2/5 is beatable and you better start getting convinced.

I'm very open to reason. But I've yet to see anyone on here show the rational behind such beliefs. 'Rake is high' is true, but not the end-all be-all behind a rationally convincing argument. I'm open to seeing numbers and laid out reasoning, but so far no one says anything other than 'rake is high'.

It takes a very different strategy than other games, but the $100NL is surely beatable long term. I'm not saying it will be for a huge win rate, but if you know what you're doing you can probably beat that game for something around $7-$12/hr.

I don't have much experience with it, but from what I've seen you could probably even beat the $40NL for $2-$4/hr long term.

The reason that nobody has a big enough sample size to show this is because anyone with the skill to beat these games isn't wasting their time with the small stakes for enough hours.

The $40 no limit at Oceans 11 is more beatable. They have no flop no drop and the rake is 3/1. You have to play very tight and never limp though. Most people don't have the patience.

Are any of the limit games at the Commerce beatable?

I'd like to see some numbers if possible also, I mean the rake is high everywhere in C.A. I don't see a big problem with it, what's the rake like in L.V. or A.C. usually what is it like a dollar less or something ? does $6 bucks really matter in a $200 pot in O8 etc

and what are all the stakes offered for limit and Omaha hi lo from 4/8 to etc and everything in between

thanks

I usually use Bravo Poker for stakes

You gents really need to stop assuming markets are efficient and that win rates correlate proportionally from one stake to the next before rake. If you've spent any real time at 1-2 NL or 4-8 limit with a full kill, you'd realize that these games are incredibly inefficient, and a very good player can quite easily crush it for 20 per hour, even in California with shallow buy-ins and roughly 15 per hour in rake. Good, tight-solid players could also clear 10-15 per hour without a sweat. If you enjoy playing poker and you want to improve your skills, don't let the false notion that "nobody beats rake" deter you from playing low-limit games.

I won't comment on 1-2 NL. But it's very hard to beat any sort of a limit hold 'em game for 7.5BB/100 (which is what $20 / hour playing 4-8 limit would be). (If we add in a full kill, that's an additional $4 and $8 blinds once every 9 hands, which would turn the game into $4.44/$8.88. That would make winrate 6.6BB/100 instead.)

A typical full ring limit game online is beatable for only 2.5BB/100 or so. A really easy limit game is beatable for about 4BB/100. Now, let's talk about the rake.

A fair drop in a limit game is the drop of $6 in 20/40. That's the equivalent of a drop of $1.20 in 4/8. Instead, the cardroom takes $5. So the additional rake is $3.80 per hand, or 22 cents per player per hand. Over 100 hands, that's an additional rake of $22, or 2.75BB/100.

Now, take that out of the really easy limit game winrate of 4BB/100, and you get a winrate of 1.25BB/100. Convert it back to an hourly rate and you are talking about .42BB/hour, or $3.36 per hour. That's basically what the best player can do in 4/8 full kill with a large sample. And most players aren't near that good.

You're taking public data from a mostly efficient market (online) and using xx% to convert that into a precise live win rate. Consider the difference in NL pre-Black Friday: 2-3 BB/100 was considered very good for online, whereas you could crush live low-stakes games for 20 BB/100. When you consider that it's not unusual to book 400-600 in profit after a 5-hour session at 4-8 LHE with full kill, I'm quite confident live low-stakes limit games are beatable for at least 1.5 big bets per hour after rake.

I'm not actually convinced about the stories of live winrates.

Had there been no HUD's and no Table Ratings, I'm sure there would have been online players talking about gigantic winrates. Poker is like fishing-- in the absence of verification, there are a lot of exaggerations.

And live players are notoriously ignorant about significance of sample sizes. 15,000 hands is 450 hours of limit or 600 hours of no limit, which is 11+ weeks of full time limit or 15 weeks of full time no limit. For players who play a more typical 3 1/2 hours a night, it's 130 sessions of limit and 175 sessions of no limit. And that's basically the minimum you need for any sort of convergence. In reality, you need to play twice as long to get a really strong confidence interval.

So the most likely explanation is that actual live poker winrates aren't that different from online winrates except for rake differences. But there are players who don't realize their winrates are unsustainable and other players who are just misreporting.

