how beatable

[VBCurtis]

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Good place to ask this:

5/10, I play average-to-well.

5% up to $10 cap rake.

Average competition is 6 donkeys, 2 VERY weak tights, and 1 other solid player. This would be a conservative estimate aswell.

Average pot is ~$100.

Beatable? I tentatively say yes, but would like some expert confirmation.

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In this case, the rake is essentially uncapped, so avg pot determines average rake. If the pot avg's $100, rake is around $5/hand. You mention no jackpot drop, and tipping $1/hand is a reasonable assumption-- $6/hand in costs. At a typically soft 5/10 game, we can use similar numbers to above- a good but not expert player could make 8BB/100 before rake. The rake in this case is under 5 BB/100, leaving you 1 BB/hr ($10) as potential profit. This game is much easier to beat, since you only need 5 BB/100 pre-rake to be a breakeven player. Note that is avg pot is $120, you pay $7/hand, and winrate may not go up (the extra aggression can become hard to deal with, and isn't necessarily all dead money); this could lead to winrate dropping to $3/hr range.

When every bet that goes in is raked, super-thin value bets lose their value, because the house takes 5% of both the bet and the call-- you bet $10 to win $19. This can make lots of what would be good decisions online -EV in your game.

If you play online, I suggest you use 25/50 cent full ring as a gauge for typical 6/12 or under live games. I play the 25 stakes to get practice extracting the most out of that level of player, and also use my winrates (smallish sample, 12k hands) to guide my calculations above. I believe 25-50 is beatable for 9BB/100 before rake, while the game is generally tighter than my local 4/8; this is where I get my estimates for 9-12BB/100 for 4/8 and lower. Your 5/10 game sounds like my usual conditions.
-Curtis