Most profitable game?

[Jacob_Gilliam]

Just want someones opinion on this.
If 4 people of equal skill at thier individual game (hold em, omaha8b, stud, stud8b) were to play endlessly for a year at the same stakes, who would end up with the most money?

I'm assuming all are winning players and have the same level of expertise at thier individual games?
I'm also thinking limit games here.
Just curious, thanks in advance!

[Pov]

I'll start by saying I do not know. The following is simply my opinion based on a few things I *do* know but it sounded like fun to reason my way through your question.

First off, let's make the assumption that all the games are of equal juiciness. Without that provision I think I would go with Omaha (assuming you could always find a game) since at least at the lower limits there appear to be a lot of Omaha player who simply have no idea what they are doing. On the other hand, Omaha is usually played as a pot limit game I believe because the luck factor is so high that otherwise there is no way to effectively punish the really poor players. In any event 7-Stud and Omaha have higher variance than Hold 'Em, but you say they are playing endlessly for a year so we'll assume the luck curve has all evened out by the time we look at results.

So, without the variance and all the games being of the same quality, I think it would have to be one of the stud games since they have an extra round of betting. Sure in Hold 'Em the expert gets to see the opponent's last card, but working under the theory that the expert makes better decisions than his/her opponents it would seem the more decisions made in a hand the bigger the edge to the expert.

So that leaves me to choose between regular Seven Card Stud or Stud Eight or Better. Unfortunately I don't think I have enough experience with split pot games to say whether an expert would have more or less of an edge between these two choices. I would lean pretty heavily towards Eight or Better under the same theory as above that with the more complex decision the expert gains more edge. The variance is likely higher (but I'm not sure that is the case) but over a suitable period of time I believe the expert will have the biggest edge here.

Of course in reality my prerequisite about the quality of games is probably totally wrong. Good Omaha are probably very profitable but too few and far between to keep you busy endlessly for a year while newbie clueless fish are playing Hold 'Em like crazy so that is probably the best game to be playing right now from a practical standpoint.

[Jacob_Gilliam]

In terms of variance, I had always heard that split games (such as omaha8b or stud8b) have lower variance. Although i rarely play omaha, usually just hold em and stud, so i could be wrong.

[AKQJ10]

I think roughly the same question was asked once on 2+2 and the semi-consensus answer was Stud 8/b is the easiest game to take money from bad opponents. Your question doesn't make assumptions about what limits, only that they're the same limits, but my guess is Stud-Eight-or-Better.

[Fredrik]

Whoever cashes in the rake? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[bholdr]

stud /8, no doubt. i am make 3x more (per 100 hands) at stud/8 than hold em, and i am decent at each.

Although, the holdem player would get in many more hands, maybe enough to even it out.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

If x people of equal skill play together long enough (assuming all play at their best all the time), they will all be down 1/x * the total rake.

The gap between expert and average tends to be wider at stud/8 than in other games, so if they aren't playing each other, then the stud/8 player should have the best results.