the poker room tucked way in the back. The games are stupid soft though.