November 3, 2024 • 24 mins
How much can you make per hour playing low stakes no limit holdem? We talk about that today
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Thanks for joining me for the absolutely free public podcast
for crushing one to one to three olimit games. Glad
to have you here today. Answering another question from one
of you guys. This is going to be the last
question in the question series. I got so many questions
we turned it into I don't know if this is
the third or fourth episode. Nevertheless, just one question covered
in this podcast, so let's you jump right into it.
(00:24):
This question was from Terry Fowler sent this to me
on Instagram. Terry asked me how much money can I
make per hour playing low stakes no limit hold them? Well, boy,
talk about a loaded question that's going to be impossibly
hard to answer. Nevertheless, you ask, and so I did
my best. The reason I saved your question for last
(00:45):
is I just didn't want to take my opinion. I
took my experience of all the many rooms that I've
played around the country, and I've been traveling and playing
poker around the country since a lot since twenty eighteen.
I also consulted with the best low stakes traveling poker
pro that I know. The guy just travels all the
(01:07):
time and just kills and makes a living play in
low stakes poker. One because he's good and two because
he grinds a crazy amount of hours. The guy's a beast.
I consulted with one of my friends who plays out
in Vegas, and then I took some opinions and experiences
from win rates from members of my patreon. So we
(01:30):
have several several winning players, some of them just downright crushers,
but we have this really good pool of winning players
in our patreon, which by if you want to more
about that, you can find links in the information section
of this podcast, or you can wait till the end
of the podcast. So I compiled all that information together
to try to get you the best answer I could get.
But I mean, I'm just gonna tell you right up front,
if you're looking for like really specific dollar amounts, there's
(01:53):
so many varials involved. I can't do. The best I
can do is give you some ranges. So let's jump
right into it. I'm just going to start with the
guy that I went to begin with. Now, I travel
and play a lot of poker, and I play a
lot of hours of poker every year. It's my pastime,
it's my hobby, it's my passion. And you know, I'm
retired and just just what I love to do. But
(02:14):
this guy, this guy's a beast. So I've traveled with
him to several different rooms and we've split some cost it,
some airbnbs and hotels, and I mean, he just plays
me under the table, like he plays twice as many
hours as me, and I think I play a ton
of I play well, if you want it for context,
we played what sixteen seventeen hundred hours last year. So anyway,
(02:38):
all that being said, this is what he told me
his favorite rooms to play for the low stakes or
Florida Panhandle rooms. I'm just going to tell you right now,
I agree without one hundred percent. So when we're talking
about good Florida rooms, for the most part, this is
going to be like halfway up the state of Florida
all the way up into the Panhandle. So you know
(03:00):
there's rooms down and around Okalla, then you got Tampa,
and you got Daytona and Gainesville and some areas like
that up north into the Panhandle where you have there's
three rooms across Panhandle near Panama City Beach, Pensacola, so
areas like that, those are just by far the juiciest rooms.
(03:20):
Now there are some juicier rooms in the southern part
of the state. There's actually a ton of rooms down there,
and so you would just need to play and find
one that suits you. But there's I mean, there's some
really obscure ones. As a matter of fact, we just
found out about a room we didn't even know existed
a couple of weeks ago that is on this long
stretch of lonely nothingness that cuts across the southern part
(03:42):
of Florida. One of our poker player friends found it
while he was taking a trip down to the Keys.
He was like us, in the middle of nowhere in
the Everglades and bam, suddenly there's a casino and he's like, man,
some of the best poker action ever. So there's a
few rooms down there. But I would say, you know,
one general rule of thumb is that the bigger and
the more metropolitan the area of the room you're playing in,
(04:04):
generally speaking, it will not be as profitable. And the
more hole in the wall places you can play, they'll
they will be more profitable. But the whole in the
wall places you're gonna deal with weird hours, You're gonna
deal with days where it's very slow. You're gonna deal
where you know, if you want to play a little
bit bigger game, it may only run once a week.
I mean, it's there's there's, there's given take in each
of them, but uh, these are the ones he specifically
(04:27):
mentioned to know this this guy. This guy's legit man.
That's why I wanted to get his opinion in here first.
But so, it's the Florida Pan Hindle Room, several of them.
Then he loves Balley's in Shreveport. I mean he's told
me epic tales of poker games at Balley's in Shreveport, Louisiana.
And then he really likes Caesars in Southern Indiana. I've
(04:48):
never been to that room, so I just take his
word for it. He said he doesn't think Midwest poker
is all that great from his experience. I haven't spent
a lot of time playing Midwest poker. That's an area
of the country I just haven't really spent any Like
I do a lot of travel and play at a
lot of rooms, but Midwest is not really one of
the places I've gone that much. He says. He thinks
(05:08):
maybe in these Midwest rooms you may make twenty five
percent less an hour than you do, for example, into
Florida Panhandle rooms. I talked to a pro and a
semi pro in Vegas and ask their opinions. Both of
them basically had the same thing on the whole. Most
games have more skilled players on average than you know,
(05:31):
pretty much anywhere else in the country. And you know,
playing the one to two game, you're going to make
somewhere from fifteen to twenty dollars probably. You know, they
said you could maybe make thirty dollars an hour on
the high end for one to three games. So if
you get into one three game, but it's highly dependent
on your game selection, you're going to be have to
(05:52):
be very aggressive with your room selection, game selection, and
table selection if you want to reach the top end.
They say you can't sit around in the tighter games
and just not be aggressive with moving around a lot.
