Moving up to bigger games

Tell us you're not ready for bigger games while telling us you want to play bigger games. Yes, it's a bad decision to sit out bomb pots in games that have bomb pots. Yes, it's a stupid rule to let people rathole by table changing on the pretense that 1/2 is a different game from 1/3. When people don't give you any action, give them the obviously it's my right spiel.

1. Essentially yes, everyone who wants to be in the bomb pot pitches in and time is taken from the pot. If you don't want to play the bomb pot you don't have to, you'll just pay time normally and sit out the bomb pot hand.

2. This is pretty bad etiquette imo, and given how similar 1/2 and 1/3 are it's lowkey a bit of an angle shoot. Regs might think you're easier to bluff when playing deep but I wouldn't expect any major changes other than them maybe being shitty to you if given the chance. Keep in mind, if you're a winner at the games you play, you're relying on those people making those snarky comments to still want to spend their paychecks at the poker table week after week.

If the entire table has agreed then yes the winner of the bomb pot will pay the time for that half hour.

There are also players who don't want to play bomb pots and pay their time separately.

And sometimes there are no bomb pots and everyone just pays their own time.

I will play depending on the bomb pot variant. I actually don't like the double board plo bomb pots because that one hand literally takes like a third of the down. It's stupid to me. If we were playing a raked game I wouldn't care.

But in time games I only like one board or maybe two board nlhe because people are terrible at those generally and they're not too slow.

And yes people will generally frown upon hit and runners. It's your decision and all that, but know that poker is a social game and there are considerations outside of what's happening this very second.

There's a 2/5 game in my local card-room that blows up on weekends, with the main regulars agitating to put the $10 straddle on every hand, and play $25 bomb pots every dealer change.

I've played in the game, and feel like I can hold my own with the regs, skill-wise, but the variance can destroy a bankroll. The last time I played with them, there was a waiting list of people trying to get into the game, but one guy at the table refused to buy in for more than the minimum, refused to straddle, and refused to play the bomb pots.

The regs were relentlessly brow-beating this guy every time he went broke and re-bought for the minimum. I was sort of ambivalent about it, but even I started to think this guy was just being a dick by not giving up his seat and moving to another table that was just a simple 2/5 game.

Thank God he was there, because it helped open my eyes to the fact that I really didn't need to be playing in that game, with my limited bankroll. Now when the regs invite me to join, I just politely say, "Thanks, but I don't have the bankroll for that game. I'll stop by and see how you're doing in a bit. Have fun. Put a beat on Rod or Max for me."

I was in another 2/5 game, sitting next to another reg, who told me he was getting ready to table-change, because a couple of players at the other end of the table were notorious for rat-holing their profits by table-changing frequently. It seemed ironic for him to table-change because the other guys were known to do that, but he had a point - any money those guys win gets taken out of play, and can't be won back, so eff them, and move to a different table, where the money will stay where it belongs - on the table.

While there may not be any rules to prevent you from being bad for the game, I think it will hurt your long term EV. The players who recognize you will stop paying you off. That's what I do. If I see a guy who never straddles, and table changes frequently, and only VPIP's 1 hand per hour, I'm NEVER paying that guy off. I'll over-fold and slow play him, just to break him, and if he's running good, I'll just table change.

Lol so what, you had like a $1200 stack (smaller?) at 1/3 and got so scared you changed down in stakes, but now you wanna buy into a $2500 max buyin game?

Sounds like youre going for the ol reverse robinhood, steal from the poor to give to the rich.

the browbeating regs can eat **** and die. Its insane to me how obnoxious the pros are demanding that the amateurs lose money to them faster. Just totally worthless insufferable parasites.

Can't speak about Encore, but the room you are playing MTS is pretty small. When I've been there, there is just one table running it. There's no hiding if you are going to keep playing. You'll have to just accept the comments or stay longer. Keep in mind that when you leave and you happen to have the biggest stack, they can't match it.

1/3 mts and a 1/2 cap game is a huge difference. Also op is probably a rec so the ones making snarky comments are probably nit regs… f-k them

Yeah I missed that it was mts, def two very different games in how big they play.

I should have added that "the guy" is actually a fairly obnoxious reg kid, who I've seen angle rec-fish. He wears a mask and won't engage anyone in conversation at the table. He always min-buys, never straddles, and is the type of player who sucks the life out of a game

The regs are just trying to run a fun and action oriented 2/5 game, in a large room with a half dozen or more 2/5 games going on a busy weekend night, and this a-hole kid wouldn't even agree to a table change. He just stubbornly sat there, nitting it up in what was otherwise an action game. Every time he went broke, he'd take 10-15 minutes to walk around before buying more chips and sitting down again.

Just got back from week in Vegas. It's only my anecdote but my experience was that the 2/5 and 5/10 games were orders of magnitude tougher than the 1/3 game. Played at Belaggio. Chess versus checkers. 1/3 had one pro max (and usually running bad). 2/5 was maybe 2 or 3 out of 8 pros. 5/T was half pros (my guess only).

