Hi everyone! I'm a 20 years old student from Italy, who just registered to this community, looking for help. I registered on Pokerstars.it two months ago, not depositing any money, and having a go in the stars freerolls, to try and grow some experience, and a little bit of a bankroll, if possible. I ended up final tabling some of those, and now I find myself with 150 euros, to try and begin playing a bit more seriously. My first thought on what to play was on 1€ husngs hypers. I really like their structure and the style of play they imply, and I already began studying some good material I found on the net, to try to have an edge on the rest of the field. My concern is about the rake, which amounts to 8%. Is this rake beatable, even given a field of possibly mostly recreational players? The break even win ratio would be somewhere around 54,5%, is this possible to obtain and surpass at these stakes, with some previous preparation? The other discipline I would be willing to specialize on, is small field mtts, mainly 27, 45, 90 men sngs and 180 max, with buyins that range from 1€ to 3€. Those offer rakes from 16% to 18%. Is this rake more realistic to be beaten than the husng hypers? What should I be playing, given I have a slight preference towards husngs, and it would be awesome to build a larger bankroll in the process of making some experience? Thank you in advance.

try looking at sites other than stars, there's really no reason to play there any more

Are there alternative sites for Italy-based players? The rake is very high for all Italians, I think. 8% in hyper HU games would almost certainly be unbeatable on the dotcom site, but if the field is softer in your country, it should be just about beatable. Other formats should provide a better chance of getting a decent ROI, however. The 45s/90s/180s have more of a sustainable future than HUSNGs as well. If you ever reached the $15 level in heads up games, you'd be up against cartels/bumhunters and "bots", since those games have essentially been solved. The softest games will be the ones that contain the most "fun players". Playing 90s/180s for a while is probably a good choice, but you should probably be aiming to graduate to MTTs once you have the bankroll (and can stomach the variance).

The $1 hypers with 8% rake is probably beatable due to how bad I expect your opponents to be, where as if you get to a higher level when your opponents are better games might be unbeatable even though they have a lower rake percentage