I had a dream last night that I was in Vegas on one of the biannual blogger trips, only this time, instead of the relative comfort of The Castle, The IP, or The Orleans, we were staying in one, huge specially-designed-for-us room in the basement of the Red Rock Casino that had it’s own Pai Gow table. It resembled an army barracks, the way the beds were bunked and lined up by the dozen, though it maintained the same sleek, modern aesthetic of the actual Red Rock rooms even though there were 60 of us staying in it. Falstaff had the bunk above me in the dream and he snored. Loudly.
When I woke up from the dream, I sat up too quickly and something in my neck cracked. It didn’t feel good, and I currently can’t twist my head to the left or lean it back too far. I wish I had one of Pauly’s muscle relaxers about right now.
I didn’t play a ton of poker over the weekend, save for a couple of tourneys and a few hours in the total waste of time low stakes limit cash games on Full Tilt. A friend practically grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me on Saturday night when he saw me playing $2-4 limit. I’d won about $200 since coming home from Vegas, but had just lost back about $180 of that win.
“No one can beat those games! Even a professional can’t beat $2-4 online because of the rake! Stop wasting your time!”
He’s totally right, you know. I’m a fundamentally solid limit hold’em player and I still have barely broken even at $3-6 and below online. I’ve always told myself that I was doing the right thing and playing inside my bankroll, but without bonuses or rakeback, these games are really a fool’s errand. A loose-aggressive player might be able to make money in them in the short term, but a tight-aggressive player like me is just going to see her big hands cracked over and over again until I want to jump off a building. The online sites don’t want to tell you this because that’s where they make a ton of money– off the low-limit “grinders” that populate these games, generating a ton of rake but still running in place when it comes to profitability. I’ve seen the same screen names in these games for months, even years, and it’s little wonder they’re all still playing $2-4. I’m just as much of an idiot as they are. And I’d probably faint right here and now if someone presented me with the dollar amount of rake I’ve paid to Full Tilt and Poker Stars over the last three years. I’d estimate it at three times the size of my current bankroll.
My current bankroll… well… it’s a lot healthier than it was before the two weeks I spent doing well in Vegas at the end of April, but still very short of supporting the limits I’m comfortable with playing live. But if I’m ever going to get it there, I have to keep taking those shots at $6-12. To play the $6-12 with the dramatic swings that are typical of live Southern California action, I’d ideally want about 8 grand behind me. With less than 20% of that… well, I’m running a serious risk of going broke if I happen to run bad for even 3-4 sessions.
Thanks to this conversation with this friend, a poker player himself, I’ve come to a tough realization when it comes to my own future with poker. Like everything in this game we love, it’s a risk vs. reward dilemma:
Is it worth risking the small bankroll I have for a shot at finally playing limits that actually have the potential to make me real money? And, in the event that I do go broke, am I able to live without playing for a significant stretch of time?
If I don’t take shots, I’ll likely maintain the amount I have right now and continue to regularly win and lose this same thousand or so dollars like I’ve done for the last year or so. And anyone who reads me knows how frustrating that’s been. If I do take shots, there is at least the possibility of finally getting out of this rut and playing at limits where there is at least the potential to beat the rake. But if I do lose it all…through Commerce-style suckouts, calling down too much with middle pair, or getting rolled in the parking lot by thugs at Hollywood Park, it would likely spell the end of poker for me, at least in the short to mid term. I’ve gone broke enough times to know just how utterly low it makes me feel. I don’t want to feel that way again.
I’ve been offered stakes before and I’ve always turned them down. This is absolutely something I have to do on my own. I’m a stubborn bitch with somewhat of an ego when it comes to intellectual things. And I consider poker an intellectual pursuit.