And for me, I hate that, man. I hate having
to be aggressive with table changing and then room changing
on top of that. And he was saying, one of
the things that happens in Vegas is like you'll go
(06:13):
through these phases where they're like this one room or
this you know, downtown room or off strip room or
something will be really hot and that'll be the place
to go, and then it'll move to you know, maybe
Caesar's will be the hot place you know for a
while or you know, so you just have to be
constantly tracking it if you want to find the juiciest places.
But you know, that's his assessment from Vegas. You know,
(06:38):
fifteen to twenty dollars an hour on average in these
one two's and that's if you're aggressive, and then maybe
thirty dollars an hour at the top end for the
one three games. Again, if you're aggressive with your room selection,
table selection and you're getting after it. My opinion, the
best rooms where you're gonna have the highest win rate. Again,
(06:59):
Florida Panhandle rooms by far, Dallas, Texas has some of
the juicies games I've ever played in anywhere, Like they're
on par with the Florida panel rooms. Houston, I don't
care for that city that much. I don't go there.
I've been there once, I don't plan on ever going back,
but games are really good there. Albuquerque, we wouldn't played
this place in Alburquerque in Wow, super good games there.
(07:25):
And then in South Florida if you go to some
of these smaller rooms, dog Track rooms find dog track
rooms in South Florida. Those are always better than bigger
places like hard Rock. So I mean that's the juiciest
places where you're gonna make the highest hourly, which I'll
talk about more a little bit. Now, if you go
to Jacksonville, that part of Florida and you go to
the larger South Florida rooms, if you go to a
(07:48):
room like the Lodge, any rooms that still cap you
hat one hundred big blinds in the one two game
are horrible. You know, those are gonna be the worst rooms.
Those are gonna be the worst rooms. Now, a lot
of people disagree with me on Jacksonville, but I spent
a lot of time at Jacksonville. I would say since
twenty eighteen, I've on average spent three months of the year. Now,
(08:11):
a couple of years it was two months. A couple
of years it was three months, and then a couple
of years it was somewhere in the middle, like two
and a half months. But so we'll say on average,
I've spent two and a half months out of the
year playing in Jacksonville. I know a lot about the
players over there. You know, there's sometimes a day where
that two to five game can be good, but there's
a lot of hours of other day where there's two
(08:31):
five games not good at all. There are two two game.
You know, it's pretty good, but the problem is that
you can't buy into it deep and their rake is
crazy high, and so it makes it a very difficult
game to have a high hour. Land the Lodge was
the same. I spent an entire month at the lodge
last summer, and an entire thirty days played the lodge
(08:55):
every single day, two sessions a day, a lot of days,
and that one two game it's not the most amazing.
Now weekends at nights it's pretty good. Week nights. Later
at nights it's pretty good. You know. I don't like
to play later at night, so I would sometimes play
noon till four or noon to five, and then I'd
go back again some days and you know, play another
(09:17):
session till nine or something. Just but I mean, they
cap you the one three game. It's capped at three
hundred dollars, and I hate that's. I mean, it's a
hundred big blind game, and those are never good. I
would put Vegas somewhere in the middle of my of
the Florida Panhandle, Dallas Houston, Albuquerque, and then the Jacksonville
and your larger South Farda rooms. I'd put Vegas in
(09:39):
the middle of those, but it's highly dependent on the room.
It's highly depending on how aggressive you're going to be
with room selection and tables selection and all that stuff.
And then finally I pulled patroon members Albuquerque game up again.
At the time I did this poll, we had a
lot of players in there crushing at Albuquerque, I mean every
the reason I went out there and played it. We
(10:00):
get a lot to talk about Northeast rooms, but not
Atlantic City. So there's several rooms in the area of
the Northeast that may be decent. So if you live
in that area or want to travel that area, it
does seem those like as Northeast rooms are quirky with
weird rules and things. Sometimes I've heard these stories of
not being able to get chips, or you having to
(10:23):
go down to the casino to get chips from the
casino and then bring them up to the Pugger room yourself.
So I don't know, it's just weird things happen in
the Northeast. I don't know what's going on up there.
So anyway, here's the overall consensus. I'm gonna try to
break it down for you and talk about what you
could expect depending on what type of room you get in. Right,
So we've talked about where I think the juiciest rooms are,
the mid tier rooms and maybe the worst rooms. And
(10:45):
then you can also just use that as a general rule,
like anytime you're in a hundred big blind capped low
stakes game, it's not gonna be a good game. If
you're playing a one two o limit game where you
can only buy them for two hundred dollars, You're just
not gonna make that much money in that game. You
just aren't. I mean, I'm sorry, you just as started
deep enough. And so what will happen is when you
play in these one two games that we allow you
to buy in deeper, you know you're essentially playing a
(11:07):
bigger game, is what you're playing. And I think it's
important to understand, right. So, my favorite one to two
game that I play anywhere in the world is a
four hundred dollars buy in cap So it's almost like
playing a two five Like it's basically like playing a
two to five game, but it's a one to two game.
And my hourly is crazy high in that game. So
I mean, these are all nuances that you're going to
have to You're gonna have to pick and choose the
(11:29):
best places. And you know, anyway here we go, so
from the best rooms that I talked about earlier for
the best players. So if you're playing in the best
rooms and you're the one of the best players in
the room, you could make anywhere from fifteen dollars an
hour to thirty dollars an hour in these one two games,
Like I bought that thirty dollars an hour mark in
most of these juicier rooms that I play in the
(11:51):
one two And then you know, when I start getting
into poker rooms that I do like to go play
app but that are capped at two hundred, you know,
my hourly isn't isn't bumping thirty dollars. It just doesn't
because it's hard for it too. It's nearly impossible for
it too. So you know, it's a pretty wide range,
(12:12):
but you know, somewhere between fifteen and thirty, and it's
how good you are and how good your room is.
