10bb per hour live is definitely doable. It isn't easy though, and it requires a large time investment studying and working on your game. The vast majority of winning poker players will never achieve this metric, as is evidenced by the plethora of bad advice you often hear from even the most frequent posters right here in this forum.


I'm just north of 7000 hours of live poker now, starting from 2-5, and have worked my way up to 20-40 live games over the past 7 years. At every stake I've played I've always managed at least 10bb/hour, (except at 10-20+, where I'm at 9bbs)

Maybe I've run incredibly well during that time frame (i probably have to some extent) but I also know that I've put in the work and study to improve.

I started off like most, playing highly exploitative poker, which served me well all the way to 10-20nl. Unlike most, however, I played what some would call a more lag style, although it is what I used to think was a balanced approach. (So I thought at the time, until I came to realize I was actually spewing in certain spots and had horrendous leaks). Despite this, I still managed 10bbs an hour at 5-10 and lower, but struggled at 4-5bbs at high stakes.

2 years ago, I decided to study utilizing gto solvers, completely revamping my game. It was eye opening. With newfound knowledge, I began to plug my leaks and beat some of the best pros in my area. (Some of which are well known poker coaches)

I'll finish this post by saying that, this year I was forced into grinding low stakes 2-5 again for a few off days of the week due to a recent move for commute reasons. I decided that for practice and as an experiment to compare winrates, I would try to emulate playing an offensive GTO style as much as possible, whilst maintaining exploitative adjustments when defending.

Knowing advanced theory and the default baseline (along with some incredible rungood) has thus far netted me 26bb/hr over the past 450 hours at 2-5.

Coming back to llsnl and seeing the competition, I know poker is alive and well. The dream is still there if you aspire to be a poker pro. But it aint easy, and the moment you close yourself off to new ideas or think you have perfected your strategy, is the moment you begin to stagnate.

Biggest game where I lived was 2/5 and I wanted bigger games.

These games run on many sites, and Stars has much higher than 1knl sometimes.

Yeah this, most people who are able to win at 10bb/hr at 2/5 move onto bigger and better games where their hourly will be higher.

So just tell me all the things that I say that are wrong so I can fix them.

(Not sarcasm)

Not in this thread. Keep it on topic, please, and take the strat to strat threads.

Oh, I wasn’t meaning here. I was meaning on strat threads. Or better yet, directly to my DM’s so nobody else improves.

Winrate discussion cycle since dawn of man:

Player a: what is the max winrate one can achieve at x stake?
Player b: crusher status is 10-12bb+
Player c: about tree-fiddy
Player d: 10-12bb/hr is ridiculous. No one can keep that up long term.
Player e: 10-12 bb/hr is the low end of crushing if you just free your mind man...
Player a: ok, thanks. I’m gonna quit my job now and free my mind.
Player f: here are my stats for the last 1200 hours
Player e: start meditating and your numbers will improve.
Player GG: don’t listen to them player F, you’re doing great. But if you want to reduce variance, I’m going to DM you some limping strategies.

HLB - Nice Numbers sir. As someone who has won greater than 10 bigs per over a large sample I can say I play 2/5 pretty well. However, I have played with a couple of players who played that much better than I and I believe in my heart of hearts their w/r at those games are quite high. Most people dont know what they dont know - because of this they can not fathom someone winning that much more than they believe possible.

jus sayin

Ya, those are very impressive stats HLB.
For the record, I do believe that the absolute best of the best can maintain 15bb/hr+ long term at 2/5 (my current game). Anything over 10 is extremely difficult though and requires taking your game seriously. The best players I know are around 12bb/hr and are constantly studying and using solvers to plug leaks.

XtraScratch nailed it. I can delete thread now and just replace it with that summary poast.

If anyone had the time I think reading this thread from beginning to end would be an eye opening experience for many (if it hadn't already happened).

My point was that 100k is not a given and shouldn't even be expected. If you've followed Dizzy at all you would know how rapidly things changed and I found the "100k EZ" line to be a funny choice of words. Sorry if tone was dickish.

The broader point was people always want to extrapolate from the sun run good times and as this thread shows and most local card rooms, the good times don't last. Sure some stick around, move up etc. but in the slow world that is live poker variance is generally the driving force whether that be positive or negative.

