It is the Ameristar game in Blackhawk, CO. It has a 10% rake capped at $5 + a $2 BBJP rake. Due to the size of the game, any action results in the full $7. I think $1 is taken if blinds are stolen or it is chopped, but not sure. That doesn't happen a lot. There's a 50/100 kill, so the game plays bigger than 30/60, so think more like 40/80. If you look around California, $6 and $7 rakes are completely standard. Ours is large, but the dynamics of the player base and demand for a very large BBJP force the rake. If you can beat online 5/T with a $3 rake cap, then ~6x the stakes with ~2x the rake isn't impossible. OTOH, the 4/8 game they spread is believed to be unbeatable.
I don't think the games were terrible, and we were playing at bad times. Pretty much assume with the amazingly low $6/half rake that you don't need the game to feature 6 limpers to beat it. Heck, a while ago it was $5/half. Guessing that this weekend was an anomaly, with both the 1500 and 10K LHE events providing a bunch of decent LHE players in town with exactly one cash game destination. So, lots of games but filled with more decent players than normal. If you live in NV, you might wish for a week from now when all of the LHE animals and their friends have gone home. If you're out for a trip, don't worry. Games being only OK is fine.

Totally forgot to mention that in one of those tight-ish day games, watched a decent-ish out of town semi-pro just snap call with KJs from CO (or HJ) vs. what I thought was a snug player's UTG open. No sweat call, flop a pair, get to showdown with dominated hand. He wasn't particularly loose and seemed a long-term winner. If he's doing that, the loose players from next day's game are calling worse J's.

The caller may have seen UTG open with a wide range before and figured KJs was profitable, especially if he didn't raise the blinds out. A lot of players have been calling raises in the blinds with very little in the games I've been in, and caller might have wanted to encourage that. Heck, that could have been me!

During my phase of experimenting with coldcalling in the small blind, where I was coldcalling hands with almost no apparent rhyme or reason, I had Babar look me up on PTR. Over ~30k hands unfiltered for number of players, I was winning 0.8BB/100 while playing 44/33. I would imagine that if you filtered for 6 players that the numbers would go down because I gamestarted a lot. Of course, I lost it taking shots at 3/6. Shrug.

DeathDonkey said:

first off, congrats dude!! very good to see some LHE folks repping the bling bling.

SIDENOTE: this is weird. usually a room would only accept callins for BIGGER limit games, no?

i agree and disagree:

1. i think most winning 20/40 players who aren't yet playing 40+ do play pf well enough to ostensibly play in the bigger games, but whenever they do they tend to get crushed. in these cases i do think it's a very clear case of being unable to adjust to the different types of fish and how to exploit them (i.e. playing postflop).

that said, i can also take mason's side here b/c there's one specific category of errors i see all the time when lower limit regs take shots at a bigger limit (i.e. 10/20 and 20/40 players moving up to 40/80 or 80/160, etc.). this error is overestimating the importance of a tiny edge preflop in an aggressive loose game with very agro players. in lower limits, 3betting or capping pf tends to warrant a reaction from most players (even the agro fish) that is "yield to the capper" whereas at 40 or 80, they may get bet into, or kr'd or be shown unexpected aggression later on in the hand. so the error is playing hands like 8s or 9s in multi-raised pots where they're basically handing over RIO b/c they then can't get away from the hand due to the catch-22 thought process of the aggression that they're not used to.

i'm not sure if i've explained this well enough but i'm sure i'll be straightened out if not lol. basically, even when you can play pf well (and there are those that can and do) at a lower limit, the higher limit's additional aggression and postflop play can turn you into an expected losing player.

separately, errors compound where you (this is the "general you" ofc and certainly not mason or anybody individual posting here) get involved with a mediocre hand and then can't get away from it b/c you see others winning with marginal holdings.

2. looking at specifically the turn and river, i do think the players we're talking about (20ish players taking a shot at higher limits) are likely to get eaten up on the turn and river. they tend to fall into one of two camps:

CampA: The Non-Believer - sees and has heard about how agro higher limit games are and doesn't ever ever fold. takes wayyy too many hands to showdown. if we had the %WTSD it'd be like 65%-70%ish vs. the closer to 50% that tends to be around where winning players end up. this is costly and it costs most on the turn/river. yes it may be the result of, or in combination with, preflop and flop errors; however, this level of sticktoitiveness is extremely costly

CampB: Nit McNitterson - the opposite of the Non-Believer where he or she ends up getting pushed around left and right. this one can be extremely costly since it's not just a bet or two that's being lost, but whole pots at times. this is a result of either not being comfortable with the money involved (even if properly rolled or taking a designated Nbb shot), or trying to bide your time to a ridiculously high degree ("i can't comfortably raise my mediocre hand here otf so i'll just toss it and wait for a better spot"). either way, even if pf play is fine here, the postflop nittiness ends up costing the player his or her ability to win.

so DD-> i also find this interesting, and another interesting aspect is looking at it from the fish's perspective. the average 20 fishies are super duper more likely to play the weak loose passive-to-average-levels-of-aggression type game where they hang on and call down. OTOH, the average 80 or 1/2+ type fishies are similarly way more likely to look for spots to win the pot without a showdown. they can do things like raising a hand like A3 on a AK575 on the river trying to represent a 5 hoping an ace that's chopping might fold and since it's tough to get 3b on this board. typicaly 20/40 fish would neverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr raise there (and btw, i don't mean to say the higher limit more agro fish has that exact/precise thought process, just that they figure out to raise there even if they're just thinking "ooh, i have ace, maybe raise win me whole pot")

I think the most common mistakes I see are people are afraid they are going to get outplayed by better players and over adjust. Basically I just play completely straightforward most of the time since its FR limit and they think I'm taking some crazy lines or running elaborate expert bluffs

Hi UpHillBothWays:

I think you make a good point. And simplifying what you're saying is simply that aggressive play does have its rewards, and one reward is that an aggressive player, even one who doesn't play that well, is often tougher to play against.