We'll gauge if you're on the lower end or the
higher end. Of that, if you're in a one to
three game, right, you could bump up as high as
maybe thirty five dollars an hour. If you're in a
in a one to three game, that's you know, more
(12:32):
than more than three than three hundred dollars cap. I mean,
maybe you could get to thirty or thirty five in
a three hundred dollars cap boy in the three game,
but it's gonna be it's gonna be tough because it's Rake.
It's a problem with Rake, and so the game the
pots don't get deep en up often enough to overcome
this hefty rate that most rooms have. Now, if you're
lucky enough to play in an area where they don't
(12:52):
have Rake and you get time like some of these
Texas rooms, that of course that will change the equation too.
But now the deeper the one three game, that's the
more you can make. I'm gonna give you another example,
and this is why it's so hard to answer this question.
I play very often in a one to three game
that's a two thousand cap game, so it's a one
three game, but you can buy it up to two thousand,
and most people sit in the game with one thousand
(13:13):
to two thousand. It's not a one to three game.
It just isn't. The blinds are one three, but that's
not what you're playing. When I'm in that game, that's
not what I'm playing. I'm not playing one three. I'm
playing like five to ten. Most of the time. Pre
flought raises are like thirty five dollars, forty dollars. I
mean some nights it gets crazy and pre fought raises
are fifty dollars. I mean, it's a it's a big game,
but it's a one to three. So again, this is
(13:35):
why it's hard. And trust me, my hourly in that
game is big. It's huge. It's you know, it's like
playing a five to ten game, a juicy five to
ten game at that. So I mean games like that,
I mean you can make seventy five dollars an hour.
You can make one hundred dollars an hour. I mean,
you know, depending on the lineup and your skill level,
(13:56):
like you can make a high hourly in a one
three game like that, But it's not a real one
three game. I mean, the blinds are one three, but
it's a five to ten game, so you're going to
need a five to ten bankroll to play it. Just
keep that in mind. But these Florida Panhandle, these best
Texas rooms, the Shreveport, the best of the rooms in
South Florida. I mean that's what you're looking at, right,
(14:18):
fifteen to thirty at one two, maybe thirty five at
one three up to depending on how deep the one
three is, you can make anywhere from you know, up
ended around thirty five to even the deeper one three
games you may make forty forty five, you know, just
depends on how deep they are. And these medium tier rooms, right,
so these these other not great Florida rooms, these Northeast
(14:41):
region rooms, these various other rooms scattered across the country
that are you know, what I would call medium. I
put the Lodge in there too. Again, people beat me
up because they say all the lodge is amazing. It's not.
I played there a month. It wasn't amazing. It was okay,
but it wasn't amazing. But you know, I'm gonna put
it around fifteen to twenty five. Like, I don't think
(15:02):
you're ever bumping thirty dollars an hour in those rooms.
So I mean, your CAP's gonna be at twenty five.
So again, depending on how good you are and how
good your game selection, you'll range. And so if you know,
if you're a good, winning player, you can you can
make fifteen to twenty five dollars an hour in those rooms.
And if you're playing in some of the worst the
worst rooms, again, I think your bottom end is probably
still around the same, probably around fifteen. If you're a
(15:24):
good player, winning player, staying on top of your game,
you can probably still make around fifteen on the low
end of these worst rooms, but your your top ends
capped it around twenty. So you know, fifteen to twenty
dollars an hour if you're like a one two grinder
out in Vegas, maybe for the place like the I
must say the low I'm won't put the lodge in
there some of these tougher Florida rooms, so you know,
(15:49):
I'm not calling out by name. And then apparently it's
Midwest rooms, And I take that strictly on the word
and advice and council of this friend of mine who
travels and just grinds the hell out of those stakes
and makes a good living at it. These Midwest rooms
on average are not that great, but keep this in mind.
Keep this in mind. Number one. Number one, The number
(16:13):
one way to crush and no limit hold them or
any poker is to play with the worst players you
can find. Right, Some people would say the number one
way to crush at a particular stakes, whether it be
one two or one three or two five or five ten,
or you know whatever states you're talking about playing. Most
people would say, boy, you want to be the best
(16:35):
player you can be. You want to be just the
best player. You need to practice the most, grind the most,
have the best understanding of the game, have the most disciplined,
and all this stuff. That's the player that's going to
make the most money. And that's not true. It's just
simply not true. You can be an average poker player
and play in the juiciest games of all time with
the worst players in the world, and you're just gonna
(16:55):
destroy it. You're gonna have high win rates. So by
all means, study, learn, practice, get coaching if you need it,
get guidance, join a training site, join my Patreon, ask questions,
become friends with other good players. You know, do everything
you can get as good as you can get, for sure.
But the easiest, number one best way to improve your
(17:18):
win word and crush at any stakes, no matter what
the stakes is is you just find the juiciest room
you can find a play in, and of course that's
limited based on where you live. You only have so
many options, but best room within distance for you to play.
And then once you get there, you constantly trying to
get on the best table you can get on, because
all tables are not equal. You need to be aggressively
(17:40):
trying to find the juiciest, worst players in the room.
Find out what table has the most of those players
on it, and get yourself in a seat at that table,
because that's going to bump your win rate up another
five dollars an hour. The other ten dollars an hour.
