Would playing 9max 5nl prepare me to play 1/3? I'm considering jumping into live cash in 2 months with a $1000 roll. I got a job.

Be aware that full ring online, even at .02/.05 is going to play way tighter than 1/3 NL live.

2nd, while the skill level will be roughly the same, game play will be different. First thing to understand about low stakes live is that most opponents didn't drive all the way to the casino to fold preflop. If you raise to 3x, you'll often get 6 callers.

You'll also get 3-bet much less live, so your default open raise should be more like 4x or 5x.

You will also (if you're a competent online player) know an order of magnitude more about position than your opponents.

That's all not to say there won't be a couple of decent players at your table, but they shouldn't be hard to identify.

No level of online play will prepare you for the shitshow that is Live 1/3nl.

1) Live rake is generally very high. This means that you want to win fewer, larger pots.

2) The majority of your opponents are going to be loose passive fish with probably a couple of tighter regs.

3) Game theory can pretty much go out the window. Baseline knowledge is still good, but you can almost certainly play in a way that maximizes your profit vs your opponent's mistakes without worried about being exploited yourself.

4) Dont be surprised at all when you are on the button facing 5-6 limps and still get 3-4 callers after raising to $30 or $40. Play strong hands and play them very strong and try to play your speculative hands as cheaply as possible.

5) A preflop 3bet is probably unbalanced toward value and a preflop 4bet is AK minimum, probably KK+.

What others said is true. You will be multi-way a lot. Your winnings will most often come when you hit a monster and you get paid off. You probably are best off mostly playing a straightforward game. Bluffing a lot vs loose passive opponents is not very profitable. Hittin a hand and getting them to call bets is. With that in mind I would think you would want to lose some of the “top pair, decent kicker” type hands from your range, or at least play them VERY carefully. Don’t assume that when you hit a king high flop with KJ that your opponent would have raised PF with KQ or AK, and that you probably are good. Some villains will limp/cold call even with AK. Conversely, hands that make monsters, like medium pocket pairs and suited connectors, can be very profitable; just don’t fall into the trap of investing a lot when you don’t hit your monster. 89s on an 8 high flop should probably play pretty passively, for example. You are likely multi-way so someone is likely to continue against a bet with a hand that has good equity against your hand. Save your betting for flopped straights, flopped flushes and draws. Similarly, small pocket pairs are generally for set mining.

None of this is absolute; get a read on your table and adjust accordingly. But if you are playing a lot of multi-way pots against calling stations, you will usually need to show down a fairly strong hand to win pots.

Live poker is a complete joke. If you can even just breakeven 2NL online you have the capability to beat live. The only major difference that might be hard to adjust to is that you'll be playing a lot more multi-way pots live. You need to study how to play those.

The majority of live 1/3 players don't even understand literal day 1 poker concepts like the value of position, hand selection, bet sizing in proportion to the pot, etc. You really have to see for yourself how remarkably bad they are.