Is B&M low limit waste of time?

Couple things I didn't see addressed that can make a difference:

1) Not all low limit B&M rooms have the $1 pulled for a jackpot. Try and find (s/b easy in Vegas) a room that doesn't do this. If you're playing for a 3 day run, odds of you catching an Aces full had beaten by quads probably won't be worth the $1 you lose from every pot you rake.

2) It's not a fair comparison when showing the B&M amount that's raked from pots over a period of time. The typical $3-6 or $4-8 player B&M is probably used to $.50-1 or $1-2 online. T

ypical rake is 10% or $4 max in Vegas, correct? Isn't the rake 10% from online. 10% of a larger pot is of course going to be more $$, but you will also (hopefully) be winning a larger pot. 10% is still 10%.

3) You do lose out on tips compared to online.

If you avoid the jackpot games, you're only losing out on tips in B&M and gaining (IMO):
A. game against MUCH worse players
B. bigger pots to win
C. social experience
D. free drinks (even water/soda/coffee/hot chocolate)

[scott2130]

You are right. This is a one night experience and the pots were VERY juicy that night.

I have a slow down in my schedule over the next month and will be able to play every Fri and Sat nights. I will keep records, including gas and travel time. I live 1.5hrs from the casino so travel time will make a difference. On the other side I will count any jackpots or table shares I get. (I got a table share this year and the jackpots are high) The rake structure is up to $3 per pot and I have seen them take $2 for the jackpot if the pot is big.

I realize my win rate will be very low unless I win a jackpot or can keep up the play. The games are very loose so this will tell me how loose. I will make a post in two weeks.

[ QUOTE ]
You are right. This is a one night experience and the pots were VERY juicy that night.

I have a slow down in my schedule over the next month and will be able to play every Fri and Sat nights. I will keep records, including gas and travel time. I live 1.5hrs from the casino so travel time will make a difference. On the other side I will count any jackpots or table shares I get. (I got a table share this year and the jackpots are high) The rake structure is up to $3 per pot and I have seen them take $2 for the jackpot if the pot is big.

I realize my win rate will be very low unless I win a jackpot or can keep up the play. The games are very loose so this will tell me how loose. I will make a post in two weeks.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know what Ill do this too. Ive taken about a month of from poker, and am going to start playing next week, I vowed to split my time 50/50 between bandm and online, so Ill keep a log book like you, I should hopefully be getting to the casinos 10-20 hours a week, along with 10-20 hours online. I think Ill start at 5/10 bandm though, because 3/6 is too low for my bankroll, but 20/40 is usually such a long wait, and unfortuently there arent any other games offered...ps my drive time is about 20-30 minutes 1 way.

[pipster]

I have heard numerous good players say that 5/6 BB/100 is a sustainable winrate at $0.50/1.00 online and I would tend to agree. (My 40K winrate was just over 6 BB/100 with the last 10K well over 8 BB/100). Now I hear people saying come back when you have 400 hours and tell me what it is... well 400 hours @ 30 hands per hour is only 12K hands. And at 30 hands/hour 2 BB/hr is about equal to 6 BB/100. Even with the extra $1 drop (which is only 1/4 of a BB), you are generally only winning 2-3 pots an hour So that is only costing you a few dollars an hour off your win rate with Tips/Jackpot.

In addition you have the much fishier game (even fishier than $0.50/1.00 at Party) and many of the games when the rake is capped at 3 or 4 dollars, the pots get up to 80-120 dollars easily. Most 3/6 games I have seen have 6-8 seeing the flop often for a raise, and 3-4 seeing the turn and river. So you are getting 80 dollar pots often, with very little of your money in them... so lots of profit.

Just winning one $80 pot with $20 of your money in is a $60 net, that will more than cover your blinds, tips, and rake for the hour.

So I would say that 3/6 (and to some extent 2/4) are definately beatable for 2 BB/hour over the long haul. Of course if you are that good, you can definately make more at 4/8 and 5/10 which have better rake structures and similiar bad players.

Agreed, the rake pretty much kills you at small tables. Spirit Mountain here takes $1 for the jackpot each hand. 10% rake capped at $3.

This means that most pots have $4 taken (3 in rake, 1 in jackpot). There's almost no way to overcome that sort of rake. Let's say you average 40 hands per hour. You win 10% of those hands, that's 4 hands. Each hand has $4 raked, which is $16, or 2.66BB. Just to keep even with the rake you'd have to win 5.33BB/100.

5.33BB/100. Yea, good luck with that.

When you get to 5/10+, due to the rake cap, it's not nearly as bad.

[soh538]

Low Limit can be a waste of time, but it can be a profitable timekiller if you are waiting for a higher limit. This was the case for me this weekend, played the 4-8 at Foxwoods, while waiting for an act 2 satellite, and came away with a $60 profit in 20 minutes.

[idrinkcoors]

Where do you play Scott? And congrats on the big score, especially for 2-5. Last time I hit the Colorado Central Station. I was there for 3 hours and profited $120. It was amazing what people chased. I'm here on the Western Slope, so I don't get there too much to see if I could average $40 and hour. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[scott2130]

I am hesitant to say where I play because I fear I will end up at a table full of 2+2 players and the experiment will be a bust. Let me get through this weekend and I will post all info on Sunday. If you want to come the following weekend then you will know where to find me.

[Avatar of Wine]

While it's true that $3+1 rake structures are extremely tough on 3/6 and 4/8 games, causing a player to bust every 30 hands or so (we'll say 40 minutes), hopefully there are more in line behind them.

A winrate beating the rake is certainly possible, depending on just how bad the players are - something similar to what people have posted at Party .50/1.00, or even slightly better, should be possible (when adjusted for rake). However, YMMV.

[pipster]

Does your average 2+2er win 10% of pots? I would think that is extremely high... since you are only playing a very small portion of flops, and folding a large percentage of those when you miss the flop/draw. I would put us at winning an average of 6-7% of pots. This is for your normal 20/10 player with good aggression. So that means you only need to win around 4 BB/100 to beat the rake, and last I saw Party Poker BB/100 for $0.50/1.00 was about 3 BB/100 to beat the rake, so not much worse. (average rake around $0.50 per hand so winning at 6% of hands = rake paid of about 3.00 = 3 BB/100). B&M for a capped rake of $4/hand you win 6% of your 100 hands seen means $24 in rake = 4 BB/100. Take out the jackpot drop and you are down to 3 BB/100 and you can't assume every pot is capped in rake, average rake on winning hands is probably somewhere around 2 dollars per hand.