I mean, just you know, you're the same player, you
have the same amount of skill, but you're in one
of these tight, not great games. And then you look
(18:02):
across the table and it's a bunch of fish and
calling stations and they've been playing and whooping it up,
and half of them are, you know, really putting the
tequila down. And you see there's a bunch of big
stacks over there. That's the table you need to be on.
You're gonna make five ten dollars more an hour at
that table just by moving. The other thing is the
d D for the buy in is the more potential
(18:24):
for you to make because you're not playing really the
same game, if you're playing a one to two game.
I'll give you a great example. So there's a poker
room I love, No not, I'm gonna call it by
name because there's a lot of them like it. This
is just one that I know pretty much off the
top of my head. My stats there because I was
just looking at them the other day because somebody asked
me about the room. But it's in the middle of Florida,
somewhere in the middle ish of Florida. And they have
(18:46):
a one two game and it's a two hundred dollars
cap buy in. So it's one two game game is good.
The games are good there. They're not amazing, but they're good.
It's one two game, two hundred dollars cap. And I
know what my hourly is there, and I go there
every year and play every I go there and play.
I'll go there for you know, two somewhere between two
and five weeks a year I'll spend playing in this room.
(19:07):
But I have a reasonable record there to know about
what my average hourly is in this one two game, right,
and it's around eighteen dollars eighteen dollars an hour. I
just looked it up a few days because somebody was
asking me about it. About eighteen dollars an hour there,
which you know, considering the game that it is, considering
it's gap at two hundred dollars bight, it's pretty good.
So I'm happy with it. And I like the area,
(19:28):
and so I like to go there and play. Sometimes
I can be making more money somewhere else, but it's
not all about money with me. It's about the experience.
And I like to travel and I like to go
to different places, and it's a pastime and a hobby
for me. Now, compare that to when I went out
to Dallas, Texas last spring and I played in a
one to two game with a five hundred dollars cap.
(19:50):
I killed that game. When I left there there an
entire month. I played the game for an entire month.
I played seven days a week. I think I took
one Monday off because I was just exhaust and tired
and wanted to go do and see some stuff. But
it's played every day there for a month and I
made forty dollars an hour. Forty dollars an hour I made. Now,
you know, a month is a long time, especially when
(20:11):
you're playing seven days a week. It is a long time.
But that's not like a crazy amount of hours. I
don't know that I could sustain the forty dollars an
hour there. I don't know if I could sustain that
for an entire year. But now I do have a
friend who turned me onto that room. He plays in Texas,
he plays in Dallas. He's a pro. He kills it,
he crushes it out there. He's the guy that told
(20:33):
me you got to come play in this room. He
actually played in the room I play in the most
one of the juiciest games in the country rooms in
the country. And he went out to visit family and
played this room and wound up moving out there. That's
how good the room was. Now, last time I checked
with him, and it's been a while, I probably haven't
talked to him in a couple of months maybe, But
he had nine months under his belt there. He was
(20:53):
making one hundred dollars an hour playing one, two and
one three, no limit. When I say the games out
there are good, the games out there, Boys is good,
So I think I probably could have maintained this win
rate if I stay there, Because I mean the games
which is great. It was a five hundred dollars cap
on a one to two game. I means you're basically
(21:16):
playing a two to five game. Really, So all these
things are important when you're trying to figure out what
your win rate can be. It's how good are you,
how good is the structure, and how bad are the players? Right,
you can't control the structure. Whatever room you're closest to
or you have to play in, you know, you know,
pick the best structure you can get the best cap
(21:37):
to buy in and have the right bankroll for it.
The next best thing to control is try to be
at the best table in the room, and then try
to be the best player you can be. And when
you max out on all those best player you can
be best table in the room, best structure in your area.
You're going to be at the upper end of what
you can earn an hour at one two, you're going
to be up there at that bumping thirty dollars, you know,
(21:59):
twenty five to thirty dollars. If you're at the best
case scenario and if you just happen to be in
a situation where you're in one of those worst case
scenario rooms where it's capped at two hundred in the
you're in an area of the country where the games
just aren't that crazy fishy, and you know, maybe you
aren't your your decent player, your solid player, but you're
not the best player in the room. You're gonna be
on the bottom end. You might be making twelve fifteen
(22:20):
dollars an hour. So I mean it's you know, it's
a pretty big difference. But that's the range of things
that you can maybe hope to accomplish or to or
hope to, uh, you know, to to shoot for or
to realize. And I hope that that helps answer your questions. Hey,
if you want to be a fan of the podcast,
you want to wear the episodes every Sunday, went fans
(22:42):
of the pot are getting it. You're getting one a
month and they're getting the rest of them over on
Patreon fluff free, ad free every single Sunday, Low limit
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(23:04):
any cheaper, more effective, helpful low stakes poker training than that.
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look there right there on that main page of the
Patreon you'll see products, and you click on products and
you'll see it. And if you don't want to sign
up to be or whatever, you just want to get
this one course, you can for sure do it. And
(24:09):
links to all that stuff is down in the information
section of this podcast. You can scroll down there and
check it out. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast today
as much as I have enjoyed bringing it to you.
I hope that I answered your questions. I warned you
up front there would be some vagaries involved, but I
hope that I gave you a fundamental understanding of what
hourlies you could expect under what conditions you could expect them,
so they help the temper your expectations and maybe help
(24:32):
you maybe better understand where you're at in the grand
scheme of things. We will talk to you next time.
