You have a good point but I don't think it makes the effective stacks issue moot. It's correct the stacks aren't halved if people don't change their raise size and you just call the bet. When I'm involved in these pots I typically raise twice my normal amount over the limpers and they call about as often as they would in an unstraddled pot because they've already called the straddle. This definitely halves effective stacks. Limped pots also halve effective stacks, though the effect may not be as important. I guess it's more like a 1/2/4 game where the fish don't realize they've doubled the stakes.

Agreed. I just play it when there are short stacks + loose players + a straddle + I have position. It becomes pretty good in that scenario. Especially if it's SOOTED

Well of course flop texture is important. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's also very important how many players there are to the flop, but if it's 2 or 3 way to the flop and the board is not ridiculously coordinated it's pretty safe to stack off with TPGK with an SPR < 3. I don't know if it's an overused concept but I've found it useful, as a way of quickly measuring your implied odds or reverse implied odds when you're considering stacking off. An SPR of 3 means two 82% pot size bets will get it in and TPGK is usually worth two streets of value. But it's dependent on board texture and ranging opponents of course.

And congrats on your latest win. Sounds like it's been a good week

.

Played 1/2 again today. I kinda want to put in 500 hours to see if this some kind of fluky run good or if I can really sustain an hourly rate as high as 2/5. Is that even possible with 2/5 being 2 1/2 times more money than 1/2? Is my edge over 1/2 players really 2 1/2 times bigger than my edge over 2/5 players? Can't be, can it?

I now have a little over 200 hours of 1/2 and 1/3

Win rate...$47.50/hr
Winning sessions... 84%
Avg session...4 hrs 9 mins
StnDev...57BBs /hr (which is higher than my 2/5 Stn Dev). Maybe because there's more loose action at 1/2 and 1/3 than 2/5? Not sure.

Semi interesting hands from today.

1) EP fish ($100) opens to $7
Hero ($350) calls in MP with Tc7c
LP ($130) calls.
BB (cant remember) calls.

Flop ($29) 7h7d6d. BB checks. EP bets $15. I call. LP raises to $35. BB folds. EP calls. I shove. Both LP and EP call.

LP has 87
EP I assume has some overpair.
I lose to LP's runner runner straight.

2) I open to $10 EP KQ and get 5 calls.
Flop ($60) K83. I check and it checks to the button who bets $35 with $110 total. I cria and lose to AK.

3) I raise a limper to $12 Ah9s. Kinda stupid actually but whatever. I play pretty LAGgy at 1/2. BB calls HU
Flop ($26) Kh4h3d. BB leads $20. I raise to $65 and he folds. Dont donk into me unless you're serious, Sir!

4) I open to $10 AsKc. Only the BB calls. Hes an 85 year old aggro 1/2 player. Kinda cool. They actually do exist apparently.
Flop ($20) JsTs8c. He checks. I bet $12. He insta check raises to $30. I think and call.
Turn ($80) 9h. He grimaces and bets $15. LOL You might as well check, Sir. I raise to $65. He says "youre so lucky" and folds. Yeah, Im lucky I got a good bluffing card. I show and the old man is not happy.

5) 4 limps. I complete Kc7c in the SB.
Flop ($12) Kd4c3c. It checks to MP who bets $15. Button calls. The table is kinda deep and my image kinda sucks. I dont think I have much FE so I just call. One more MP call.
Turn ($72) Jd. Checks to MP who bets $25. All 3 of us call again.
River ($172). 9c. I lead $100. One fold. MP shifts back and forth in his seat. He just saw me bluff and really doesnt want to fold but he finally surrenders. The button thinks and calls with JcTc.

Ended the day with a $40 win after being stuck $325

No... 47.50/hr is definitely not sustainable unless you're the greatest player in the world. And the standard error over 500 hours will still be pretty large (roughly 4.5BB or $9/hr).

It's definitely possible you could win more at 1/2 than 2/5, but I would think most players capable of crushing 1/2 (15BB/hour+) would be able to beat 2/5 for at least 40% of their 1/2 winrate, which is all you'd need. I figure you've just run better at 1/2, which makes sense given your sample size is way smaller for 1/2.