I never broke a sweat at 1/3, but the others were just nerve-wracking for me at least. Prior trips last few years were similar (played at Aria and Encore). Max buy-in at Belaggio was 100 bb at 2/5. For a rec this is much easier to navigate. YMMV, just my $0.02.

I mean i know the exact type of player, and no they arent “just trying to run a fun” game. I dont care who the guy is, or what he does, if you whine about how someone else is or isnt spending THEIR money (for example, straddling), get bent. If he wants to play there, thats his right. The pros want straddles because they make more in higher stakes games, and they think because they are there often they feel entitlement about the game running the way they like, despite the fact that its the exact opposite of that.

They aren't though. I 've been trying to explain it in various threads and it's like I am screaming into the void.

Looking at the pop stats in my tournament database, I see that the population is losing at a clip of 2.74BB when the effective stack size is between 90-110BB. Population is losing at a clip of 1.01BB/100 when the effective stack size is between 40-60BB.

Given those stats, if population played 2/5 for 100BB, they would be losing 14 dollars per hundred, whereas if they played 5/10 for 50BB, they would be losing 10 dollars per hundred.

Maybe the sample is influenced by me not playing 50BB stacks well, but I can't imagine that you are earning more money if you turn the game into 5/10 with smaller stacks. I cannot imagine that regs are capable of playing 50BB stacks better either.

You probably do increase variance in terms of the money you win or lose though.

Not trying to drag out a pointless debate, only seeking understanding...

These aren't "pros". These are guys who play once or twice per week. They're not grinding out a living playing 2/5. They just like having a lively game. I'm not a pro. I'm a once per week player, and even I found it a bit annoying after a while.

If it was a small room with only two or three 2/5 games going, and if the other games were terrible, I could see not wanting to change tables. But this is Parx, one of the biggest rooms on the east coast, with at least a half dozen 2/5 tables going on weekends.

The point I was making is that I realized I wasn't comfortable playing in that game, because it plays bigger than 2/5, and I don't really need the variance impact on my bankroll. I think that's a mature decision. It would likewise be a mature decision for this kid to table change to a regular 2/5 game, rather than stubbornly sit in this particular game, which is playing bigger.

Even if it's his right, I have to think it's not good for his win-rate, if he's buying in for the minimum, and not straddling, and not playing the bomb pots, but everyone else is, including the recs at the table. Everyone at the table is going to get fed up, and it's not hard to figure out what his short-stack strat is going to be. No one is going to pay him off, which is why he kept going broke repeatedly.

This isn't like some random rec-fish coming in to take their shot and buying in short. Most regs would have a bit more understanding in that scenario. This kid is a regular in this room. And I have personally seen him angle another player, a true rec-fish, so he's not inexperienced when it comes to understanding game dynamics.

He may be exercising his right to play wherever the room seats him, but he's also being a total dick by refusing to table change, knowing that there's a waiting list to get into this particular game.

Casinos have mostly moved to 200 BB stacks. Because they stupidly listen to the pros, who want to play deep stacked! But they also want the blinds larger! They just want to trick casuals into playing for more money.

And docvail, maybe hes a dick, but nothing he is doing abou this is dickish and the browbeaters certainly are dicks. As an aside, if these regs wanna play $10 blinds, PLAY FIVE TEN. ITS EVEN TIME RAKED FOR GODS SAKE. Ask yourself, why arent they playing 5/10? The answer is pretty obvious.

You need insane samples to distinguish something like winrate. Fwiw short stack fish are losing significantly more in my cash game db than 80-120bb stacks over millions of hands

It's definitely way better for pros, so maybe rooms should ban it

Do you have proof? I am not in front of my computer, it each sample that I used was more than one million hands.

Either way, it doesn’t make sense. The smaller the stacks there are in terms of big blinds, the smaller your win rate in terms of bb/100. Think of this.

Our golden standard for live poker is 10 bb/hour which is 33bb/100.I o you can win 33bb/100 because usually stacks in live poker are 200 bb. If the the average stack sue was something you encounter in tourneys like 15, it’s impossible to win ata 33bb/100 because this means that you are stacking someone twice every 100 hands. But if you think of your wins in terms of the fraction of the effective stacks, then it makes sense if you win anywhere from a fourth to a fifth of the effective stack… if you are good. And that corrwspnds with what I am seeing in my database.

Skipping the drama, and going straight to OP...

Why? I would think deeply about why you want to try this.
I know a few bad 1-2 players who went on a hot streak and then wanted to try 5-10 to say they could and got crushed for 1000s.
If it's because you think playing a 50bb strat. at 5-10 will win more than your 100bb strat. at 1-3 then go for it, but this isn't a video game and you don't get level up points for playing bigger games.

