WTF is wrong with people?

All online guys need to do to kill live games is show up.

Oh, and tl;dr.

This thread popped into my head Friday night.

1/2 NL UTG raises to $15 and gets 6 callers including me on the button with 87. Flop comes 865 UTG bets $45 all folds to me I call, BB calls. Turn comes 8. Checks to me I bet $100. BB folds, UTG tanks for ever.

Keeps saying things to me like "I know you wouldn't bet so much if you had an 8" and "Why so much?" Couldn't think of the right line to make him call and eventually the guy to my left called the clock on him and he folded.

But I was amazed at the guy freaking out over a smaller bet on the turn than he had made on the flop. It was like two different worlds to him.

Going to Vegas tomorrow - going to read this over and over on the plane trip down!

Sarge

After reading this post the only thing I can think about is how to get the other players to buy me a drink.

This is really great information. I play 1/2 and sometimes 2/5 semi-regularly at the Shoe myself and my other friend that plays up there were talking about just this thing the other day. The only other thing I'd offer, especially at the shoe, there are about 10 regulars that bet top top like it is quads. It is a huge money maker if you know who they are, but yet I watch guys that always read the huge overbet as a draw and call these guys with TPMK (which is absolutely great for me because these guys WILL get trapped when you flop a set or two pair and its just that much more money to give away).

I completely agree with the suited connector/small pp comments specfically related to the aforementioned people that will gladly get their whole stack in with TPTK and will curse their awful luck that you could have possibly outflopped them (completely disregarding that they put in 15X the pot size as a raise). As it was mentioned before, keep these guys really happy and smile and sympathize and keep taking their money.

I've noticed myself being up in over 90% of my sessions, but I have a leak in my game where I seem to give away alot of my profit and often turn winners into losers. I think it has to do with me getting too confident at the table and instead of sticking to playing basically tweaked ABC, I get it into my head that I can outplay these guys and end up trapping myself trying to push a guy off a hand that hes not going to fold, or stop paying attention to position and playing the hands like K10o and AJo in raised pots that I wouldn't dream of playing earlier in the session. I keep a spreadsheet of the maximum I make per session versus my actual results so I basically have an idea of what I should be working towards as a maximum profit mark. Do you guys see any trends like this in your play? I think maybe I start trying to play deepstacked poker and my calling range just grows and grows and I start disregarding position and basically become one of those bad players trying to hit a monster with garbage. Is there a time in which you feel you should just leave the table despite being deep stacked, at a good table full of players fitting the classification, and having a good image?

Oh, and in addition, I do occasionally get upset at the table. I do my best not to do it but sometimes let my emotions get the best of me when I take a 2/5 shot and repeat the previous 2/5 shot in losing a 3k pot to a 2-4 outter and drop right back down to 1/2. I do my best to keep them happy both for myself and in respect of the other players there destroying these guys for profit. It is hugely important to be nice and friendly. Starting conversation makes these guys want to play with you, and it also sometimes leads to people drifting off in to long convos in which they stop paying attention to you and the game and their play deteriorates.

This is why I am a strong advocate of doing business during heads up all in situations. I usually like to run it 3 times, or even equity chop. To me this is a huge incentive to play in NYC as opposed to AC. Though there are many reasons to play in AC, there have been many times where I was all in and got drawn out on the first time only to win 2/3 of the pot. This ultimately led to winning sessions where in AC I would have gone bust.

what's the difference between check/calling and check/flatting? And when did "flat" become a verb?

Re: Winrates, Bankrolls, and when to leave.

When to Leave: If you are super deep (IE 600BB) and not comfortable playing that deep or it is a significant chunk of your bankroll, and there is another competent player or two on the table deep as well, consider leaving. Otherwise, stay as long as you are playing your "A" game. Figure out what in your game changes when you start to lose, watch for it, and leave/adjust/correct it when it happens.

Bankroll: 20-30 buy-ins should be enough for most live players. A lot of this depends on your style of play, difficulty of your games, and if you mix limits at all, but generally speaking, a live "pro" at $1/2 (200-300 max) or $2/5 (400-1000) max, should never be going broke if they have a 30 buy-in bankroll and are actually a winning player. This subject has been discussed to death in a million places in the past (See LLSNL forum).

Win Rate: Yet another subject that has been discussed to death in LLSNL as well as multiple threads in B&M. Simply put, and to summarize my experience as well as what I have seen of other good winning regulars I know:

The below win rates assume that the max-buy-in for the game is no less than 100bb, assumes that the rake is 10% up to $5 as well as a $1 drop for BBJ. Assume that you play ~25 hands/hr on average I'd you need to adjust the rake and you can figure out your win rate accordingly.

$1/2 : $15-25/hr is sustainable long term in a 100bb max game with the above described structure.

$2/5 : $30-50/hr is sustainable long term in a 100bb max game with the structure described above.

$5/10 : $60-100/hr is sustainable long term in a 150bb max game with above structures. This varies highly based on location, number of tables running, etc etc. Beyond this limit, I chose not to speculate as I have never personally played $10/20 live. However, I can assure you, that with proper table selection, at the right venues, that $100/hr is achievable.

(Obviously, if games are 150bb+ deep, your overall hourly should continue to increase, in general the deeper the game, the higher the hourly).

The first number given as hourly is what a "good" winner should expect to make long term, playing a mix of weeknights and weekends at your average casino/card room. The second number is what the upper echelon of players at that limit can expect to earn over the long haul. They are likely in the top 5% of winning players at that limit.

I have spent 6 years traveling the country for work and have visited the majority of card rooms all over the country. Every game plays different, some rooms are very nitty in general, others are action packed, others don't get more than a table or two running, where 8 out of 10 guys are the same people on those tables every day.

