The bolded is dead on. There are many people who would be better off if they were worse at poker so they'd just quit instead of wasting their life for scraps.

If Biden died before the election do you still win that bet since Harris will be the next president?

yes, micro stakes online are a good place to get in "reps" as long as you know full well its a massive waste of time from an immediate money making perspective. the problem starts when people who play micros or small live games start to talk about win rates and bank rolls and circle jerk each other into thinking its a job and waste everyone's time. theres always some dork who has a whole whopping 896 hours lifetime at 1-2 or something convincing other newbies that 20bb/hr is standard for a good player and a "great 1-2 player" (oxymoron) can make $50 an hour. that small rake trap games are a viable job and/or stepping stone. THEY ARE NOT, THEY ARE A TRAP!!!

How is this a "problem", so long as they, and their newbie followers, are playing (and losing to you) ?

Micro-stakes are the greatest newbie acquisition tool ever. for the poker industry, live and online.

They ARE a "stepping stone".

Casinos cannot afford to spread them live due to cost considerations, but they were a god-send to creating and sustaining live poker, as well as online poker, as fish lures.

That is just my opinion, but its based on 20+ years of industry observation (and the Doug Polk poker origin story)

weren't you recently trying to get this thread shut down lil Gash? good thing you didn't or i couldn't correct your dumb observations.

aLmost no one playing micros or small stakes live is ever playing or losing to me. it attracts no one who helps the mid/hi poker economy. they are in no way a stepping stone for gamblers only soulless nit regs. The bad players die in micros and are raked out of existence, no mid/hi whale ever came out of grinding micros or small stakes live, mid/hi whales jump straight to big games they dont start small, they view poker like blackjack or another table game, they dont go to the $1 tables to "work their way up" lololololol. they go where action that excites them is. Your doug polk observation is correct, that is the type of player coming out of these stakes, tough smart players with a lot of gamble who jump up FAST, never whale fish. the players that stick there are souless grinders who were meant for cubicle jobs and bad players who can never get their head above water because they are being raked to death.

these games sustain poker in no way shape or form. they are rake traps that sustain the casinos and stop money from getting to bigger games. this is one of the reasons (along with tournaments) that bigger games are drying up super quick, becoming insanely predatory and most are private or semi private at this point. If all games under $5 big blind were eliminate and all small buy on tournaments the poker economy would get a massive boost instantly and people would have more fun! they would save a little and play bigger games. THE CASINO WOULD LOSE, and everyone else would win. you would get a culture of "shot takers" and not a culture of **** grinders and people hating poker because they lose to the rake in small games and never had a chance.

Interesting take. So what would your advice be for someone who is only rolled for the 1/2 1/3 nl games to move up? Are tournaments a better option than the small stakes cash games?

I think you are confused. I have never made any attempt to shut down this thread. (I check it probably daily because I think it the most "live", engaged thread on 2+2)

In the past, I spent many years tracking player progression from micro-stakes to higher stakes online. Literally, data on a few hundreds of newbie accounts, from entry level in Micros to progressively higher buy-in cash games. (I mentioned Doug Polk because his publicly posted description of his poker evolution followed that sort of progression.) Where do you THINK players originate ?

As for your prediction that casinos eliminating ALL games under $5 big blinds and all small buy-in tournaments, concluding that means "THE CASINO WOULD LOSE" is truly myopic and not well-thought out. "THE CASINO" would not sustain a money-losing offering just so poker players can feed on fish swimming in deeper water. If the games lose money, the casinos will NOT offer them long term. Why do you think they would do so ?.

When casino poker roomswere shut down because of CoVid, online poker, including micro-stakes, experienced tremendous growth.

He's advising to shot take aggressively and establish yourself at the higher level. So for example if you're rolled for 1/2, 1/3 you could get a job, save up a 2-3-4 buyin for 2/5 and take your shot. If you're a winning player at 2/5 one of your shots is likely to eventually be successful. The crux of this is that he believes playing 1/3 for income is a wasteful use of time. If you're bankrolled for 1/3 and you have a job you can live off you can shot take right now.

Truth.

I find 1/2 beatable more so than 1/3. The newbies and recreational players seem to congregate at 1/2 and the pros and semi-pros move up to 1/3 and higher. I do see some semi-pros bum hunting at 1/2 and we take turns with big pots and winning sessions. A while back two guys were shoving all in blind and together punted about $2k, so booking a $1k win on a $300 buy in week after week doesn't seem so bad.

The other night I decided to take Limon's advice and asked the floor to put me on the 2/5 list. He looked at me quizzically, I've known him for a long time, and said '...are you SURE you want to be on the 2/5 list?...' The way he said it caused me not to be on the 2/5 game, I took it to mean I should stay at the 1/2 game where it is easy money. But to each their own.

BTW I'm retired, don't need to work and am contented to just double my buy in every night, not looking to turn pro.