The dealer or players will explain how paying time works, you can probably get out of bomb pots for a short amount of time if you say you don't know how to play them and you'll agree to donate your share of time ... but that's probably close to playing them and way overfolding, and you probably can't do it long term.

In general I don't care about any of this anymore, I've lost count of the number of times someone has won a giant pot against me and immediately pulled out a rack. I've certainly left a casino/game before because of stack concerns.
However if the 1/3 game in NH has a small player base, and you want to play in it a lot it might be worth not doing it as often as you'd like. Also 6x starting stack means something very different if you bought in for $150 or $500.

The room doesn't spread 5/10 only 10/10, with no cap.

Okay, into the drama...

Your stats. were for tournaments, and his were for cash. I can believe it's the opposite.

In cash people will still play 87s with less than 50bb and only realize there's no future implied odds when they are facing an all in on the flop or turn.
Super often see people play 1-2 with $100 and call off most of it and reload, then hit and have $200-$300 but not understand that when they call KTo/AJo with $100 hoping to hit they don't have to worry as much about domination and now with $300 they are torching.

The big problem for cash is the cap on rake, if you are consistently getting all in and the rake cap. isn't met then it's going to be a bad time for everyone.

As for straddles/blinds (let me get my soapbox out) ... I think they are mostly bad for everyone, but everyone likes/understands them a lot easier than ante's or whatever which actually do what people say they want.

The bad regs. think it's good for the game, but it mostly makes the game worse and stops new players turning up.

The gamblers can think it's good because it "creates action" or whatever, but it mostly does the opposite and they adjust improperly.

For the best regs. it can be great if the gamblers are asking for it, but even that's a fine line because it's harder to get rid of once the gambler has gone and now the game is just worse for no reason.

It's kind of like bomb pots, people think it'll be great because everyone sees a flop with 100% ranges so they'll be a lot of action ... but actual strategy is to be horrifically tight.

The reason I used tournaments is because they are played in all sorts of stack sizes and I would have had a bigger sample for smaller stacks. I haven’t looked at my cash database and can’t now, because I am at the casino. I am willing to bet that if I look at the population stats of my cash database, I will find the same dynamic. Poker is poker. The bigger your stack size, the bigger the achievable win rates tend to be. Like, when I look at winrates for 200bb, they are bigger than win rates for 100bb. That’s why big win rates are achievable in live poker. You often play 200bb deep.

I also don’t think that 99.99% of regs can play 50bb stacks well, because I don’t think that anyone has studied that stack size. It’s also tricky to play. Like the RFI ranges for 50bb are different and tighter than the RFI for 100bb. who knows how tighter you have to play because of the rake? It’s also tricky to play, because it requires hands that make strong top pairs, but you will often find yourself in marginal spots in which you won’t know if you should get it in with TPGK or not.

Last but not least, when you play 50bb stacks, the rake is bigger as a proportion of the pot, so it’s eating at your win rate more. Like I if you win one pot for 200 bb and you pay 7 dollars in rake is better than if you win 2 100 dollar pots and you pay 14 dollars in rake.

So I think this obsession with doubling the blinds is mistaken and driven by people who ran well in these conditions.

For the record, i agree with you that AT MINIMUM the winrate likely isnt very different if the stack depth stays the same. But I do think the typical $5/10/25 with straddle game gets $5k-10k deep FAST.

But the rake is the wild part. Straddle 2/5/10 is raked WAY WAY WAY more than 5/T at basically every casino cuz 5/T is time raked.

And yes, as illeterate alluded to, theoretically you should play tighter in straddle games. Button raises tighter, and sb plays almost nothing.

You could observe the 5/10 at Encore if you're unsure about it. I've seen that 1/3 MTS play like 5/10. Who cares what people say at the poker table? I've seen people in the NH cardrrooms go south just switching between 1/2 games. Who cares? People come and go at the table.

FWIW, I played 1/2 with a guy who likes to play the 5/10 at the Encore. He was down $20,000 in one week at the 5/10 game. He wasn't good. That's why he was playing 1/2.

He lectured me about how not shoving KK pre-flop for $250 on the button over a $30 raise from a complete beginner spew monkey was just terrible. I explained that I was happy that the guy called off his stack over two streets with a gutshot (like I knew he would), even though he hit. This guy couldn't understand that playing a $600 pot against a opponent with a gutshot was a more profitable line than taking down $30 pre-flop. So, there's plenty of rec dollars in the 5/10 game.

play if game looks good lol? id try to time your shot around a time when game will be softer than average - some combination of holiday / weekend / graveyard

Appreciate some of the feedback. Don't understand the hate for wanting to sit at a 5/10 game with 500 or 1k. Never going to be someone who would be buying in for more than one other bullet max.

Also in regards to the 1/3 MTS comments. I bought in for 300, and ran the stack up to 2100. By the time I had returned to the table several players topped off to be within the 2k range. Not something I was comfortable with. I will admit in hindsight that I feel that my better option would have been to just leave vs moving down to 1/2.