How difficult is it to become a good limit player?

[jkamowitz]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah are we talking online multitabling? A 20/40 6 max online player is going to make like 300+ per hour with rakeback.

-DeathDonkey

[/ QUOTE ]

I was referring to live play actually. (and yes, I think whether one pays rake/time/timepots does affect the hourly rate considerably)

[nineinchal]

A good player playing 20/40 can make 15-25 dollars/hour. A great player can make 50-60/hour.

Someone told me recently "The best player at the table makes a bb/hour, the second best makes half of that, the third breaks even and everyone else loses."

[/ QUOTE ]

An expert player earns an average of one BB an hour. That has been my experience playing for over three years. This is discussed in either "Gambling Theory and Other Topics" or "Poker Essays" by Mason Malmuth. I recall his quote about this, it goes something like this "If you stack eight red chips on the table, that's what you will earn per hour if you play 20/40, stack 4 chips, that's expert play at 10/20." That has been my experience on line. I play the live games on Saturday, since I have found the worst players at the largest cardroom, playing over their head, playing too many hands, and going to far with them. I believe this is about the only way I can manipulate my earn rate to be greater. The downside to this is that the terrible players do get lucky. I will know more about this in another year, since I have only been showing up in live games for a few weeks consistently.

[sweetjazz]

From personal experience, I think the hardest thing about limit poker is to play well on a consistent basis, particularly when you are taking way the worst of it in terms of the distribution of cards. Many good players have mediocre results and many very good players have merely good results because of their inability to either play well or sit out when they are running bad.

[bottomset]

[ QUOTE ]
"Also, what makes a great limit hold'em player? "

winning lots of money?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it's being the last monkey to throw poo

[tolbiny]

[ QUOTE ]

A good player playing 20/40 can make 15-25 dollars/hour. A great player can make 50-60/hour.

Someone told me recently "The best player at the table makes a bb/hour, the second best makes half of that, the third breaks even and everyone else loses."

[/ QUOTE ]

An expert player earns an average of one BB an hour. That has been my experience playing for over three years. This is discussed in either "Gambling Theory and Other Topics" or "Poker Essays" by Mason Malmuth. I recall his quote about this, it goes something like this "If you stack eight red chips on the table, that's what you will earn per hour if you play 20/40, stack 4 chips, that's expert play at 10/20." That has been my experience on line. I play the live games on Saturday, since I have found the worst players at the largest cardroom, playing over their head, playing too many hands, and going to far with them. I believe this is about the only way I can manipulate my earn rate to be greater. The downside to this is that the terrible players do get lucky. I will know more about this in another year, since I have only been showing up in live games for a few weeks consistently.

[/ QUOTE ]

The poker essays book is out of date, it was written at a time when 20/40 was among the bigger games available and "expert" players were significantly worse and player pools were much smaller. Expert play at 20-40 should be in the 2-3 BB/hr range, but your not going to see much of that around as most players capable will be playing the larger games.

[Heir_Aparent]

note before post: all comments regarding toughness of limits is w/ respect to Stars games, all shorthanded

The biggest adjustment u will prob have to make right away is to the nastiness of LHE variance. It is well known that you are much more handcuffed when it comes to LHE, even SH, and sometimes variance comes in many more forms than just being coolered.

but if your a winning 2k NL player, you should have no problem beating 5-10 right away. 10-20 takes some adjustments, but its mostly just increased aggresion and slightly better play all around. There are still fish there. The same goes for 15-30 for the most part (good 30-60+ players who wont play as low as 10-20 sometiems play the 15-30 games).

As was mentioned before (I think by Ddonkey) poker theory and hand selection is in fact quite important at these midlimits. If you do this well and hand-read/value bet at a good rate (which id imagine someone of your experience is capable of doing) you will be able to beat these games quickly, though prob not for a substantial BB/100.

IMO after this is when it gets tough. 50/100 has beatable games, but the play becomes MUCH more agressive (especially 100/200 +) and hand reading becomes tougher. I still think with good game selection 50/100 is beatable by a good solid agressive player, but the winrate will be small, and getting to the point where u can beat it easily will take hard work.

I dont have a lot of experience past 50/100, mostly because the games jsut get that much harder. The variance is wild and nasty- it becomes easy to get fooled into thinking your a favorite, when your really not. The edges just get a lot smaller in general and its just hard to get comfortable to not only the tougher hand reading, constant adjustments that need to be made, but also to the big money swings. 100/200 SH can yield bad runs that amount to 60k+ especially when you first test yourself in that limit.


basically overall i agree with the consensus. fairly easy (if ur experienced in NL or other forms of poker) to get decent/good, but very hard to get great.

[Heir_Aparent]

I missed 30/60 in that post. It's substantially tougher than 15/30, with the occasignal fish or two in them. It really varies because sometimes you will be 4 handed for a while with 2 or 3 fish and the game is great. However, if u play whatever game is running its not always gonna be so sweet. If you play the regulars its much tougher.

[catcher193]

you can't go all in.

[Abbaddabba]

[ QUOTE ]
The poker essays book is out of date, it was written at a time when 20/40 was among the bigger games available and "expert" players were significantly worse and player pools were much smaller. Expert play at 20-40 should be in the 2-3 BB/hr range, but your not going to see much of that around as most players capable will be playing the larger games.


[/ QUOTE ]

lawl.

3BB/hour is about 10BB/100.

Tables that good do not exist for any extended period of time beyond the play chip level.

[tolbiny]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The poker essays book is out of date, it was written at a time when 20/40 was among the bigger games available and "expert" players were significantly worse and player pools were much smaller. Expert play at 20-40 should be in the 2-3 BB/hr range, but your not going to see much of that around as most players capable will be playing the larger games.


[/ QUOTE ]

lawl.

3BB/hour is about 10BB/100.

Tables that good do not exist for any extended period of time beyond the play chip level.

[/ QUOTE ]

3BB/hr is closer to 8BB/100 than it is to 10BB/100, especially with auto card shufflers. Expert online players pull in 2-3 BB/100, and live players are granted a vast amount more information to use, enjoy a better fish/good player ratio due to a lack of multitabling, and have more time to make their decisions.