It's also been my experience, and this goes back to the 1980s and other forms of poker as well as limit hold 'em, is that when what appear to be pretty good players who move to higher limits, they often do poorly. Your explanation is certainly at least part of the reason.

And as for your sidenote, yes The Bellagio will take call ins for $20$40 limit hold 'em but not for the larger games.

Best wishes,
Mason

Easily one of the best and enjoyable threads I've read in a long time. Regarding the mistakes on the turn and river we're discussing with players moving up to higher limits, doesn't it really boil to those players not being all that good at reading hands?

Last night I both opened AJ utg and folded AQ to utg raise. Carry on.

i think it's quite possible that away from the table if you asked these same pros about a hand, they would advise the "correct" play for most of those situations (where they're donked into or face "unexpected aggression" based on their current limit). i think it has to do with physically being there at the table and the higher limit that has the negative impact on their expectation.

for example, one common mistake is not allowing an aggressive fish to just be him/herself. often i see players taking a shot wanting to "protect their hands" HU (hands against which an opponent likely has at most 5-6 outs) and they raise the turn (this is bad when the range you're facing is one in which you're WAWB and by raising you lose almost all the WA's. same concept as in the lower limit but here it's either not in flow by being donked into or kr'd on the turn).

so the same player may come up with the correct range both at the table and away from the table but only derive the "correct" action away from the table. that's just a thought though and clearly i can be wrong here.

to answer your question, then, no it's not necessarily a hand reading thing. could be simply not being comfortable with the limits and/or outthinking oneself.

and as "fun" as this thread is, it's kinda frustrating that mason boiled down my post into like 2 sentences lol. thanks for your response though, mason, much appreciated. but yea, way to show a guy up.



finally, in terms of the SIDENOTE, this makes absolutely no sense to me. the point of call ins is to extend a seat-reserving-service to the players. which players the room extends this courtesy to should be the ones where it will make the most return on their expected effort, right?

the borgata, for example, doesn't accept call ins (And gives you 1 hour or 1.5hrs, i forget which when it does) for limits lower than 10/20. so only high limit players can call in. their reason is that they don't want to flood the phone lines and lists needlessly given the sheer volume of players that would use/arguably abuse that service. higher limit players are far fewer in number and it's harder to get high limit games going/started etc. so the list helps in that way too.

i def don't see any reason why any casino would do the opposite of the borgata call-in-policy-wise. especially when the infrastructure to offer call-ins is available. so what's the reason why whichever places we're talking about (i assume the B?) only allow callins up to 20?

Def.

Im playing 20 at Bellagio, I 3! from the button only to get 4! from a guy wearing a 2+2 polo. Board runs out AKJ8A.

He wins the pot, I turn to him and said, "I thought that was a fold"

His response, "in 1999 it was"

Hi Zac:

I knew this would go up.

Best wishes,
Mason

Agree or disagree: Pre-flop in a full ring LHE game is the simplest street to play at at least a near expert level of any street in any widely played game.

Preflop headsup should be simpler, hasn't it supposedly been solved?

The big blind in Huhu limit simplest then?

Agree, excluding pre draw in 2-7

Interesting - I think pre-flop full ring LHE is considerably simpler than first round 2-7 triple draw.

There's just gonna be way more spots in holdem where you adjust to your default spread heart strategy becuse other players are opening so wide.

Somebody that doesn't know he rules of 2-7 but is really smart could play the first street very very tough after like 2 hours

Is Razz solved? Seems very solvable. Or is there just no one working on it. Not very widely played, but sometimes part of MIX or HORSE

Razz is probably the simplest game overall, but even if "solved", it would be much tougher to memorize any 3rd street strategy because of all the possibilities of upcards.

This game is also not played often, but I'm guessing shorthanded Jacks-or-better (California high draw) would be the simplest beginning strategy: open anything legal to open, if it has already been opened raise anything that beats that opener's range, etc.

Third street razz I agree probably would be the easiest to learn a basic rote strategy for but I think that the important nuance of playing against a potential steal and flatting vs. 3bet decisions make it more difficult to play at an expert level. 2-7 TD I think is more complicated due to card removal, shorter handed play, starting hand adjustments being less linear, and the arguable existence of flat vs. 3bet decisions.

Even if you disagree that it is the easiest, it seems very unlikely that pre-flop skill is a significant part of what stops the average 20-40 winner from winning at 80-160.

Cool thread.

So did mason have AJ or 88?

I'm sure he had JJ.

How could he not, given his response and the OP in this thread.