Finding profit as you move up.

Think about it like chess. If you are an 2200 ELO player, you'll win say 99% of the time against anyone playing chess "for fun" ... even if they've studied a lot. However if you play a 2400 ELO player you probably have 1% chance of winning a game.

It's kind of the same with poker, except instead of 99/1 split it's more like 60/40 or 55/45. This can be mentally crushing because you can believe that you are much better but still lose a lot, on the other hand it is great because nobody plays chess for money when they are 1% but lots of people play poker for money when they are 45%.

Your question also kind of implies that you think poker ELO caps at 1000 or something, where there isn't much to learn after the basics ... that would be a wrong thought.

I think the people you see reg battling are probably a combination of things going on.

Some people know they're slight losers and want the challenge and experience to learn and improve themselves.

Others know or perceive they have some type of edge.

And mixed into all of this is that there are no other games they are interested in playing. Like a 20k or 40k nl guy is not interested in playing 1knl even though they know they'd crush everyone.

And then you also have dynamics where regs playing A game you won't make any profit, but if they tilt their C game is like that of a whale. So sometimes people play just waiting for opportunities like that to occur because maybe their edge is in the quality of their B and C games vs the other regs.

By definition, if you’re sitting at a table of all better players, you don’t find profits (instead, you find another game).

If you mean this in a more general sense of how do we win when playing against competent (comparably skilled) players, it’s by identifying whatever it is they are doing that isn’t optimal (even “good” players make lots of mistakes) and then adjusting accordingly to exploit them.

As long as you can basically hang eith the regs and there are a few recreational players that you easily beat, 3 recs at a 9 hnaded table can easily be enough so that the other 6 players are winning.

But part of it is that you have to know how to play the regs/pros to at least break even vs them. You notice they aren't paying off as easily. Well, that means you need to be incorporating bluffs. The reason is two fold. First of all, you straight up profit when you get your opponents to fold the winning hand, and second, if you have a reputation for bluffing, you are more likely to get paid off when you have it.

It's a bigger game. Fewer fish, maybe, but the fish are bigger. Bigger pots to win. Also, less variance, because fewer fish making bad plays and winning anyway.

Not to say it's not worth asking the question. I see vloggers discussing the difficulty in increasing their hourly rate in a tougher game at higher stakes vs a softer game at lower stakes.

My circle of poker-playing friends includes guys who play 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, and some 10/10. I hear about guys who were destroying 2/5 getting crushed at 10/10 before dropping back down and playing 2/5 again. I've seen guys get crushed at 2/5 and drop down to 1/3, and guys get crushed at 1/3 drop down to 1/2.

I've mostly been playing 2/5 the last few months. My experience so far is that it's harder to find a very soft 2/5 game, but even a reasonably soft 2/5 is more profitable than all but the softest 1/3.

Everyone who you run into at a 1/3,2/5,5/10 game is exploitable, reg or no reg so there's money to be made. I do think with the amount of effort/intelligence it takes to dominate say the 5/10 game you're better off trying to exploit a different industry, as poker seems to cap income fairly low these days.

I have some good news for you. When you move up, the players are just as bad. The only difference is they have more money to gamble with so the player are the same but with much deeper stacks.

If you are a good player, you are not going to break even against the other good players, and they aren't going to break even against you. The rake is the winner.

The money comes from the bad players. If there aren't any in your game, find another game. Move down if you have to.

I wouldn't assume the players are better. There's plenty of idiots with money at every stake. Play your game.

Good bread.

As someone moving to 2/5 from 1/3 I'm finding it to be a bit of a power gap. People often say our casinos 2/5 game is the toughest they have seen. Right now I'm just treading water. The exploits seem much much tighter.

At 1/3 I think about 90% of players are so far out of balance that the exploits are huge and so it might well be more profitable, especially because it also gets deep sometimes.

At our 2/5 we have one asian maniac kid who will blow 2k like its nothing. A bunch of guys bluffing at high frequency as well. One guy who has rote memorized the computer lines in everything so hes very face up and over confident. Its also a very aggressive game. So I'm learning to adjust to that.

Played 2/5 last night, at a pretty tough table. Thought about changing tables, but I was running good and there was a lot of money on the table in this game. I've changed tables more frequently since moving up to 2/5 from 1/3, and don't often find that a new table is any easier.

Walked by a 1/3 game on my way to use the men's, and saw a guy I know with what looked like $2k in front of him. I'd seen him come in just a few hours earlier. He's a bit of a luckbox, but still, it made me think of this discussion, and wonder if it wouldn't be more profitable to grind it out in an easier game at lower stakes.

No easy answer, I guess, until you put in the time and measure your results.

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Poker profits come from worse players. If you don’t know who the worse players are…

I’m confused by a couple of the responses. Are people actually saying that the players aren’t better as you move up? Are the better players not moving up in stakes?

I think 2-5 definitely has a lot more pros and regulars that study the game, fewer complete novices, and even the nits play better and are more aggressive. If there is a 5-10 game in the room players will sometimes sit in 2-5 games while waiting for a seat at 5-10. Those players won’t be in a 1-3 game.

I do see more reckless gamblers at 2-5 though. Probably less OMC types too (but more tight players that try much harder to improve than the average OMC).

Generally speaking yes up to a certain point. It really depends though.
I would say it's probably true most of the time comparing 1/2 to 5/10.
But after that it's difficult to say.

I thought 1/3 would be different than 1/2. At first, it seemed like the game played differently / better. After a while, I realized it was just in my head, mental noise from the stress of "moving up". 1/2 and 1/3 are only incrementally different, mostly because the worse a players is, the more he'll gravitate towards a game with a lower buy-in.

I thought 2/5 would be different. The first time I played, it seemed like it. I wasn't really ready to move up then. Years later, I was ready, and moved up. That was a couple months ago.

Is it different? Yes, somewhat.

On average, the players are better, but the average skill level is higher simply because there are fewer rec-fish in the player pool. But there still are some. There's less open-limping, over-limping, flat calling and over-calling, more 3B'ing and 4B'ing than at 1/3.

But there's also more money on the table, and more predictability in what most opponents are doing, resulting in less variance. The rec-fish have more money, and are just as willing to risk it. With fewer of them in the player pool, they're easier to identify.

There are a handful of "pros" playing 2/5 at my local cardroom, but they're not "PROS". Most of them would get destroyed playing against REAL pros, the ones grinding 10/20 and higher stakes. The pros playing 2/5 in my room are basically just better than average solid regs. They make a living off the fish, not off the other solid regs.

They study the game, but everyone studies now, if they're any good. I'm not anti-GTO, but I tend to agree with those who scoff at the notion of trying to play balanced at low-stakes, when most of the player pool is exploitable, such that old-school "play the player" strategy is often more profitable than memorizing charts and bet sizes.

If you're capable of identifying the weaker players in the game at 1/2 or 1/3, you'll be capable of identifying them at 2/5. If you're capable of exploiting them at 1/2 or 1/3, you'll be able to exploit them at 2/5.

The big difference is that at 2/5, you might be average (give or take) among the 6-7 solid players out of 9, whereas at 1/2 or 1/3, you might be above average among the 3-4 solid players out of 9. The good players at 2/5 are only incrementally better. There's just more of them.

You can make more mistakes at 1/2 or 1/3 and still have a profitable session, because 2/3 of the player pool is horrendous. You can't make many mistakes at 2/5 and still book a winning session.