Is live 2/4 hold 'em really -EV?

[MicroBob]

another way of looking at it instead of just 35BB's being taken off....

$120 or so....that's more than a rack of white being taken off the table every hour.
so if you have 10 players with 1 rack of white each...just remove one each hour for the rake.

or think of each of the 10 players having to pay roughly a $10/hr time-charge on the 2/4 game just to get to play.

something like that anyway.

yeah, the opponents suck and the games are definitely beatable.
but underestimating the impact that the rake has on one's potential profitability is done all the time.

(on that note...I've been on a handful of tables where someone will bring up the idea of 'how do these poker-rooms even make a profit on these things?' failing to realize that 35 hands X $3 an hour means $100/hr per freaking table. no, they aren't as profitable as slot-machines...but they are profitable and it's not too hard to figure out how..yet so many people just don't see it).

[bernie]

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(on that note...I've been on a handful of tables where someone will bring up the idea of 'how do these poker-rooms even make a profit on these things?' failing to realize that 35 hands X $3 an hour means $100/hr per freaking table. no, they aren't as profitable as slot-machines...but they are profitable and it's not too hard to figure out how..yet so many people just don't see it).

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Not to mention the wives and g/f's and friends who are playing those slot machines while the guy is playing poker.

b

[Rosencrantz1]

Nice post, bernie.

[steamboatin]

Amen, if I could get poker to just stay even with the MRS's slot play, I would be one happy camper. Luckily for me, she doesn't like to gamble so I usually go play poker on my own.

[Budget Boy]

I think about the best your going to do in 2-4 is $6 an hour. One thing I will add is how SLOW this game moves. You are not getting many hands in per hour. You have 8 confused people to a flop, who will not know how much it is to call, when it is their turn, and who will say "raise" and then put anywhere from 6 to 15 chips out one at a time. This hurts your earning potential per hour, plus is absolutely brutal to sit through if you haven't seen any playable hands in a while.

[peterchi]

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Not to mention the wives and g/f's and friends who are playing those slot machines while the guy is playing poker.


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haha

while i know this stereotype is often true, one time i got kind of pissed at the floorman at Greektown because my gf (who was trying to learn how to play) asked if she could watch me play. he said no, laughed, and told me to give "the sweetheart" some money for slots, in quite a condescending voice. i didn't appreciate him using the stereotype to make fun of her for wanting to watch.

but now she plays with me, and life is good. for the most part [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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.

[BoxTree]

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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.

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You must raise hands like AKo preflop. You have tremenouds equity (value) preflop and it will be nearly impossible to make up those bets postflop, even with half the table going to the river.

And players who limp should be calling a preflop raise 100% of the time (unless there is a 3-bet).

It seems like you've read SSHE but have selectively chosen to ignore the fact that the book was written for loose games (7-9 players preflop). Sure, SSHE is incredibly applicable online (where you generally get 3-5 players preflop), but it is masterful at a truly loose game.

And if you're calling hands like 56s UTG or J9o ever, you're making mistakes. (You said that you're limping with a fairly large number of hands. I just want to make sure you're not adding hands that aren't in the loose games section of SSHE.)

[shakingspear]

I don't know. I like it when I have a good starting hand and raise, and then watch 6 people cold call. Most of the time they're calling down with worse hands. Sometimes I lose. A lot of times I'm winning.

I think you're leaving money on the table if you're not raising preflop with your premium hands in these games.

[bernie]

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Not to mention the wives and g/f's and friends who are playing those slot machines while the guy is playing poker.


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haha

while i know this stereotype is often true, one time i got kind of pissed at the floorman at Greektown because my gf (who was trying to learn how to play) asked if she could watch me play. he said no, laughed, and told me to give "the sweetheart" some money for slots, in quite a condescending voice. i didn't appreciate him using the stereotype to make fun of her for wanting to watch.

but now she plays with me, and life is good. for the most part [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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Wow, no sht? He said that? I'd have been pissed. What an [censored]. Did you say anything to him or talk to any of his overhead?

b