easier to sustain...

yeah, lets rehash this one. or at least humor me a bit.

which is the easier win rate to sustain? if you dont like the choices, provide some of your own...for instance, if you play limit.

FR or 6max?

Not sure but I have sustained 12bb/100 at 10NL over 50,000 hands. I think 5bb/100 at 25NL would be just as easy.

5+ ptbb/100 at 25nl is by far the easiest. it is important to note that at full tilt at least, the rake is almost double at 10nl. instead of taking .05 from every dollar on a pot that sees the flop, it takes .05 from every fifty cents on a pot that sees the flop. i think i saw someone that calculated it was an extra 4 ptbb/100 in rake between 10nl and 25nl. that number might not be accurate but it is obviously a substantial difference.

Originally Posted by pgil

FR or 6max?

take your pick.

it doesnt matter, according to Renton, much. and, my win rates dont change much when i play both.

of course, i'm basing this off of his "i datamined 50k hands and saw no one winning more at 6max" post. if i put wrong words in his mouth, i apologize in advance.

i chose the 200nl one. i think the 50nl @ 3.5 is the most difficult of those five choices. So, if you're maintaining 3.5 @ 50nl, you should be excited to move up again.

Where are you at these days anyways, chopper?

Originally Posted by BankItDrew

i think the 50nl @ 3.5 is the most difficult of those five choices. So, if you're maintaining 3.5 @ 50nl, you should be excited to move up again.

really? now all i need to do is reach and maintain that for a while, then I'll start to feel real good

rly? I feel I've been running soooo bad for the last 3 weeks (15k hands) and I'm still over 3.5 @ 50NL (30k). maybe I just set too high standards for myself or my current bad streak is evening out my hot streak from december :P

to answer the question 5ptbb/100 @25NL is easy, can't say anything about the higher limits, I'm like - 30ptbb/100 @100NL over 2k hands or something (which means nothing else then I lost 700$ there in 2k hands)

You need to define sustain.

Is it 50k hands, 100k, 250k ...

the 200nl option without a doubt

Originally Posted by BankItDrew

i chose the 200nl one. i think the 50nl @ 3.5 is the most difficult of those five choices. So, if you're maintaining 3.5 @ 50nl, you should be excited to move up again.

Where are you at these days anyways, chopper?

well, i'll pm you with all the gorey details. well, hell, i have nothing to hide. may as well spit it out. maybe somebody can learn, too.

but first, somebody HAS to tell me WHY 200 is easier to sustain a 1, if its theoretically the hardest level of all the choices? do the games get softer? or, are your fundamentals in place well enough that 1/100 isnt much of a goal?


anyway. drew, i play a lot of 10NL...still. and am mixing in 25NL (about 50/50 now). i "dabble" with 50NL when i can find obviously soft tables.

but here's why. we talked several months ago about moving up. and, i promptly did. and immediately went on the worst downslide of my non-variant life. i posted graphs in another thread of my two most recent db's. one, over 87k hands, had almost no variance in it at all. that was from 2006 thru march of 2007. then, posted another, about 50k hands, from mar 07 thru dec 07. it went almost completely sideways.

you remember what i was telling you in august of 07. 12 BIs in about 10 days!! lost 15BIs for the month. horrid run. well, it never came back with a good upswing. through the end of the year, i barely gained ground to get back to even. thats 3 months of +15 BIs. or 4 months of breakeven play.

my confidence was in the crapper. big time. bad beats. bad play. we all know the story. over such a long run, it can really shake you up. i abandoned the idea of moving up until i got my "mojo" back.

bottom line: i have it back. and, although, i have no desire to play for "income," i DO have the desire to move up...slowly. thanks to spoon, you, pythonic, among many others. i have done a good deal of "calculator play" and found that if you are going to play lots of poker.....YOU MAY AS WELL GET PAID FOR IT!!! no revelation there. but, my "i want to beat the pussies for big winrates" attitude is kind of dumb. why not beat as high a limit as you can...and maximize the money you make. DUH!

anyway. you asked where i am. and i know i gave you more than you asked for. but, i'll be joining you guys at 25NL, 50NL, and 100NL prolly fairly soon...so long as the confidence doesnt go completely in the crapper again.

but, one thing i really still enjoy: killing the micros and helping the beginners get off on the right foot. analogy: some of you enjoy teaching graduate courses. some of us enjoy teaching first graders.

i like teaching the newbies the right way to build bankrolls and the basic fundamentals of the games.

sorry that got long, but it was a long time coming...the declaration to re-enter the climb.

