Exactly this. Bullseye. The technical part of beating livepoker isnt the main point when it comes to play livepoker week in and week out for 30 hours+ every week.

It is to not lose your mind completely- and manage to show up to play every session when you cant seem to turnover a winning hand, you cant play a session without running KK into AA, you cant seem to fade any flushdraw when they get it in bad against your set and so on and so on. Its alot harder than it seems like on the surface when you are actually in this nightmare day in and day out over a longer period of time.

At the same time youre running like absolute dogshyt, the nit reg that is bad for the game is sunrunning like you never seen before- for 4 months straight and prints money every session while you coudnt flop a set even if your life depended on it.

Mental game is by far the most important aspect of beating livepoker over a big sample aka thousands of hours.

Why is it silly? It’s the exact same thing, except I’m measuring it by hands rather than by hour. When I played live I heard the same type of ghost stories about guys making $120/hr playing 5/10 but never saw it. Of course there were stretches where I made crazy hourlies, but those are due to variance man.

Thanks guys, I appreciate both of your posts, but it’s absolutely lol to suggest you can make 25-30 bb/100 in a 5/10 live game anywhere over a reasonable sample. Where are you getting this information? Do you have personal experience or know someone with these results, long term??

The mistake that both of you are making, i hope, is due to sample size. Since it takes over a year working 40 hours/week to get even 100k hands (still not a super meaningful sample, but an ok one), you may be misinformed about what is possible due to a short stretch of running really good.

I definitely believe that it’s possible to beat a soft game (especially if you can buy in deep) for more that 10bb/100, but sorry, 25-30bb/100 is not possible except in the short term.

I believe this type of widespread misinformation is part of the reason why so many people try to hack it as live poker pros and then get discouraged, because they had the wrong idea of what was possible in the first place. A pretty good measure of this is to see how many 5/10 grinders are still around in a room after years of it. Hardly anyone does it long term.

Anyways I will not post again about this, dont want to derail the thread. Good luck OP, be realistic and hardworking about your goals and you’ll get there. If there is one thing I can say it’s that hard work always pays off, especially in poker, and you seem to be willing to do that.

25-30bb/100 must mean your opponents are complete droolers and making absolutely horrendous mistakes all the time. Perhaps that might be the case for a few hours on some weekend nights, but not enough to sustain 30-40 hours of volume per week.

5/10 live plays deeper than 5/10 online and all the bets are much bigger. 1500 max buy in at Commerce, 2500 max buy in at Hollywood Park, 3k max buy in at the Bike. And of course the 10/20+ games are uncapped. The skill edge is much larger live and the number of fish is much greater. I don't know what the top end winning rate for an absolute crusher would be but 10bb/100 doesn't sound too unreasonable.

I played 5/10-20/40 at the commerce for a month last year and 100% agree. 10bb/100 absolutely a possible long-term WR

I have not seen 10bb/hr over a large sample at 5/10, but I've seen it on the graph of a player whose record keeping I trust at 2/5 over 10K hours.

That same player has posted that he has a friend who wins 11bb/hr over a large sample at 5/10, but that's really rare. Most pros indicate that their hourly goes up a bit at 5/10, but their bb/hr goes down significantly.

They were posting 10bb/100 which is equivalent to ~2-3bb/hr, more reasonable?!

it's silly because

1. there's no benefit to the conversion
2. you turn a real number into an estimate

only reason to do it is familiarity with online forcing old habits

maybe it was just that much easier a decade ago, maybe the other people i knew who played were all liars, but if you factor in survivorship bias (ie the only people who would progress to 5/10 and higher obviously played well or ran like gods) then it's pretty plausible

i also think game selection is an undervalued asset that a lot of the online players fail to properly account for

There are very, very few casinos/places in the world you can get 30+ hours a week of 5/10+ action at.

I dont think those kind of numbers are impossible, my live PLO numbers are ~similar, the game just has to play a lot bigger. If you're playing 5/10, it's "actually" 5/10/20 and sometimes 40 with a 2-3k or uncapped buyin. But, you have to be the best, or a top 3 player in the room long term to achieve this.

And it wouldn't be very many months before grinders moved in a dried out the game.

I appreciate the conversations above since they’re enlightening me and answering questions I have myself as well.

just skimmed and stuff though so I’ll go back later.

just got a 97 on my final for one class. One video presentation left for another until I’m a free man

I'm always intrigued by the aim for such high marks because of diminishing returns but especially for you who doesn't want to use the benefit at all.

