I don't know where this thread belongs but here it goes.

When I first started playing poker I cut my teeth at 3-6 limit. I played about ~50 hours a week for about 6 months. I was a loser.

For anyone who doesn't know. 3-6 limit is a very cruel game. Every pot is multiway (5 ways or more). Its next to impossible to run anyone out. You can't put anyone on a range. I mean how can you put the whole table on a range? Its very common that if you are ahead on the flop that you have to "dodge" more than half the deck to win by the river. And if you are playing tight it is extremely boring because every hand is so slow.

Despite all of this I still played at these stakes because I was told that you win when you are playing against players that are worse than you. And 3-6 limit had the worst players.

I had a thought when at the table one day. "I don't think I could win even If I knew everyone's cards". I shared this thought with a player next to me who was complaining that he couldn't win because no one was respecting his raises or folding to his bluffs. He disagreed. He thought it was obvious that a player could win knowing Opponents whole cards. "You would know the correct way to play in every situation." he said. I wasn't so sure. With everyone in the hand and the inability to bluff, the only way to win the hand is to have the best at showdown. Sure knowing the strength of your opponents will let you know when you are beat and you could save a bet on the river maybe. I guess this would save you some money, so maybe you will be losing less money it the long run.

So my question is this.

Does Anyone know if they have been simulations run that 1) shows if a skilled player can beat low limit poker, and 2) does having whole card information give a player a winning edge?

When you talk about being unable to win because “nobody respects my raises and I can’t bluff” that indicates that maybe the reason you can’t win is that you are using a poor strategy. If nobody folds to your bluffs, that means nobody will fold to your value bets either. The purpose of bluffing is not really to win a particular pot. It really is to make opponents call your value bets. If they never fold to your value bets, then you have no reason to bluff, so quit bluffing. Similarly, keep in mind the reasons for raising. Only one of these is thinning the field. Another is building a pot in situations where you have an equity advantage. The second of these is more important in low stakes limit games.

Consider a very extreme case of a low stakes limit game. No matter what you do, nobody will ever fold. Suppose you have AA and you decide to play a raise or bet at every opportunity strategy. LetÂ’s assume 9-handed. IIRC AA has about 30% equity vs 8 opponents playing a range of ATC. In a 3/6 game, you would raise pre, building the pot to $54. Another $27 goes in otf, making a total of $81. Turn and river action add $54 each for a grand total of $189. Total cost to you is $21. You win $189 three out of ten times, so if you played this spot ten times you would expect to spend $210 and win $567 for a net profit of $357 or $35.70 per hand - a very nice profit.

This example is extreme, but so is your question about being able to win when knowing hole cards. The idea is that limit is a completely different game with completely different optimal strategies. A value-heavy strategy with very little bluffing, folding hands that play poorly multi-way (goodbye to KJo and ATo kind of hands!), and raising almost entirely for the purpose of increasing pot size, and recognizing that limping isnÂ’t a dirty word (much of the EV from PF raises comes from winning the pot without a flop or isolating and winning with a flop cbet - that wonÂ’t happwn in limit). Limit can be beaten, but you canÂ’t do it by stubbornly clinging to the strategies that work in NL games.

One caveat - the rake at many public casinos in small limit games is a very high percentage of the pot size. That factor might well make it very difficult, if not impossible, to actually beat a low limit game. My post above focused on a hypothetical rake-free low stakes limit game.

Does Anyone know if they have been simulations run that 1) shows if a skilled player can beat low limit poker.

You don't need a sim to show that there are many people who can and do beat low-limit poker, assuming we're not talking about some crazy rake like 10% to $25.

There was a similar question in the LHE section here awhile back. The answer is yes. But winning low stakes players can and should move to bigger stakes if available. The rake tax is brutal at low stakes.

A 3/6 game would be hard to beat with the rake at my local casino. I play the 4/8(highest LHE game they offer) and am beating it for about 1 BB/hour as a rec player. The LHE wizards in the Limit section of this forum could beat it for 2-3 BB/hour, so they could find a way to win at 3/6 as well. But why would they? They can play 20/40 and higher and win more.

this is trivially easy to answer. You are saying that "you need to dodge more than half a deck to win" - let's make it even more extreme and say that you need to dodge 3/4 of it. However, in a 5 way pot, you are only contributing 1/5th of the money. So, in this extremely simplified model, you have a 25% chance of quintipling your contribution, which is a very, very profitable proposition. You're mistaking a chance of winning and a chance of making money.

Ty for the responses.

I was expecting rake to be an issue. But I was surprised to hear that low limit poker is beatable. I must have been using the wrong strategy way back then.

My problem is that I could never win a hand. Let alone win enough to profit. I’ll be looking at the LHE section for some more in depth answers

1) When you were a beginner, you probably weren't very good. Even if you were better than the average player, you probably weren't good enough to beat the rake.

2) The looser a game is, the more variance you face. If your true win rate is very small, it takes a very long time to get to a spot where you will necessarily be in profit mode.
I'm sure that seemed like a lot of poker, but you probably hadn't gotten to the 'long run'.

Be very careful. Low level limit poker is probably beatable in the long run, but the answers you are getting here are that it would be for a small amount with high variance. It is such a small amount with such a high variance that the immediate obvious question is why?

If you have played enough hands at low level limit poker to show you are a definite winner (i.e enough hands to overcome the variance), you could have made far more by being a mediocre player at a higher limit.

Heck, you probably could have made more per hour begging on a street corner. Why?

JimL
Ty you for the warning. I gave up on limit poker a long time ago. I play nl but I don't know if you can say I moved up in stakes, since I am playing at the lowest stakes offered in my casino. I am winning though, and I don't want to go back to low limit poker. It just seems like slow torture.

Really I was asking because I was curious. I wanted to know if I was right about the game being unbeatable. I learned something new once again. I wish I would have been on these forums years ago.

I found low limits very beatable up here at Canterbury and Running Aces. You need to know how to count outs and Calc odds and lots of patience. I find it very enjoyable every now and then from the tournament and NLHE grind. In the higher limits (say mb 8/16 and 20/40+) most of the time I am losing a little bit (I NEVER go broke) but when I do win I win ****ing WIN BIG!