You just do stuff like calling jams with draws without doing the math, and when you check it you actually lost $10 on the hand, but who cares because your hourly in the game is $100 and by doing that you keep getting invited back

Hardest thing to do in a scenario in which one can win 90% of sessions in an invite-only environment such as home games is probably winning 90% of sessions.

Winning is hard enough by it self, adding even just the illusion of punting money away is going to make it significantly harder to win.

With that said, I get where you are going with it. You are essentially focused on the getting invited back part. Personally, I have tough enough time winning 90% of sessions even without any fake attempt of throwing money away.

FWIW, perhaps I am just underestimating the effect of rake. Most rooms around here take somewhere between $6 to $8 per hand, and that is basically $210 an hour or $23.33 per player in cost to play.

If I get $23 added to my hourly, I will probably win a significantly more sessions as well. And for the average losers in casino games, adding $23 hourly will probably make them feel a lot better about losing and playing, too.

Combining all that in a rake-free environment, it is probably quite sustainable.

Very few winning players play loose enough to win enough hands to pay $23.33/hr in rake. Poker rooms also dont get max rake in every hand.

Good home games tend to be raked.

Well, I didn't believe it until I looked at my numbers, but I actually had a winning year

2019 net: +$138

Tournaments: +$1659
ITM/Played: 5/20
Buyins: $6,095
ROI: 27%

Cash: 152 hours, -$1521 (-$10/hour)
1/3: 80 hours, -$528 (-$6.60/hour)
1/3/6: 27 hours, $1442 ($53.40/hour)
2/5: 45 hours, -$2435 (-$54.11/hour)

I tilted and spewed a lot in cash games. My mental discipline was the worst it's ever been.

Had my worst session by quite a bit in late november, losing $4100 in one night Definitely tilted and punted somewhat but the heavy losses were getting rivered in two 500bb pots at 2/5 with all the money in good OTT. What can ya do.

I play most of my hours at 1/3 because the 2/5 only runs at night. It's crazy tilting to have dozens of hours of 1/3 grinding wiped out by 2/5 variance (and the discrepancy in stakes led me to spew at 1/3 as well -- easy to forget $30 or whatever is a "big bet" when you're also playing with people putting $200 in pre with offsuit gappers etc.)

Will resolve to play a lot more disciplined in 2020. I like the satisfying feeling of finishing a session you played solidly, even if you ended up losing.

I've definitely been there before. After busting a tourney in Reno one time I commenced to be the whale in a 1/3 game. I think I donated like 3600 vpiping 100% from every position and seeing a flop no matter what with any hand.

It was fun though. I cracked a guys KK w/ 92o from a flop of
Q T 3 lol. It came running 2 9.

go to 5/10 to recoup your losses?

Stats since getting a kitten 6 months ago:

[IMG][/IMG]


Kittens confirmed +EV

Love cats … Well played Bad!

Sick numbers Bad!

good job BadReg, studying starting to payoff

My 2019 Tourney only stats (AKA lol donkaments)

P/L $3042.00
$/hour 14.58
Duration 208 hours 38 mintues
Cashed 10/33 (30%)
ROI 11%
Buy-in $27,260.00
Winnings $30,300.00
ABI $826

Since getting to the long run in tourneys live is going to be pretty much impossible, how are people viewing the opportunity cost of playing tournaments? Say in these 200ish hours that your EV in cash is 8-9k that's 6ish thousand in "lost" profit with much lower variance.

Accounting note: I counted winning satellites as profit and then would fully debit the account when playing the larger event. Example if the satellite was 410 and I won a 3300 dollar seat I put 2890 in profit but when I fired the larger tourney I marked a loss of 3300. Obviously if I didn't win the satty it goes as -410. Also chopped the Tag team buy-in to 250 from 500 (2 of us) which increased my ROI 1 percent ...also I still have a satty seat outstanding (series later this winter) so if I bust that event I'll be pretty much break even...