A lot of your win rate will have to do with your venue selection, your table selection, your seat selection, and how quickly you can identify your opponents tendencies. Many recreational players don't play for more than 4 hours per session. Some of them might even change gears during the session (IE play like a maniac the first 30 min, double up, then sit back and nit it up for the next 3 hours not wanting to give anything away).

Table selection and venue selection are very key points here that I want to elaborate on. Typically, if you play the same venue often, you should have a good re-pore with the floor staff and dealers, and in a larger room, be able to pretty quickly ascertain where the best action/easy money is. If you are new to the venue or don't visit often, tend to look for noiser tables with lots of money on the table.

As far as Venue Selection goes, primary considerations are as follows (listed IMO by order of importance):

1.) Distance: How far do you have to commute? Remember, every hour spent in the car is an hour you are not on the tables. Additionally, it is money that you are likely burning in gas.

2.) Game Selection: How many tables of your game are usually offered at this venue? Just 1, 2, or is it 10? Are there varying limits in the room (one step below the highest limit being offered, is quite frequently the best game IMO).

3.) Rake Structure: Is there rake or BBJ money taken pre-flop, is it a 10% up to $X game, or is it un-capped (unusual in the US), is there a BBJ? Bad Beat Jackpots, for those that don't understand, are a strictly neutral EV proposition, however, the odds of bring EV accurately collected are very slim...

Personally for me, and my location in the Chicagoland area there are a lot of options. 2 of which are terrible options (most days) due to a higher 10% up to $8 rake structure with an additional $1 for BBJ pulled pre-flop from the SB. Then there are the charitables, which depending on the distance, can be the best bet given the 10% up to $5 structure and are frequently within 15-20 minutes of me. Thirdly, there is the Shoe, which offers the highest variety of games, the most action, the most tables, and a reasonable 10% up to $5 rake and BBJ taken in pots that hit a flop that are > $20.

Hope this helps, sorry I'm a bit late to the thread :-).

What does "equity chop" mean?

With cards still to come, agreeing to split the pot based on players' hands win/lose percentage at the time.

example: preflop you go all in with KK for 50, i call 50 with JJ; as you are an 80% favorite, we agree to split pot 80 to you, 20 to me regardless of runout.

Play high enough and I'm sure you will be fine. But at the lower limits, what it means is that the bulk of your profit will come from ABCing the right targets. And keep in mind that sometimes you can harm yourself by thinking too deeply. A lot of the time, the other guy is just not thinking that deeply and you are giving him too much credit.

LOL. Nitdonk, just play your way for a few rounds. When someone at the table makes a comment about how tight you are or that you must have {insert monster hand}* here while you are playing a pot...let that be your trigger to open up your game a little bit. You don't have to go all crazy and start raising 35s UTG like I do, but one fun part of poker is building an image and then using it to your advantage. Find some good spots to do this and you will enjoy your poker experience more. ...Maybe you can elevate yourself to SpicyNitdonk.

*Which you have, of course.

I've played way more at micro stakes online than live, but one of the things I really love about playing live is the wealth of information available. Sometimes people just say out loud what they are thinking or why they did this or that. (Also, best comparison I can make to 1-2 NL live is 2-5 penny online, but it's a slight insult to 2-5 penny.)

Excellent post BAEVentures, except the grammar/spelling Nazi in me wants to correct "re-pore" to rapport

Lol, I was trying to figure it out but couldn't get spell check to give me the right answer.

Great thread! I'm always a huge mess with cash when I come and go from the casino. Any advice on how to organize cash so I can easily figure out how much I have?

Also, my wallet generally doesn't fit all the bills (not a brag because I have a moneyclip wallet), and I feel paranoid carrying it in my pockets, so does anyone have any recommendations for what to use to carry money around?

Level?

I hope so.

Glad were making threads like these, where we offer free advice to bad players for the sake of proving we are great to other losers on the internet.

Nope, not a level. It's annoying to have to count my money after a game, especially since I always top off, so I really have no idea how much I'm taking out. I guess one way would be to just keep a paper record, but there's got to be a manual way to organize into thousands or something.

Count how much you bring with you before get to the casino, and then count what you have when you leave. Am I missing something here?

Rhymes with "devil"

Solid post, but a serious suggestion to improve would be to start with this bit, and then maybe stick the rest of the advice in spoiler tags next to a label that says "I agree to the above" ToS style. I see so many idiots come in to the game and start talking about 3bets, EV, what bad plays people are making, etc. If those fools keep it up then we'll wind up with play levels approaching those of online games, and then good luck making decent money 1 tabling.

I thought one of the main reasons for a poker forum was to exchange advice. We post hand histories, HUD advice etc, etc in our normal stakes forums. Plenty of successful pros have credited 2+2 for helping them out when they were learning, and in exchange, they were willing to post advice also. This all seems so self-evident.

I think your post is saying more about yourself than it says about OP.

If you do a search for BR requirements, you'll find a lot of posts. But since no-one has answered your question and I'm in a good mood....

Assuming a $500BI, you obviously have 30 buy-ins. That's close to ok - you probably won't get broke, but what you will likely do is get down to a point where your BR is so short that you will (even subconsciously) change the way you play. That 3 barrel bluff for 2 buy-ins in easy to do with 28 buy-ins behind you. With 6? Even when you know it's the right play? Not so easy.

Also, think about this: If having 30 BI gives you a 99% chance of survival, but every time you get over 30 you take the money for something else, then effectively, every time you sit down you are you are taking one of those "percents" away. If that is the right number (99%), which can be debated, then eventually you have to logically get broke. (p.s., I'm not smart enough to figure that out - I read it in someone's book. Forget which one though.)

Also, for your other question, my record downswing at 2/5 was $5,500, and that's probably on the low side. I know winning players who have lost $10K plus in a stretch. It's not really that hard to do.