My 1/2 winrate will never hit 47.50/hour because I started out on a big downswing

Man you love that T7...lol. Runner runner straight is nasty.

Why show the old man in hand 4?

I like to have an image of a maniac because although I play LAG preflop, Im much more TAG postflop. I dont bluff very often at all. I only bluff when its obvious I can attack in certain spots like this one, but I like people to think Im bluffing constantly. That's how I get paid off in spots that lots of people dont.

Crazy high hand story.

A few people limp. The flop comes TTT. It checks around. The turn is an Ace and a guy bets and everyone folds. He shows T7. At this poker room you have to play both cards so the guy isnt eligible for high hand. Everyone groans and tells him he shouldve gone all in on the flop to get everyone to fold and prevent the turn from being dealt. He wouldve been on the High Hand board which was $300 at the time. He was from out of town and didnt know anything about the high hand.

Very next hand. I swear this is a true story.

The flop comes TTT again. The same guy shoves all in. Everyone folds and he shows T9 and hits the high hand.

Anyone care to calculate the odds of back to back flops of all the same card. Both flops having the same cards, not just a flop of all 6's or all 2's, but all the same card as the first one. A player having the 4th of that card. And the next flop it happens again....not just by anyone, but by the same player?

i'm guessing you're winning a ton without showdown, yes?

anyhoo, nice stats bruh.

1) Yeah, I would fold this at 2/5 and probably shouldve here as well.

3) If you saw my "win %" without showdown on hands where people donk into me on the flop and I raise their donk bet (usually with very little equity), you would fall out of your chair. Stakes dont matter. It works at 1/2...2/5 and 5/10 as well.

4) I disagree with you here. I dont call it "running hotter than the sun" just because you were presented with a situation that you can use to exploit weaker players when most players dont take advantage of those opportunities. That's called a skill advantage, using position ect. If he wouldve checked I woulvde not been sure what to do. If he had bet bigger I wouldve folded. His bet sizing was a tell that I took advantage of. That takes skill and balls. There are lots of opportunities that pop up like that during a session. Good players make money from them. Not so good players dont even recognize them, but they are always there. This one was just really obvious. A less obvious one is hand #3. People almost never donk bet into the raiser with a super strong hand because they dont want to miss out on the raiser Cbetting. When I raise their donk bet, they have no choice but to assume I have an overpair. Over and over again they fold and lots of times they show TP as they fold.

thanks for the tutorial

@ 1/2....

the tells are WAY more than at 2/5.

the patterns are way more. I do feel you have to look at the bet size pattern not the bet size relative to the pot because these players think in absolute values not relative ones.

You can bluff despite what many say

I've always debated whether a 1/2 $300 max is a better game than 2/5 with $500 max. We assume everyone buys in max here.

This has gotta be pbkc. LOL

I went thru a 4 hr stretch today (playing 1/2) where I won just 1 hand. Here's the hand.

Lady with $200 limps in MP. I cover and raise to $12 with 5h4h. She calls
Flop ($27) 9h9d7h. She leads $20. I raise to $65. She folds.

I was stuck a max of $235 right before this hand. I ended the day up $200 about 1 1/2 hrs later after the table turned wild as hell and I hit a couple hands.

Least favorite hand of the day.

Limped pot. 6 to the flop. I have 9d6d in the BB.
Flop ($12) 6s6c2s. SB leads $25. WTF? I call and everyone else folds.
Turn ($62) Qh. He bets $25. I call.
River ($112) 2d. He bets $50. I call and lose to QQ. SMH

It's insanely unlikely. So much so that I should assume you're lying even if I think you're almost always truthful. (this is just a commentary on how unlikely it is--I believe you but bayesian inference says I shouldn't.).

Anyway, let's calculate the probability. I'm going to assume the order of the Ts doesn't matter. Also going to assume nobody has looked at their cards (i.e., you're not in the hand and don't know what the other guys have). If the suits were the same and dealt in the same order that's of course even more insane. First we look at the probability the flop is all Ts, regardless of whether the man has a T.

