The degen dream is still alive. I was at resorts world 3 weeks ago playing 1/3 with a crazy canadian guy who was drunk off his ass. That table was awesome. Canadian guy kept making me tip the dealers/waitresses more than $1 by taking chips from my stack, one guy sat down at an empty seat and got dealt in for 3 hands without buying in, then when he found out he had to buy in, he tried to buy in with $27. When the dealer told him it wasn't enough, he tried handing the dealer his credit card. Whenever anyone sat down in that seat the rest of the night, the drunk guy would get confused and call them "credit card"

thanks for the writeup! I'll keep it in mind

Haha, that's classic. My very first hand I ever played in Vegas was at Bellagio 1/3. There was a drunk guy opening pots to $50. He did this about five times and everyone folded, then he did it and I looked down at 88 and shipped it. He called me with Q7h and the eights held up. I thought, damn I love Vegas lol.

Well that was a thoroughly craptastic month! +.99 evBB/100 over 47k hands of mostly 50 Zone including my first 6200 hands at 200 Zone at a whopping -.45 evBB/100. Totally meaningless samples, but I feel like software issues with Ignition and what I eventually figured out was a failing network adapter really didn't help. It's good to have bad months though. If I had crushed, I would just get it into my head that my game was in great shape and I would become more proficient in my not-so-good style. Now I feel much more motivated to improve than I did before because losing sucks. Ya, totally lolsample. But my long-term goal is to beat 200 Zone for 5+ BB/100, and nothing in my database indicates that I am close to getting there yet. Hopefully the December holiday games live up to their reputation and I have a big month.

I feel you man, I agree where it's actually better to have stretches where you're not winning if your goal is to become as good as you possibly can. When all the cards are hitting and winning just feels easy you don't dig in and do the work to get better as when you have stretches like this. Keep up the work, it'll pay off.

Isn't ignition one of the anonymous sites? I would think in that environment 5bb/100 is crushing to near impossible unless there are a lot of droolers in the player pool. That's a good winrate on a soft site where you can game select and have a hefty database of hands on players to go for maximum exploits. Hell, I'm on a 50K breakeven stretch at 200NL and that's with good game selection on a softer site.

Ignition is infamous for being extremely soft precisely because it’s anonymous. I 4-tabled 6-max 100nl reg tables last night and at any given time there would be around 6 players who had broken stacks and enormous gaps between VPIPs and PFRs

I know there’s a fair amount of cases of people maintaining 10+bb/100 winrates through relatively high stakes there

Zone it’s probably tougher because you can’t tell who’s a tight reg and who’s a fish, so you have to play a middling strategy.

Is December games being crazy a thing?

5bb for 200z is a good achievable goal. The best regs probably have 7-9bb/100 based on how much they grind etc. Its a much softer site than say stars or gg.

I've been on something of a downswing in Ignition/Bovada 50NL the past few weeks; it has brought my winrate down to 14bb/100. (20K hands overall sample size)

I am a mediocre player with huge holes in my understanding of the game.

Yeah I’m pretty sure it’s reasonable for a solid player to sustain a 15bb/100 winrate at 50nl. I’ve heard grumblings of people maintaining winrates like that even at 1knl but I’m having trouble finding the links

I play in a state with legal online poker and play on those sites, but hearing this makes me wonder about checking this magical place out you all speak of.

This guy runs an American friendly stable, so I assume this is ignition

I play on the same regulated site as you and on bovada. Games are the same the difference is for stakes like 50nl/100nl you can find good games 24/7 whereas in PA it might be hard to get 4+ tables running during certain hours.

Yeah I typically only play nights and weekends and the games are usually running and good, so I can’t complain.

Yes can confirm. I just started playing again out of boredom.

I've been playing pretty consistently for the last 3 months and haven't noticed much of a difference (the games were crazy all that time).

Sorry it was a joke(obv not a good one.) Implying that the crazy play you will see is me.

at about 6k hands in on iggy 100nl, and so far the main real difference I've noticed is that people 3-bet way more: 8% on 100nl vs. 6.5% on 50nl (the difference is much bigger in spots like CO vs. BTN or SB vs. BTN, since the percentages are basically the same in earlier configs).

And they'll c-bet in a 3-bet pot 75% of the time on 100nl, and 70% on 50nl. They also fold more to 4-bets (51%) than 50nl (42%), so I need to start looking into more aggressive 4-betting.

But the thing I've also noticed is that they're not really any better in 3-bet pots than they are at 50nl. They seem to have the exact same strategy (auto c-bet flop for 1/3, keep barreling if I have a good top pair or better, otherwise x/f), except that strategy works way worse when your ranges are wider. A good example of the dangers of trying to implement a solver-ish strategy on an earlier street without having a clue to how that impacts your strategy on later streets.

Thanks man! Good luck to you too this month.

It's anonymous, but I still think 10+ BB/100 is possible even in the fast fold Zone pool. But that would be a crusher who is capable of beating mid-high. US players are bad to begin with, but Bonition is full of degen sports bettors who are even worse than the typical US recs.

December is usually the best month of the year while June-July are usually the worst. Hopefully the trend continues.

Interesting, are there any hypotheses as to why? Being inside more? Year-end bonuses hitting?

The biggest noticeable jump I felt was going from 200 to 500. 50 to 200 all felt marginally similar. With the smallest gap being between 50 and 100.

I think the biggest reason is that the recs are off of work around Christmas. Being inside more and work bonuses are probably part of it too.

Yup definitely more down time at the end of the year and less competing things going on.

Yeah definitely. The Zone pool isn't even that much more difficult.