Thanks for joining me for the absolutely free public podcast
for crushing one to one to three olimit games. Glad
to have you here today. Answering another question from one
of you guys. This is going to be the last
question in the question series. I got so many questions
we turned it into I don't know if this is
the third or fourth episode. Nevertheless, just one question covered
in this podcast, so let's you jump right into it.
(00:24):
This question was from Terry Fowler sent this to me
on Instagram. Terry asked me how much money can I
make per hour playing low stakes no limit hold them? Well, boy,
talk about a loaded question that's going to be impossibly
hard to answer. Nevertheless, you ask, and so I did
my best. The reason I saved your question for last
(00:45):
is I just didn't want to take my opinion. I
took my experience of all the many rooms that I've
played around the country, and I've been traveling and playing
poker around the country since a lot since twenty eighteen.
I also consulted with the best low stakes traveling poker
pro that I know. The guy just travels all the
(01:07):
time and just kills and makes a living play in
low stakes poker. One because he's good and two because
he grinds a crazy amount of hours. The guy's a beast.
I consulted with one of my friends who plays out
in Vegas, and then I took some opinions and experiences
from win rates from members of my patreon. So we
(01:30):
have several several winning players, some of them just downright crushers,
but we have this really good pool of winning players
in our patreon, which by if you want to more
about that, you can find links in the information section
of this podcast, or you can wait till the end
of the podcast. So I compiled all that information together
to try to get you the best answer I could get.
But I mean, I'm just gonna tell you right up front,
if you're looking for like really specific dollar amounts, there's
(01:53):
so many varials involved. I can't do. The best I
can do is give you some ranges. So let's jump
right into it. I'm just going to start with the
guy that I went to begin with. Now, I travel
and play a lot of poker, and I play a
lot of hours of poker every year. It's my pastime,
it's my hobby, it's my passion. And you know, I'm
retired and just just what I love to do. But
(02:14):
this guy, this guy's a beast. So I've traveled with
him to several different rooms and we've split some cost it,
some airbnbs and hotels, and I mean, he just plays
me under the table, like he plays twice as many
hours as me, and I think I play a ton
of I play well, if you want it for context,
we played what sixteen seventeen hundred hours last year. So anyway,
(02:38):
all that being said, this is what he told me
his favorite rooms to play for the low stakes or
Florida Panhandle rooms. I'm just going to tell you right now,
I agree without one hundred percent. So when we're talking
about good Florida rooms, for the most part, this is
going to be like halfway up the state of Florida
all the way up into the Panhandle. So you know
(03:00):
there's rooms down and around Okalla, then you got Tampa,
and you got Daytona and Gainesville and some areas like
that up north into the Panhandle where you have there's
three rooms across Panhandle near Panama City Beach, Pensacola, so
areas like that, those are just by far the juiciest rooms.
(03:20):
Now there are some juicier rooms in the southern part
of the state. There's actually a ton of rooms down there,
and so you would just need to play and find
one that suits you. But there's I mean, there's some
really obscure ones. As a matter of fact, we just
found out about a room we didn't even know existed
a couple of weeks ago that is on this long
stretch of lonely nothingness that cuts across the southern part
(03:42):
of Florida. One of our poker player friends found it
while he was taking a trip down to the Keys.
He was like us, in the middle of nowhere in
the Everglades and bam, suddenly there's a casino and he's like, man,
some of the best poker action ever. So there's a
few rooms down there. But I would say, you know,
one general rule of thumb is that the bigger and
the more metropolitan the area of the room you're playing in,
(04:04):
generally speaking, it will not be as profitable. And the
more hole in the wall places you can play, they'll
they will be more profitable. But the whole in the
wall places you're gonna deal with weird hours, You're gonna
deal with days where it's very slow. You're gonna deal
where you know, if you want to play a little
bit bigger game, it may only run once a week.
I mean, it's there's there's, there's given take in each
of them, but uh, these are the ones he specifically
(04:27):
mentioned to know this this guy. This guy's legit man.
That's why I wanted to get his opinion in here first.
But so, it's the Florida Pan Hindle Room, several of them.
Then he loves Balley's in Shreveport. I mean he's told
me epic tales of poker games at Balley's in Shreveport, Louisiana.
And then he really likes Caesars in Southern Indiana. I've
(04:48):
never been to that room, so I just take his
word for it. He said he doesn't think Midwest poker
is all that great from his experience. I haven't spent
a lot of time playing Midwest poker. That's an area
of the country I just haven't really spent any Like
I do a lot of travel and play at a
lot of rooms, but Midwest is not really one of
the places I've gone that much. He says. He thinks
(05:08):
maybe in these Midwest rooms you may make twenty five
percent less an hour than you do, for example, into
Florida Panhandle rooms. I talked to a pro and a
semi pro in Vegas and ask their opinions. Both of
them basically had the same thing on the whole. Most
games have more skilled players on average than you know,
(05:31):
pretty much anywhere else in the country. And you know,
playing the one to two game, you're going to make
somewhere from fifteen to twenty dollars probably. You know, they
said you could maybe make thirty dollars an hour on
the high end for one to three games. So if
you get into one three game, but it's highly dependent
on your game selection, you're going to be have to
(05:52):
be very aggressive with your room selection, game selection, and
table selection if you want to reach the top end.
They say you can't sit around in the tighter games
and just not be aggressive with moving around a lot.
And for me, I hate that, man. I hate having
to be aggressive with table changing and then room changing
on top of that. And he was saying, one of
the things that happens in Vegas is like you'll go
(06:13):
through these phases where they're like this one room or
this you know, downtown room or off strip room or
something will be really hot and that'll be the place
to go, and then it'll move to you know, maybe
Caesar's will be the hot place you know for a
while or you know, so you just have to be
constantly tracking it if you want to find the juiciest places.
