Unbeatable Game???

I routinely play tournament poker in the state of Colorado and have done fairly well over the years. I tend to avoid the cash games due to their high variance nature. In fact, the only time I really play them is while killing time waiting for a tournament to start; recently I was doing just that.

Colorado has a $100 maximum bet rule, so the most popular cash game is $1/$2 to $100, but here are $2/$5 to $100 games, and even $30/$60, $50/$100 limit games.

So, I sat down with $500 at a $1/$2 game where the average stack was $150, with only one other player having $500. Most players, simply buy-in for 50BB.

I had been playing for about an hour, mostly just folding and still had my $500 stack. I was on the button with and 8 players limped for $2 each. I raised to $20 – you might consider that to be rather large, but in reality, that’s a standard raise at these games; 6 players called and 7 went to flop.

Pot - $140 - rake
Flop –

They all checked the action to me. Obviously, this is not the greatest flop, but with the pot being so large and with what I hoped to be a tight table image (as if that even matters), I decided to take a shot at this pot and bet the maximum $100. I expected this bet to find out any sets, or possibly two-pair combos – I might get called by medium Jacks and pocket pairs like 77 – or, I may take it down here. All 6 players called, one of them from MP with $30 behind; which really screws up my plan – I have no idea what they have, but I know Ace high isn’t going to win this one.

Ok, so I’m done – even if an Ace or King falls, it’s a bluff catcher.

Pot - $840
Turn –

In addition to my previous read, this is a disaster card. Again, they checked it back to me and I checked behind.

Pot - $840
River -

And yet again, they checked it to me and I checked. The first 2 players didn’t want to turn over the cards and held them face down trying to get someone else to show first. Finally, the MP player with $30 behind rolls over and everyone else quickly mucks and he scopes a large pot.

Now, if it was just this guy, I’d be like “get him a drink”. He obviously employed some profitable decision making on that hand. However, it’s not just him. I think I’m more terrified by 5 players that limp-called/called $120 (which was well over 2/3 or most of their stacks) with hands that couldn’t beat a river'd pair of nines.

I realize that this is just 1 hand, but I suspect that even in a larger sample size, this extremely high variance exists. Coupled with the $100 max bet, rake, and dealer tokes, I’m thinking that this game is unbeatable but am curios what any cash game minded players think about that.

Unbeatable? It seems like the easiest game to beat ever I dont know if you had any idea of what players you were playing with but if you did, you should probably raise bigger, they are calling anyways and you got the crushed. When there are 6 player on the flop and everyone limp/called I would never bluff. They are calling too much so why bluff?

Generaly speaking cashgame players have less variance than turnamnet players. Thats why most bankroll management recommend 30 BI's for cashgame but 100 for turnament players.

Cbetting on a dryboard like this is standard and its rare anyone has connected with this. Sure theres sets but in all seriousness it doesn't happen as much as we remember.


we can now double barrel here. We can do this for value and bluff. People will call with flush draws and get sticky. And by betting we also put all the guys with smaller pockets or whiffed broadways in tough spots. Even Jx will be in a tough spot and that's definetly what we want.

So bet here.

River well we know previous streets we have done the best we could do with the hand. We told the story. Depending on if it's headsup íd consider continuing telling the story and just shove.


I like cash because I know I can often walk away with a win. Instead of spending hours on end in a tournament and bust out for nothing.

Cash is hardwork sure. But tournaments are as well but I consider people who choose the tournaments route are often a bit more lazier and just wanting to hit the lump sum rather than learn the game.

My theory is if I can master cash... I can then play tournaments on the side and still go for the lump sum... but i wont be the guy who wins a big sum and goes to cash and lose it all ... i'll be the guy who wins a lump sum as a bonus and win more at the cash


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After playing for sometime and building my experience up and books. I've come to the conclusion its best not to overthink why people call with A9... easy answer is probably a gambler but everyones different at the game. But just if we are going to lose a hand in a bad way, at least go down fighting

Only thing worse than a losing hand is letting someone get there with a freecard.

