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Live poker is all about patience. Sometimes most people are playing solid, but eventually around 11 pm-1am people will slowly start getting so bored and start making stupid bluffs for stacks. So you have to be more patient that your table

One more I would like to add is endurance. Especially, when you playing a 6+ hr session. It could be really tiring on your body and mind. So a good diet, enough sleep, and regular exercise are very important.

Low stakes Live Game Tip #7: If you bet and get raised and all you have is top-pair, fold. This will save you a ton of money in the long term. Not many players at low stakes are making “moves” or bluffing in these situations. They’re doing it because they have two-pair or better.

Have not read all the comments, so don't know if anyone touched on this -- in live poker, it is important to develop a very thick skin because in every room, you will play against someone who is a complete sh*tbag; sometimes that person is actually a misanthrope, and sometimes they're just trying to get you tilted... either way, you need to tune it out and not let it affect your play. While this can be very difficult, it is nonetheless an essential skill that one must possess for the live environment.

Agreed on most points but particularly that playing too many small pots live is a HUGE leak. And as you said, makes hand recall very difficult when you start to think about why and how you ended the session in the red, so it's not good for your bankroll or your study.

For live poker one of the biggest tells is betting. An opponent will tell you if theyre strong or not nearly every time just by how theyre betting or not betting. You just have to pay attention to every player and analyze every hand that gets to showdown. Not just your hands. Keep notes on players at the table. After an hour or so you should be able to out play most people on the table. If you cant you need to work on your game and figure out how to plan and execute.

Also, as for playing tight, it's important that the raise sizes can be enormous compared to the blinds. It's not uncommon to raise to 12 after not playing a hand for an hour and to get 3 callers. (Here in Florida anyway) your risk of ruin is SO low that you *could* just wait for AA-QQ and AK, to get involved and still turn a profit. Also, the stack depth is not really 100bb if you're raising to 10 or 12 pre. It's like it's 50 to 70bb. (As far as the post flop SPR is concerned) This means you should play muxh tighter.

From a multi-year experience playing live poker for a living: Boredom management is a VERY important skill to master to avoid spewing chips.

Another important thing that I realized recently is that you should never play 1/2 when the rake is capped at $5 in both the 1/2 and the 2/5 game. In 2/5 you can get over $50 in the pot after one preflop raise and a call. Then all postflop action is unraked. In 1/2 most pots are $50 or less so the entire pot is raked most of the time. Add in the fact that you also should tip $1 on your wins making it best to play extra tight because even though you can usually run over the table of weak players, you pay way too much in rake and tips to make it worth it. A player who can make $50/hr at 2/5 should make $20/hr at 1/2 proportionally, but with rake and tips being such a higher percentage of the pots, you're lucky if you can make $15/hr.

Excitedly waiting for your $2/$5 vlogs!!! Learned so much from your stuff. Keep it up!

Yep, all true. I've been grinding at the same card rooms in CA for the last 5-6 years (2-3-5, & 2-3-5 deepstack mostly) and everything you've mentioned about live cash games is 110% true. I can especially appreciate your note about tells existing, but it's better to stick with a sound strategy, since I play regularly with a lot of familiar faces, and so while I do find spots once in a while where reliable tells are profitable, it defintely does not happen on a regular basis. Not regular enough to depend on.

It was 42 degrees the other day and yes, they had the AC on at the Hollywood at the Meadows Casino.

Tip -Find out about ppl to kill the time… a lot of online poker ppl don’t like it cas they don’t have ppl skills and are obsessed with winnrates ect…

Awesome video -- I often find myself capable of spending 2 hours in a live cash game before the boredom sets in where hands that you would normally fold pre-flop you begin to think to yourself "hey, this looks playable". For on-line games, can you tell the computer to auto-fold pre-select hand groups at each poistion at the table? I could see where this would be a great thing where you could have different acceptable ranges at each position that you'd be willing to play based on the number of callers acting before you. Also it's funny how the table dynamics usually take these big swings in cash games where at first everyone is playing solid poker with raises, 3-bets, max 2-3 people in a pot pre-flop to where everyone is limping in before the flop and we're playing for pot sizes that are only 4 times the BB. In cash games, it's usually hard to transfer over to another table in this case since there's usually a waiting list for a table so the only way to get things moving along is to straddle. But this is the biggest problem with live cash poker today is that most poker rooms seem short-staffed so even though there may be 16 tables, only 4 are running because of the staffing problems and you have over 30 people on the waiting list. You would think that with rakes being as high as $8 per hand for a $1 / $2 game that the card rooms would have the incentive to offer dealers more money in order to get larger workbase and have more games running.

