The fact is that $2-$4 is beatable because this is usually the cheapest game in the house and, therefore, the one most likely to attract the worst players - and as we all know, a good player can beat a bad player any day of the week - even if they can't beat them every hand of the day.

I was recently playing $3-6 at the Mirage on a Friday night - and I had this interesting conversation going with an old pro and what I call an "odds only" guy - the old pro was saying that you can throw the odds out on a Friday night at the Mirage - and the "odds only" guy was arguing that the odds are the odds no matter where you are playing.

I sort of came down in the middle - that in a game where there are likely to be a lot of poor players, the odds are still crucial to your play - but what changes are the other aspects of your play.

What changes, IMHO, is that in a game like this, the key bets are on the turn and the river, whereas in a "normal" game, the key bets are the flop and pre-flop bets.

For example, I rarely found it to be a wise choice to raise pre-flop in that game because the raise was highly unlikely to drive anybody out - I noted that if I was in late position and I raised, pretty much 90% of the time, those people who were already in would call the raise.

Furthermore, I noted that once in, most of the players were very likely to stay in until the river - they would stay in on 2nd or 3rd pair, chase straights and flushes no matter what.

As such, my typical play was to call a fairly large number of pre-flop hands, but to raise on almost none - usually I would only raise on pocket pairs - and then raise occasionally on AKs or AQs - but that was about it.

My rationale for this was simple - the early bets were not going to drive anyone out - so unless I ultimately have the winning hand, those bets are giving me no value. Furthermore, such an approach allowed me to see more flops, thus gaining more information on my hand - and then, knowing that I was likely to have several callers no matter what, I had a better sense of which hands I was likely to win.

Now, of course, I varied my play considerably - so I have some hands where I raised pre-flop and then made a continuation bet - but this occured after I had already established a reputation as a guy who tends to win at showdowns.

And see, this, IMHO, is the critical difference between B&M and online that the online players don't respect - your table image is SO MUCH more important at a B&M game - and you can really use this to your advantage at the lower stakes games where you can intimidate the fish.