So are all live tourney players just sun-running? I still think they are fun and still will fire at the series and when tourney series come locally, but can only imagine doing that for an income without a sweet backing deal.

2019 Totals:

Stake, P/L, Hours

1/2, $205, 120hr
2/5, $1347, 87hr
2/2 PLO, $3750, 58hr
Tournaments: $9235 (Buy ins ~ $8k, Cashes ~$17k)

Total P/L: $14,539

The year started out really bad for me after a horrendous 2018 where I battled through a downswing and tilt/mental game issues. That spilled over into early '19 until I started turning it around in Q2. My goal was to play 500 hours but I only played about half of that. The downswing and tilt in the early part of the year kept me on the sidelines a lot. I ended up dabbling in PLO a bit and found the game to be extremely soft and a lower rake (no promo drops). Overall I'm happy I was able to book a profitable year and work through my mental game issues. I had some major breakthroughs in that area that will be reflected in my results going forward.

Happy New Year!

I'm a rec player who plays around 8 tournaments a year focusing on good guarantees, structure and soft fields. Based on experience, I can confidently say that the large majority of tourney regulars are either break-even or losing players. Many of these players just play every single tournament with no regard for the structure or prizepool and they aren't even backed!

Obviously the pros are backed or sell action but many of them are good enough to be profitable long-term, just not profitable enough to make a living. Also, to your question, there are rec players (and pros) who are just sun running and will come back to earth eventually. That is a tale as old as time in the tournament world.

FWIW my Hendon Mob shows ~ $100k in cashes in 8 years and I'm at about $50k profit before taxes.

2019 NL Results:

$1/$2 $2/$5
$ Won $955 / $20,250
Hours 19.7 / 817.0
Hourly $48.56 / $24.79

Fair run through August, 7bbs/hour at $2/$5 NL, but the last 230+ hours = ~-2 BIs. Nasty, but it is what it is.

Happy 2020!

Move to 1/2 full time is obvious

Totally!

whoops



Not the best way to end the year. To be fair, I really don't know if it was before or after the 10th drink. All I know is that tequila shot did not do me any favours.

2019 Results

Cash:
1/2 - 207:21 hours - 10.70 BB/hr
1/3 - 007:36 hours - 25.83 BB/hr
2/5 - 226:08 hours - 06.00 BB/hr
T/T - 002:48 hours - negative 32 BB/hr
Total - 443:53 hours - 8.30 BB/hr - $26.73/hr
Filter - 441:05 hours - 8.55 BB/hr - $28.93/hr (filtering out the T/T shot)

101 Sessions, 66 Win, 33 Loss, 2 BE (65.3% Win)

MTT:
Total Buy In: $775
Total Cash: $1001
Total Profit: $226

Numbers are way down compared to last year's 250 ish hour sun run. Mostly due to an epic downswing. Here's a giraffe to point out the ridiculousness my most epic downswing ever. It looks to be about $9,400 and contains a T/T shot but there is also 1/2 mixed in so this probably represents around 15 buy ins. Still hard to get my head around. Two biggest swings last year were both half this size or less. How is this possible?



ETA: 2018 for reference.
2018 Game - Hours - $ - BB/hr
1/2 - 23:08 - $2,347 - 50.72 (includes $500 High hand)
1/3 - 12:07 - $1,489 - 40.96
1/3/6 - 0:35 - $70 - 20.00
2/5 - 219:12 - $12,741 - 11.62
2/5/10 - 0:20 - $11 - 3.30
Total - 255:22 - $16,658 - 15.59 ($65.23/hr)
Total - Winning Sessions 65, Losing Sessions 23, Break Even Sessions 3
Total - Longest win streak 14, Longest loss streak 5

I've got an extremely soft 2-2-5 and 5-5-10 PLO game near me. With moderate table selection, the game is unbelievable. I'm breakeven after 3 sessions with an AIEV of around +12 buyins.