Rake is crazy high here in Prague. It's the equivalent of 5%, $20 cap + $4 at one location and the other location is the same except w/o the +$4 quads plus bonus.

The grind is real…. I love being super patient. I’ll fold my way into making money almost 100% of the time. I can sit for 15/20 hours never even taking a pee break. I feel like I’m unique hMm 🤔

In games with a 'no flop, no drop' rule, always chop blinds when HU SB vs BB. If you are playing higher stakes with a time charge, then never chop, unless you think the other player is much stronger HU.

Live poker is all about selection. I just moved from bay to kc have yet to check the games

Something really cool about your voice. Very listenable.

I'm frightened to gamble especially at poker my dad was a gambler and this puts me off

Straddles are common in live poker, but for online they practically don't exist. 1/2 games can become 1/2/5 quite often, so be prepared to play for shorter effective stacks and bigger swings.

once again a stellar video from a great guy!

While most tells are very player specific, I've found bet timing as well as chip/card handling tells to be easily the most consistently reliable.

I play 1/3 in SoCal where the rake is $2+1 on the flop, and max's out at $5+2 WHEN THE POT REACHES $20! Add $1 toke and you're nearing 40% on small pots.

Another consideration is that poker rooms tend to be loud, and you can always catch a loudmouth at your table. And it's also not unheard of for a couple of people to sustain an intrusive conversation whille you're on a hand. So it's not exactly what you're used to. That said, an upside of live poker is sociability. You can strike up quiet conversations without a lot of trouble if you are even the least big sociable.

great video! Thanks for putting these out.

Oh so EXCELLENT video!

i used this strategy back in the day played way over my head 25-50 holdem i would look to win one decent sized pot early and then put my stack on complete lock down unless i got aces or kings. i knew winning a decent size pot and just getting up and leaving is bad etiquette

My question is: I get the feeling you were talking strictly about 1-2; but is 2-5 roughly the same? Half of the rake pain vanishes at 2-5 -- especially if the BB win rate is similar.

good information here, do mostly live home games, both cash and small tourneys, no casinos in this tiny, democratic, middle eastern country I live in, but a lot of teh information flows. Was hard getting back to live games after the coivd outage, got into club sit n go's online with all my poker buds around the country. (payments outside of application, need a VPN just to play...). good basic information to stay conscious about! always good to have a reminder

Tells are about 10% of a hand. But paying attention preflop makes a big difference in the hand against recs. $20 an hour at a 100bb game is very doable paying attention to tells. $30 an hour at a 150bb game.

Do you also tip the dealer when take is taken?

I thought maybe play short and tight. Try to get all in early with premium hands. And move between poker rooms in Las Vegas so not sitting at one table too long. Thoughts?

One truth I would add to this is that most people defend their blinds way too much. In a slow cash game this can wreck your stack.

$4 cap for rake in most vegas casinos

love your content!!!

if you had to average it out, what % of time do you leave the table up/down and how much is a good amount to make per hour average?

Quality content Thank you

Sometimes if I make a few hundred within the first couple of hours playing 1/2 I will just get out of there, even if the game is good and head home to play some games - I struggle sometimes with the long 6hr+ sessions when you are folding endlessly

I’d love to see some 2/5 vlogs (:

I actually make $36/hour in New Orleans 1-3 harrahs casino. But my city has different variables. Match the stack with most dealers not caring about what you buy in for. Last night I bought into my 1-3 for $5k. $36/ hour and 12bb/hour

Rake in Australian casinos is $15 cap with some home games at $30 cap! 🤣

Comparing online vs live is like comparing football vs basketball

I don't record every hand so I calculate my win rate on bb/hour. Obviosly this isn't as accurate but it gives some sort of guude.

