Oh that clears that up then. Limit is entirely outside my expertise!

ty for the comments

I don't think anyone would disagree with you that there are plenty of games that go where there are higher winrates available. I don't think that's what people are talking about though with their guesses at winrate caps. I think the caps are more referencing the rough ceiling for games that consistently run that most people have access to. Like for example with 2/5 games live, I'm sure there are lots of games running especially on weekends and prime time where the available winrate is higher. But if you want to actually play full time you can't just play in the best games/times which drags down the winrate that you can achieve over a meaningful amount of volume. There's for sure some unicorns in every game type who really are just a notch ahead of the other good competition in the games. But most people aren't gonna be in that top echelon and it's also hard to know if the top crusher of the moment is actually THAT better than the rest or if they are just running on the good end of unlikely variance. I think there isn't much point worrying about winrates anyways, especially in live games. Things are just too slow, conditions change too much before a sample is meaningful. Think everyone is just stuck using the eye test and making their best educated guess as to which game they are most profitable in based on the bit of info they have and can observe, and then hoping they picked correctly.

60k ev should be very doable for a good LHE grinder if decent 20/40 games are running daily

agree with everything here

With enough hours sure. There’s a good thread about this exact topic in the limit section. Basically, nobody plays 20/40 for a living. They have other sources of income or they play higher. It’s similar to 2/5.

Like 1500 hours. Very doable if the game runs most of the time and that's your main source of income. There's more people than you think playing 2/5nl live as their main game for a living. Prob not the best choice for most people but everyone's gotta decide for themselves how they want to spend their life.

The question you should ask yourself is how many hours of grinding and studying limit will it take to get in the .75-1 BB EV range?

I agree with the guy that says there are basically no real pros at 20/40 limit in an expensive city. Just go to commerce and ask the long term mid-high stakes limit players their opinion. I bet they will mostly agree needs to be minimum 40/80. And that’s a volatile game, you need a little bigger bankroll than 5-10nl for that.

I don’t know what your roll is obv. I mean, you are in a great area for limit Holdem. But there’s a lot to consider wrt opportunity costs, etc.

But why aren’t you playing 5/10nl+ right now? Are the 2/5nl games your playing super deep?

1500 hours for 60k sounds like a J O B. Very doable in theory. But not realistic after factoring other aspects. The clientele that play 20/40, choosing between your real life and your hourly etc takes its toll. That’s why nobody plays 20/40 exclusively for a living and 40/80 is the minimum stake. The thread in the limit section had a great discussion about this. Nobody plays 2/5 exclusively for the same reasons nobody grinds 20 for a living. 40/80 and 5/T become the minimums because it’s less avg hours, higher pay, less rake, and a better environment overall. Some people can make low stakes work, but it’s never long term.

I don't disagree with the sentiment here but there are definitely career 2/5 players, some of which have been playing for many years and aren't interested in moving up to 5/10 for various reasons.

I am pretty sure 2-5 is being looked into strictly from the prism of playing in LA/California, AKA a shallow buy-in/highly raked game in one of the most expensive places of the world. Many players grind 2-5 (BIs of 1k-1.5k) elsewhere and is perhaps the most common stake for a grinder, actually. Not that I would ever want to go back to that, but it is very common, of course.

I've been playing 2/3 and 5/5 almost exclusively for about half a year now and plan to keep doing it. I talked in more detail about it pretty recently but I think the reduced stress allows me to play more hours and just enjoy life more even though the hourly is lower. I think that for grinders who can take a 5k loss and then go enjoy themselves at a party that same night, come back and hit the tables the very next day, yeah I agree they should totally play higher! But I can't so I suppose it's about knowing your own strengths and weaknesses.

So I see your sentiment quite frequently on 2+2 that you can't make "enough" money in LA grinding 5/5. While it's related to winrate discussion, I surprisingly don't think I've ever really delved into this specific topic before. I'll say this straight up: I don't understand it at all. A google search tells me that the median household income in LA is $70k, which I believe that is very reasonably attainable by grinding 5/5. Are you disagreeing with that winrate statement, or are you saying that a single person making the median household LA income isn't "enough" for 2+2's standards?

Ya pretty much emphasis this. I think playing 5/5 is sweet!

Good questions!

Re: grinding/studying limit. Honestly, I may be overestimating my own ability, but I feel like I could be hitting that in 20/40 by next week if I dedicated it to LHE. There is definitely a monetary cost to learning for sure though. I like to think of it as having to pay for and take a class to get a new job :P

Re: bankroll. Ya perhaps if I was more diligent throughout my poker career and had more money I would be less stressed playing higher. But ah well. Maybe in the future I'll find out!

Re: playing 5/10 NLHE. So I'm mostly playing at the Bike, which runs 5/5/10 in addition to 5/5 most days. Of course I will sit in it if conditions are good, but honestly through my experience playing in it, and just by looking at the lineup I can't possibly fathom my hourly being higher by regging 5/5/10 over 5/5. It attracts almost all of the more serious rec players who care more about playing good poker rather than winning or losing money

Yeah! I suppose we can't know for sure but I would also guess that if we had NFL-style statistics for all "full time poker professionals" in the USA, there would be more 2/5 players than any other stake.

Thanks for the comments! I always feel a bit cheesy saying this but I honestly do appreciate all of you for taking the time to post in my thread I have been feeling down all week and it really brightens my mood to see discussion here

It sounded like your expenses are also minimal despite being in LA so yea playing 2/5 to sustain yourself is alright. It won't result in much growth tho

Yeah my living expenses are very low. I have never cared too much for fancy things, and most of my hobbies (playing flag football, volleyball, board games, karaoke at home) cost next to zero. I love my apartment, my 2009 Honda Civic, etc. I think it also really depends on your friend circles too, we like to buy groceries and cook together (alright I'll admit I rarely do any of the cooking myself) rather than go out and eat, stuff like that.