@Aces at some point you mixed poker to martial arts lol Honestly poker is very boring game most of the time. Bluffin fish is not wise. bluffing multiple fish is well too much.

If we give 50% calling range that flop connected 40% of the time per player if one pair is enough to continue, probability someone connected 96%. I kinda see the point that if we bet flop we should bet turn too.

Aces2w1n said:

Cbetting on a dryboard like this is standard and its rare anyone has connected with this. Sure theres sets but in all seriousness it doesn't happen as much as we remember.


we can now double barrel here. We can do this for value and bluff. People will call with flush draws and get sticky. And by betting we also put all the guys with smaller pockets or whiffed broadways in tough spots. Even Jx will be in a tough spot and that's definetly what we want.

So bet here.

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You are over thinking it. They are fish, 6 players to the flop, for a fish a small PP is not a though spot, especially when they only have $30 left. I would never bluff here, dont care what bord. I am happy to only value bet here.

Other than that though, I agree with everything

braveslice said:

@Aces at some point you mixed poker to martial arts lol Honestly poker is very boring game most of the time. Bluffin fish is not wise. Bluffing multiple fish is well too much.

If we give 50% calling range that flop connected 40% of the time per player if one pair is enough to continue, probability someone connected 96%. I kinda see the point that if we bet flop we should bet turn too.

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Lol

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You were obviously on a table with lots of limping fish. It's unwise to try to bluff them wit a no pair no draw hand. So I actually didn't like the C-Bet. It was just too many of them to fight off in this particular hand.

Normally I would agree with Aces2w1n but not in this hand but on the overall Cash vs Tournament discussion I agree with Aces2w1n. Cash Games is where you make your steady money. For years the Cash game has helped me recoup my tournament losses. So when I cash big in the tournaments it's really nice.

Aces2w1n said:

Cbetting on a dryboard like this is standard and its rare anyone has connected with this. Sure theres sets but in all seriousness it doesn't happen as much as we remember.


we can now double barrel here. We can do this for value and bluff. People will call with flush draws and get sticky. And by betting we also put all the guys with smaller pockets or whiffed broadways in tough spots. Even Jx will be in a tough spot and that's definetly what we want.

So bet here.

River well we know previous streets we have done the best we could do with the hand. We told the story. Depending on if it's headsup íd consider continuing telling the story and just shove.


I like cash because I know I can often walk away with a win. Instead of spending hours on end in a tournament and bust out for nothing.

Cash is hardwork sure. But tournaments are as well but I consider people who choose the tournaments route are often a bit more lazier and just wanting to hit the lump sum rather than learn the game.

My theory is if I can master cash... I can then play tournaments on the side and still go for the lump sum... but i wont be the guy who wins a big sum and goes to cash and lose it all ... i'll be the guy who wins a lump sum as a bonus and win more at the cash


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After playing for sometime and building my experience up and books. I've come to the conclusion its best not to overthink why people call with A9... easy answer is probably a gambler but everyones different at the game. But just if we are going to lose a hand in a bad way, at least go down fighting

Only thing worse than a losing hand is letting someone get there with a freecard.

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Yeah - I'm not so much worried about this particular hand - I definitely think I could have played it better. But here's the problem - let's say I do double barrel - the first guy to act has 9.4:1 and it gets worse from there since I can only wager $100 into an $840 pot.

I'm not real sure that matters since most of these players aren't doing the math. But even without doing the math, it's pretty easy to guesstimate that they have (or should have anyway) the odds to call.

This means that I allow all 6 of my fishy opponents to play optimally against me from this point in the hand forward. If I raise larger, this problem gets worse - although it does have the advantage of probably having fewer players to the flop.

I do suppose I could adjust my pre-flop raise size smaller, which would help prevent this sizing dilemma, but then I'd have 8 opponents instead of 6; so that may be moot.

So, in short, the only way to beat them is to make something on the flop - and we all know that doesn't happen often enough, or with the correct implied odds when it does, since most players only have 50BB, to win. That's why I stated that I think this game is unbeatable.