I agree that low limit live is beatable - but the problem is, if you have a bad run, it's going to upset you logically to a degree that you'll stop playing, because you won't really trust that you can get out of the hole (ok, I generalized - you = me ). If 4-8 limit is beatable for 1.5 big bets per hour (and I believe it is), then $2,400 should be more than enough. But, what if you have a losing week and lose $1,000+ - without hand histories, it's tough to really evaluate and convince yourself to keep going. (and if you're playing for some sort of living - would you want to? Could you continue to pay bills for two months before you get out of that hole and make some profit again?)

I think the problem comparing to online is also related - online is all about using the data to the best degree possible. With live, there is no data - you might be 100% sure one person is tight, and other is super loose - yet it turns out the super loose person is only playing loose against you, or maybe only on the button. Online I once pinpointed a NL player whose PFR stats UTG through the button went like this - 10/12/24/85 - yep, pretty much any two on the button, and it worked against most because he was conservative overall (like <20 or whatever overall PFR) Live, I would never know. He could even show down some crazy button hands, I would still not peg him as being so loose in that spot, just give him some credit for some random plays.

Also live, it's so few hands per hour - people say sample size, sample size, sample size, but is it really sample size that's paramount when you're playing live? People will play their cards so much differently that to me, there's other factors that get magnified much more. There's an ebb and flow to a live game that doesn't always exist online.

Also, +1 on moving to LA - I did it, and realized it wasn't going to work out, so I am back here now. I think there is a bit of an illusion to the Commerce limit games because yes, they can be super loose, and when you hit right, you get four rack wins no problem, but also there can be long spells of running 'bad', because there's 2+ villains drawing to 5 outs each all the time. So I went from thinking I was earning $45+ an hour no problem at 20/40 to wondering if I was even going to end up breaking $25.

Love commerce. Anybody go to the Poker University classes?

This is very much incorrect.

Mathematically, live poker is just online poker with fewer hands, somewhat different player tendencies (perhaps, or maybe not), and a different rake structure.

But in terms of your winrate, sample size is everything. Because the basic reason for variance in poker is because of the randomness of the cards. It simply is the case that over any run of 10,000 or 15,000 hands, you can just run bad, in the sense of getting your big pocket pairs cracked more often than usual, missing more than the usual number of flush and straight draws, getting two outed more often than you should, etc. And in limit, variance is especially high, because you can't use bet sizing to price people out of continuing with their hands.

None of that changes live. And it's a huge mistake to think the laws of mathematics don't apply to live poker. The only way to know anything close to your "true" winrate (a bit of a misnomer, as winrates fluctuate due to game conditions and the skill improvements of the player) is to play many tens of thousands of hands, which means full time play for months or part time play for years.

It doesn't matter how different you may think live poker is. Sample size is still the overwhelming issue here.

I didn't interpret his statement as saying sample size isn't important. I interpreted it as saying there is a huge amount of variance in how people (especially fish) play, and a lot of it is "in the moment" stuff, so it is very hard to estimate your edge over certain players, where online this is much easier.

my superuser comment earlier was more of a joke, but realistically, live winrates can be compared to play money winrates online. I don't know anything about limit, but for big bet games I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to make 20bb/100 in play money online just like it isn't in live poker.

I sort of follow your log. You have basically been doing this (professional live poker player) for 1.5 years. I guarantee if you are still doing this in 10 years your attitude will be very different, even if you succeed and are still making it work.

You actually need at least 100,000 hands or two years of full-time data for one game at the same location, at the same stake, and with the same buy-in structure to calculate a number that's within 2-2.5 big blinds per hour of your "true" win-rate 90% of the time. You could also eliminate much of the noise that comes from improvements in your game and changing game conditions by applying exponential smoothing, giving more weight toward recent results.

This is a number that you could reasonably estimate based on your last 500 hours and adjusting, using an honest assessment, for how well or poorly you've "ran" during that time. My sessions average 5-6 hours, and I use my winning sessions percentage as a secondary check against this estimate. Assuming a reasonable level of tilt control and not a single night where I'm simply giving money away, I find that at 45%, my results are considerably well below "all-in EV," and I should have made roughly 5 big blinds more per hour. The opposite goes for 65% over 80-100 sessions. 55% is roughly "at EV" for me, but yours should be closer to 60% if you're averaging 8-10 hours per session and you have a more conservative style of play or less volatile game conditions.