Nice video. Needs some advice from you and the group. Just getting started playing live. I made just under 1k chopping a tourney pot and am using proceeds to start cash games. I know I have a steel learning curve and plan to eventually play some recs at the local rooms. Theres a decent game with quality players near. Should I play this table to learn from these guys? I am pretty perceptive and see what they are doing even though I know I wont win big and may end up losing on average $100 a week. But I am training for eventual vegas trips during convention week. What do you guys and gals think?

Hey now, no need to hate on the money pit that is golf lol. Jk, keep up the good work the sir! Been enjoying your content for some years now.

Gotta stop opening KQo and 98s utg in a 9 handed 1/3 game 😭

Very nice video and tips, thanks ! What kind of BK do you recommend for 1/2 and 2/4 for hobby playing ?

Wait lists?

Hi Sweeney- I just the core program about 2 and a half months ago over on redchip. . I play mostly on New Jersey PokerStars at the moment. $15 and under tournaments mostly. My win rate from January was 16% but it has jumped up to 22%. So thank you for that. My question is does red chip sell a HUD or recommend a HUD? I am ready to implement one. Thanks!

Is there a reason they keep it so cold in the poker room?? My local casino is freezing

How much can I make playing 1/2 in a single month?

I know it is not a popular decision but probably best to avoid tipping the dealer in low-stakes cash games with a bad rake structure. If people complain just say would love to tip, but the rake I am paying makes it not possible. Get upset at the casino for not paying dealers better. The same goes for 21. If you put the work in at counting cards and can find games with beatable rules, you are wasting your time if you are tipping after every win. Your 3/4 to 1% edge will disappear in tips very quickly.

lot's of times in these middle of nowhere casinos you're lucky to make twenty hands an hour. like watching paint dry.

Getting dealt napkins for hours in live poker, creating aka forcing spots with those napkins getting called by all the limpers to only see your napkins whiff the flop as the limp callers lead, call, call directly into your 8x open over those original limpers and you fold. This is live poker leak 101. Been there ;-) 🤣🤣🤣

I make $30 an hr playing 1/2 over 6 month period.

Swings are very brutal. I used to play 6 tabling online full ring for 30 hours a week. That's ~42,000 hands per month. You can have some massive swings in 1 month online. The same amount of hands is 1 year playing live full time (2000 hours a year) to put things in perspective. And I did have that one year live. Luckily I tracked my hands and realized it wasn't me, it was variance in large all in pots killing me.

POker teaching Is A Bluff good luck boys ...

Good video as usual Sweendog.

What is your opinion on the Texas hourly rake? Paying 11 bucks or so for 1/3 is that worse than raked pots or better?

i have tremors. They have made me money (and cost me0 money as people think they are tells.

is rake the same in Texas where card rooms charge per hour in a cash game?

Shalom

In ONLINE cash games, you CANNOT win! Impossible. So, lunatics play online, only.

What is an optimal to buy-in in live cash 1/2 games? I’m a rec player but did 20 games in last couple of month and never know if I go with 100bb or 250

Truth #7 Just say no to GTO

Would you believe it if I told you someone in Florida makes 40+bb/hr over several years at 2/5?

Looks like...harrah's???

Err......I know somebody who's making $35 an hour.

But isn’t more rake better? (#3)

Online one cannot win. That's main difference.

Talk a lot slower

Talks too fast. Slow it down. Less caffeine.

FIRST

Why you talking shit on golf?

Lol you have a unique opportunity to tell people how you lose in live and online poker.

Before you watch this video, I want you to think about if taking advice from a guy who has been playing poker for 18 years and still plays $1/$2, is in fact a good idea.

I play underground games in nyc and rake is between 50-250 per hand. Gross but they give you dinner, drugs and a bonus