That's one of the problems with big bet. Sure winrates are higher, but variance and bankroll requirements are so huge that it is easy to get stuck in the micros for a long time. First starting FR LHE with a 600 blinds roll, and moving up a level every month was pretty reasonable. Building a bankroll from the very bottom made sense to make sure I knew what I was doing, but at big bet it's so hard to be sure of that without a huge sample anyway. And it takes so long to build the bankroll that is makes sense just to deposit enough for a non-cheeseburger stakes level and jump in.

My biggest problem with big bet games is how to play more than 30 mins before I want to kill myself out of boredom.

(continuing my list of things I hate about NLHE)
I really dislike how rare showdowns are. To me, card games are about cards. I like watching how the board develops. I get satisfaction out of seeing the cards form combinations like straights or flushes.

In online nlhe it often feels like you might as well have no hand at all because the actual strength of your hand matters so little when theres so much bluffing and folding going on.

Then it flip-flops in live nlhe where every pot is 5-ways and SD bound and you just have to nit it up and wait for the friggin nuts at an agonizing 20 hands/hour.

600BB BRM never made a lot of sense for a recreational player. The idea of moving up once you have some experience is good. The place where it breaks down is the concept of collecting a huge BR at limit X to have the $ for moving up to 2X and then steadfastly sticking there until having 4X or going broke is silly. Why do you self identify as a 2X limit player forever? Due to the simplified maths of BRM?

Xhad made a nice post about Kelly betting and LHE. You can decide you don't like moving limits by being as aggressive as he is, but the concept where you let yourself move up and down is clearly good. You can make the sane addition to Xhad's idea of getting some experience at your current level before moving up to 2X or you can just say getting in over your head for a bit at 2X will likely move you down.

Again, the idea of once you move up you have a huge BR and then stick it out until you bust is flat out dumb. First, it makes your BR too big and forces you to take forever to move up. Second, not being willing to move down is dumb. If you want to apply these ideas to big bet poker, it should be possible. Assuming big bet poker appeals to you. Just because someone modeled RoR with a simple model doesn't mean you have to use that as a road map for months of dull grinding once you've mastered a given limit.

Elo is having trouble dealing with the fact that that_pope is the undisputed GOAT LHE player and owns this thread.

Pokerstars getting into DFS this year. I can't believe it took this long tbh since it gives them immediate access to US market.

http://www.odfreport.com/809/pokerst...ampaign=buffer

Maybe not in public, but there's always PM.

Agree with Wolfram on all points about NLHE but sadly it seems like the only thing donks want to play. I didn't play much poker in 2014 but it was almost entirely big bet, about half NLHE and half PLO. The problem with small stakes PLO is the rake is absolutely insane. My pre-rake winrate was about the same for both games, but after rake my NL take was about 70% higher (and this isn't adjusted for running way below EV at NL). Std deviation almost exactly double for PLO according to my db.

I'm very lucky. On one of the sites I play, PLO rake is capped very low.

.25/.50 40 cents
.5/1 80 cents
1/2 $1.60

5.5% rake capped at $3 is insane at small stakes PLO. Over 20 bb/100.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2UIz2BlDC8

Good god... I just broke my 1.5 year hiatus from live poker to try out this new "legal" poker room in Austin. There is no rake or tipping, just a $25/night "membership fee". So I thought I would give it a try. The problem? You guessed it... $1/$2 NLHE! I have never played a big bet game live. So for the first 15 minutes or so, keeping track of the pot size and considering the various nuances of live big bet vs. min bet poker kept me engaged. The rest of the hour dragged. About an hour and a half in, I began simultaneously feeling the signs of extreme boredom and an oncoming panic attack. 15 minutes later, I knew I had to escape and barely managed to finish the round. Live poker sucks. NLHE sucks. Put the two together, and omfg... I really want to become a better person. I have often thought about what hell would be like. If hell is a never ending 1/2 NLHE table, then I am officially a god fearing man. Nobody deserves that. And what really baffles me is that thousands of people choose to do this to themselves every day. The other players seemed to be nice people who were genuinely having fun. Like one dude even ordered a couple pizzas to share with everyone at the table. I can only assume he is a masochist.

**** live poker. **** NLHE. I will deliver sandwiches with Elo before I ever become a livetard pro or sell my soul to NLHE.

When I got home, I decided to grind some 100 PLO. Yes, I am once again facing my kryptonite... this evil 4 card game that tilts the **** out of me and triggers what little gambling addiction I have. Unfortunately, I was still tilted from playing 2 hours of live NLHE. Like I totally bet 3 streets in position with akxx on an AA337 board and called a 67/0's river check-shove. I win like 0% of the time in this spot. A 67/0 will always have A3/A7/33 here. I know this. I called. In LHE, this would not be a big deal. In PLO, I just lit 60 bbs on fire and will need quite a few hours of good play to make it back.

