cash game acceptable r.o.i

im new to cash games and am messing around in the 4FL ,i play 2 tables and take 50 blinds onto each table ,i often find it difficult when to end a session,i like playing but when i reach a certain profit i seem to take my foot off the gas and tighten up,also in the game im in the small profits i have made overall are imo ok! but i,d like to know an experienced players view on what is an acceptable ,for example ,i started with about $22 after nearly 2 weeks its now at $28(huge money )
what is a realistic amount one can expect or hope to see as a sucsessfull profit(i only use this account for limit games so i use it as a br for the 4fl,i alsoknow that $22 is not enough to BR myself for this game!!)
if i was to make 25% of my BR as a profit in 6k hands am i aiming high or too low.also after playing tournies for years i find my approach to cash game play profit based ,i think this is not a good thing as i said earlier i tighten up at a certain win rate then when i make this amount i seem to look for excuses to leave the game (even when the conditions are good on the table )can anyone put me straight ???or tell me a more correct mindset from which to approach the game and or tell me what is an acceptable roi for my limit? thanks to all in advance

By 4FL you mean $0.02/$0.04 fixed limit holdem ?

At FL the amount you bring to the table is irrelevant as long as you can cap all streets if needed.

Success in cash games is not measured in terms of ROI but in terms of big bets per 100 hands, i.e. BB/100. At high stakes, 2BB/100 is considered very good for FL, but i have no clue what you can expect at micro stakes.

Belgo can you elaborate, at what limit in general is it considered high stakes, 200NL, 1kNL?

custo80 said:

Belgo can you elaborate, at what limit in general is it considered high stakes, 200NL, 1kNL?

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Depends on the sites actually. iirc, 200nl is mid-stakes on both stars and tilt and 1kNL should be high stakes for both.

BTW, the win rate above was for FL. At NL, the best players still have win rates in the 5 BB/100 range even at the highest stakes.

jumping jack flash said:

yeah ,thats the game mate ,i know about BBper 100 but im not exactly 100% sure how to calculate it,nor do i have the amount of hands played that could give you a consistent number (it might be a real easy calculation and probably is,but i,d rather it was done correctly for definite ) any thoughts?

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Well, there are two options.

Either you are serious about playing poker and you should get yourself a tracking program (either PokerTracker or Holdem Manager) to track / analyse your game. They both have free trial versions.

Or you are just playing for fun, and then you should not really care about your win rate.

If you haven't decide between the two, at least make sure to save your hand histories so that you can recover them later if you finally decide on the first option.

cheers for answering
i am serious about poker but as money is an issue currently i thought i,d start at microstakes and pay my dues so im soaking up as much as i can atm . i thought about 6k hands or maybe a month of playing small limit games daily and see where i stand before i buy software. i felt that buying software right now is too early and that i should get a hand history that will give some indications on how good /bad i do. but if its a free rial i,ll probably have a look. i like to play live also ,where software cant help me so im trying to just get my game right without it but its a foregone conclusion that i,ll get pt3 or HEM

Limit is hard, play NLHE. That's my advice to you.

i enjoy it more than nl ,i feel more comfortable playing limit ,and much prefer its format ,having played NL for years in tournaments ,limit cash games are a breath of fresh air

jumping jack flash said:

i enjoy it more than nl ,i feel more comfortable playing limit ,and much prefer its format ,having played NL for years in tournaments ,limit cash games are a breath of fresh air

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If you enjoy it, that's all fine & dandy. Play what you like. Just realize that with the limit game, you're not pushing a big edge. Players are often getting close to pot odds to suck out on you, and you have to learn to play medium strength hands (like middle pair) very well. So as long as you realize limit is a hard road to make money on, then go ahead & have at it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Right now, I'm currently playing a lot of stud 8, which is a limit game. And some days its the most frustrating thing in the world, pushing a small edge & barely beating the rake. And when compared to NLHE, where I can sit down, and force bad players to put tons of money in drawing near dead, it seems pointless to play a limit game.