That is sick. What would you say average stack depth is on the table at any given time over that sample? You seem to be one of the few who reached escape velocity and still occasionally chime in which is appreciated.

In L.A. the best structures for 1.2 are 40 to 100 max the next is 80 to 120 1/3 and then obv the beat structure 2.3 which is 1 to 300.

I am relying to be conservative as Its very hard for me to get outside income to replenish what I have however grinding this raketrap 1.2 is starting to get very annoying. Idk if The 1.3 is any better starting off with so little bbs having to shortstack, very high varience.

Is maybe sitting with 150 to 200 at 2.3 the best option? Again I would prefer to buyin full and have a full 20 buyin 6k roll for playing that game but I am.a solid player and dont rhink I should be going broke all that often buying in half or 75bbs. Idk I'm just stressed out with being at a table with 40 and 60 stacks all the time..no money on the table and although I have been beating these games for months it's too slow

Yeah ofc. My saying that about dizzy specifically was obviously wrong. FK you diz I really believed you were the Messiah. But to the point about 100k at 2/5 it's just 10bb/hr for 2k hours which is way higher wr and more volume than most will achieve in a year but I think we've proven it's very doable.

</3

4300 is over 14 full BIs for 1/3,. I think that's plenty, as long as you don't play too high variance a style, which is possible full stacked and less so with shorter stacks. Def don't play 1/2 in LA with their stupid tiny BI caps and ridic rake, imo.

+1

I've heard from hustler and bike employees that they want their plaza tables pulling in at least $180/hr. That's more $20+/hr we're paying. (Games from 2/3 nl to 5/10/20 nl which all have the exact same drop structure.) Looking at the commerce drop now, it seems like you're always paying $6 post flop, so not really too much different from 2/3+ except no flop no drop. It's hard to beat that game when the average stack isn't even $100.

It sounds like you have a job though, which means you can be super aggressive with your BR as you can replenish it. I'd move up to 2/3 $300 cap immediately, or maybe even the $2/300 cap 2/5 or 3/5 games. You basically wanna sit where the stacks are deepest so after you double up your BI, you can make some actual $ to beat that horrendous drop. All the players in those games are aweful and love to gamble. So as long as you can keep your wits about you through the hundred+ hrs of losing/break even stretches that will hit you from time to time even with such a soft player pool, you'll be fine. If you stay at 1/2, you're never gonna go anywhere long term.

2/3 at the bike and even the short stack 3/5 at commerce are good games and likely a way better option than those absurd short stack 1/2 games. Unless it’s changed in the past 1.5 years though, commerce 3/5 is going to be a pretty gambly and high variance game so you would have to be ready for that.

What do you say could be a common Std Deviation over hour on LLSNL?

It’s hard to know for sure, but I’m trying to figure it out for a while.

I think the best way is observing....

I noticed that I’m usually UP or down 100bb over something like 3-5 hours on the games that I play.
Could it be a real indicator?

If we think that a common std deviation for online players would be something in between of 80-90bb/100 and 100 hand are aprox. 3hours on a full ring table, it kinda make sense.

Live Poker is usually more passive than online, but people are also playing larger preflop, so it could compensate.

What is the standard deviation that you guys observe on your stack in something like 3h of play?

And what’s yours observed winrate with those data?

Over the last 150 hours of play I have 34bb/hour at 2/4. I think this is on the very nitty side btw, i havent played my best poker during this streak as my results show (about 4bb/hour) and I'm conscious I have played a very tag/nit style with adversion for high variance spots. Cause of my job I could play only once a week for 3-4 hour session this year, and I think this is way too less volume to stay sharp in the game. My goals for these last 3 months of the year and for 2020 are to study more, putting more volume in and to start avoiding the fear caused by battling other good regs or taking the right line in high variance spots. Anyone have some good advice on this? I have struggled with this a lot in the last days. I think I have a very good theory basis, but sometimes I can't pull the trigger when I need to. It can't be a bankroll issue, I play very comfortably with around a 60 buy ins roll. Maybe just a mindset problem? I would like to hear some advice from the very seasoned players in the forum.

