I am a 4 8 limit player. I am a student, and play at Foxwoods mostly on weekends. I have been playing at the casino since i turned 21 in october. I have logged about 500 hours since then, strictly playing 4-8, and am beating the game for about 11 an hour. I am considering moving up stakes to 10-20 once summer comes, so i can concentrate on it for awhile without worrying about school. Obviously the 4/8 is a loose and passive low stakes game. I was wondering if anyone with experience playing this game can offer me any tips regarding specific adjustments I'll need to make.

Also, is my win-rate, in combination with the hours I've played, enough for me to say that I'm beating the game and to move up in stakes.

I'm new to this forum, so im not sure if i posted it in the right spot, but any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

matt, i occasionally play the 10/20 and have posted some fw 10/20 hands in small stakes. Some people post hands here in medium. Have you tried the 5/10 kill game? It's easy to beat almost always and will give you a good amount of experience dealing psychologically with 10/20 stakes when the kill is on.

Anyway even if you don't know what's going on, when you have your mojo jump right in. You're a winning player and although these players are somewhat more astute than the 4/8ers, they're not pros. I'd say buy a rack and take a shot at the 10/20, stay in it as long as the fish are swimming and you're not tilting due to the increased bets.

if you can beat 3-6lhe online 10-20lhe Live should not be that tough if you can be patient and not tilt if things go wrong. and if you dont think the jump will affect you at all then you should go for it, gl

FYP.

DaveR has this nailed.

The 10/20 at FW's is pretty soft (as is the 20/40) in the loose passive way. I will say however that the first time I ever got semi-bluffed live was in this game. This was quite a while ago, but I was stunned when I called his turn c/r and thought that I was paying him offon the river, then he says "I missed, Q high". Now that I think about it, it was about the only time I was ever semi-bluffed in that game.

I haven't regularly played that game in 3 years, but I still see the same faces during the day. A lot of these guys are more on the tight-passive side and I generally made my money by stealing and taking orphan pots. The game during the day should be tighter than 4-8.

I'm guessing that if you're putting much thought into your game/stakes that you'd be a winner in the 10/20. With that said, realize that just because you've been a winner at 4/8 over 500 hours it doesn't mean you're a winner in general. Assuming 30 hands per hour you've only logged 15k hands which isn't a ton. People have gone on 50k+ hand heaters/downswings.

Again, if I had to guess I'd say you're fine playing the 10/20, but my opinion not necessarily based off of past results as much as you actually caring about your game in general.

do the 5/10 kill for a while first - the 10/20 is full of nits who won't give up a lot. the 5/10 is a nice mix of the 4/8 and higher games and will get you used to the stakes.

I've thought about the 5/10, but I have a problem with the kill pot idea. I don't like the variance that the kill pot would bring to the overall profit of the game. I'de prefer to play in a 5/10 with no kill before jumping to 10/20. Any word on what games Mohegan will spread when it opens in september?

I would think that a 5/10 kill game would have smaller $wise variance than 10/20 but that just makes sense to me (i.e. I haven't done any math and haven't had anyone tell me one way or the other).

what's the house take (rake or time charge) in those lower games at Foxwoods? In NJ it is pretty much impossible to beat the rake (long term) at any game below 10/20, which still charges $10 an hour for time.

mtgordon - I dont mean the typical varience. I'm talking about specifically in a killpot game. An extreme example could be, you win a 20 big bet pot. The next hand is a kill pot, and you end up getting involved. You lose a 10 big bet pot. After this, you should be up 10 big bets, but instead you're even because of the kill pot. Thats what i dont like about those games

vanman - I think the rake for all limit games 4-8 and up is 2 on the flop, 1 on a certain level ($30 in 4/8) and 1 on the next level ($60 in 4/8). Most of the time its a 4 dollar rake on each hand, and stays the same i think all the way to 20 40. This is another reason why i want to move up.

this is what I was getting at- at 30 hands per hour (good dealers can do more), that means the house is taking at least $120 off the table each hour. While you are likely contributing a bit less than your fair $12 share by TAG play, you also get to factor in tips. So basically you have to be a +1 BB per hour winner just to break even in the game.

So from my view $11 per hour is monstrous. Like you're both a winning player and you've been on a huge heater. Move up to a game that will still pay you when you cool off.

any comments from the more experienced posters on my reasoning here is appreciated...

matt - don't think of it that way, as it's an artificial thing you've come up with. think of them all (bets) as 5/10, if you want. in the long run the kill pots will average out won and lost amongst all players so it becomes a wash. or if you really want, think of it as 7.5 / 15, since that's roughtly what it averages out to with roughly half the pots being killed - if you really want to track your bb as 15 each. either way, play a long sample, total up results, divide by hours played, yields your units, same as any other game.

Kill games can be hugely profitable partly because the bad player is playing more hands. They hardly ever fold when they are killing a pot. So playing with a bad player more often is profitable.