Limon, may I ask in which way you see Biden as a good president? Non American here, just curious as the whole world laughs at your superior president for some time now.

wow you speak for the whole world? and here i though you were just an ignorant fuqtard who cant see that the biden economy is the strongest and fastest growing on the globe. speaking for the whole world must be tiring. go do it somewhere else bitch.

there is no roll for 1-2. you have a job. use your discretionary income to buy into 5-5 or bigger and yolo. you will go on a sun run sooner or later and now you can make some REAL choices about your life.

i hate to say this, but since i am completely honest in this thread at all times i will. If you are a recreational player you should only play tournaments, they have everything a rec wants, time sink, excitement, possibility of a big score. If you want to play for money you should NEVER play tournaments, they are an absolute waste of time under 10k buy in and 10ks are so few and far between that the variance is insane. better off just not playing them since they require very specialized poker training to be a winner and its just not worth the time.

He obviously doesn't mean that the casino would lose money - he means that by shutting down all 1/2-1/3 games the casino would make less money than they are currently.

Also very obviously while "pros"/"grinders" do work their way up from micros/small stakes--> midstakes/high stakes, this is a population of winning players. Limon is clearly referring to where the population of losing players/fish originate from at mid/high stakes. The answer is clearly that they didn't "work there way up" b/c they would be losing/breakeven at all stakes... they are people who already had enough money to gamble at mid/high stakes and jumped in the game that made sense for how much money they like to gamble with/bring to casino.

Speaking as someone who used to "grind" (never full time) and was a winning player at 5/10 live, now I just play tournaments b/c they are way more fun than cash as a recreational player. I also have such little time to spend at casinos its way more fun to schedule around some WPT/WSOP 4x/year than spend a wife pass on a day trip to AC or whatever. Was way different story when I could go play like almost every weekend, if I had ability to play a lot would be more interested in cash again.

Still take poker super seriously / am a mega nerd but like I feel I understand the mindset much better of a fish now lol

You sir, win the coveted limon "reading comprehension" award. It is rarely given on online forums where the dumbest but most vocal critics seem to like to read, at most, every other word of the post they are criticizing. This prestigious award also comes with one free beer if you ever see me out and about.

Huh? this is you no?

Apologize for your insolence if you want me to interact with you further.

Now that's pretty funny.

limon had dat receipt, lol.

limon delivers.

If you're a rec you should play what you want to play. You're playing for fun.I know tons of recs who just want to play a few hours in a night 2-3 times a week. They don't want a long time sink.For them tournaments basically make no sense. Many recs just prefer cash over tournaments for other reasons.

Additionally in the northeast while the Borgata is having its first real tournament series in 4 years right now,and some smaller tournaments have popped up lately ,for basically 2+ years after things reopened from COVID there were no tournaments at all save for one 400 dollar event at borgata that was an absolute debacle.

I do agree from a making money standpoint low buy in tournaments are a waste of time and variance fest. Most of the people grinding these things are broke as hell,backed, selling pieces and essentially hoping to hit the lottery.

It's actually depressing seeing some of these guys for 5+ years still putting together a 10-20k package to play a bunch of small event during a series just wasting their lives thinking they have a massive edge when they're really just hoping to get absurdly lucky.

Someone playing them for fun totally different story.

Correct. While there are some guys trying to go pro who work their way up from 1/2 nl who might play 5/10 nl when they get 15k or whatever and drop back down when they get kicked in the teeth and lose half their money rinse and repeat that's not where 99 percent of the losing money in those games is coming from.

Guys playing 100 dollar a hand blackjack don't "work their way up" from the ten dollar tables counting cards just like recs at 5/10 nl aren't grinding 1/2. They just like poker like gambling and that's what they're comfortable playing for.

Setting aside the dreadfully depressing thought of 1/3 "pros," it's pretty amazing that any poker room would spread both 1/2 NL and 1/3 NL, and even more amazing that people see some sort of appreciable difference between those two games. I think it's actually less of a difference than between, say, 2/4 limit and 3/6 limit.

Not to mention that the rake on low buy-in tournaments, like low limit cash games, is potentially unbeatable. I'm not a tournament guy so maybe I'm wrong.

I find the idea of even a 1-3 pro to be mindboggling; you could do just as well by being a would-you-like-fries-with-that pro.

But then, I live in a town where the minimum wage is US$15/hour.

Theres not really any such thing as a "pro" at 1-3. dont worry. anyone who can play at all and has the proper mindset for even the tiniest chance of succeeding at poker jumps past these soul draining rake trap stakes instantly. Dont listen to anything a floor man has to say, floor men are nearly always failed gamblers and its rare to find someone who knows less about what is going on in a casino (maybe a dealer). If you are ever lucky enough to play with a floorman or in a "dealers game" you will instantly see they are the worst poker players on earth. Follow limons advice, live a little.