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At 2-5, 3-5, and 2-3-5 (mostly the last), after 640 hours of current records, my hourly standard deviation is 83 bb/sqrt(hr) (variance of 6860 bb^2/hr). My winrate is currently in the crapper, as I have just gone through a two-month+ downswing that has destroyed my year's winnings, but right now it is a shameful 1.5 bb/hr. The standard error of my winrate (SD/sqrt(total hours played)) is more than twice this, so God only knows what my "true" winrate actually is.

If you do a search ITT, you'll find SDevs for winning players from. ~50-~150BBs/he, with most clustered in the 80-110 range.

Thank you! How are you tracking your std deviation? Observation only or you use any app that helps on that?
I have a really simular situation than you.
A job and play once or maybe twice a week.

If the tag/nit is working for you, maybe you just don’t have to change it.
The more you play, the more you study, more confortable you will be to opening your ranges and play better in higher variance spots.

Studying the mental game could help too.

Thank you for the replying too...
How you do the tracking?
Taking notes of all hands involved?
Or there is any calculation that can be done?



Oh, right. Thanks for the info.
Just went through some pages, and didn’t see, but it’s true that I didn’t have put much effort on that.

Sorry.

I have an app that tracks my results.
Tag is working for me, but I feel the need to get better at the game and stay ahead of the curve, and winning 4/bb over a small sample is basically nothing. I could easy be a break even player or a light losing player in the long run. Another argument of getting better is that I play in a very small player pool, the skill level is becoming better every year and most people know how I'm playing now and they know that I play mostly for value when the pot is getting big and they pay me off only in cooler situation. The only thing that I can do right now is getting out of my tight comfort zone and start opening my range and battle more for pots by barreling and bluffing. I'm very honest with my play and I know that my understanding of theory is good. Have red a lot of books and got a subscribe to clp 1 year ago, looking 1 video a week or something like that. I'm a pretty decent hand reader too, I know combinatorics, barreling texture, 3bets range and all the stuff. I honestly never studied gto and that stuff, cause I think that exploitative play will always be the better play for llsnl, but maybe I'm wrong and I should rethink about it. The problem with me is really getting out of my comfort zone and start doing these plays for real, I have the roll for this but I simply stop myself a lot of the time. Is/was someone in the same campvand could give me some advice? I think my problem is a mental one, not much to do with the game.

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I keep records of every session I play: start time, end time, amount bought in, amount cashed out. I have maintained spreadsheets of this information for all my live play over twenty years.

On pages 60-61 of Gambling Theory and Other Topics Mason Malmuth gives formulas for computing win rate and variance, given a dataset of session lengths and session results.

Overall winrate is easy: it is the sum of all your session results divided by the sum of all your session durations.

Variance is a bit of a pain

V = sum(w[k]*w[k]/t[k])/N - (W*W/N)*sum(t[k])

Where V is the variance (the square of your standard deviation) that you are computing,
w[k] is the amount won (lost) in your kth session
t[k] is the duration of your kth session
N is the total number of sessions,
and W is your average win-rate. W = sum(w[k])/sum(t[k])

I keep separate spreadsheet pages for the various games and levels that I play on which I compute my variances in those games.

Maybe you are afraid? Like, afraid of trying something "out of your own safe tag box" at the table, and fail in front of the table?

Just a thought, as i have battled with this to some degree myself. Putting pressure on myself, and have the urge to play "perfectly" aka not doing any plays that could make me look stupid in the eyes of other players.

Like you, i never had any problems winning right off the bat when i started playing live for like 8-9 years ago. But it wasnt until i started working on open my game up in some spots, and just go with a play if i believe it was +EV forgetting about what others may think of me that my game/winrate really started to skyrocket.

For me personally i had the biggest battle regarding those issues maybe 3-4 years ago, but it is still an ongoing process i have to fight every other game i play. The perfection voice in my head still try to talk to me on a regular basis, so i have to be aware of it so i dont fall back into old habits.

I dont know if any of this sounds familiar to you, but i agree that your issue/roadblock is in your mental game somewhere. You just have to be honest enough with yourself and the reflections you are doing to find it.