Some questions about live NL cash games

[tarath]

A friend of mine was suggesting that playing some of the live games in vegas/LA might be a nice way to make a lot of easy cash but he's not that experienced and I had some questions I thought some of you guys might be able to answer.

1. What stakes do you have to play at live to match the winrate of a good 1/2 online player?

2. When you play live since you can only play 1 table you have to play for a lot more money to make a comparable hourly wage. This has got to make the variance really really brutal relative to the amount your earning per hour? How massive a bankroll do you need to earn as much as a online 1-2 player.

3. How bad are the players. If I stepped in to a live 5/10 game in vegas would the competition be softer or tougher than the 1/2 games on stars. What about the 2/4 games on stars.

4. How much time did you have to spend learning to deal with hiding your own physical tells, reading the tells of others, and the other things that are specific to the live game?


Thanks for your answers.

[Wolfram]

1. There's no way to answer this without knowing your winrate and your multitable frequency. A good live player probably has a higher edge in live games than a good online player (though this is debateable), but you get way fewer hands pr/hr (around 20-30 depending on players/dealers).

2. I find that the variance can be managable because when you play live it's usually much easier to get action on your monsters. One example is sets. Raising preflop w/small pp's isn't really needed because it's so much more easy to build pots postflop (people fold even less live than online). And in many cases people aren't as aggro live as online, so you won't be put in as many tough marginal spots.

3. They are horrible. The minimum stake for NL live is 1/2, 1/3 or even 2/5 (at bellagio). So the complete noobs are forced to play these stakes. People make huge mistakes preflop and even bigger ones postflop. I'm not quite sure how it compares because I only have experience with 1/2, 1/3 and a little 2/5. All were very soft though.

4. Not that much. At first, you get super exited and nervous when you have AA/KK preflop, and when you flop nuts, but after a while it'll barely register. Just don't do anything fancy like talking to much/to little. Mainly I just shut up whenever I'm in a hand.

If you are observant and pay attention to hands that you're not playing then you'll start to pick up on people after a while. It's just an experience thing. Just remember that live tells aren't really that huge and should never be the primary reason for why you make a certain play. Usually what people do is much more important than how they do it. One tip though, if you're trying to pick up on tells, watch peoples hands more than their face.

[w33ktight]

Used to play a lot of live so I'll give this a shot

1. In a live 200nl game a good player would be happy to average $10-$20/hour over a lot of hands. The rake really kills you, and its tough to get a lot of hands in.

2. Yeah, in live poker you don't play as many hands, so whereas online you might play a 5k hand session and lose 4 buyins over the course of a day, 5k hands takes a LOT longer to play live, so you might run bad for a month, 2 months, etc.

Doesn't matter how massive a bankroll you have, someone who can beat 1/2 online is always going to make more than someone who beats 1/2 live.

Beat: I have a pretty big database of when I used to play 1/2 live and you could definitely beat the hourly rate just playing nl50 online. When I run bad online I play 2/5 live, Seems like the hourly rate is decent and one could make some bread playing it. I would recommend at LEAST a 20k bankroll for it, obviously way more if you are playing for a living.


3. Live 5/10 in vegas will be MUCH MUCH MUCH softer than the average 200 or 400 game on stars. Live games generally tend to play much deeper than online and the players in general are WAY worse.

4. I dunno man just try not to look like a huge fish. Things to avoid: Sunglasses, poker books at table, etc.

GL man, live poker is so fun