Of course … but if your goal is to be an online pro and have a 1st world salary …

I’m pointing out it’s no longer good enough to be better than the recs alone.

You need to be at least break even or losing less than 1bb/100 vs the regulars in the pool, and play at least 100NL if not 200NL (maybe 50z) to have any longevity. If recs are few and far between, you need to be doing better than that.

Interestingly, in a large database the average "reg" (literally just reasonable VPIP/PFR) has a decent win-rate (2.5bb/100 pre-RB). If rake is 7bb/100 then 9.5bb/100 of their winnings comes from fish/not regs.

The crushers still win at <10bb/100 so even if you assume all their extra edge comes from beating regs they'd still be losing without fish. It looks like anyone winning at a micro/low stakes table with all regs is (relatively) insanely good and should be playing higher.

The win rates you're citing from a database sound plausible - even close to what I can remember off hand from my own database.

The last part of your logic doesn't seem right to me though.

A 2.5bb/100 win rate could be from winning 2bb/100 from fish and .5bb/100 from regs ... or (much more likely) it could be from winning 12bb/100 from fish and losing 9.5bb/100 against regs ... or many other combinations. To be clear in my 1st example your true win rate against fish with 7bb/100 rake would be 9bb/100 and 7.5bb/100 from regs ... or 19bb/100 from fish and -2.5bb/100 against regs in my latter example.

I actually have a way to find the answer to this, at least in my own pool ... but it could take a while to post the results.

Correction ... 19bb/100 from fish and -16.5bb/100 against regs. Did my math backwards for the regs.

Doesn't this all depend?

There are lots of people who will be willing to continue to lose money if they are getting value from it. Value might be something other than money. Some people are just looking for action. Their poker losses are nothing more than rounding errors in their net worth and they want to gamble. Other people are just looking to play others better than them. They know they are getting the worst of it, but they live for that small fraction of the time when they get the best of it.

If I played prime Michael Jordan 1 on 1 at basketball he would undoubtedly beat me, but the one time I pump faked him and scored would be legendary in my mind.

There are plenty of people who can afford to regularly lose sums that would be large to an average person.

I think this is the place to point out that reg does not equal winning player. There are plenty of people who regularly play poker who are not winning players.

Targeting long term losing regs is one of the most profitable plays in poker.

Just going by the title of this thread and not the actual contents.

I would think it depends upon the poker market. If a person is playing in a market like Vegas is made up of lots of tourists then most of a person's profit is going to be made off of targeting tourists and avoiding the variance of the regs even if they are beatable, they are probably better than the tourists.

If one is playing in a smaller market where regs make up most of the player base and tourists are rare then the money will be made off of regs.

We can only play the cards we are dealt.

For the context of the thread I’m talking about regs who are playing a strategy that can at least beat 25/50NL online and recs would be the people with big vpip/pfr gaps