I don't know, but I think I'm going to avoid these games like the plague.

I think you have drawn the wrong coclution from this.

You dont hit your hand enough? Yes you do, about 30% of the time. You should raise bigger to make it less people to the flop which will raise your implied odds, (AT+) and decrease your reversed implied odds (T7s). You should never bluff because they are calling way too much, and everyone knows that to exploit that, you only Vbet (big).

I dont know why you keep bringing up the $100 cap. If everyone bought in for about 50bb thats $100, and even if they bought in for 100bb the 50bb bet is most of the time commiting your stack. The cap is irellavant when the limit is 1/2.

ssbn743, your conclusion is like saying that because apple drops from tree, apple is pulling the earth up.

braveslice said:

ssbn743, your conclusion is like saying that because apple drops from tree, apple is pulling the earth up.

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Well, fair enough, but I just gave you the reasons for my conclusions; what conclusions do you come to?

Please read my answers :'(

Are we just going to sit here and ignore the fact that OP said he plays tournaments because cash is too high variance?

Also, this hand didn't happen or is greatly exaggerated just like OPs opening statement.

ssbn743 said:

I routinely play tournament poker in the state of Colorado and have done fairly well over the years. I tend to avoid the cash games due to their high variance nature. In fact, the only time I really play them is while killing time waiting for a tournament to start; recently I was doing just that.

Colorado has a $100 maximum bet rule, so the most popular cash game is $1/$2 to $100, but here are $2/$5 to $100 games, and even $30/$60, $50/$100 limit games.

So, I sat down with $500 at a $1/$2 game where the average stack was $150, with only one other player having $500. Most players, simply buy-in for 50BB.

I had been playing for about an hour, mostly just folding and still had my $500 stack. I was on the button with and 8 players limped for $2 each. I raised to $20 – you might consider that to be rather large, but in reality, that’s a standard raise at these games; 6 players called and 7 went to flop.

Pot - $140 - rake
Flop –

They all checked the action to me. Obviously, this is not the greatest flop, but with the pot being so large and with what I hoped to be a tight table image (as if that even matters), I decided to take a shot at this pot and bet the maximum $100. I expected this bet to find out any sets, or possibly two-pair combos – I might get called by medium Jacks and pocket pairs like 77 – or, I may take it down here. All 6 players called, one of them from MP with $30 behind; which really screws up my plan – I have no idea what they have, but I know Ace high isn’t going to win this one.

Ok, so I’m done – even if an Ace or King falls, it’s a bluff catcher.

Pot - $840
Turn –

In addition to my previous read, this is a disaster card. Again, they checked it back to me and I checked behind.

Pot - $840
River -

And yet again, they checked it to me and I checked. The first 2 players didn’t want to turn over the cards and held them face down trying to get someone else to show first. Finally, the MP player with $30 behind rolls over and everyone else quickly mucks and he scopes a large pot.

Now, if it was just this guy, I’d be like “get him a drink”. He obviously employed some profitable decision making on that hand. However, it’s not just him. I think I’m more terrified by 5 players that limp-called/called $120 (which was well over 2/3 or most of their stacks) with hands that couldn’t beat a river'd pair of nines.

I realize that this is just 1 hand, but I suspect that even in a larger sample size, this extremely high variance exists. Coupled with the $100 max bet, rake, and dealer tokes, I’m thinking that this game is unbeatable but am curios what any cash game minded players think about that.

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That is really crush...wow..I think that is psychological moment when all limpers went in a huge pot with adesire to try luck ...it happent cause your aggression made them to eager to beat you anyway...

IPlay said:

Are we just going to sit here and ignore the fact that OP said he plays tournaments because cash is too high variance?

Also, this hand didn't happen or is greatly exaggerated just like OPs opening statement.