Now, obviously the variance is drastically higher than NL. I don't recall every going on more than a 4 ish buyin downswing in Live NL. It's pretty much sit around, value bet, stack fish with a set, etc. I find I can use my "skillset" more at PLO. I.e. high level reads, blocker bluffs. Players play extremely straight forward in low stakes PLO. There are older guys that will 100% only raise with the nuts on textures and you can snap muck the second nuts. Definitely a lot of situations where you can deduce more information in PLO vs NL.

I am confident if you can withstand the variance, the PLO game is superior in terms of hourly, but as an income, NL is going to be more stable. I don't play much, at most it would be like 13-14 hours per week.

What do you all think? I need a side income, and can certainly crush these games(I played 200nl and 400nl online for years, huge winner at 200nl), just not sure what to do with a mid 5 figure bankroll. I could also check out the 5-10 games, though I doubt they are +EV enough to play over a 2-5. Thanks.

TBH, you don't have enough data to make anything resembling a sound decision. Which means that a good thing to do would be to collect more data.

I would say continue to play 2-5 for income, while at the same time putting in more hours at the PLO game when you can.

Don't forget to work on your game away from the table.

I'm sure this is an annoyingly common question in here, but can someone please tell me what the best poker session tracking app there is for iphones.

2019 results:

+$8139
178.93 hours
$45.49 per hour
72% win rate

All played at 2/3 with $500 max. Currency is kangaroo bucks not freedom bucks.

There's a generous dose run-good in these results, including a very juicy +$1475 on a single hand...crazy in a low action game.

Not a bad 2019, despite ending on a $1200 downswing with half of it coming from taking a $1K shot at a deep stacked 1/3 game with lots of $10 straddles.

113 hours. Most 1/2, with a few hours of 1/3 sprinkled in, as 2/5 has now been completely replaced by a 1/3 match the stack game.
+$1825
20 winning sessions, 16 losing sessions.

I didn't track my Vegas results, but from memory, it was about +900ish over about 13 hours or so.

My goal for 2020 is to get in 200 hours, and hopefully take 1 or 2 more shots at the bigger game. My biggest hindrance is I can usually only play during the week and the game tends to be more of a Friday/Saturday thing. I'd also like to try and play the $1100 MSPT event when it comes to town, either in May or October, or if I'm lucky both. In the last 15 years I think I've played at most 10 live tournaments, and have yet to cash, so it would be nice to pop that cherry.

2019:

+9,301
462.67 hours
$20.10/hr
4.89 bb/hr
won 95/158 sessions (60.1%)


1/2: 20 sessions, +$1,465, 34.95 hrs, $41.92/hr
1/3: 48 sessions, ($145), 137.52 hrs, ($1.05)/hr
2/5: 83 sessions, +$9,159, 274.60 hrs, $33.35/hr
5/10 and 10/10: 4 sessions, +$177, 9.47 hrs, $18.69/hr
5/0 PLO with rock: 3 sessions, ($1,355), 6.13 hrs, ($220.92)/hr

looking back, my goal for the year was 250 hours, which i hit in early August.

i unfortunately can't play many long sessions because of family commitments, which i think sometimes negatively affects my play.
158 sessions => 2.93 hrs/session
but only 106 unique days => 4.36 hrs/day.

i'm going to attempt to get a few longer trips planned. already have one for Vegas in Feb. gonna try to do 1-2 more through the year. last short trip i took i got 22 hours in 2 days with my family being there.

overall, i'm probably going to take a step backwards in 2020. every year since 2015 i've increased my yearly volume and while i've done ok for a rec player, it's just becoming too much. it doesn't help that i'm currently on a massive downswing (>7k) since early november. can't seem to do anything right. but even if i wasn't, i want to put an extra 10 hours/week in at work (close to promotion, which benefits me much more long term) and that time needs to come from someplace.

hourly goal will probably stay at 250, but i think i would like my hrs/day to be closer to 6

and i need to figure out PLO. too much money there to not play it.