Switch from $0.5/1 to $1/2: Opponents worse?

[nickabourisk]

No problem,

I was kinda wondering why people were giving me such a hard time when I obviously came to this site to learn and strategize, not to be criticized for being a relative beginner. Although I must say, the harsher the criticism, the more I'll remember it so in the end, it's probably a +EV situation.

[Rev. Good Will]

Its a conditioned response, every once in a while we get a poster who goes along the lines of "OMFG POKAR IS RIGGED, THEY PLAY SO BAD, YOU CANNOT PLAY A POT WITHOUT GETTING RIVARED"

[malorum]

Playing 1/2 at Pacific means you've failed an intelligence test (involving rake calculations), thats why the players are so bad.

Its really like a low pass IQ filter.

[johnnyrocket]

you want to sit with these players, if you read any of sklansky's books they talk about how you profit whenever a player makes an incorrect call. This would be the case when they are cold-calling raises to your high pocket pairs, exploit this and you will run over them in the long run if you are good. Variance can knock you down quickly at these tables though so be confident and dont let losing sessions carry you away from this easy money.

[nickabourisk]

malorum,

I don't see why you have to insult my intelligence like that (I would easily accept "ignorant"). What correlation is there between someone's ability to do rake calculations and their poker play?

Yes, I agree that the players are very bad (and apologize to everyone for creating this lame thread in the first place, now that I've spent more than a night playing $1/2) but could their poor play perhaps outweigh the effect of larger rake. For instance, I've been running at ~10BB/100 and still consider myself a n00b (I was playing $0.25/0.50 just a month ago and my BR has gone from $20 to ~$1100). Now, I'm not saying this to brag but to prove a point. If a n00b like me can do this at this fishy site, imagine how well one of you could do on Pacific. I can see that if you are playing at a site with 100% RB, then that would be a huge advantage. Do you know of any sites with huge rakebacks? If so, I'd love to find out about them!

[gregorio]

WPEX has no rake. google rakeback and you'll get tons of sites offering rakeback deals, or http://www.rakerebatereview.com/ is a good place to start. (It seems they "are currently working on a major overhaul of the site and we ask you to bear with us for a couple of days until the new version of the site is up." I believe they usually have a fairly comprehensive list of rakeback sites.

10bb/100 means you've been running extremely good or you've hardly played any hands. 2BB/100 is considered a good rate. It may be possible to win more than that at $1/2, but 10BB/100 means you've been getting great cards. Maybe one reason the players suck so much at $1/2 Pacific is that you've had a run of great cards. i'm not saying they don't suck, but there's not way that you're winning 10BB/100 against wihtout a whole lot of luck, which makes other players look bad.

[nickabourisk]

gregorio,

Yes, you're right. I just started playing $1/2 less than a week ago and this is only over a several thousand hand sample so I know that this number is not what the actual winrate will be. However, really great cards help but are not the only contributor to the winrate since these donks will for instance go crazy with T4 on a T55 board in an unraised pot when the big blind raises them on the flop and turn. Basically, many many mistakes are being made and I have had very few downswing days (probably never more than 1 losing day in a row) for the past month. I mean, these players are horrible. So what I'm saying is, I think ~5BB/100 is definitely maintainable here.

Again, I apologize for whining (in the creation of this post) about poor play by others. With knowledge of expectation value, I never should have posted this. I think it was late at night, and the first couple hours after my transition. I love playing against them!