I just headed back to the Vic for the first time since before the pandemic on 10 Nov. 2021. I signed up for £1/2 NLHE, £1/3 NLHE, and £1/2 PLO tables, and just decided to take the one that had the first vacancy - it was the £1/3 NLHE.
I played on a Wednesday night (6:15pm to 10:15pm), which might be part of it, but the wait was about 10-15 minutes, and the rake was 5% capped at £10, which is super-reasonable, IMO. I think the £1/1 game might be 10%, but generally speaking, I'd probably avoid the £1/1 altogether even if you're bankroll-short simply because of the rake.
For about 20 minutes, a few players left and a few others were away from the table, missing blinds, so there was a 3-handed game... but the table quickly filled back up again.
I would consider the game I played to be very beatable - I bought in for £200 and cashed out for £1040 four hours later, but YMMV.
Some things I noticed:
* A lot of players like to buy-in with more than 100BB. The table max is £1000 and I've seen players buy-in with that amount. This doesn't necessarily indicate that they're good, just that they prefer to play very deepstacked. Stay aware of effective stack-sizes.
* Oddly enough, there wasn't anyone I would consider a real "calling station" there, which meant that players can and do find the fold button... perhaps *too* often. I'd say that most of them were just *barely* level 2 players - they thought about what they had, and they thought about what I could have, but they didn't think too much about what I thought they had, or what I thought they thought I had.
* Tight-aggressive is the way to go - emphasis on
aggressive. I think at these stakes and venues, there isn't a whole lot of bluffing, and minor semibluffing. I found that by playing good cards agressively (3B AJ+ TT+, for ex), I'd get a lot of folds from squeeze plays in position, and while flop c-bets didn't necessarily gather respect, solid turn c-bets did. Point is, when I had something, I bet for value, when I had nothing, I'd use my position to see if I could take the pot with a bluff - just about the only time I took a passive line is when I had a bluff-catcher with showdown value. So... you know, ABC poker.
* For the most part, the players were weak when it came to bet sizing - both not using the texture of the flop to size their bets, and not really taking into consideration the size of the pot... both for making bets and calling bets.
*
Position, Position, Position. Sometimes I'd have absolutely nothing - when bet into, I felt comfortable in late position with floating a flop c-bet (which was usually under-sized, like 1/3rd to 1/2 pot) then when opponent checks the turn, try to steal the pot with a 1/2 to 2/3 pot-sized bluff. It worked way more often than not.
* Don't worry too much about being out-kicked. While at some tables, you want to fold your AT-type hands to a single raise, I found that players didn't really care too much about the possibility of their cards being dominated. A whole lot of A-rag hands get played, and a hell of a lot of people play two-broadway or suited-connectors, or even just random any-twos even when they probably shouldn't (especially out of position.) It wouldn't be unusual to see a UTG raise from someone with A7s when we're 7 or 8 handed.
As for my own lucky night, a few things happened, first, when it came to showdown, I usually had something. There was one hand that I got it all-in on a coinflip and won, but it could have easily gone the other way - if I had lost that hand, I probably would have re-bought in and broken even for the night.
So, that's my little report.