Also, until you get to the big stakes, rake is crushing your win rate in fixed limit.

c9h13no3 said:

Limit is hard, play NLHE. That's my advice to you.

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While someone is still in the learning stages of poker, I disagree with this. Limit is great for beginners because mistakes cost much less. Also, there is much more emphasis on pot odds vs break-even odds and less on implied odds. It's great for ingraining the basic mental progression needed for each poker decision.

I played Limit Hold'em for the 1st year of my poker career while making many mistakes and many deposits. If I had started out playing NL instead, I probably would have ended up in the poor house.

However...

BelgoSuisse said:

Also, until you get to the big stakes, rake is crushing your win rate in fixed limit.

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I agree with this. If you are semi-experienced and looking to make a profit, I'd say 25c/50c FL is the minimum you want to play to get over the rake.

(I hope FP sees this thread. He played higher stakes LHE for quite a while.)

limit suits me fine ,and has improved aspects of my game ,im not quite the begginner i sound but im no big time player either ,after playing NL tournies sngs for years im well aware of the differences , as for the rake and not being able to beat it . its 2/4c limit ,and even if i do spectacularly well im not gonna live on the winnings lol! but if i can beat this game overall then its in the realms of possibility that i could beat a higher limit .

Divide the amount won by number of hands played. This equals your money won per hand. 25% of your bankroll =
$5.50/6,000 hands = $0.000917/hand

Dived that number by twice the big blind to convert units to big bets
($0.000917/hand) /$0.04 = 0.022925 big bets / hand

Multiply by 100 to get BB/100
0.022925 * 100 = 2.29 BB/100

So at this point, increasing your bankroll 25% in 6k hands is completely within reason. Of course, once your roll gets larger, 25% is a bigger number, so at some point, it's not going to be reasonable to expect that anymore.

For an idea of what you can make at limit, I have a little over 10,000 hands of $.25/$.50 and $.50/$1. I've got 5.39BB/100 at .25/.50, and 3.52BB/100 at .5/1. I'd extrapolate that a bit to infer that at .02/.04 you could likely have a significantly larger than 5.5BB/100 winrate.

If you want to learn about limit, specifically for play against the bad players found in those games online and $5/$10 and below live, then you should check out Small Stakes Hold'em from Sklansky, Miller, and Malmuth. The best text I've read on the dynamics specific to loose limit games.

just worked it out , and calculated it correctly with all my numbers according to your instructions and im at 9.09BB/100 which i suspect wont be sustainable (tho it would be cool if it did) still ,its early days and i need to play longer sessions ,but after 2 hrs or so, im looking to get out ,i hope my playing stamina increases ,i just seem to get bored and become money orientated and think "i,ll get out with my profit yeah!! 25% of my buy in aint bad etc etc" maybe i should add another table!!!! ,what do other players use to get by this type of thinking? is it a bad way to think? questions ,endless questions!!!!

Omg, I just wrote a pretty long post, added an extra comma, hit backspace and my browser went back a page, killing my post. Going to try to recover it.

I think your 9.09 BB/100 actually is sustainable at the stakes you're currently playing. Just the fact that you're winning at that rate already indicates you have a good idea of how to play, and that's pretty much all it takes for the first few levels, so well done there.

2-3 hours is a road block for me as well. In live play, I have played for 36 hours once, and at the end of that I felt similar to how I do after 4-6 online. I think it's mainly that in live play there's much more going on around you which keeps you aware, and alert, while online you simply stare at a screen where most objects are static. Anyway, what I've found is that after two or three hours, or whatever time I'm starting to feel fatigue, I take a short break. 30 minutes has always been enough, and often 10 or 15 is fine. My brain just needs a little time to decompress, and not have a few hundred hands an hour being thrown at it. So you might want to try playing 2 hours, taking a 10 minute break, then going for 2 more hours. You won't even have to leave your tables, you can just sit out and you should still have most if not all of your seats when you return.

