I'd like to start playing 6maxLHE but having no experience with these games I have no idea what stakes are reasonable for learning the game.

I'm a winning 2/4NLH player so I already have a good understanding of hold'em in general and I don't have any bankrollrestrictions.

I've read many times about the comparatively large impact of the rake at LHE. Do I have to take this in consideration as well? Is a good rakeback deal more important then fishy games like, for example, on Pacific poker?


Any thoughts on this are most welcome!

RB is vital. I would probably start at 2/4. 1/2 is rake hell, and I believe 3/6 and 5/10 actually take more BB/100 off the table than 2/4.

Welcome.

As a NL -> LHE convertee myself, I can tell you that you're in for a wild ride. This game is imo harder to master than NL, especially when we're talking 6max.

Don't start too high because this game is wildly swingy and you're very likely to steam more at first because some of the beats are absolutely horrendous and some of the plays will be really puzzling and annoying to a nl convertee. It's also less intuitive than NL.

2/4 seems about right, but move up once you feel you're a winner to escape the rake. Also, RB is essential to beating the small stakes game. The edge is much thinner than at NL. Standard winrate for a good player that practices good table selection is 1BB/100 vs 4-5ptbb/100 for NL. Downswings of 100BB happen all the time (25BB ~ one buyin at NL) and many winning players have experienced 500BB downswings or more.

I'd still say fish > rb, but I'm prejudiced. When I tried switching from my fishy 3+loose passive a table site (small bonus, no rb; equivalent to ~20% back) to FT, I lost >200bb in a small sample and would have gone broke if I kept playing there without the big bonus, rakeback and my PLO and SnG's winnings(I ran superhot).

Anywho, what I'd recommend just to start with is the 6max starting hands table thats around here somewhere, reading hypermachi's guide(google) just for starters and reading Stox's book. I hear the video-coaching sites help alot as well, but have no experience with that yet (I will once I get some time, since I dont get abo's when I cant take advantage of them).

Good luck, and if you want to see a donk(me) playing and talking in dutch. PM me for the link.

Edges are thinner here, so you need to work harder ... NL we can be mindless robots at without getting hurt, not so much here.

Personally I'd recommend 2/4 .. it is more or less equivalent to 100NL in winnings/bankroll requirement (almost ... perhaps slightly less in both). 2/4 is also where games start to grow more interesting than the limpfest 4 to a flop of 1/2.

BTW ... I play SSNL as my main game.

Thanks for the replies,

I think I will start with playing a decent amount of 2/4 before moving up. That way eventual losses won't hurt me as NLHE remains my main game

I've been looking around at the LHE action at different sites and it struck me that there aren't too many sites with a good number of tables to choose from.
I usually play during European daytime and so far only Stars, FT and Ipoker offer more then 4 tables of LHE 2/4.

Are the Stars games still beatable at these stakes or is it better for a beginning player to start elsewhere? I have no FT rakeback and I'm expecting to be supernova this year on stars.

tx.

Stars games are very beatable during europe nighttime (18:00-01:00 GMT) when I play. Dunno about the daytime, but I'm guessing so as well. You could always wake up really early (6:00) to try and catch the late night drunken US fish.

And stars rake is better than most other sites I think, so that + Supernova should be a decent additional edge over FT.

Once u read Winning In Tough Hold'em Games and Winning SH limit, i think ur able to beat the 3/6 and 5/10.