But you know, that's his assessment from Vegas. You know,
(06:38):
fifteen to twenty dollars an hour on average in these
one two's and that's if you're aggressive, and then maybe
thirty dollars an hour at the top end for the
one three games. Again, if you're aggressive with your room selection,
table selection and you're getting after it. My opinion, the
best rooms where you're gonna have the highest win rate. Again,
(06:59):
Florida Panhandle rooms by far, Dallas, Texas has some of
the juicies games I've ever played in anywhere, Like they're
on par with the Florida panel rooms. Houston, I don't
care for that city that much. I don't go there.
I've been there once, I don't plan on ever going back,
but games are really good there. Albuquerque, we wouldn't played
this place in Alburquerque in Wow, super good games there.
(07:25):
And then in South Florida if you go to some
of these smaller rooms, dog Track rooms find dog track
rooms in South Florida. Those are always better than bigger
places like hard Rock. So I mean that's the juiciest
places where you're gonna make the highest hourly, which I'll
talk about more a little bit. Now, if you go
to Jacksonville, that part of Florida and you go to
the larger South Florida rooms, if you go to a
(07:48):
room like the Lodge, any rooms that still cap you
hat one hundred big blinds in the one two game
are horrible. You know, those are gonna be the worst rooms.
Those are gonna be the worst rooms. Now, a lot
of people disagree with me on Jacksonville, but I spent
a lot of time at Jacksonville. I would say since
twenty eighteen, I've on average spent three months of the year. Now,
(08:11):
a couple of years it was two months. A couple
of years it was three months, and then a couple
of years it was somewhere in the middle, like two
and a half months. But so we'll say on average,
I've spent two and a half months out of the
year playing in Jacksonville. I know a lot about the
players over there. You know, there's sometimes a day where
that two to five game can be good, but there's
a lot of hours of other day where there's two
(08:31):
five games not good at all. There are two two game.
You know, it's pretty good, but the problem is that
you can't buy into it deep and their rake is
crazy high, and so it makes it a very difficult
game to have a high hour. Land the Lodge was
the same. I spent an entire month at the lodge
last summer, and an entire thirty days played the lodge
(08:55):
every single day, two sessions a day, a lot of days,
and that one two game it's not the most amazing.
Now weekends at nights it's pretty good. Week nights. Later
at nights it's pretty good. You know. I don't like
to play later at night, so I would sometimes play
noon till four or noon to five, and then I'd
go back again some days and you know, play another
(09:17):
session till nine or something. Just but I mean, they
cap you the one three game. It's capped at three
hundred dollars, and I hate that's. I mean, it's a
hundred big blind game, and those are never good. I
would put Vegas somewhere in the middle of my of
the Florida Panhandle, Dallas Houston, Albuquerque, and then the Jacksonville
and your larger South Farda rooms. I'd put Vegas in
(09:39):
the middle of those, but it's highly dependent on the room.
It's highly depending on how aggressive you're going to be
with room selection and tables selection and all that stuff.
And then finally I pulled patroon members Albuquerque game up again.
At the time I did this poll, we had a
lot of players in there crushing at Albuquerque, I mean every
the reason I went out there and played it. We
(10:00):
get a lot to talk about Northeast rooms, but not
Atlantic City. So there's several rooms in the area of
the Northeast that may be decent. So if you live
in that area or want to travel that area, it
does seem those like as Northeast rooms are quirky with
weird rules and things. Sometimes I've heard these stories of
not being able to get chips, or you having to
(10:23):
go down to the casino to get chips from the
casino and then bring them up to the Pugger room yourself.
So I don't know, it's just weird things happen in
the Northeast. I don't know what's going on up there.
So anyway, here's the overall consensus. I'm gonna try to
break it down for you and talk about what you
could expect depending on what type of room you get in. Right,
So we've talked about where I think the juiciest rooms are,
the mid tier rooms and maybe the worst rooms. And
(10:45):
then you can also just use that as a general rule,
like anytime you're in a hundred big blind capped low
stakes game, it's not gonna be a good game. If
you're playing a one two o limit game where you
can only buy them for two hundred dollars, You're just
not gonna make that much money in that game. You
just aren't. I mean, I'm sorry, you just as started
deep enough. And so what will happen is when you
play in these one two games that we allow you
to buy in deeper, you know you're essentially playing a
(11:07):
bigger game, is what you're playing. And I think it's
important to understand, right. So, my favorite one to two
game that I play anywhere in the world is a
four hundred dollars buy in cap So it's almost like
playing a two five Like it's basically like playing a
two to five game, but it's a one to two game.
And my hourly is crazy high in that game. So
I mean, these are all nuances that you're going to
have to You're gonna have to pick and choose the
(11:29):
best places. And you know, anyway here we go, so
from the best rooms that I talked about earlier for
the best players. So if you're playing in the best
rooms and you're the one of the best players in
the room, you could make anywhere from fifteen dollars an
hour to thirty dollars an hour in these one two games,
Like I bought that thirty dollars an hour mark in
most of these juicier rooms that I play in the
(11:51):
one two And then you know, when I start getting
into poker rooms that I do like to go play
app but that are capped at two hundred, you know,
my hourly isn't isn't bumping thirty dollars. It just doesn't
because it's hard for it too. It's nearly impossible for
it too. So you know, it's a pretty wide range,
(12:12):
but you know, somewhere between fifteen and thirty, and it's
how good you are and how good your room is.