Thinking things like "I'll get out with my profit yeah!!, 25% of my buy in ain't bad etc," can actually be a reason to leave a table. It is not theoretically, as (especially in limit) a table you are winning at is profitable. This indicates you have a higher skill level than some of your opponents whom you are exploiting. Therefore, the longer you sit at the table, the more money you will make. Try to instead think along the lines of, "I've increased my buy-in by 25% already? This table is going to boost my bankroll by that amount!"

Trying to protect what you've won is going to lead to sub-optimal play, which may not lose you money directly, but can still cost you exactly the same in leaving money on the table you would have won had you simply been playing your game instead of playing to keep what you've already won.

A great quote on this subject is from Mike Caro. He said something to the effect of, "Every hand you are dealt, no matter how much you've won, no matter how much you've lost, you are even"

And this is so true. When those cards are dealt, you have exactly as much money as you have. It doesn't matter what happened last week, last orbit, or last hand. You are even, and need to simply make the best decision you can on this one hand.

Further, you can analyze the table. A table is either +EV to be sitting at, or it's not. If the table is no longer profitable, then you should leave. If it is, then you should continue to play unless you feel you could be doing something else that's +Life EV. Say you're at a table, and there's a great fish, you clean him out, he reloads. After a few more orbits he leaves. You look at the table as it is and say, "I've still got an edge here." But how big is it? How much has your winrate changed now? Perhaps it would be better to take a break and go spend time with your kids or go fishing, or whatever it is you like to do. This isn't as big a deal yet since you're playing smaller stakes, but if you're playing for significant money, you can get in the mindset of, "I have to be here, I'm working and I need X hours a week." So a little ahead of myself here, but I got carried away.

Keep going with questions, they're good!

thanks for the awesome post ,its never too long a post for me!! you seem to be a few levels ahead of me and its great to listen to someone who has stood where i currently stand. i agree about what mike caro says about even money and am trying to get my head to a place where a period of losses wont dishearten me and i can be a little more cavalier in my reaction to losses,as a tournament player in NL i have thrown things at walls ,screamed in anguish when someone has hit a 2 outer on the river on the bubble .This is not to say that i want to get used to losing too much!! but a healthy respect for variance is what i,d like. .
At todays 2 hr mark i resigned myself to a 25% profit and played out my last free hands ,but then became involved in a small pot which turned into a very big pot of which i felt i was favorite ,the flop kq rag but my a3suited matched 2 on the board and as the pot was rammed and jammed i got great odds for a draw which on the turn i made ,the river bought an ace which made somone a top straight plus someone else had made a smaller flush ,so the inevitable raising war ensued in which i triumphed with my a flush this doubled my buy in plus change,almost immedietly i left the game ,i wish i,d read your post before and maybe i,d have tried out your sit out for a while method (which is a simple answer but i seem to either get tired mentally or some sort of inner alarm goes off saying "thats it for you today son ,you,ve had a touch so be happy")
as for questions pal ive got millions (you,d soon get sick of it lol)
ive just installed poker tracker 3 free trial and it seems to be good ,im sure it is an invaluable tool for the informed player but to me i saw a lot of interesting stats ,but it,ll take some time before i can analyse leaks in my game and get the most helpful stats for my hud whilst playing,at the minute i have the default stats up,vpip, pfr,af, etc which i have on a pot odds calc anyway, the forum they have has info but plowing through it for hours will be fun (not) . my point is how did you get to grips with pt3 , where as a limit player did you find its strengths or weaknesses?,did you customize your hud ?,could you live without it now?is it neccessary at the higher limits (cause in my game you seem to be able to get by without it)
did super system 2 (im 99% sure you read it) jenifer harmons piece on limit help your game . oh by the way you have re affirmed my faith in the power of the forum thanks for reading and taking the time to answer ,i very much appreciate it and can hopefully repay the advice and opinions you written
hope the cards are kind to you mate !!