So, pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has told me that 1/2 and 1/3 in Vegas is roughly similar in difficulty to 5NL and 10NL online, and that 2/5 and 5/10 in Vegas are similar to 25NL and 50/100NL online. In my experience, I have not found this to be 100% accurate, in that in Vegas about 30% of the 1/2 and 1/3 tables I have played at seem to be heavily shark infested with good LAG players who normally play 2/5 and 5/10 and who are playing 1/3 to blow off steam. And this, you basically never see online. Has anyone else had this experience? And, apologies if this is not in the right section as this is my first post outside of the micros.

Vegas low stakes games can be hit or miss but I have found them to be some of the toughest low stakes games in the country. Aside from the availability of bigger games as you move up, if I was going to try to play live for a living I would pick literally anywhere else 2/5 regularly runs.

Comparisons to online tend not to tell the whole picture because at live 1/2 you have much wider skill disparities, where online tends to have more homogenous player pools. I would say Vegas 1/3 is close in skill to 10nl. But my local 1/2 game every table has at least 3 bad players that are rare at 10nl, and almost no solid thinking players. Ive never played above 1/3 live so I cant speak for how much tougher the games get, but if you can beat up to 25 or 50nl online you should have no trouble being a winner in the vegas low stakes games, or crushing softer fields elsewhere. There will be some adjustments you will have to make, but as long as you adjust appropriately, they can all be beaten.

It is not my experience at all.

And I'll share a secret with you ..... When you do sit at a 1-2 table and someone else in the game tells you they usually play 2-5 80% of the time that is not true. And if you are in a room with 2-5 going it's more like 95% (unless the player is currently on the 2-5 waiting list).

If a player claims to play 5-10 or higher it is untrue 99% of the time.

Yeah that too. The amount of people at 1/2 who claim a big tourney score or to have won 6+ figures playing high stakes is staggering. Of course they get very defensive when you ask them why they are degening it up play low stakes (usually very poorly.) They are as bad as Jon Lovitz pathological liar character from snl.

That high-stakes player at 1/3 to blow off steam and crush the game is a myth. Might happen occasionally but it’s nothing you see regularly.

Back when I was playing 5/10, sometimes I would play 1/3 because I wanted to play with friends and get drunk. I doubt I ever played good poker when doing that. And even if I did sometimes, there were definitely way more occasions where I just spewed away money.

In Vegas, with all the ‘pros’ playing 1/3, none of them are really good at poker. If they were, they wouldn’t play in a game where you can barely make a living.

The reason why 1/3 games are significantly tougher than 5-10 years ago is not the influx of ‘pros’ but the fact that lots of really bad players learned some basic strategy and transformed from huge losers to marginal losers. Once you learn that playing 50% of hands is a recipe for disaster at a 9 man table, you made a huge step to losing significantly less money per hour.

The good Eastern European NL25 players online players spend hours every day studying the game. Comparing them to 1/3 ‘pros’ is almost insulting.

It's not that it's a myth. It's that those guys don't sit in the game and brag about being bigger players..... When they play the smaller game they talk about non poker stuff....

That’s true. The percentage of players talking about poker is significantly higher at low stakes anyway.

The people who are trying to play LAG at this level just suck. It’s so rare to see a good LAG playing lower than 2-5 that you must be giving a lot of opponents way too much credit. Or you’re just trolling us which was my initial reaction when I read the thread.

5/10+ players who drop down to 1/3 usually suck. They get bored and try to steal every pot even though most players in those games will never fold if they have something.

I don't think there is an equivalent "level" of online play that equates to live 1/3. It's a very different game. At what online stakes do you regularly see 5x raises called by 4 people preflop with nobody even considering 3-betting?

The players who are beating you aren't LAG masters, they just understand the dynamics of live 1/3 better than you. It is a beatable game but you have to adjust.

Okay I looked at some recent posts from you and you’re clearly not a troll.

It’s possible you ran into some of the better regs and they were dealt more good hands than usual and looked more LAG than usual when they normally are more ABC. Or you saw people that were LAG who were pretty bad, but not horribly bad and overestimated them. They’re making mistakes; but maybe you can’t identify enough of them yet.

If anyone brags about playing higher that’s a sign of insecurity IMO and makes it more likely they aren’t good (but maybe they are better than other 1-2 and 1-3 players). I doubt any posters here who succeed at 2-5 or higher would feel the need to brag to the 1-2 players about how good they are. It would just be obvious from their play. And if the 1-2 players still aren’t impressed that’s not a bad thing either.

Thanks for all the responses. I don't know what's going on. My my last 3 trips to Vegas to play 1/2 and 1/3 were all losing, and lots of people were playing hyper aggressive pf in a way I've never seen online at 10NL. Maybe it is just variance?

What is the lowest stake online? It's not 10NL, so expecting to see the style of play at an 'upper' level online game to the lowest live game is something I would struggle to accept.

I always tell players in my area that they 'can' step up a stake when in Vegas and they should feel as comfortable to the games we play (if their bankroll can afford it). Rarely do they come back telling me I'm full of it.

You should see a large difference between 1/2 and 1/3 in Vegas. Fewer places run 1/3 and IMO they run it to discourage a portion of the 1/2 pure tourist types from sitting down. The 1/3 at Aria is usually a great 'poker' game.