P(all Ts) = (4 nCr 3) /(52 nCr 3) = (4!/(3!1!))/(52!/(3!49!)) = 4!49!/52! = 12/(52*51*50) = 12/132600 = 1/11050 ~ .0000905

Then P(all Ts twice) = P(all Ts) * P(all Ts) = 1/11050 * 1/11050 = 1/122102500 ~ .000000008190

Since there are 13 ranks P(all same twice) = 13/122102500 ~ .0000001065

If you want to know the probability the guy is dealt the same four of a kind twice on the flop, then the calculations are similar. We're again assuming nobody has looked at his hand, and also the man is playing all Ts for simplicity (this isn't hard to correct if you give me a range of how many Ts he's playing, but generally the fewer Ts the less likely this is to happen).

First note P(flop all Ts & man has exactly one T) = P(flop all Ts) * P(man has exactly one T)

P(flop all Ts) = (4 nCr 3) /(52 nCr 3) = (4!/(3!1!))/(52!/(3!49!)) = 4!49!/52! = 12/(52*51*50) = 12/132600 = 1/11050 ~ .0000905

P(man has exactly one T) = (4 nCr 1)*(48 nCr 1)/(52 nCr 2) = 4*48/1326 = 192/1326 = 32/221 ~ .144796

Then P(flop all Ts & man has exactly one T) = 1/11050 * 32/221 = .0000131037

So this is the probability the man is dealt four Ts in this manner. For this to happen twice in a row,

P(man flops four Ts twice in a row) = (1/11050*32/221)^2 = .000000000171708

For the more general question of how often you'll get a flop all the same rank and this man has one card of that rank, we multiply by 13 (note the number is actually probably less than half this as people are less likely to play 2s vs. As for instance).

P(one man flops same four of a kind twice in a row) = 13*(1/11050*32/221)^2 = 256/114684773125 ~ .00000000223221

This will happen about once every 447,987,395 sequences of two hands. Put another way, if you play 2000 hours a year at 30 hands per hour for 50 years, or 3 million hands (1.5 million sequences of two hands), this will happen at least once with probability .003348. So, in a lifetime of grinding, 50 years of 2000 hours per year, you'll get such an event once per 298.65 lifetimes. Note this is looking at a specific player (i.e., you). The probability of merely witnessing such an event is nine times higher, or .0301 over such a lifetime. That is, you should expect to witness the same one person at the table flop the same four of a kind twice in a row once every ~ 33 lifetimes.

I doubt the man had any clue how rare flopping the same four of a kind twice in a row is. What a luckbox

I knew it sounded like it would be next to impossible, but those odds are ridonkulous. Never the less. I swear it actually happened.

I believe you, because you seem truthful and I can't imagine why you'd lie about it, but just for fun let's look at the math behind why I shouldn't.

E is the event you report these hands occurred
S1 is the event these hands occurred
S2 is the event these hands did not occur

We have P(S1) = 100*256/114684773125 = .000000223221 (assuming you played 200 hands)
We have P(S2) = 1 - P(S1) = .999999776779
Suppose P(E|S1) = .75, or you report these hands when they occur 75% of the time.
Suppose P(E|S2) = .001, or you just randomly make this up once every thousand 200-hand sessions (6666 hours).

Then by Bayes Theorem P(S1|E) = P(E|S1)P(S1)/(P(S1)*P(E|S1)+P(S2)*P(E|S2))

P(S1|E) = .75*.000000223221/(.000000223221*.75+.999999776779*.001)

P(S1|E) = 0.0001673877640164104411

WHAT!!? You're basically never telling the truth here. That can't be right. Let's change the assumptions a bit. Assume you ALWAYS report the event when it occurs and you only randomly lie once in a lifetime (100000 hours) of 200-hand sessions, or once every 15000 200-hand sessions. Now

P(S1|E) = 1*.000000223221/(.000000223221*1+.999999776779*.0000666)

P(S1|E) = 0.003340471266136

WTF!? Even assuming you're a total saint you're still lying over 99% of the time! LOL.

So how low does P(E|S2) have to be so that P(S1|E)>.5, i.e., how rarely must you be telling us this happened when it didn't for us to believe merely it's more likely than not that it did happen, given you said it did?

