Without writing a whole novel on my history, I'd describe myself as a consistent winner in micros with a decent theoretical foundation. Back when I was playing a lot in 2009-2010, I would 8-table the 4.4/180s SNGs on Stars before BF. I won 21 of those and had about a 30% ROI overall across my SNGs and MTTs. Nothing too crazy, but I'd say I at least had basic competence.

I haven't really played much poker since then, but I'm trying to get back into playing shape ahead of a Vegas trip, where I'll be playing the giant, some cash games, and possibly some other low MTTs at places like PH and the Rio.

I went down to a local card room to work on my live game and put in two sessions of 1-2 NLHE earlier this past week. I was honestly stunned by how low the level of the games was. Massive fundamental errors left and right. People played extremely loose and it was typical to see 4-5 players in each pot. People had crazy bet sizes, often bombing for far more than the size of the pot or shoving for 25 BBs pre-flop with no raiser. People were barely folding anything, calling off really light and calling multiple streets with virtual air, not to float, but just to gamble. They were limping stuff like AQ and AK in multi-way pots where those hands don't play very well. I felt like basic strategy was virtually nonexistent. It was actually somewhat hard to play in the game because so many of the lines defied logic.

I was able to walk away with a decent profit both sessions because I picked up some big hands, got paid off, and avoided bad suckouts, but I felt like I didn't learn a whole lot besides a few minor specifics.

Was I just lucky to get some soft tables or is this pretty much par for the course when you play 1-2 NLHE live? 2-3 solid players at the table along with maybe 1-2 maniacs and another 3-4 who alternate between playing solid and doing idiotic stuff?

When I was younger I would stick to 2/4 and 3/6 LHE at the casinos because I didn't want to expose myself to the volatility of NLHE cash games, but after this experience, I'm wondering if that wasn't a huge mistake. You could almost print money in these games if you ran okay and had patience.

Live 1/2 is softer than 0.01/0.02.

Live 1/2 is more profitable than ACR 1 cent/2cent. I'm "a nit" at 1/2 and i'm the action on ACR

Live 1-2 NLH at casinos or cardrooms varies a lot depending on who is there. Don't expect a lot of good players, but don't make the mistake of considering everyone at the table a fool, doofus, or an easy fish. Besides that , with so few hands in a session, anybody can get lucky , including you. The opposite is also true.

The mistake I see people in your spot make all the time against the types of players you describe is that they tend to get angry that they couldn't get the bad players to fold. Embrace the bad play. You don't outplay them by bluffing them. You can't write them a complicated story if they don't know how to read. Just take them to value town. You can still splash around. You don't have to play strictly ABC poker, but respect aggression unless they've shown you a reason not to. There are lots of players that bet the strength of their hands, so when they go all in with top set you could ask "Why would you go all in with that hand?" they say "I didn't want you to hit!"


What Bene just said above is very accurate. You just need to figure out which players are which players. The cash games will be a lot less soft than the tournaments. Your mind will be BLOWN at how bad tournament players are in some of these things.

Oh god, the tournament players.. Nothing worse than dealing a cheap nightly tournament. It's the final table, chip leader has 15BB and everyone else has less than 10BB, people are limp/folding from all positions, every decision requires incessant tanking and sighing.. fml

It really is. After I spend a lot of time on this forum and see a good variety of posters posting good advice, I'm always worried that the games are about to get really tough. Then I go play 1/2 and am just shocked by how bad so many people are.

Honestly, this is a great description of playing live 1-2. 90% of 1-2 players are recreational players who play their own cards and that's about it. Sure, you might run into a really good player from time to time, but I really like your line "you can't write them a complicated story if they don't know how to read." The game is about as straight forward as it comes and you can't get into a leveling game with the guy that just wants to socialize, play his cards, and drink his coffee.

I always say that if you play 100 tables of 9 handed that on average you will find 5 players are bad, 2 are okay, 2 are good. If you break that down further usually 2 of the 5 are horrendous and let’s say you lay it out saying they play one session a week for the year. Those two likely lose 10K or more over the course of the year. The remaining 3 bad ones probably would lose under 5K but not by much. The 2 okay players likely waffle a ton from year to year. They depend totally on luck and aren’t good enough to win without getting cards so one year they may win a few thousand, the next they lose a few. The two good players usually never get in a big hand with each other if they don’t have to. One is usually extremely good and the other is marginally good but may still be a marginal loser in the long run. One is often tight aggressive while the other is often a rock

My impression of live small stakes NLHE is that you should be prepared for most pots to be multi-way. Players whose instinct is to raise to steal limped pots or isolate can become frustrated because their raises never work and they find themselves in bloated multi-way pots with hands that don't do well in that scenario. In some games, a tight-passive nut-peddling strategy might even be close to max EV.

The quality of play is very bad, which is good obviously. Most of the issues a half-decent player will run into are metagame in nature. Anyone who wins online at any level at all is a better technical player than the average 1/2 villain. However, that’s not the autowin button you might think it is.

Joey,


I have exactly the opposite reaction after reading forum posts.

Definitely my experience as well. The big single pair drawing hands like AK and AQ seem to lose some of their punch when you're getting 3-4 callers pre-flop regardless of how tight you've been playing. In the games I played, you could fold for an hour and then suddenly raise UTG and people still wouldn't show you any respect. In my experience over years of playing various games live and online, the biggest leaks of the average low stakes losing player are calling too wide and a general inability/unwillingness to consider that they're ever beaten. Like another poster said, they play their hand without ever considering what you might have.