We'll gauge if you're on the lower end or the
higher end. Of that, if you're in a one to
three game, right, you could bump up as high as
maybe thirty five dollars an hour. If you're in a
in a one to three game, that's you know, more
(12:32):
than more than three than three hundred dollars cap. I mean,
maybe you could get to thirty or thirty five in
a three hundred dollars cap boy in the three game,
but it's gonna be it's gonna be tough because it's Rake.
It's a problem with Rake, and so the game the
pots don't get deep en up often enough to overcome
this hefty rate that most rooms have. Now, if you're
lucky enough to play in an area where they don't
(12:52):
have Rake and you get time like some of these
Texas rooms, that of course that will change the equation too.
But now the deeper the one three game, that's the
more you can make. I'm gonna give you another example,
and this is why it's so hard to answer this question.
I play very often in a one to three game
that's a two thousand cap game, so it's a one
three game, but you can buy it up to two thousand,
and most people sit in the game with one thousand
(13:13):
to two thousand. It's not a one to three game.
It just isn't. The blinds are one three, but that's
not what you're playing. When I'm in that game, that's
not what I'm playing. I'm not playing one three. I'm
playing like five to ten. Most of the time. Pre
flought raises are like thirty five dollars, forty dollars. I
mean some nights it gets crazy and pre fought raises
are fifty dollars. I mean, it's a it's a big game,
but it's a one to three. So again, this is
(13:35):
why it's hard. And trust me, my hourly in that
game is big. It's huge. It's you know, it's like
playing a five to ten game, a juicy five to
ten game at that. So I mean games like that,
I mean you can make seventy five dollars an hour.
You can make one hundred dollars an hour. I mean,
you know, depending on the lineup and your skill level,
(13:56):
like you can make a high hourly in a one
three game like that, But it's not a real one
three game. I mean, the blinds are one three, but
it's a five to ten game, so you're going to
need a five to ten bankroll to play it. Just
keep that in mind. But these Florida Panhandle, these best
Texas rooms, the Shreveport, the best of the rooms in
South Florida. I mean that's what you're looking at, right,
(14:18):
fifteen to thirty at one two, maybe thirty five at
one three up to depending on how deep the one
three is, you can make anywhere from you know, up
ended around thirty five to even the deeper one three
games you may make forty forty five, you know, just
depends on how deep they are. And these medium tier rooms, right,
so these these other not great Florida rooms, these Northeast
(14:41):
region rooms, these various other rooms scattered across the country
that are you know, what I would call medium. I
put the Lodge in there too. Again, people beat me
up because they say all the lodge is amazing. It's not.
I played there a month. It wasn't amazing. It was okay,
but it wasn't amazing. But you know, I'm gonna put
it around fifteen to twenty five. Like, I don't think
(15:02):
you're ever bumping thirty dollars an hour in those rooms.
So I mean, your CAP's gonna be at twenty five.
So again, depending on how good you are and how
good your game selection, you'll range. And so if you know,
if you're a good, winning player, you can you can
make fifteen to twenty five dollars an hour in those rooms.
And if you're playing in some of the worst the
worst rooms, again, I think your bottom end is probably
still around the same, probably around fifteen. If you're a
(15:24):
good player, winning player, staying on top of your game,
you can probably still make around fifteen on the low
end of these worst rooms, but your your top ends
capped it around twenty. So you know, fifteen to twenty
dollars an hour if you're like a one two grinder
out in Vegas, maybe for the place like the I
must say the low I'm won't put the lodge in
there some of these tougher Florida rooms, so you know,
(15:49):
I'm not calling out by name. And then apparently it's
Midwest rooms, And I take that strictly on the word
and advice and council of this friend of mine who
travels and just grinds the hell out of those stakes
and makes a good living at it. These Midwest rooms
on average are not that great, but keep this in mind.
Keep this in mind. Number one. Number one, The number
(16:13):
one way to crush and no limit hold them or
any poker is to play with the worst players you
can find. Right, Some people would say the number one
way to crush at a particular stakes, whether it be
one two or one three or two five or five ten,
or you know whatever states you're talking about playing. Most
people would say, boy, you want to be the best
(16:35):
player you can be. You want to be just the
best player. You need to practice the most, grind the most,
have the best understanding of the game, have the most disciplined,
and all this stuff. That's the player that's going to
make the most money. And that's not true. It's just
simply not true. You can be an average poker player
and play in the juiciest games of all time with
the worst players in the world, and you're just gonna
(16:55):
destroy it. You're gonna have high win rates. So by
all means, study, learn, practice, get coaching if you need it,
get guidance, join a training site, join my Patreon, ask questions,
become friends with other good players. You know, do everything
you can get as good as you can get, for sure.
But the easiest, number one best way to improve your
(17:18):
win word and crush at any stakes, no matter what
the stakes is is you just find the juiciest room
you can find a play in, and of course that's
limited based on where you live. You only have so
many options, but best room within distance for you to play.
And then once you get there, you constantly trying to
get on the best table you can get on, because
all tables are not equal. You need to be aggressively
(17:40):
trying to find the juiciest, worst players in the room.
Find out what table has the most of those players
on it, and get yourself in a seat at that table,
because that's going to bump your win rate up another
five dollars an hour. The other ten dollars an hour.
I mean, just you know, you're the same player, you
have the same amount of skill, but you're in one
of these tight, not great games. And then you look
(18:02):
across the table and it's a bunch of fish and
calling stations and they've been playing and whooping it up,
and half of them are, you know, really putting the
tequila down. And you see there's a bunch of big
stacks over there. That's the table you need to be on.