I've done very well for myself playing online poker. Yet every time I : play bad, loose BI's, break-even, etc... I loose confidence.

Every time this happens (once every couple weeks), I take a step back and ask myself if poker really is for me. What helps me get back on track is taking time off, it truly is the best medicine. I take time off to reset my emotions and get myself back to where I want to be.

The thing I've noticed that I've improved on is that the breaks have gotten shorter. With time, comes matured confidence. I say 'matured' because it's not the confidence a newbie gets from pwning their first table. It's a confidence that can't and won't leave me anymore, a really great thing to have, but a very hard thing to attain.

I think the best way to attain this is through practice. Practice not only your game, but other things as well. Such as, playing in the right state of mind (play fresh and so clean clean). Some people exercise before playing, I have something to eat, take a shower and urinate. It's a nice reset. Try to learn about the game everyday. I have a very easy time finding something to read about poker that I haven't yet already read. Practice playing a set amount (2k hands, 3 hrs, etc.) then taking a break, play this amount maybe once or twice or thrice a day. The real professionals don't play until they drop dead, they play when it's time to check out. This makes for a more scheduled, balanced game.

Wow, just lost my train of thought. Gf giving me a hard time about you know what again. Yeah same one, long story, not going to hi-jack, stupid bitch. Where was I...

Maybe it's not so much confidence that I'm referring to, discipline rather. Which is the most difficult thing to attain IMO than anything else in this world. It happens to also be the most important thing regarding poker, more so than skill.

I'm really happy to hear that you are helping out a lot of people in the beginners forum, along with spoon and others. You really have quite the following there. I went in there yesterday and was happy to see how many people were getting valuable help from you guys. Use this basis of information that you are preaching to them and practice it yourself, perfect it.

You mentioned playing 10nl, 25nl, and a dabble of 50nl. First of all, this approach has worked for countless FTR members towards reaching their short and long-term goals. Secondly, this is not something that has ever worked for me. What I did was pwn a level exclusively, then moved up. Most levels I slid and dropped back down. After a few attempts, I was finally able to maintain a winrate and remain there. Then, pwn that level after a large sample then tried to move up again. This worked for me, not everyone, not the only way, maybe for you, i dunno.

Anyways, long shizzle I know. It just looked a lot like you got off track and had a hard time getting back on (although you might be back on now). All I'm trying to say is that you will fall off track again. The hard part is getting back on, but it gets easier to get back on each time following practice of discipline.

You can sustain a 15+ winrate at 10NL very easily

Originally Posted by BankItDrew

Wow, just lost my train of thought. Gf giving me a hard time about you know what again.

what? your little wee wee again? just how big is a bot's dick anyway...lol

sorry, horrid joke. but, thanks a mill for the post of encouragement.

when i play tons and tons of hands, i start to open up and get hyper-aggro. i'm sure most can relate. but, when i start the inevitable downslide (hyper-aggro coupled with some negative variance), i go on monkey tilt and play MORE hands. i power through. that may be part of the mistake.

i believe that variance is like sales. its numbers, not time that changes what you accomplish. however, if the fundamentals by which you achieved your success have changed, increasing your numbers is the worst thing you can do.

not my first downswing, not my last. just my worst. hopefully, through all the work i put into it, i actually learned something.

we'll see. but, thanks again for the words of encouragement. it means a lot. ya know...i help you a bit, you help me a bit.

later, dude.

Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer

You can sustain a 15+ winrate at 10NL very easily

Would like to see your PT stats for this please.

py, hes playing at cake and the like. a non-US guy that can crush true noobie fish that dont have to like poker enough to jump through some of the hoops we have to now.

obv, non-US players can use credit cards for the most part. something the US shut down years before Frist started reading the Bible (as interpreted by Southern Baptists).

btw, jack, i think most will agree that 15+ is quite the accomplishment. you'll be getting a pm soon...lol.

if you table select well there are lots of nl200 games that are only slightly harder than 25nl

Originally Posted by Genitruc

if you table select well there are lots of nl200 games that are only slightly harder than 25nl

mind giving some networks to a US player? or, were you saying stars, ftp, and the like can still be had? i assume so, as i have heard some great stories from regs here on heaters, but i also assume its harder at some of the US sites than abroad.

oh, and correction, Jack wasnt on Cake. he pm'd me and lit me a new one. lol. not really, but he did tell me he wasnt ever on Cake.

Sorry Chopper, I sometimes forget that I'm blessed to live outisde the U.S.

Stars and FTP def have lots of fishy games but clearly the ratio of fish to good players isn't as great as some other sites.

I think Eurolynx allows U.S. players on the Microgaming (Prima) network. What's great about those games is you can leave tables open when you're not playing and get stats on everybody.

Also, if you search around, there are sites like Bugsy's (bugsysclub.com) that are associated with Sportsbetting and have very little traffic.

But, my God, when there are games to be played, they are amazing.

lol. this morning i was wasting time, apparently, but doing a ton of research for bonus hunting again.

i noticed quite a few former "fishy sites" have re-opened to the US, or have started accepting epass, too.

the door's are slowly opening back up, but i fear the tidal wave of fish has been crushed, and we may never see times like we did a couple years ago. you know, when you could expect a 5+/100 winrate on a 100NL table. (ahhh, party days)

and, yes, where there is tons of traffic, there are tons of fish. there are just more sharks to gobble them up.

is prima still soft, btw? i noticed there are other skins that allow US players, too.

I've found that on Prima, there are fewer fish than the golden days of party (obv) but that the fish that are there are whaaaaaaaaales

like, i m not talking 35/7 fish. i m talking 73/0 call-you-down-with-Ahighorbetter-fish.

I think 100nl-200nl being the easiest....and 10nl option the toughest lol

Originally Posted by Alexos

I think 100nl-200nl being the easiest....and 10nl option the toughest lol

really? so, a double digit sustaining 10NL player should cruise right through 25 and 50 without having to adjust too much?

because that is what it sounds like you are saying.

I think that the higher level of players don't realize that they could maintain a 20+ptbb/100 @ the micro's if they tried hard enough.

now, we are approaching a question i always wanted answered/proved.

do you really think a 20+ is sustainable, over 25k hands, anywhere?

i dont. i think variance and luck make that virtually impossible.

I think it's possible. I would attempt it @ 2NL if someone paid me enough.

hmmm it s definitely possible

I had about 22 bb/100 at nl100-400 over about 40k hands in my old database

those were the old games though... I was at 28bb/100 over 22k hands of nl200

over 25k hands I think you'd be surprised how much a decent player running hot can make

make that 50k hands... 100k hands... and then I think it becomes veeeeerrrrrry tough to sustain huge #'s over a big sample without awesome table selection.

Also, in my case these sample were bb/100 (not ptbb/100, which are 1/2 as much).

100NL

Gen, that one always seems to get me.

so, bb/100 to ptbb/100 cuts the winrate in half, yes? so, your 22 becomes an 11? and the 28 becomes 14?

the poll at the top is using PTBB's, btw.

Originally Posted by Chopper

the door's are slowly opening back up, but i fear the tidal wave of fish has been crushed, and we may never see times like we did a couple years ago. you know, when you could expect a 5+/100 winrate on a 100NL table. (ahhh, party days)

You can still beat 100nl for 5ptbb/100. Hell, my game is far from perfect but I was beating 100nl for over 4 when I moved up.

I think everything up to 100NL is easily accomplished, even for an average player. My stats for the games are:

8.1ptBB/100 over 35.35k Hands @ 10NL
Didnt really play 25NL at all, due to using satellites to buil a BR.
5.25ptBB/100 over 40.53k Hands @ 50nNL
5.35ptBB/100 over 5.08k Hands @ 100NL

Yes i should probably have not played so many hands at these levels, but im 19 and a student so I can always use the spending cash ... lol

All the the games listed above are very beatable for average players with a decent grasp on the game.