Using Wolfram Alpha, we solve the equation for x: .5 = 1*.000000223221/(.000000223221*1+.999999776779*x)

x <= .000000223221

If you think about it this is crazy. We need you making up the event to be exactly as rare as the actual event to think you're probably truthful. And if P(E|S1) < 1, it needs to be rarer than the actual event. For us to be 90% sure you're truthful, you randomly making it up needs to be over 10 times rarer than the actual event of a guy getting the same quads twice in a row. I think P(E|S1) is very close to zero, not because people never make things up, but because you would almost never make up this specific scenario of the same guy flopping quads twice in a row.

I point out all this not to suggest you're actually lying (though I was curious what the math would say), but rather that when dealing with rare events it's often logical to assume dishonesty. And you see this in BBV all the time--people assuming somebody's downswing is due to bad play (like me starting on a 7.5BI downswing over six days), rather than chance. They're just using Bayesian inference, usually correctly, but rare events do happen, and often those downswings are just variance.

Today I went to a different room. What a mistake! Its a 40 minute drive from my house but I go now and then because the action is much better than my normal room. There was a bad wreck on the highway and it took me an hour and 20 minutes to get there, which is longer than I stayed. I played 2/5 and got hammered.

Got my KK cracked by 35. He limped / called $30 preflop. Flopped a pair and turned 2 pair.
Got JJ vs KK and lost a big one.
Raised $25 AQ and got 5 callers. 6 to the flop of A72 and a guy called my $50 flop bet with JJ with 4 players yet to act...and then turned a J.

So I left and went back to my normal room and went back to my little honey hole...better known as the 1/2 game. I got stuck about $235 but left up $350.

There was a clown calling raises with ridiculous hands like J4 and 63s. Of course he was running hot or I wouldnt even bring it up. The size of the raise didnt seem to bother him much and we started getting deepish so I announced.... "Boys, from now on this is a 2/5 game". Everyone looked at me like WTF? From that point on, all of my raise were 2/5 sized raises. I opened to $20. I raised limpers to $25-$30 and so on. The game got very interesting to say the least. When he finally left, I went back to normal raises sizes.

A couple interesting hands.

1) EP ($300) limps. I raise in the cutoff to $12 with 54s. He reraises to $27. I call.
Flop ($57) 442. He bets $35. I call.
Turn ($127) 5. He checks. Earlier he limp reraised JJ and pounded a Jxx flop and then showed so I was pretty sure he had nothing here when he checked the turn. As a matter of fact I said to him "Last time you reraised preflop, you pounded the flop with top set. I'm pretty sure you have nothing" and I tossed in $15 for the hell of it. He called.
River ($157) A. He check/called $100 with AK.

2) 2 limps. I raise to $12 with QcJc. They both call.
Flop ($39) Jh4h3s. UTG checks. MP leads $15. It looked like he was on a draw to me so I raised to $50. UTG cold calls and MP folds. Uh oh!
Turn ($154) 8c. Check/check
River ($154) Ks. Check/check. UTG has AA.

3) EP opens $10 Couple callers. I call in MP with 4h5h. We go 5 to the flop.
Flop ($50) Kc4c5c. Checked to me. I bet $40. SB calls.
Turn ($130) Ks. Hmmm...I put him on the bare Ac, but he could also have something like KxJc. He checks..I check behind.
River ($130) Kh. X/X. He shows AcQx and Im good.

4) UTG opens $10. 3 calls. I call 9h8h and we end up going 6 to the flop.
Flop ($60) 9c8d3s. SB bets $23 with $60 total. UTG calls with $180 total. Folds to me. I raise to $65. SB calls $60 all in and we're HU.
Turn K
River T...I show and he mucks.

5) EP limps. MP limps. I raise to $15 TT. Only EP calls.
Flop ($35) Kc4c3s. He check/calls $15
Turn ($65) 8d. He check/calls $15.
River ($95. 3c. He leads $40. I fold.