I pwned some people with April Fool's jokes today. The poker gods pwned me the hardest with this ****ing 1/2 NLHE bs. LOL @ me. The poker gods are merciless and cruel, as there is no way to prank them back. They knew that putting a "legal" card room in my city would make me do this to myself.

Online poker for life. I have actually been relatively happy being a poker player again since I 100% quit live poker. Tonight was a setback, but I shall recover and move forward. I cannot unsee what I saw tonight. And as we all know, time heals no wounds. I will never find my way back to the innocence I lost the first day I chose to play live. But never playing live poker again? I CAN do that! I can choose not to further deprave my haunted soul... one day at a time. I have accepted that part of being a poker player is understanding that every day is and always will be the worst day of my life. But I can slow my inevitable descent into the abyss by avoiding live poker and NLHE.

I mean I could quit poker entirely. But I listened to way too much 90s grunge so I am perma-addicted to self-sabotage. And poker does seem like a more productive way to tard up my life than my other options. So anyway... see you morons at the Blowada tables!

Cliffs: That_pope ****ing owns you.

When I was 19 years old, and first trying to pull off being a fulltime poker player, my two buddies and I would take a 90 minute drive once a week to play this live home game. It was a $40 tournament with 20-25 guys, followed by a $1/$2 NLHE for those who busted.

I was so incredibly excited to go to that game every week. The players were so horrific, and we were so into poker. We were splitting our winnings evenly, and since I was grinding like .5/1 LHE online and they were playing mostly $2-$10 MTTs, the nights when we would come back each $200 richer were nights to remember.

I'm really nostalgic about those days, but the thought of playing a live $1/$2 game or a $40 3 table SNG now seems miserable. I would rather do just about anything else, before I would subject myself to a game like that.

Don't be so results oriented

I turned on xflixx's twitch stream just now. He's playing 1/2 NL 6-max and this hand comes up:

He's on the button with KQs and opens, sb folds, bb calls. The flop is K-T-5 rainbow.

He checks back. He reasons that he can't get value out of worse by betting. Villain ends up firing turn and river with an airball bluff so he ends up being right, so maybe its the optimal play.

But how dumb of a game is it when you have near the top of your range for the flop and the best action is to check it back? If he has a balanced bluffing range then how often is he c-betting this spot? 10%?

I swear to god, if NL didn't exist and a game designer would propose it to his boss today he would be fired on the spot. "Hey boss I just designed this awesome game. How do you win? You play as little as possible! Genius, right?"

So tempted to solicit surf doc to come make fun of all of you. You sound like a bunch of Razz guys complaining about flop games.

LHE = Why read the book if you can see the movie.

Going too a homegame, The equvilant of of 1/2 with a bunch of my old highscool friends. There Will be alchohol and class A narcortics, so I should be all right even though it is NL.

Even when I get drunk playing a home game with friends, it is so annoyingly slow. If two people are having a conversation, it is impossible for either of them to act on a hand. I end up being a dealer as well.

This usually ends up with me getting drunk to put up with it and then being one of the first out. Then I don't have to deal with it. Strangely enough last weekend I played my first one in like a year and I stayed sober and won it.

I watched that guy's stream for about an hour this morning also. I'm not convinced he's actually any good at poker.

One hand he called a SB minraise from the BB with 83s, checked back T93, checked back J turn, then on K river he thought hard about "turning his hand into a bluff", which seemed like just about the worst idea ever for a 4bb pot where you have a pair.

That guy may be a winning player, but there's no way he's a very big winner.

we're not wrong though.

NL = Where the only aggressive option you can profitably take is bluffing.

LHE = The Tic-Tac-Toe of poker games.

They obviously miss your action and let you win. Expect a second invitation.

God, this old chestnut.

Sure, you can choose how much to bet in NL... but you make betting choices about a 10th of the time you do in LHE. How many times do you see a turn in NL? Once every 3 orbits?

When 99% of your choices are: "fold" its not really a very complex game.

No one has yet mentioned my biggest pet peeve of home games. Screw the painfully slow play or low stakes or the boredom. I played in a couple $10-$20 buy in home game tournies to catch up with old friends and get drunk. The unbarable part to me is that since I'm a poker pro I'm so how expected to win all when I play some ******ed coin flipping contest for stakes I don't give a **** about. I end up playing in some painful tourney just to be social and **** around and then have to listen to everyone talking **** when I lose some standard hand in a 10 blind structure because since I'm a pro I'm somehow never lose a hand. Basically I hate dealing with anyone who doesn't have a clue about poker try and talk about poker

Shouldn't have worn your bracelet.