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Well, if you are bad at cash then you will most likely lose, right? If you then are winning in turnaments its not a super weird conclution to come to that there are more variance in cash, beacuse he doesn't know that he is a loser at cash. I did though explain in my first comment that variance is higher in turneys, but for some readon he does not seem to read my answers.

I my self have not been to a casino but if I am going to a casino i expect everyone to be fish and limp / call too much which made me think that the hand could be true

But the fact that he does not answer to my long explanations and answers to the short once with no constructive feedback makes me feel like he might be trolling, or atleast is not here to acctually learn, just wanting people to say that cash games are unbeatable so that he can feel better about his losses.

Rejoicing on...

I am just having trouble wrapping my head around this story. Seems unlikely to be true with stacks under $500 and that many people calling $100 into what was a $140 pot to start. ( I understand that as additional people called the odds improve) after limping and checking into the pot to begin with and then having the winning hand be a pair of river 9s. It's highly suspect. My recommendation is if these people are real, to get their names and addresses and invite them over for a weekly game. Its nice to have 1 ATM at the table. You found 6!

Which casino was this, because I want to go there!
I mean, this is one of the most beatable games ever. This feels like you play on pokerstars play money at the lowest stakes. So much money for grabs.
I would never have cbet the flop there against 6 opponents. I mean, if they are calling stations, the chance is so big that one of them actually hit at least a pair, which means they are never folding by definition.
Just wait till you really hit something and then play like this. You most likely will get paid off.

mr_kommpa said:

Well, if you are bad at cash then you will most likely lose, right? If you then are winning in turnaments its not a super weird conclution to come to that there are more variance in cash, beacuse he doesn't know that he is a loser at cash. I did though explain in my first comment that variance is higher in turneys, but for some readon he does not seem to read my answers.

I my self have not been to a casino but if I am going to a casino i expect everyone to be fish and limp / call too much which made me think that the hand could be true

But the fact that he does not answer to my long explanations and answers to the short once with no constructive feedback makes me feel like he might be trolling, or atleast is not here to acctually learn, just wanting people to say that cash games are unbeatable so that he can feel better about his losses.

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I don't know why you're so self conscious about me reading your posts - I read them. I just don't think advocating station-ish play is correct, i.e. bet when I have it, check/fold when I don't. That's not profitable in any game, cash or tourney, and is even a worse line of thinking.

Now, I have always done poorly at cash - and I don't know why; I have done well in tourneys. I understand completely that they are two different games, but over the years, the majority of my cash game experience is in these $1/$2 to $100 games.

The described hand is 100% real, and is not the first, or even the most ridiculous I've seen at these games; I saw one about a month ago where a guy chased the bottom end of a straight down, calling $100 bets the whole way and won just under a $1,000 pot with nine high when he missed; to be fair, he was getting like 8:1 or better the whole time.

While I've never been very good at cash, I also don't play all that much. Looking at my sessions, I see far better results at cash games in Vegas than I do in Colorado; albeit I'm still stuck even in Vegas, but 10:1 less.

This was just 1 hand that I highlighted to try to illustrate what I'm dealing with. Now, there are occasions, at these games, where I'll see an entirely different table - 8 limps are common, but at some tables all 8 limpers will fold to a $7 raise. It comes and goes, this table was the worst I've seen in a long time, but certainly not abnormal, especially on a Saturday night (and I don’t know why that matters, but it does).

What can we expect to win anyway? If you subscribe to Owen Gaines, "Poker Math That Matters" you'll find the following:

BB/100 hands Description
0-4 Marginal Winner
4-7 Nice Win Rate
|7+ Crushing the game

We're never going to "crush" a game with such high variance, so we're looking at, let's just say 5BB/100 hands. 100 hands in live poker is roughly two hours - meaning $5/hour is what we can expect to win if we're really doing well.

Maybe it's just me not having the patience for $5/hour, or maybe it's just me being terrible at poker (it's possible believe me), but whatever it is, the variance is too high and the maximum bet too low for this game to be much better than Bingo. And that's exactly what it feels like - case in point, the hand above.