People obsess excessively over win-rates. Whether using them as you would in djck-measuring contests or for self-motivation/de-motivation week to week and month to month, you really shouldn't care what your win-rate is. You should instead focus your attention on consistently playing well, minimizing mistakes each session, improving your skill set, and creating better game conditions. A specific win-rate calculation should serve only to reinforce your own estimate of how much you should be making in your game. If your assessment significantly deviates from this calculation, chances are that you're not as good as you think you are (as is the case for most live players, particularly those who assume they have few or no leaks and consistently berate how others play).

I don't think a sample size of 1 person is significant. In addition to things I've witnessed, my comment is based on stories of those who have been playing poker for 10+ years.

Thanks for following too

Thanks, you saved me some typing. That is what I meant. I think some would still disagree, but I've definitely seen even the most regular (and decent skill-wise) of players at times go on some very weird forms of tilt (whether it's playing more hands or over-value-betting marginal hands or whatever else).

Overall, I think a line from some old-school book sums it up well - there's basically times when the game is so bad that no one will win at the table against the best player there (the rake, who wins $100-250 each and every hour). Yet there's other times when the game is just so incredibly good and easy to play right that one could probably earn superuser-worthy winrates if the game were to continue indefinitely (but of course it can't since there are one or more heavy donators in every pot who will go broke). I think it makes sense to vary one's play based on the state the table is in (and I'd go as far to say that, when playing four or more tables online, this is difficult to do to a high degree).

I'd even like to venture something more argument-worthy - that everyone's winrate live is in a vacuum and has no use being compared to anyone else's. Even 100,000 hands is not enough live, the game changes so much season to season, hour to hour. I think unless someone played over someone else (every other hand) for 100,000 hands over many years, there's just no way to compare.

I don't know why I started waxing eloquent on all this, just felt in the mood I guess and I always enjoy following this thread.

So, can anyone tell me what the blinds are on the $400 game they have posted? And does it come with free food?

Your thinking is such low level math I want to put "math" in quotes.

Suppose you got to play with a superuser account. How much of a sample size would you need to know you had an edge?

Bolded part is especially laughable.

Live poker is NOT just online poker with fewer hands. Live poker has much, much more opportunity for edge, AINEC.

People who think online poker is the same game as real poker don't understand either.

Personally I prefer online, for the usual reasons. But real poker is a superior test of complete skills. Online poker to real poker is checkers to chess. Get over it.

And the sample size needed to establish edge in real poker is as much tinier than samples needed for online as the edge in online is tinier than the edges possible in real poker. DUCY?

I'll be visiting the LA area in mid-October. Commerce looks like the best place to play, but the buy-in/blind structures for no limit are a lot different than I've seen. I don't think the 2-5/$200 game will be a good profit opportunity relative to the rake (Unless the action makes it so--let me know). The 5-5/$500 should work, but I'm curious about pre-flop raising frequency. Should I plan on being more aggressive in defending my blinds?

I play in a 2-5/$500 game in Oklahoma and a 3-5/$500 game in Wisconsin. In these games, we'll see a pre-flop raise about a third of the time. More often in some games, but for the most part, the tables have a lot of passive players pre-flop. Given the higher amount of money in the blinds, am I likely to see a significantly higher pre-flop raise percentage in the 5-5/$500 Commerce games?

I was going to say Hallelujah, the thread is back on track - except you didn't ask what the blinds were!

I haven't played NL at Commerce in a year +, but I thought the $500 was 5-10 blinds?

Also, I don't think many are thinking about the larger blinds, because a) they just don't think (at least not about things like that), and b) there's not many times it will be folded to the blinds (unless things have changed in the overall play). I think the right idea is to be positionally strong and pot-committed with almost any hand played against the opponents you expect to be in with. (again I might be way off, I usually play limit at Commerce and it's been a while since I played the $200, $400 or $500 (whatever it was then), and 500-1500 games)

In all seriousness is Commerce the best place overall in LA?