I'm barely break even, with big swings, in .40-.80 ACR stud game, .10 ante, .20 bring in.

I am a long-term winner in reasonably tightly structured live games, mainly $5-10. And a big winner in looser home games at similar stakes.

Many of the players in the online game are very loose and aggressive, but not particularly good. Most are losers, in fact it appears to me that almost everyone is a long-term loser in this game! One piece of evidence -- when I step down to .04-.08 to work on my game, I see many players from the higher game.

The rake is very toxic, and I'm wondering if it's simply not possible to overcome it here. I've tried playing looser and widening my range against suspected looser opponents. And I've tried playing tighter and exploiting usual difference in range. Small sample size of course, but I beat the heck out of low limit holdem ($5) on this same site. (And beat the .04.-.08 stud pretty well due to the many really terrible players there).

Curious if anyone else here has played this or a similar game and has wisdom to share.

What is the rake for this game?

It's actually not that bad, I looked at it. I think playing heads up the rake is tough, but with five or more players it seems fine. It's a swingy game, and I think I just need to stay focused and adjust to the players. There are a number of very aggressive, experienced (but not necessarily great) regulars, and many will give excessive action to try to tilt opponents. Adjustment is everything -- for example, I lost a hand to a player yesterday where he raised third with a 7 showing, I raised with split queens, he called, caught a deuce on 4th and raised my bet. I then called 5th and 6th as neither of us visibly improved. River checked through and he took the pot with sevens and deuces v. unimproved queens. These are good spots for me, and I just need to focus on picking good spots and playing well on later streets. Overall, I'm up about 100bb in this game over+- 20 hours of play since this post, which is decent. But I honestly don't feel like I'm winningdue to the ups and downs -- even though I am overall.

I've gotta think if you're actively studying hands and posting on this site, you will be a top 5% player in the 40c/80c player pool on ACR within a month

Well, I'm a winning player but probably should tighten up a bit with starters. It's a big swing game -- yesterday for example, built a big pot with trip kings, but didn't fill, ended with two opponents one of whom rivered a straight and the other rivered a flush (or had it on sixth but was afraid to raise because I had a pair of kings showing). It's really avoiding tilt and continuing to steal opportunistically, read ranges in smaller pots well and then play the big pots well when they come along.