So, maybe unbeatable is a stretch (although I don't think it's much of a stretch) but maybe just "Not Worth My Time" is a better title.

ssbn743 said:

I don't know why you're so self conscious about me reading your posts - I read them. I just don't think advocating station-ish play is correct, i.e. bet when I have it, check/fold when I don't. That's not profitable in any game, cash or tourney, and is even a worse line of thinking.

Now, I have always done poorly at cash - and I don't know why; I have done well in tourneys. I understand completely that they are two different games, but over the years, the majority of my cash game experience is in these $1/$2 to $100 games.

The described hand is 100% real, and is not the first, or even the most ridiculous I've seen at these games; I saw one about a month ago where a guy chased the bottom end of a straight down, calling $100 bets the whole way and won just under a $1,000 pot with nine high when he missed; to be fair, he was getting like 8:1 or better the whole time.

While I've never been very good at cash, I also don't play all that much. Looking at my sessions, I see far better results at cash games in Vegas than I do in Colorado; albeit I'm still stuck even in Vegas, but 10:1 less.

This was just 1 hand that I highlighted to try to illustrate what I'm dealing with. Now, there are occasions, at these games, where I'll see an entirely different table - 8 limps are common, but at some tables all 8 limpers will fold to a $7 raise. It comes and goes, this table was the worst I've seen in a long time, but certainly not abnormal, especially on a Saturday night (and I don’t know why that matters, but it does).

What can we expect to win anyway? If you subscribe to Owen Gaines, "Poker Math That Matters" you'll find the following:

BB/100 hands Description
0-4 Marginal Winner
4-7 Nice Win Rate
|7+ Crushing the game

We're never going to "crush" a game with such high variance, so we're looking at, let's just say 5BB/100 hands. 100 hands in live poker is roughly two hours - meaning $5/hour is what we can expect to win if we're really doing well.

Maybe it's just me not having the patience for $5/hour, or maybe it's just me being terrible at poker (it's possible believe me), but whatever it is, the variance is too high and the maximum bet too low for this game to be much better than Bingo. And that's exactly what it feels like - case in point, the hand above.

So, maybe unbeatable is a stretch (although I don't think it's much of a stretch) but maybe just "Not Worth My Time" is a better title.

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Thank you for answering me, I think you understand that i get annoyed when I am giving you an explanation, you ignore it and ask someone else to give you an explanation. Anyways...

You say that you would not like to play a fit or fold type of style because its not profitable at any game. Thats is not correct, in your game it would be perfect, maybe boring but then the question then becomes if you want to have fun and break even / lose or have a little boring and win. The fit or fold stratergy works perfect against these opponents beacuse they are playing a "stratergy" where they call with anything from top pair to a gut shot (or even worse) and in that case, why should you bluff?

The book you were refering to and the win rates is probably right. Where you got it wrong is that you SHOULD be crushing this game, no doubt. You are refering to the variance being so high that you can not crush it, the variance has no impact on your win rate in the long run. You lose more when you have a bad session, but you also win more when you have a good session. I would think that you can easily get a 15/100 hand win rate (dont know what the rake is though) at these games, as long as they are this fishy and you follow your stratergy.

Its like playing bingo, sure. The only difference is that you will have way more bingo boards then you opponents for the same price and you will be able to roll the bingo balls multible times to rule out the variance. I would play that bingo all day.

I have never had the opportunity to play this kind of tournaments, I see that you play them very often with good money but my bankrol is just starting so I play freeroll tournaments

These type of games can be super frustrating. You never know what two will show up. It's good to be a game with calling stations but you're going to take some beats. I can't believe all these people called your c-bet for so much money. I definitely need to get to this casino.

PKRNRS said:

These type of games can be super frustrating. You never know what two will show up. It's good to be a game with calling stations but you're going to take some beats. I can't believe all these people called your c-bet for so much money. I definitely need to get to this casino.

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Boy, you hit the nail on the head there.

I played this game again yesterday and for the last time - it's no fun and is a complete waste of time; I’m sorry if that upsets anyone.

