Lowest beatable limit?

[Dazarath]

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You seem predisposed to steering your friend away from the 2-4 game, which is fine. No argument here. There are very few good reasons to play that low live, most of them will not apply to most people trying to make money at the game.

But if you tell him it's unbeatable, you are just lying to yourself and him both. What I see is that you are trying to make the math fit your views, when there is evidence that your views are incorrect.

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I'm not quite sure how you came to that conclusion, but you're wrong. My friend has already convinved himself that it's not beatable. I don't have an opinion. I'd actually prefer to see some proof that it is beatable. But, I don't consider the statement, "the live small stakes games are juicy", substantial evidence. Too many people have either convinced themselves that 2/4 is either beatable, or it's not. No one's shown any proof. And no, a good 10-20 session run isn't proof. The problem with the long run in B&M is that it's pretty damn long. At only 30-35 hands/hour, it takes many, many sessions to hit 50k-100k hands. Online, we can pump out hands at 8x the rate.

[Dazarath]

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i know i did my own "back of envelope analysis" but was wondering if it's correct.

i was thinking 10% rake to $3 max at lower limits (2-4) and 5% rake to to $5 max at 5-10... is that correct?

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Like we pointed out earlier, your calculations will end up different than mine, because in california, it's not based on the pot-size. This is ok, because the concepts I discussed earlier can be applied to any rake structure.

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are online rakes lower per 100 hand basis?

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Definitely. The online rake is much, much lower than the rake for equivalent live games.

[SomethingClever]

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if there was no rake then wouldn't you need 0.01BB/100 to break-even?

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Sorry, I should rephrase that. To breakeven at a 2/4 game with a $4 rake, you'd need to have a winrate equivalent to 7 BB/100 in an unraked version of the game.

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I'm pretty sure you can't get an answer to this without an average pot size in the equation.

[mosquito]

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You seem predisposed to steering your friend away from the 2-4 game, which is fine. No argument here. There are very few good reasons to play that low live, most of them will not apply to most people trying to make money at the game.

But if you tell him it's unbeatable, you are just lying to yourself and him both. What I see is that you are trying to make the math fit your views, when there is evidence that your views are incorrect.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not quite sure how you came to that conclusion, but you're wrong. My friend has already convinved himself that it's not beatable. I don't have an opinion. I'd actually prefer to see some proof that it is beatable. But, I don't consider the statement, "the live small stakes games are juicy", substantial evidence. Too many people have either convinced themselves that 2/4 is either beatable, or it's not. No one's shown any proof. And no, a good 10-20 session run isn't proof. The problem with the long run in B&M is that it's pretty damn long. At only 30-35 hands/hour, it takes many, many sessions to hit 50k-100k hands. Online, we can pump out hands at 8x the rate.

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I don't recall if it was GT&OT or Poker Essays I where Mason gave estimates of win rates at various games/stakes. His guestimate at the time was that a great 2-4 player could beat the game for 2BB/HR (maybe it was more). This was based in part on knowledge of some people's actual results. The rake has gone up a little since then, the games have probably gotten softer.

My suppositions are based on your response (or lack of) to my PM which offered adequate statistical proof.

If you still don't think it can be beaten, you will never be convinced IMHO.

[Dazarath]

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I don't recall if it was GT&OT or Poker Essays I where Mason gave estimates of win rates at various games/stakes. His guestimate at the time was that a great 2-4 player could beat the game for 2BB/HR (maybe it was more). This was based in part on knowledge of some people's actual results. The rake has gone up a little since then, the games have probably gotten softer.

My suppositions are based on your response (or lack of) to my PM which offered adequate statistical proof.

If you still don't think it can be beaten, you will never be convinced IMHO.

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I thank you for your interest in the subject area, but I posted at the very beginning of this thread that I wanted a calculation to show evidence that the Commerce 2/4 was beatable. Telling me that "it's beatable", or that people have had short runs of winning sessions don't tell me anything.

The thing is, no winning player is going to stick around playing 2/4 for 100k hands. Right now, I'm going to assume most of the supposed winning live 2/4 players have played less than 10k hands. As poker players, we should know that 10k hands worth of results is not indicative of your true results. People have have losing streaks of 20k hands; 10k is insignificant.

[Forbin]

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Yes, the California situation is different because the rake is not a percentage of the pot, but a straight charge.

If there is no flop, they dont't take the normal drop, but usually will still take $1 at the lower limits.


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Not all CA casinos skip raking a pot with no flop. A number of the ones around the Bay Area take the $3+1 at the lower limits immediately, before any cards are even dealt. The only time you get a break is when the # of players drops. It might be $3 at 7+ players, $2 at 6, $1 at 5 or fewer. At some point they stop taking the $1 jackpot drop too.

[arod4276]

your statement is very very untrue. 2-4 is very easy to beat after the rake. Now for how much,,thats an entirely different story.

[Bulbarainey]

as far as my experiences go thus far, commerce 3/6 is beatable. ive been playing this game almost exclusively for the past 3 months, have logged a little over 200 hours (which isnt much, i know), and am averaging $9.80/hour. So far it has done what I wanted it to do, replace an otherwise crappy job I could get for $10/hour. Just wish I could make enough to actually save any of it, at this rate I spend what I make with nothing left over, sometimes spending back into my original bankroll.

[Dazarath]

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as far as my experiences go thus far, commerce 3/6 is beatable. ive been playing this game almost exclusively for the past 3 months, have logged a little over 200 hours (which isnt much, i know), and am averaging $9.80/hour. So far it has done what I wanted it to do, replace an otherwise crappy job I could get for $10/hour. Just wish I could make enough to actually save any of it, at this rate I spend what I make with nothing left over, sometimes spending back into my original bankroll.

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This is what I've been saying in the problem. 200 hours is only 600-700 hands. We should all know that it's a very small sample size. I've played even less than 200 hours total myself, so I try not to draw any conclusions from that play. I use my PT stats combined with the known fact that the Commerce games are much easier than the online equivalents to draw the conclusion that I should be winning at Commerce.

Another poster PMed me saying that he has played 75k hands of 2/4 live with a positive winrate. 75k is a good enough sample in my eyes. I was unaware that any poster on this forum had played such a large sample of hands of 2/4 live. I figured that most of the live 2/4 players on this forum were either 1) grinding out a marginal or even negative winrate, or 2) they'd move up way before they even got to 10k hands.

[Bulbarainey]

this is very true, I don't think I'll get to 10k hand myself either... I would think the only 2+2'ers who stay that long at 2/4 or even 3/6 are because it's the biggest limit they can play in their area. I've heard of some states having $5 max bets as law.
Another thing I've thought about, but doesn't totally even out because you will swing more, is that at almost every table at commerce there are always a few absolute donks you would not find online except in the rare occasion, and just one of these donks calling every single hand kind of "pays the rake" for us because they play so poorly. Does anyone think this makes sense? or am I smoking rocks again...