To be a good/great 'lowest' stake live player you need to be able to pick up on all the playing styles at the table and watch for the land mines. I think Vegas does have 'reg' players (especially off duty Dealers) that can snipe off a few hands while the rest of the table gets caught up in Bingo/Gambling/Cards. Being in tune with live reads/table dynamic takes time IMO.

You will get into much more 'poker' at 2/5 and 5/10 and depending on where you play and this is where you will see actual Pros/local Regs show up on the radar. Again using Aria as an example ... I would expect the 2/5, even the 5/10 at Aria to be less skilled since you will get the hotel guests that can afford to pay 'those' hotel rates coming into the room and plunking down their cash at higher stakes. Now slide over to The Orleans and I would expect more rocks than the nearest canyon in their 2/5 'most' nights.

Sorry to see you run bad in the 'poker capital of the world' but as with any other poker hand ... Did you get your money in good? Weeding out the gambling/birthdays/lucky hands/favorite hands can be a task for sure, but typically the betting is face value after the Flop .. if they're betting, they have 'something' if not 'it'. GL

Can you describe what you mean by hyper aggressive? Are we talking regular 3 and 4 betting or just certain players raising many hands by an amount larger than you're used to? You will run into players who like to raise a lot pf. Sometimes they're actually good, sometimes they just seem good because they're running well or found a table full of scared money.

In about 15 mins of play, I was 3 bet pre-flop 2 times, 4-bet once, and after making a pot size raise preflop against multiple limpers, was donk-shoved into on the flop for 2x the pot. And this was not a table of drunks. About 4am Saturday night at Aria.

I’m actually thinking, a reason this is happening could have to do with my appearance, if that makes sense. I look intellectual, like a thinking player who knows how to fold, and possibly people take advantage of that. Clearly, appearance doesn’t apply online.

In 15 minutes in a 1/3 live game, you probably see 6-8 hands on average, sometimes even less. If you raise/3bet over 50% of your hands preflop and then immediately fold to aggression, players will notice even on the lowest stakes.

There are around 15 poker rooms on the strip. Try somewhere with weaker games. IMO the best 1/2 and 1/3 games are at the 2nd tier rooms. As in the next biggest rooms after Aria, Bellagio, Caesars, Wynn, and Venetian.

Yes, so I just had a $600 winning session at Bellagio. Funny enough, I found the game to be softer on a Mon afternoon than on Saturday night. The biggest change I made to my game was incorporating slow playing when I had the absolute nuts against all the tight nitty players.

1) Card players, Poker players, Gamblers ... There are more Gamblers on a Saturday night, especially at 4AM when a lot of them may be stuck and just looking to play hard.

2) Waiting around for Tight/Nitty players to 'also' have a hand that you can get value from could end up with some pretty big losses and/or non-payment of value on previous streets. You also need to consider if the player is aggressive or passive in their play. I agree that a tight AND aggressive player is prime for slow playing, especially when OOP. But the passive players wont pay you off on the River without above average holdings whereas they will 'politely' call value bets on Flop and Turn. GL

1/2 and 1/3 games are the same everywhere from my experience. In general if it’s a 9 handed game 5 of the players are bad, 2 are average, 1 is above average and 1 is well above average or extremely good. You don’t always have that last guy there. Sometimes it’s two above average players. I’ve only occasionally been at a table where I thought 3 or more players were very good and even when that does happen they usually are too tight to be winners in the long run. Time of day matters as said above too. I usually play Venetian or Wynn or Caesars and find that week days 2-9pm are best. It’s not too tight and you don’t have a billion impossible to read drunks either.

It's just how that particular game played at that time. It doesn't mean all the Vegas games play that way. Sometimes you might be in a game full of OMC nits, where there's hardly any action. It just depends on the particular game you're in.

And how do you know they normally play 5/10? When I'm waiting for a game I usually play the smaller games, but I don't turn into a sLAG. I still play pretty much the same.

What were they 3 and 4 betting with? Did you see their hands? Is it possible they had premium hands? It's easy to think when they do that, everyone is playing back at you, but that's not usually the case.

What does OMC stand for?

(O)ld
(M)an
(C)offee

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It only takes a few "fun" players, sometimes even only one, to change game conditions from poor to good. There is no poker room that clearly attracts these players more than other rooms.

I generally like tables where you usually get 6+ players seeing the flop for a single raise and iso-ing doesn't work. (Hence, why I like PLO.) Other people might prefer a table where they can 3bet to isolate players they see as fish because they want poker to be more of a mano a mano test of wills. It's been years since I played online, but being comfortable playing more multi-way pots was an adjustment that some online players had problems with when playing live. I am not sure how true that still is.

If you want to play in a room not infested by sharks waiting for a seat at 2/5 or higher, play in a room where 1/2 or 1/3 is the biggest game. Pros probably want to game-select, so if you want to avoid them, find a room with 1-2 tables of SSNL and few rooms within reasonable walking distance.

Cheers, found some more info on it

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...offee-1685552/

Yes, all this advice is great, had another win at Golden Nugget. The game there is completely absurd. Unlimited buy in for 1/2. People who sit down with 1500 bucks like it’s a 5/10 game. I think the biggest adjustment I’ve made this trip overall has been just adjusting to tables where basically there are no short stacks, or only 1 short stack, unlike online and all the casinos in LA where I’m from. Also adjusting to how only maybe 20% of hands go to showdown, and where most of your money is won from everyone folding preflop or on the flop.