I played for about 4 hours. I bought in with $500 and 4 hours later I had $510. Now, I did have some coffee and toke'd the dealer $1 for every pot I won, as long as it wasn't a blinds only pot - so all told, I had $524, or 12BB gross profit, 5BB net.

I had $500 the whole game, there were 2 other guys that had $200, and everyone else had $100 or less. One guy, an older guy, kept buying in for $100, and would then take $40 off the table and put it in his pocket. He'd lose his $60, get out another $100 bill and do the same thing; he must have done that 6 times.

I was getting pretty excited that I was actually going to have a winning session, as ridiculous as it may seem, but baby steps are important. I told myself that I was going to get up at 7PM, and right about 7, I was UTG with every intention of not paying my BB.

From UTG I was dealt and opened to $10 (the standard size all day long). I got 3 callers, one from MP, the Button, and BB.

Pot - $41
Flop -

The BB had $232 (in real time, I just knew he had around $220) in front of him after just wining a larger sized pot in a set over set scenario - prior that that he had $50 (always the sign of a good player). He also had $132 in chips and an additional $100 cash bill.

So, the BB checked to me and I lead out slightly larger than 2/3 pot, for $30. The other two players folded and he quickly called.

Pot - $101
Turn -

He checked to me again. Obviously, the deuce changed nothing, I didn't really know what he had, could be anything really, but could be hearts, some kind of medium Jack, maybe like 68 or something; nothing is really out of question here. I could also be crushed with a set (although he just had one the previous hand), so I decided to find out and fired a second 2/3 pot barrel of $75. Again, he quickly called.

Pot - $251
River -

Then, inexplicably, he bet $27 leaving only his $100 bill behind.

In a lot of cases, that’s an easy fold – generally, they don’t bet with a hand that can’t beat a single pair. However, I felt that it was a blocking bet of some kind, although what he was blocking I had no idea; it just felt like he was trying to get to showdown cheaply. I figured the only way I was beat there was if he had J7 or maybe a set, and that there were lots of combos I crushed; KJ QJ, even J10 and A7 are easily possible there, plus it felt like he didn’t want to put that C-note in the middle (pretty standard tourney tell when players do that), so I decided to put him in and raised to $127.

He tanked for 3 full minutes - the whole time I was thinking "Call with KJ, it's good here!" - I have to be good here right?

He finally called, I rolled the aces and he rolled and beat me with 2-pair.

So, that's it - I'm done with these games. You know, I know that there are losing sessions and there are winning sessions, but I almost never win that these games - ever.

There are simply not enough chips on the table to make this profitable with everyone buying in for less than $100 and being station-ish NIT's - it's just not possible to win. Case in point, I grinded out 12BB gross in 4 hours and ended up down 121BB because some jackass wouldn't fold his 74o from the BB for his stack. It’s just not possible to compensate.

Moreover, as I look around, I've met some $2/$5 to $100 pro's, some $30/$60 and $50/$100 limit pro's, some PLO pro's, but I've never ever met, or even heard of, a $1/$2 to $100 pro. As Jeff Foxworthy would say, “Here’s your sign”.

This is easily the single most frustrating thing I have ever dealt with in my poker career and I'm just not going to subject myself to this nonsense anymore - I'd be better off paying someone $200 to kick me in the balls. Maybe this game is beatable, I don’t know for sure, but I know that I can’t beat it. Even if I could, what are we talking about here, $5/hour? If I were a pro, I’d take 48 hours of mistake free play to recoup what Jacktard just did OOP with a 74o.

I'm sorry mr koompa - but I can't handle it anymore - I gave it another shot, and was a hair away from a wining session, but that's it - I'm sticking to my tourney’s.

Yeah you have to almost adopt their style of play. Post flop play has to be strong. It's impossible to read these diggle berries. Your variance will look like v-tachycardia. Really have to play for straights and flushes. Forget the book on these guys cause they can't even read the board or other players. I play 3/6 and there is a lot of this.