Wise move.

A recreational player can definitely win at these stakes.

I think one of the biggest keys is tracking your results, by tallying wins and losses. Then let your results guide you when to move up to higher stakes. This will give you something exciting to work towards. It also teaches discipline, which is one of the most important skills to be successful playing poker.

Just be aware that almost everyone "pays their dues" when they're new to poker, and will initially lose to some extent. I know I was likely a small loser in small stakes games my first year or so playing recreationally once or twice a week (I wasn't tracking my results at that time).

Don't get discouraged if this is the case for you too. With a little study and discipline/tilt control, your results will quickly improve.

Appreciate your reply and insights. I sat down for an orbit at $2/5 while I was waiting for $1/3 game on a weekday evening. I would get murdered in a game like that. I have been tracking my wins/losses. I’ve logged about 20 hours so far. We will see how things look after maybe 200-300 hours.

Yeah not all 2/5 games are created equal. Some can be just as soft as a typical 1/2 or 1/3 game.

On the other hand I've been on tables with like 3 legitimate pros and the rest of the players are "good" regulars. I've been playing for years and I couldn't win on a table like that.

Table selection is part of the game, and it's hard sometimes but we've got to have the humility to recognize when a game is too tough for our current skill level. The saying is, "If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour then it's you."

I only play live, 1-3 and 2-5 as a hobby and make money each month. Yes, it can be profitable.

How many hours do you typically play a month? Do you use any study material?

Your categories overlap. Recreational would cover the last 4 in your list of 5

Fair enough. Point being that the actual pros generally play the $2/5 game at my casino. On average there is 0.5 highly skilled players on average at the table.

The question is - are you good enough to know that?

Probably not. However, those that I define as highly skilled/pro on my observations are the players that:
1. Never open limp
2. 3 bet at a reasonable frequency
3. Squeeze well and frequently
4. Isolate weaker players to heads up pots
5. Apply pressure to capped ranges when their range and nut advantage can do so.
6. Actually 3 barrel bluff
7. Go for thin value appropriately
8. Can make tough lay downs
9. Rarely take passive lines.
10. Actually check raise bluff on turn.


Not necessarily a high bar, but in my estimation I see a lot of weak passive players and rarely find someone that is skilled enough that I change tables. There is likely some sampling bias since I generally go on weekend evenings or evening during huge high hand promotion. I suspect that if I got on weekday afternoons there are a lot more “pros” proportionally.

11. Do not go on tilt after being felted

Golden rule #1

NEVER use the word never in poker.

Fail.

Hahaha touché.

Used to be a major "yes." Not so much any more except in extreme star studded games.

OP, this is one of the most important comments in the thread ^

Both in terms of improving your skills and in terms of producing an intellectual challenge, learning to crush at these games can pay huge returns.

To do it requires that you become highly aware of situations, players, and game dynamics that alter "standard" strategy. Solid ABC poker still wins at these games, but it's boring, slow, and can cause frustration. By ABC poker I mean generally decent value-heavy or vaguely GTO play.

The key to these games is recognizing the massive amount of exploitable spots. That, by definition, is non GTO. It requires that you correctly assess what deviations your opponents are making, and adjust to exploit them. It works because on the bottom stakes rung, very few opponents are aware enough to realize this and make any counter-adjustments. It provides an excellent training ground for finding players' flaws and then attacking them.

A lot of this involves playing post-flop & playing multi-way pots. So many players learn decent standard pre-flop strategy and lean on that to build their win-rate. By the turn, they are mostly lost and flailing, hoping to carry their PF advantage through to the river. If you spend a lot of time in these games seeing flops cheaply and with speculative hands (limping and flatting far more than standard recommendations), in position, out of position, etc, you will gain a huge wealth of experience and feel for post-flop spots. You will learn to manage pot size, make informed stabs, bet for thin value, apply pressure across multiple streets, read goofy bluff lines, and adjust hand strength to account for multiple players, particular styles, and weird situations.

This is a stellar set of skills to have when you move to bigger and more dangerous games, and because those games run leaner and more aggressive, it is actually a set of skills that takes a longer time and more numerous, expensive mistakes to learn at the higher level. You will also get the chance to think carefully through the theory of what you are doing if you are as interested in studying and the intellectual side as you say. You will have the chance to take the principles GTO is built on and apply them to weird sets of ranges and different starting hand scenarios, like figuring out how to balance a PF range that is 50+% limps or flats. It will also greatly disguise your style, skill, and level of aggression. In tough larger games, you can get eaten up with that kind of PF range, but in the small games, you can get away with it just fine.

OP, you yourself listed your first three criteria for a highly skilled player to be defined by "standard" PFR actions: raise first in, 3b a lot, squeeze. There's value in doing those things, no doubt. But there is more value in getting fish involved in a hand they can't quite let go, or letting them chase a draw at the wrong price. By exhibiting a ton of PF aggression, you chase out a lot of bad or mediocre players and prevent them from getting themselves into spots where they are completely clueless and facing large bets. So you actually take advantage of their small preflop mistakes, but doing so costs you the chance to set them up for big post-flop mistakes. NLHE is a game of reading players and trading small mistakes for big ones.

This.

Many, many years ago I played in a home game that I was not there for the money. I was there because of the players. It was for micro-stakes ($0.10/$0.25 live), however many of these players were people I did business with and they were overall a good group of guys to know. I was there for the networking, but it was just a fun group of players to be around.