However, there are some pitfalls specific to kill games that you need to be aware of:

1. The kill dead money makes it correct for the fish to play more hands and you have to adjust as well.
2. Be aware of the pot size on the river and adjust your river value bet requirement on whether the extra bet will cost you a big bet in kill money.
3. Be aware of the position of the kill and yours. Isolate the kill if you think the table will allow it.
4. If you have the kill, it makes sense to raise some types of hands that you may not even play to thin the field. Specifically hands like KJo, A9o that have show down value. This depends on the field and your position.
5. If the kill is the big blind, you have to tighten up as the dead money is now less than that in a 10-20 game (12 dollars rather than 15 dollars). Also as the SB in this situation you have to tighten up a lot.
6. Also the kill game is raked like 5-10 and not 10-20.


I used to love the old 10-20 with a half kill game at foxwoods. The action was tremendous as the kill bloats the pot. However, I had to make adjustments. Many of which I have now forgotten.

They are profitable and worth while.

Some good thoughts on the kill game here. The 5-10 FW game can be a great game, but psychologically you have to be prepared for those times you get invoved with kill hands, lose a bunch of bets, and then the game reverts back to 5-10 for an extended period of time. It can be very frustrating. Of course if you're on the winning side of the kill hands....

The reason to play 5/10 with a full kill FW ahead of the 10/20 is that there will be a greater percentage of awful players in that game.

F*ck the variance of the kill games. When I was in CA I played an 8/16 half kill game and managed to lose every kill pot I played, on the river. I ended up down - but so what. I lost to a guy who called a double sized kill bet cold with 63o. Next hand he folds pre-flop and says "I can't play this trash". Seriously.

The 10/20 game is a tightish game. Mostly passive but sometimes gets a bit wild especially when 20/40 players are waiting for a seat to open or are on a serious cooler. There are a ton of regulars in that game, a few of which call themselves pros.

Also, are you bankrolled for the 10/20 (I consider $5,000 enough to weather some storms - but others may have a different opinion - and it may depend on how tight you play)? If so why not try both games and see what feels right? The one session swings in the 10/20 @ FW, for me, have been as much as $1,700 in the negative direction and $2,200 in the positive.

Rick are you sure it wasn't you calling 2 cold with 63o. Or do you draw line for cold calling @ 63s.

With regards to the OP, if you are playing this game on the weekends you will find the game will range from loose passive to loose agressive but the play in general is substantially better and generally more aggro than the 4/8 or even the 5/10 but still very beatable. The weekday crowd and the 1st morning tables on the weekend tend to play much nittier, lots of chopping and open raises that take the blinds.

Best of luck

The 5/10 full kill game at foxwoods is ridiculously easy to crush.. I've had 4 days of 1k+ wins playing 5/10 there and I don't go down that often.

The few times I've played 10/20 it's been quite a bit more tight passive... still easy, but not nearly as easy as 5/10.

The thing about the 5/10 kill game is it's 10/20 when the game is super loose(i.e. profitable, it's never very aggressive)... and 5/10 when the nits are sitting around. I'd rather play for larger stakes in a loose game where people are playing terrible hands, variance be damned.

That being said I'd rather not see thinking players at 5/10, so feel free to skip to 10/20 :P

LOL (truly I laughed out loud)

I draw the line at 63s. However only when I am on severe tilt. You can tell I am on severe tilt because I am muttering to myself after having slapped myself silly.

And mostly I am raising with 63s not calling two cold. But 2+2 has cured me of that "tendency" after I posted about a hand I won in which I raised 52s EP and had to go runner runner to win - thus using up all of my luck for that session.

Please introduce yourself to me, Pisan. You know me well enough that I must know you...

.

10/20 is the most solid of the limit games at foxwoods.

The action isn't always the best, but solid players usually come out ahead because the games are always stable.

During the weekdays it can sometimes be downright miserable early morning/mid afternoon, with sometimes the entire table being all over 50 (except for me ). I do well enough in the mornings, but the games can come to a crawl sometimes so I've started to show up later and had better results.

It usually picks up towards the night because most of the extremely tight old-timers call it a day. Towards the weekends the 10/20 gets particularly good regardless of the time of day. There's always a game going and sometimes up to 3-4 simultaneously on the weekends.

Basically if you are looking to step up in stakes from 4/8, 10/20 is probably the way to do it as long as you have the bankroll. I started at 4/8 and basically skipped right over 5/10 because there was too much variance. You know exactly what you're getting if you play 10/20 at FW and if you're a solid player it usually works out. If you want non-stop action and can afford it then 20/40 is your game, but it can be extremely unstable and unforgiving which is why I usually avoid it.

The best 10/20 tables are the ones with a couple loose cannons mixed in with the overwhelming amount of rocks, but it's usually almost all rocks. This is fine if you're willing to mix up your game. You don't want to sit around for 3 hours waiting for the nuts because that's what the rest of the table is going to do. On the flip side you don't want to be 'mr. action' because everyone will look to you to make money off of.

The trick is playing solid but mixing up your game eniugh where you can tag people out of nowhere. Sneaking up on people in a full handed game usually works best for me. I try not to play under 6 handed because the game just doesn't have enough action to make it profitable. This almost never comes up because the game is dominated by regulars who ensure it's always full.

If you plan on going mainly on the weekends then this is def your game. It's the logical progression for a good 4/8 player as long as you have the bankroll.

Most of this is very basic information but I hope it helped. Good luck and see you at the table.

- Dave F.