Been away from the game for 12 years, are low stakes casino games still the same?
Hello everyone
so basically life gets in the way , and I haven't played for 12+years (I know it sounds insane but it is the way it is). Finally I wanna get back to play some poker so I decided to ask you guys here (it took me a while to recall this forum's name LOL)
About me: I was just a straight forward player who barely beat the rakes. For the last 1000 hours I played in the $1/2 games at my local casinos in the year 2011, I made around $3500-4000. So I was making 2BB per hour I guess.
Should I be expecting the same calling stations, maniacs and old nits from 12 years ago in your average casino card rooms or they have gotten better?
Also I just saw a few videos on Youtube, what's with the small betting size nowadays? Like a quarter size bet or even smaller. That was pretty much unheard of 12 years ago.
Thanks everyone for your time
Best regards
KZ
I recognize the screen name from way back in the day when you posted hands fairly regularly.
In my experience playing live, the passage of time isn’t always as important as location. I moved a few times in the last 12 years and I found game quality varied quite a bit when I moved—some better, some worse. So I’d hesitate to comment as I’m not in your location.
Also, Garick—there very well may be a big difference between Greek nationals and Greek immigrants, though my experience with Greek immigrant
Oh my god it's great to see you again Vernon. You have always been a valuable contributor to this forum.
So I played a few hours at the 0.5/1e game and it was a total nitfest. It was so bad that half of the table were old Greek nits, and out of the other half 3 kids were actually watching poker videos while playing. Almost everyone were tight. And most of these people were short-stacked.
It was far worse than any games I had played back then. In the end I won some tiny pots and cashed out about even at the end.
I will check out the 2-5 game later and hopefully the game would be better.
Rake is always an issue but it should be beatable. The rake has increased for me from $7 to $8 but my winrate has not suffered.
Just learn the correct starting hands to play in each position and 3b ranges - and you should have a major edge over any low stakes player.
One thing i've noticed a lot of low stakes players do is open 4 - 5x preflop which is just crazy bad. If they limp a lot and all of a sudden open $20 in a 1/3 or $30 in a 2/5 game they have a pretty big hand so I have avoided a lot of coolers/going broke by just flatting with hands like JJ or QQ vs that sizing. The amount of times they had KK+ and I only lose like $100 or less with QQ is quite astonishing. A lot of poor low stakes players will pretty much tell you what they have if you pay attention.