6) Same EP from last hand opens to $12. I call with 22 OTB even though its probably going to be HU because he's the type to lose tons with TPTK or an overpair. We are $500 effective. Both blinds end up calling also

Flop ($48) 652. Blinds check and EP instabets $50. I call and we go HU. He says "I check blind"
Turn ($148) Q. Why does he check blind? I imagine its because he has AK. I fire out $75 and he calls which shocked me. He checks blind again.
River ($298) 3. Hmmm. I dont know WTF he has but I bet $150. He calls with KK.

I guess that's not a horrible idea this deep? Checking blind for to make me think he has overcards and for pot control? An aggro player could easily try to steal this pot from him with air.

Don't know why you leave the first game just because you run a little bad for an hour. Sounds like there were some very bad players.

1/2 hands:

1) Why are you calling 3-bets with 54s? It's not a large 3-bet but still...bleh.

2) What worse hands are calling your large reraise with QJ?

5) Why the tiny turn bet? Villain could interpret this as weakness and donk the river.

6) Why do you assume he has overcards? I think people check dark when they fear certain cards and don't really know what they'd do on that card. If they don't check dark and the scary card(s) come, then they are check/folding a lot. I think this player was just scared of an A hitting and wanted to disguise his hand in case an A hit, hoping you would check behind on A turns or rivers.

Can't really iso/fold to that size...

You do realise how insane strong you look when you make this speech play right? You do realise literally no one would ever say this without a strong hand right? If there are any good regs in your game, they should recognise this and use it against you.

Careful not to do this vs a good player. Your hand is pretty face up with that sizing OTT. Vs fish/average live reg it's fine though.

It's pretty bad because he should be betting again on most turns.

.

You are correct about the speech. I rarely talk during hands, but what was anyone going to do to use it against me though? Besides fold?

What would you do on the turn in my TT hand? Im really not sure in a spot like that where he mostly has a FD or has me beat with a K.

I keep track of all kinds of things in the notes on my phone when I play. Here's an example. Hands where I raise as a bluff as a one and done play with very little to no equity. I raise to take the pot down. Nothing else. If he calls Im not putting in another dime (barring some miracle card)

Example:

I posted this hand the other day.

I raise a limper to $12 Ah9s. BB calls and limper folds.
Flop ($26) Kh4h3d. BB leads $20. I raise to $65 and he folds.

Im raising to $65 to win the $46 pot. If he calls, Im done with the hand. Even if an ace hits Im not betting again. (might bet the river if he check turn and river) The point is Im risking $65 to win $46 and I think he will fold X% which is higher than the pot odds.

In 38 hrs of 1/2 since I started this little 1/2 run

Ive done something similar 9 times and won 6 for 67% success rate. Total profit of $128 or $3.37/hr in pure bluff profit.

Oops, meant to subscribe to this like a week ago and forgot. Read through it now and looks like we have even more in common than I thought (online background, no HUD, self taught for the most part, unusual lines/strategies, Dallas, retired..albeit u really aren't retired). Anyways, good luck!

I'm not a fan of your limp/shove with AK in the original hand history. The pot isn't big enough to warrant putting your entire stack in the middle. It's hard to get value from worse by doing this. Also, I'd expect that you have bluffs in your range here in which case you are just risking far too much when the same could be accomplished for a lot less.

Yeah, he posts way too much.

If these hands represent hella LAG then I play hella maniac as my norm. It mostly seemed like you were playing TAG but had a run of good starting hands.

150bbs deep to play T7 sooted from the CO in a limped pot? I'd play that all day at virtually any stack size. It does suck this is a button straddle though but still if this goes to a flop we do have position on everyone else.

LOL. Check your own post count , Sir

54s calling the min-raise is a little +EV. You need ~20:1 to be roughly break even. You flop huge a little more than 6% of the time... now discount coolers and suckouts. Not even counting draws. And this is all assuming the limp-reraiser has AA exactly and isn't folding no matter what comes. He was getting ~23:1

And if you play poker long enough, like I have, you see all sorts of WTF **** that is mathematically impossible. I have a long list of "how the hell is that possible".

Prob bet bigger. I think we're ahead mostly but it's v close. The point is when he has a fd and you bet that size, he gets more than enough odds to call profitably. Even if we bet 40-50% pot, I think it's an improvement