This is the biggest concern to me. I like to think I'm compensating with growth in other areas, for example socially. When we met a few months ago, I have always felt anxious about the idea of entering a club. Now I feel comfortable being the first person on the dance floor.

That being said, perhaps I'll feel better about approaching poker as a challenge in the future

Thanks for the comments

congratulations

People with much more poker experience concluded it’s not realistic to play 20/40 for a living and that 2/5 is very similar to 20/40. Personally, for you, you get bored easily... so you could make 70k over your first 1500 hours playing 5/5. I would bet a significant amount you won’t keep the pace for 8k+ hours.

As sick as it may sound, 70k/yr is not enough to live comfortably in LA for the majority of people. People aren’t owning homes, building wealth, having kids etc due to severe financial stress. Go look those stats up. You may be OK living as a single bachelor, but for everyone else that wants more... it’s not ok. Our major cities (and Canada’s fwiw) are being used as a store of wealth for the worlds richest. Look at NY, LA, BC etc. We have slowly priced our own citizens from living in the our best cities. Go look up those stats.

Not to mention that 70k as a poker player is less valuable than 70k at a regular job. No benefits and large variance in monthly income makes it less desirable

Of course it's a JOB. Poker for most people after awhile is pretty boring and repetitive. Extremely few people still have the passion to find it fun to put in a bunch of hours after the first couple years. Professional athletes making big money to play a sport arguably have one of the best and most fun jobs in the world. And yet most still get tired of the daily grind that comes with it as their career progresses.

What's long term? If it's 5-10 years there are 100% a bunch of low stakes guys doing it. If you are saying people aren't playing their entire working life til retirement I'd prob agree that's unlikely although we also are still <20 years into the poker boom so we don't even know yet. I'd argue that doesn't even have anything to do with 2/5 vs 5/10+ though. Even if you are playing a bit bigger than 2/5 on avg the reality is just that it's super hard to be successful year after year for a decade+ in poker.

Mostly true but like with most things it depends. If you have a significant other who has a job you can get your health insurance through that immediately bridges the gap by a lot. And the downsides of poker are just the downsides of being self employed in any capacity. Generally higher risk with generally higher upside and a bit more control over your choices. Upside of poker specifically is way less than it used to be though so def not a smart choice for most people obv and if you aren't saving a bunch of money for the future you are setting yourself up for a bleak future.

Some days I sort of miss limit. The low stakes limit games were so much simpler. Play tight, value bet aggressively, don't bluff, fold to aggression, print money. The last few times i have stumbled into 10/20 it was still pretty soft, but not like i was back in 2004.

My favorite limit story by far. I'm waiting for a NL seat, so I plop down at 3/6. I somehow end up in a game with like 4 married couples, and they are all super nits. I think I accounted for 95% of the preflop raising at the table and was basically looked down upon as some jackass ruining the game. Then some lady opens to $6. The guy to her left 3-bets to $9. Folds back to her and she face up mucks KK, and he shows AA. That's the only time playing live I've seen someone muck KK pre. And it was in a limit game. For a single bet. And they were right (sort of, still should've called).

In that limit thread alone, collectively, there’s probably 200,000 hours of live poker “pro” experience. They know more than I do. I’m repeating what many said because they have more experience. I’m still waiting to read a thread on 2p2 of hundreds of highly successful 2/5 and 20/40 pros. Again, as said in the limit thread, Occam’s razor applies.

Of course you can grind for 30-40k year. Of course you could play more volume for a little more pay. Of course you could piggy back off a spouses health insurance in the short term. But for what? At what cost will you go to force poker to work?

I quickly skimmed that thread, will go back and read it more thoroughly, but the premise seems to be making 100k a year at 20/40 or playing it for a living in a high cost area. Obv making 100k a year at 20/40 limit or 2/5nl is not a realistic goal, but you don't have to make 100k a year to be a successful pro. And of course if you are living in a very expensive area than you aren't going to be doing that well if you only make 50-60k a year. 1500 hours of play per year is a very doable number. If you work a 9-5 you are doing more like 2k+ hours a year. But in most places if you are making 50-60k a year you should be able to live pretty well and save a decent % of your income. A lot of people have to work a lot harder than a poker player does with a lot less flexibility just to make a lot less money each year.

Not sure what you mean by short term piggy backing on a spouse's health insurance. There's nothing short term about it. You can't just make sweeping assumptions about whether it makes sense or not to be a poker professional. It varies so much based on a lot of factors and then there's things that are purely subjective like happiness etc. If you had two 2/5 players, both make 60k/year in games that are likely to be around for the next decade, but one lives in LA with high costs and one lives in Oklahoma, those are not the same situation.

Do you realize that all self employed work has the same downsides of poker? Do you feel the same way about all self employed jobs or just poker?

I’m going to be direct. Please don’t take offense. I need to understand where you’re coming from. Are you a professional poker player? If so, what was your job experience prior to poker? If not, what kind of work are you in? You’re making statements that make me think you don’t have a good job, or maybe never had one. Continuing the poker side of this doesn’t make sense until you’ve read the limit thread.

Double coverage is a really good idea. I know multiple people who work just for the benefits. I think it’s disgusting, and wrong. Hopefully one day healthcare will be fixed. For now it sucks. If an aspiring entrepreneur or self employed person cannot afford to pay insurance, it means they aren’t where they need to be yet.