It was quickly apparent that I was easily one of the better players there, if not the best. The play wasn't terrible, maybe equivalent to a modern Friday night $1/$3 game. A bunch of decent, but unimaginative ABC players, with passive calling stations sprinkled in.

After a few weeks I began to realize that one of the passive calling stations was better than he appeared. He played excellent post flop and there was a certain sneakiness to his game. He was one of the players I wasn't friends with outside of the game. We were both people invited to the game by others.

One day I got to talk to him and we got into strategy a little bit. While talking to him I became clear he was a far better player than he showed there.

After getting to know him, he confided in me that he regularly played successfully in far higher games. He was a very good player. He said that he used this game as a form of learning. His goal was to play as loosely as possible while generally breaking even in the game. He wasn't there to win money. The stakes were so small that one could have a higher hourly rate begging out on the street.

His goal was just to get himself into a bunch of weird situations and learn from them. To put himself in uncomfortable situations and do the best he can. I immediately took up the challenge and played the same way. It was one of the best learning experiences I ever had.

One of the biggest advantages in poker is position. Acting late is a huge advantage. The way positional advantage plays out is through realized EV. The reason a player can open up their range in later position is that it is easier to realize the actual EV of a hand in a later position rather than an earlier position. Even in NL holdem, hand EVs are much closer than people realize, but there is a problem realizing that EV out of position, especially deep stacked.

It is one of the reason short stacked tournament fold/shove charts are different than a deep stacked cash game opening range. It is axiomatic to realize EV when shoving.

Playing extremely loose in that low limit game put me in all sorts of situations where I really had to work to realize my actual EV in order to break even. Playing pocket aces is relatively easy. Playing suited connectors in late position multiway is easy. Playing crap early and realizing your EV is much harder.

I absolutely second JimL’s and AnyMouse’s comments. It’s become commonplace in poker to prematurely dismiss opponent skill level based on observations of their decisions with limited background/context on the whys behind those decisions. It’s easy to make snap judgments and pigeon hole players into neat little boxes, but humans are far more complex than that - both on and off the felt.


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How is this even a question? Beating small stakes games isn't hard at all. Bring a pro might be hard, but simply being a profitable rec in small stakes live games is easy for any intelligent person with some discipline. Studying is barely necessary and perhaps not necessary. Recreational players also have certain advantages in terms of the way they're perceived at the table.

Poker at its best is about the intellectual challenge of maximizing your EV in any given spot.

The best players get their success by maximizing the opportunities they have against a wide variety of players, not by having the best winrate against other strong players. Even the nosebleed players are getting most of their value from exploiting the rich recs. That's the game, other good players are there to maximize profit, not to butt heads other pros.

Isn't "recreational player" basically just a pretentious euphemism for "fish?"

The question is equivalent to "can a steer win at a rodeo?"

A recreational player is someone that isn't trying to make a living (now or in the future) at playing poker.

Pro .. Playing for profit .. and relying on that profit for at least a portion of their livelihood.

Reg .. Plays 3-7 days a week .. 'trying' to play for profit .. cares about their results but poker is a Plan B activity.

Rec .. Plays sparingly, 'for the love of the game' .. very little, if any, poker activity outside the room

Whale .. Can be a Reg or Rec, but is there to move chips at a much higher rate than most Players would deem average

Fish .. Player who doesn't grasp poker 'situations' and either misplays and/or over-values their holding with respect to the spot and/or Board. Could be from lack of experience or just an overall lack of mental capacity for the game.

You can have a Fish-Reg or Fish-Rec .. but hopefully not a Fish-Pro. Or as Magic has been calling himself as of late "Pro-Fish" GL

No, that's not a pro. Where does the rest of his livelihood come from? Does he have a part time job?

A pro pays 100% of his bills, food, and every other living expense exclusively from his poker bankroll without relying on a spouse for extra income or parents for free rent. You'd be surprised how little real pros there are. I'm not tryna brag or any thing but my bills were over 3k/mo and I paid them year after year with no other income while most of the other "pros" in my pro player pool have wifes who work good paying jobs or they lived at home while in their 30's with no bills except a cell phone bill and car insurance so I don't really use that word too lightly, but that's just me.

If I also have some investment income, does that mean I'm not a pro? I thought it meant I'm a smart one.

So the pro's who have several horses (IE : players they stake) and make more from the horses combined than they made aren't pro's because the income from horses was more ?
Pro's who invest in the Stock markets and make other income from this are no longer pro's
Or Rental properities ?

BTW I do agree with the rest of your post , most wannabee's live at home or have spouses with good jobs

and for the Record I do not consider myself a pro. my BJ counting days got me several properities and a fat stock portfolio, I'm happy making $30-40k a yr for pocket change

also there are Several Recs who play winning poker 50-60 hrs a week but play for other reasons than $$$$$ Define winner ? If they play 2000 hrs a year and made 5k they are happy and you need these types to keep games going or start games so they serve a purpose.

Of course they are, I was referring specifically to the ones who's wives are the real bread winners or the ones who live at home with little or no bills.

A lot of these guys barely win even though they play almost every day.

A professional poker player should be defined as someone who plays poker "for a living", meaning all his bills and living expenses are paid out of his net poker income. Someone there playing every day doesn't automatically give them the golden pro status.