It can only be from your own self bubble that people have created for you. If you're getting top marks in a good degree why are you passing up so many opportunities for nothing.I really am baffled. Would you please list the reasons or link me to where you have. The thing that comes to mind is autonomy which is so easy to get by making your own firm in a few years when you have contacts and you live an "easy" life.

Or he just takes pride in his work

25bb/100 at live 5/T is $70/hr give or take and yes I do believe it's sustainable (given unlimited 5/T action). With that said I only know a couple long-term live regs and haven't seen massive samples of 5/T to know for sure.

However, I have seen multiple big samples at live 1/2 and 1/3 clearing $25/hr and live 2/5 samples at $40-$50 (and one above 60, but maybe great variance or some sick good private games or whatever), so it's absurd to say that 3bb/hr is max attainable at 5/T. At that rate it would be more profitable to move down and be the best 2/5 reg in your pool + 24/7 access to the games.

If you play live 5/T and make 2bb/hr, you could even make more playing live 1/2 or 1/3, and yes I've seen the samples to back that up. My understanding is that bb/100 drops a good chunk at 5/T but good regs tend to make more money than at 2/5 despite this. But that means a 20-25bb/100 winrate given that 30/100 (8-10bb/hr) is possible at 2/5.

Seems like it boils down to game selection. I definitely think you can make 25bb+/100 in good lineups. The problem is finding enough of those tables to put in serious volume.

Wat? I posted to say that the live winrates Oladipo was calling impossible are definitely possible, and that I've seen evidence of it over a large sample size at 2/5, and heard credible reports of it at 5/T.

Many pros have shown 10bb/hr at 2/5 over 2k hour samples, and one at over 10K hours. It is much harder at 5/10, and I don't know a lot of midstakes players, so I can only offer the one second-hand example at that level.

will find time to go back and engage later, but if I may..

Quick point again as many are attesting to a lack of 5/10 action (presumably where they are) COVID-19 will most certainly change the landscape and I’m aware of that but:

I am in the best place for 5/10 in the world- home of the three largest poker rooms in the world (ime)

I’m less than 30 minutes away from Commerce, the Bicycle, and Gardens. I believe Commerce alone rivals most areas in the world in 5/10 action with it effectively spreading 24/7. When you include the other two top 10 poker rooms in the world, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with that.

This was by far and away the reason I chose to come back home despite my willingness to continue living on my own, supporting myself etc.

This is Simple Ricks playground (commerce) so I’m sure he’ll confirm

http://www.casinocitytimes.com/artic...r-tables-65550

Confirmed. Well over 500 poker tables just between the three largest SoCal rooms. Not including the other options like Hollywood Park and Hustler.

I was thinking about renting my own place like college, but it would’ve run me $15-20k for anything & anywhere decent just for 2021. With roommates.

Rather keep liquidity and leverage up even if inconvenient at times.

A $30/h 5/T winrate would make playing a waste of time. You would probably have losing quarters or worse due to variance with a winrate that low. You need to be able to crush live if you don’t want downswings that seem to last forever.

At live it generally takes far less skill to make the same amount of money. If you think top 5/T pros are making $30/h you’re just uninformed. People are making that at 1/2 over statistically significant samples.

This, about a decade ago and don't have records anymore but I played live at around 5/10 (followed the games sometimes lower other times much higher). Nearly 3k hours and a winrate over 13bb/hour.

Table selection is key, these were all private games in Asia and the occasional foray into a Macanese casino.

Like browni said, the swings were incredible. It wouldn't make any sense for someone to grind out <3bb/hour live because they'll just get eaten alive by variance without an absurd win rate to keep you afloat.

Humblebrag, my lifetime hourly at 1/2 is over 30/hr and 2/5 is over 65.
I'd still try to avoid playing thur/fri/sat all night when youre young, if youre crushing its much better to still have time with friends/women than being at a poker table every weekend.

I highly doubt my win-rate will be anything special starting out, and this journey will likely be very humbling.

That being said, even post pandemic, my guess is there is enough action at mid/“high” stakes in LA to support basically any poker grinders ambitions.

Whether that be $75k over 35 hours a week of grinding in 2022 or $175k over the same 35 hours a week in 2025. Etc.

This doesn’t mean anything if I’m not continuously better than like 95%+ of my competition in every game I sit in— so that’s my first priority.

Sick results ao!

Completely agree with browni and rr

If you scale that up to 45-50 hours a week, you could make over $150k a year. Have you thought of doing that?

I don't live in a place with consistent games above 1/2. After like 25, unless you *really* need the money, you shouldn't be grinding 40+ hours in a casino.