I didn't want to hijack the other thread, but I too have often wondered what the hourly possibilities are with live games. The rake structure is supposed to be really bad @ the lower games like $1/$2 live, but the play is also supposed to be especially horrible, too. I think it's largely dependent on the location, number of games, players, and the like. For whatever it's worth, since I started playing poker again last December, I've been to the casino twice and both times bought in for the full $200 and cashed out $401 and $347 respectively. I probably played 3 hours each session for a total of 6 hours which is about $58 an hour. Obviously that's a pretty low sample and nothing spectacular happened in that time - 1 or 2 nice pots, not a lot of great starting hands or bad beats. I suspect that kind of win-rate is not sustainable long term. It's just a guess, but I'd say maybe $20 to $30 an hour is possible for your typical good, winning player in a live $1/$2 - the kind of player who can routinely win $25NL and higher online.

If anyone has kept good records of live play hours played, profit made, and win-rates of the lowest stakes, I'd be interested to know what they've found. There's a casino about an hour and 45 minutes away from me that has $1/$3 NL. I haven't been there yet but I'm very interested to see the quality of play and possibilities there. Anyone have the skinny on the Evansville, IN Aztar Casino games? I have noticed in home games I can ON AVERAGE usually win a buy-in a night or a buy-in every 6 hours. We probably play 20 hands an hour, so that's about 83bb/100 or 41.5ptbb/100.