You're gonna make five ten dollars more an hour at
that table just by moving. The other thing is the
d D for the buy in is the more potential
(18:24):
for you to make because you're not playing really the
same game, if you're playing a one to two game.
I'll give you a great example. So there's a poker
room I love, No not, I'm gonna call it by
name because there's a lot of them like it. This
is just one that I know pretty much off the
top of my head. My stats there because I was
just looking at them the other day because somebody asked
me about the room. But it's in the middle of Florida,
somewhere in the middle ish of Florida. And they have
(18:46):
a one two game and it's a two hundred dollars
cap buy in. So it's one two game game is good.
The games are good there. They're not amazing, but they're good.
It's one two game, two hundred dollars cap. And I
know what my hourly is there, and I go there
every year and play every I go there and play.
I'll go there for you know, two somewhere between two
and five weeks a year I'll spend playing in this room.
(19:07):
But I have a reasonable record there to know about
what my average hourly is in this one two game, right,
and it's around eighteen dollars eighteen dollars an hour. I
just looked it up a few days because somebody was
asking me about it. About eighteen dollars an hour there,
which you know, considering the game that it is, considering
it's gap at two hundred dollars bight, it's pretty good.
So I'm happy with it. And I like the area,
(19:28):
and so I like to go there and play. Sometimes
I can be making more money somewhere else, but it's
not all about money with me. It's about the experience.
And I like to travel and I like to go
to different places, and it's a pastime and a hobby
for me. Now, compare that to when I went out
to Dallas, Texas last spring and I played in a
one to two game with a five hundred dollars cap.
(19:50):
I killed that game. When I left there there an
entire month. I played the game for an entire month.
I played seven days a week. I think I took
one Monday off because I was just exhaust and tired
and wanted to go do and see some stuff. But
it's played every day there for a month and I
made forty dollars an hour. Forty dollars an hour I made. Now,
you know, a month is a long time, especially when
(20:11):
you're playing seven days a week. It is a long time.
But that's not like a crazy amount of hours. I
don't know that I could sustain the forty dollars an
hour there. I don't know if I could sustain that
for an entire year. But now I do have a
friend who turned me onto that room. He plays in Texas,
he plays in Dallas. He's a pro. He kills it,
he crushes it out there. He's the guy that told
(20:33):
me you got to come play in this room. He
actually played in the room I play in the most
one of the juiciest games in the country rooms in
the country. And he went out to visit family and
played this room and wound up moving out there. That's
how good the room was. Now, last time I checked
with him, and it's been a while, I probably haven't
talked to him in a couple of months maybe, But
he had nine months under his belt there. He was
(20:53):
making one hundred dollars an hour playing one, two and
one three, no limit. When I say the games out
there are good, the games out there, Boys is good,
So I think I probably could have maintained this win
rate if I stay there, Because I mean the games
which is great. It was a five hundred dollars cap
on a one to two game. I means you're basically
(21:16):
playing a two to five game. Really, So all these
things are important when you're trying to figure out what
your win rate can be. It's how good are you,
how good is the structure, and how bad are the players? Right,
you can't control the structure. Whatever room you're closest to
or you have to play in, you know, you know,
pick the best structure you can get the best cap
(21:37):
to buy in and have the right bankroll for it.
The next best thing to control is try to be
at the best table in the room, and then try
to be the best player you can be. And when
you max out on all those best player you can
be best table in the room, best structure in your area.
You're going to be at the upper end of what
you can earn an hour at one two, you're going
to be up there at that bumping thirty dollars, you know,
(21:59):
twenty five to thirty dollars. If you're at the best
case scenario and if you just happen to be in
a situation where you're in one of those worst case
scenario rooms where it's capped at two hundred in the
you're in an area of the country where the games
just aren't that crazy fishy, and you know, maybe you
aren't your your decent player, your solid player, but you're
not the best player in the room. You're gonna be
on the bottom end. You might be making twelve fifteen
(22:20):
dollars an hour. So I mean it's you know, it's
a pretty big difference. But that's the range of things
that you can maybe hope to accomplish or to or
hope to, uh, you know, to to shoot for or
to realize. And I hope that that helps answer your questions. Hey,
if you want to be a fan of the podcast,
you want to wear the episodes every Sunday, went fans
(22:42):
of the pot are getting it. You're getting one a
month and they're getting the rest of them over on
Patreon fluff free, ad free every single Sunday, Low limit
cash games dot com. And if you want to do
the annual methods and just go yeah, man, I'm just
gonna sign up for any you get about ten percent off,
So it's a big discount. It's a dollar sixty six
cent in episode. And if you do the ten percent
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(23:04):
any cheaper, more effective, helpful low stakes poker training than that.
Target to low Stakes Poker Training one hundred hours of
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(23:27):
the game and you get to talk hands with them.
It's amazing. Lowlimit cash Games dot Com Again, if you
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Learn how to master it. You can get that by
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this one course, you can for sure do it. And
(24:09):
links to all that stuff is down in the information
section of this podcast. You can scroll down there and
check it out. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast today
as much as I have enjoyed bringing it to you.
I hope that I answered your questions. I warned you
up front there would be some vagaries involved, but I
hope that I gave you a fundamental understanding of what
hourlies you could expect under what conditions you could expect them,
so they help the temper your expectations and maybe help
(24:32):
you maybe better understand where you're at in the grand
scheme of things. We will talk to you next time.
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CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.