The earlier editions of all those old-time Sklansky books always advocated not playing limit hold’em at stakes below $10-20 because the games were unbeatable due to the rake. All of that wisdom supposedly changed with the dawn of the online game, where players could learn at micro-limits and then move up. But moving up was always the objective. I haven’t done that. Perhaps in 2003 on Party Poker there was a fortune just waiting to be mined at $2-4 and $3-6, but those days are long gone. The online game has changed. Players are smarter and have more information at their disposal. No-limit cash games are still a worthy endeavor online with plenty of donks to spread the wealth around, but I’m not a no-limit cash player and I don’t think I’ll ever try to be one until the money doesn’t matter to me anymore. That, and playing NL cash online is about as fascinating to me as watching CSPAN-2.
Perhaps the more things change, the more they actually stay the same? Or at least, revert?
It’s a tricky problem. I miss 2004 and 2005, when there were thousands of dollars in bonus money to help build a roll.
I wouldn’t try to take too many shots, just because limit poker can be devastating if things don’t go your way. I’ve come to believe that you need a larger bankroll than 300 BB to survive in limit, and it doesn’t sound like taking shots will get you that high anytime soon.
So…if it were me, I would either keep grinding or accept a stake. Staking isn’t that bad, if you just need it to build a roll to play in the games you want to play.
I play on-line Limit poker at even smaller stakes than you do; if the blinds have a digit to the left of the decimal point, it’s out of my range. I’m lucky to break even in the long run, but I keep playing because I enjoy the game and the intellectual pursuit, as you put it. The rake may be one reason why I don’t come out ahead more often, along with my only average skills.
So the question is, am I playing to make a profit, or am I playing because it’s a fun and challenging pastime? The answer for me has to be the latter. The way I see it is, there are two types of poker players: those who play for a living, and those who play for entertainment. In the second category, there are those who try to play well enough to avoid throwing their money away, and those who don’t. I can’t imagine ever playing for a living, but I hope I can play well enough to keep myself afloat without having to continually take money out of my "real world" account. If I can do that, I will gain a nice feeling of accomplishment. That may sound wimpy to some, but we each have to find our place in the scheme of things, and for now, that’s mine. I hope you find yours with a minimum of heartache.
That wasn’t a dream. I do snore. Loudly. Heh. I snorted yogurt when I read that.
I disagree that you can’t make money at the 2/4 limit games. I’ve been playing 2/4 and 3/6 limit(both full ring and shorthanded) for 2 years pretty casually and have a decent winrate at both levels. I take shots at higher limits but I’m a casual player who plays for fun and a little extra $$ each month. Sure the rake is higher but the quality of player is much lower.
Thanks for your comment, Lumpy. I have to disagree with you though. A "decent" winrate at those games is barely covering your rake. If you have rakeback and multi-table, that is another thing entirely. I do believe it’s possible to profit multitabling these games WITH rakeback, but playing only one or two tables without it is something akin to being on a hamster wheel. Or playing a video game.
Put it this way. If our winrates were really "decent" after 2 years at those levels, wouldn’t both of us have moved up by now?
If I played more, I’d take shots. But the reason I stay at the lower limits is because they profitable enough to let me do things I want with a minimal ouch factor.
Eventually, I’ll make the $200 and $400 buy in games my staple, but my first reaction to getting stacked at those levels shouldn’t be to turn my laptop into modern art against a wall.
OK I’ll break it down to numbers.
I play about 400 hands/hr of 2/4 with a winrate of 3BB/100 over about 50k hands. That works out to $48/hr. No rakeback included but definitely multitabling. If we throw out multitabling then I completely agree.
Also most of this play is shorthanded. I can’t maintain a 3BB/100 winrate at full ring.
Exactly– 3 BB/100 is a pretty spectacular winrate for limit hold’em, but I believe it’s simply not sustainable in today’s full ring online 2-4 game. 4 tabling shorthanded is an entirely different animal.
I know a lot of people enjoy the 6-max games and they tend to be populated by worse players overall, but shorthanded LHE has never suited me, my bankroll, or my style of play.
Good luck to you though, and keep crushin’.
Make the move to SH. I hated it and it didn’t suit my game either but the players are just awful. I got used to it and now I can’t go back to full ring. I was in the exact same boat as you. After the UIGEA and then Neteller the full ring games just died.