Disagree about playing to win; I think one should play to maximize ROI. Because so much of the money is loaded onto the final table, the difference between the two might seem negligible in the early stages, but when there are pay jumps involved everything changes. I have seen over and over again someone "playing to win" making massive ICM punts in pursuit of a bigger stack, basically handing free money to everyone else remaining in the tournament.

I also disagree about "always always always" playing the main. It is certainly true that it is by far the softest $10K around, and that anyone who makes money playing NLHE cash games can be expected to have a substantially positive ROI in the main. But it is a $10K, and it is a large-field tournament, so even someone with substantial ROI needs something like a $10 million bankroll to be properly rolled to play it.

Meh I mean sure you are of course right about ROI vs "playing only to win", you got me there. But I think its clear what sort of audience I was talking to. For every 1 guy that makes an ICM punt "trying to win" there are 10 guys that are folding AK pre for 20 bb because they don't want to bust. I'm not talking about with 13 players left in big ICM payjump situations either, I'm talking about on day 2, I'm talking about "I stopped looking at my cards on the bubble cuz I didn't want to get tempted to play a hand", I'm talking about "I'll blind down to nothing so I can make a payjump that is 4% of a buyin". The low hanging fruit.

As far as playing, all I meant was its a good tournament, obviously bankroll management matters a lot. People that are winning cash players or playing smaller buyin tournaments should try hard to sell a piece and play, simple enough.

You guys are the best! This LHE community is the quintessential 2p2 hang. While the LHE games seem to fizzle out, at least they are here in MN, due to this spread legs limit craze, you all are still kickin. I'm humbled to still be able to talk to my deucescracked idols.
I've also seen many a player misapply ICM strategy in a way that's reminiscent of card counting mistakes. If casinos encouraged this approach, they might actually profit as many players would attempt it and do so poorly... I think that's what DD is saying?

The last time I won a satty to the WSOP almost ten years ago my then coach Pokerbob (dig that name drop!) gave me a stake (10%) in this notion that a cash game player can aggressively exploit the **** out of all these ICMonkeys... as I was heading off he gave me the tongue in cheek advice: "be sure to flop many sets!" Priceless
But in my case my investment is 0. Does this affect the ROI concept?

I think I like your idea of taking this oppurtunity to really learn some tourney **** and invest in Faraz's course and then use the other half of the money to do this:
♡nss

Was randomly nostalgic for the old “is my live win rate sustainable” posts from a decade+ ago.

What’s the current outlook based off of what true live grinders have amassed in the many years (and presumably thousands of hours) since?

Edit: I know game conditions change(d), but still curious about the live samples that might have started to get to million+ hand range

Well my bi-monthly checkin to the LHE thread is telling me we are talking NLHE tourneys

Its the game of the future.

DeathDonkey sure plays it a lot lately.

In my neck of the woods, 1.25-1.5 BB/hr very sustainable. I also finally hit 2+ BB/hr for a whole calendar year in 2023. That being said, the games have been drying up in WA a bit and while I’ll always love the pace of play and comfort of LHE, NL is substantially more complex while also having a pretty big increase in skill edge and variance doesn’t get in the way quite as much.

Are the games about the same difficulty in California (40/80, 60/120 etc.) as Washington? Is a similar winrate achievable?

I can’t really speak to that as I haven’t played in Cali since pre-Covid. I’m sure there are a lot more fun players with disposable income in Cali but also the full-time and play-for-profit players in WA LHE games are all varying degrees of not that good imo. I’m guessing Cali games are populated with many players that are better than my toughest competition here.

Even though the rake and cost of living have been going up in Washington, they are both still lower than in California.

I’ve never played in Washington but the 40 and 60 games at the Commerce can be very good and sometimes very bad. The games are typically better later in the week and at night. I played in a 40 game yesterday in the morning and for the first three hours there were five players who had been playing all night.

Just curious if you (or others you may know) have 10k+ hours in your local game by this point?

I have like 1700 hours in the local 20/40. 6000 hours in local 8/16+. I play a good chunk of tourneys and NL cash also.

In all fairness I was really, really stuck.