When I used to play .25/.50 LHE on Pokerropm.com way back in the day, it always felt like you had to mine sets and flushes because your TPTK type hands were so likely to get cracked. Had a similar experience at the cardoom playing 1/2 NLHE. You're rarely getting spots where you can really squeeze people or steal pre-flop, so mostly it just comes down to waiting for a monster and then getting paid off. The frustrating thing is that you need cards to win at these stakes because nobody is ever folding. Of course, it's great when you finally make a hand because they're calling off with anything.

Representative example: I'm in the BB with 98o. One villain in early position limps. SB completes. I check. Board is A98 rainbow. EP limper raises to $10. SB calls. I re-pop it to $30. Limper shoves for $100. SB calls. I tank for a little bit just to consider if either of these guys could have AA, A9, or A8. I think it's possible, but I have blockers for most of the hands that beat me. I call. EP raiser had AT. Villain had the same hand as me. We hold and chop up his money.

I'm not saying my thought process was great here, but when you look at the EP raiser, what does he really beat with that shove? And what hands am I re-raising the flop with that he beats in order to justify the shove? All he beats is a straight draw and maybe fools calling off with TT-KK, but those hands probably aren't raising there with two callers ahead of them. So basically just seemed like a braindead move, and this was from one of the more decent players at the table. I saw far worse stuff like people calling off for 25BBs PF with A7o.

It is very easy to be the best player at the table but you still have to overcome rake, and the fact that huge sizings make the game usually not play that deep. Also if you do not have a lot of hours logged at 1/2 you will level yourself in spots. There are some bad regs who will make more in 1/2 than world class players because they are more used to tendencies of opponents.

Haha punchy. There certainly is bad advice posted but most of the posters here seem light years ahead of what I see at the low limits.

If I can be so bold as to say I almost always feel like I'm the best player at the table and the next best player is usually someone much worse then what I see usually posted on this forum.

Joey,


Just based on limited knowledge of your posting/analysis, I’d expect you to be the best player at most 1/2 1/3 tables, and the best two or three players at 2/5 3/5.

Thanks Diablo. I take that as a compliment and you're probably not far off. My local area only supports a 1/2 game so that is where the vast majority of my recent experience comes from, and when I've played away from home and had access to 2/5, I definitely thought the competition was significantly better (though still not anywhere near amazing).

Honestly, this goes back to my general thoughts on poker in the last 10-15 years. Everyone knows how to play hold 'em now. I'm not saying they all know how to play it well, but even the worst 1-2 player understands the game better than the worst 1-2 player 10-15 years ago. Between television coverage, internet coverage, vlogs, books, etc, etc, etc, it's just harder to get paid. People aren't donking off their whole stack with just one pair very often.

In 2005, your AK on a K high flop would get paid off on three streets by guys who called preflop with K5 and or K10 or something and hit top pair. Now those players are just calling and not raising with their one pair. They're getting better at folding one pair to three bets. While that's not always true and you might find the one guy at the table who doesn't believe you or just wants to donk off with one pair, it happens a whole lot less often than it used to and the game has gotten tougher.

I agree that as a whole games have become tougher (I've only played for ~9 years) but I don't think the improvement has been linear across all skill levels. I think medium to better players have become significantly better because they take advantage of all the tools you mention. I think the worst players have only gotten marginally better because most of them have no interest in working on their game.

In 2005-2006 or so, there were more "bad" players in my opinion. On any given table, you'd have 2-4 spots that you could guarantee would pay you off and would go broke before the day was over. These were people willing to put in 50 big blinds preflop with pocket 4's when they saw a raise, a 3 bet, and maybe even a 4 bet in front of them. That just doesn't happen as much any more. These were people calling anywhere from 12-20 preflop with J6 offsuit and then getting their whole stack in when they flopped a jack (even if it's second pair). These were recreational players who played on Monday night with their buddies while watching Monday Night Football and drinking beer and decided to play at the casino once in a while. They didn't understand that they couldn't say "I'll call that bet and raise you." You just don't see these people nearly as much any more.

But, your thought process is probably true. The bad players are marginally better but the things I see are people with better hand selections preflop in 1-2 games (to some extent) and people who don't over-inflate pots with one pair. There are still obvious spots to make money against these bad players, but I don't feel it's as easy to get paid as it used to be in 1-2 games.

I think some people are too focused on the idea of stacking someone because it used to be so easy. Now, people complain a table is too tight if they find it hard to felt someone, but since my style has never been predicated on winning big pots, I haven't seen much of a difference.

Goud,

Where do you play?

In the SF Bay Area at least, low limit players suck pretty much as bad as they always have. I do think the idiots in the 5/10+ games are now slightly less stupid than they used to be.

Grunch from title alone: How tall is Tiny Tim?

You learned that playing a game optimized for tougher online NLHE will make you a marginal winner at best, likely a donor. Knowing is > half the battle. (Not snark.)

Pretty much par for the course although it varies. My impression is the 1-2/1-3 games in the larger Las Vegas rooms probably have more aspiring pros but still plenty of tourist.

MOST IMPORTANT INSIGHT: Bad/mediocre live players play NLHE like they play the lottery or roulette (or, Ed Miller would say, a slot machine). They spend the whole session dreaming of making a straight flush and stacking someone with quads. They aren't there to steal medium sized pots or float or otherwise play position. They certainly aren't there to fold suited semiconnectors or small pairs unless you make it painfully expensive. And it never occurs to them that just as often they'll have the quads and their neighbor will have the SF.

Many people do.

A big part of the skill gap separating those who win modestly at 1-3 from those who crush it is finding spots where pots are abandoned, where barreling twice might actually work, where you can get three streets from TPTK versus nits who are going to fold if they didn't make their draw or make two pair, etc.

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. (I got that from Manager Tools but it's apparently from Will Rogers.)

I'm somewhere between good and bad judgment but I'm still probably one of the top 2-3 players at most 1-3 tables.