Quote:
Originally Posted by KingOfZonePoker
I'm thinking about stepping up and trying out live at the 2/5 game here. Are there a lot of tough regs? Any insight into the game? Thanks
At 1-2 if you buy in the for the max, you likely wont be put all-in for many many hours even if you play all 4 streets.
At 2-5 if you buy in for anything less than $500 you'll be lucky to last one hour without a hand taking you into "all-in territory" decisions. Your whole stack is at risk all the time.
At 1-2, a $20 preflop bet is rare and even rarer if you get a caller. (maybe not on Friday night, table-dependent) Given a $200 buy-in, it's tough to get a pot over $100. 80%, if not more, of "all-ins" are the nuts.
If you play 2-5, a $20 preflop bet is a pot-sweetener and you get 3 to 5 callers easily. And with a pot of $80 to $120 you know the flop bet is going to be $80ish.
So you're now up to 25% of a typical $400 buy-in on the flop, (very few, maybe 1 or 2 per table buy in for more than $500 even with the higher buy in limit)
You bet $80 on the flop, get a caller, and the pot is now over $250 and you must play the turn and river! Again, this is the norm at 2-5.
That is by far the biggest difference. I've played 1-2 and 2-5 there for years. If you hit a few hands at 2-5 you WILL get paid, at 1-2, maybe 1 in 3 of your big hands will get paid. So, if you play 2-5 and you only bring 1 buy-in, you better get off to a good start or it will be a short session.
If you define "tough reg" as someone who challenges your stack frequently, then yes, there are a lot of tough regs at 2-5, and if you define it as someone who is tough to beat since they play TAG, then not nearly as many tough regs as 2-5 vs 1-2.
On the good side, all the action-players tend to move to the same table, and you can find one table where you're not constantly at risk every orbit or two.
GVC has a problem in that within the 2-5 group you have people for whom 1-2 is just too slow and small, and others for whom simply wont whip out $3K to sit at the 5-10 table but want to play bigger than 2-5. So the disparity between playing styles at 2-5 is so wide it makes for awkward tables. You'll have a nice "normal" table and an action guy sits in and it's so obvious the table style is not for him and within 20 minutes he's looking for a new table.
GVC really needs to create a 1-2 $300 max buy in and bring back the "5-10 $1500 max no straddle" back. As it is now with just two choices (that 5-10 thing they have caters to like the same 20 guys, I dont know why those guy dont make it a home game, they all know each other) you have too many people stuck at a level and style that is "in between 1-2 and 2-5 and others stuck between 2-5 and the 5-10 game they have now where it's really 5-10-20 $3K buyin.
TL/DR Variance is multitudes bigger at the 2-5 than 1-2
I'd love to play a bit bigger than the 1-2 they have now, but the 2-5 is just too fast and almost every hand you play you gotta ask yourself, "am I really ready to go all the way with this if I hit the flop? or call my big draw since it'll be about half my stack?" the 2-5 becomes almost binary if you dont have $1500 with you to reload a few times.