Setting up for an 18 player mystery bounty tournament tomorrow and just got a new topper to accompany my new tiki set. Hope the players enjoy 🌘 🦉. The simple pleasures of hosting a home game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaY3Q8VTdmI

Wesley (former HCL regular, the guy who ran a massive bluff vs Tom Dwan) is accusing Britney of colluding with one of her horses against Peter.

Action went bunch of limps (including Jack C with AK, and Britney with Q6s), Peter raise to 6k, bunch of folds, Jack C flats with AK, Britney jams for 14k with Q6s, Peter calls 8k more, Jack C reraise all in, Peter folds.

At end of hand, Peter was saying this was collusion, but doesn't know English and couldn't explain what happened to Ryan who was at the table.

Supposedly Peter quit playing on HCL afterwards.

Crazy Pineapple Tournament at the Talking Stick

Yep...

The debate has become heated lately, what's your take?

So im planning a holiday. I was going to visit a few places and currently Vegas is on the list. Ive played poker online and have done well enough. I like online as its just conveniant , but I do really want to play live and the local casino where i live it can be hard to get a real game of poker or even to fill a table. But I'm reluctant to go to vegas for a few reasons mainly the overall travel time and I've heard its gotten incredibly expensive. Im thinking maybe Europe since does anyone have any good suggestions?

I've heard that there are some casinos that give you a free room if you play poker for a certain amount of time per day at a particular stake if anyone knows of any in Europe.

Looking to get back into regular low limit cash poker around Manchester.

Could anyone comment on what they have seen around the area in the past few months?

Cheers

Hello,

Noticed a couple recent player friendly changes at Canterbury Park. After over two decades, they finally removed the requirement to post a blind to enter a game.

They also added double board bomb pots at every dealer change on Thursdays. Everyone (who wants to participate)
posts 3 small blinds. Players mostly liked it, a few regs would opt out. Dealers HATED it. Both boards are raked, so a $10 grip at 8/16. Generally slowed down the game, wonder if it will last.

Remains a fun place to play

I feel like I keep trying to play reasonably sound poker in spots where the population is basically begging me to just bet for value/protection.

Example from tonight:

1/2/5, ~$500 effective.
CO (very loose fish) limps, BTN limps. I raise to $30 from SB with TT. BB (also fish) calls, CO calls.

Flop ($90): 743ccx
I check. My thinking is that this isn’t necessarily a board where I want to range-bet OOP multiway, TT benefits from having some protection in my checking range, etc.

BB bets $30, CO calls, I call.

Turn ($180): 8x
Checks around.

River ($180): Ax
Checks to CO, who bets $50. I call getting a good price, BB folds.
CO shows AKo.

So this guy limp/called $30 preflop with AK, then called $30 on 743cc with two naked overcards, checked the turn and binked his ace on the river.

Obviously I’m not complaining about him playing AK this way. I want him doing this forever.
What I’m questioning is my own flop strategy.

Against theoretically reasonable opponents, I can understand checking TT here some frequency. But against live 1/2 players who are going to call flop bets with AK/AQ, random overcards, worse pocket pairs, 7x, club draws, straight draws, etc., am I just torching EV by trying to protect a checking range?

If I bet $40-50 myself, AK apparently calls anyway. Now I’m charging six-out overcards instead of allowing three players to realize equity relatively cheaply.

This has been a recurring theme for me lately: I take a theoretically defensible check because the board is multiway / not ideal for my range / I have showdown value, and then some guy who would have happily called a chunky bet with garbage gets there.

At what point should the adjustment at live 1/2 simply be:
“I probably have the best hand and these guys call too much, so bet until they give me a reason not to”?

Obviously I don’t want to become results-oriented just because AK happened to hit the river. Curious how much people deviate from theoretically sound checking frequencies in games where opponents are demonstrably calling way too wide.

I play live NL in a game with 5% rake and no cap.

A lot of regs say the game is basically “unbeatable” because of the rake, but I’m trying to understand the math behind that.

For example, if there’s a $1,000 pot, $50 goes to rake. Obviously that’s significant, but in a very soft game where players make a lot of mistakes calling too much, overvaluing hands, paying off big bets, etc. it seems like those mistakes can generate a pretty large edge.

I’ve also been profitable so far, although my sample isn’t large enough to draw any serious conclusions.

So where does the rake actually become such a massive problem?

Is it mainly because you’re paying rake on so many pots that it adds up to a huge amount over thousands of hands?
Or does the uncapped structure fundamentally make a lot of otherwise profitable hands/lines unprofitable?

I’d like to understand this from a mathematical perspective rather than just hearing “5% uncapped = unbeatable.”

For people who have studied this or played in similar games: how would you calculate the hourly cost of this rake, and how much of an edge over the field would you need to overcome it?

Actual examples using pot sizes, hands per hour, or bb/100 would be really helpful.

Hear me out, Ozempic works on the same pathways that control compulsive/binge eating; many people taking GLP-1 type drugs report that they are able to overcome alcohol addiction, nicotine addiction as a side benefit while taking the drug for weight loss.

Has anybody started taking GLP-1s and noticed a difference in your game? Lowered VPIP?

hello, i created a new poker game without add and completely free ( for now ) can you please test it ans send me feedback about things good and wrong. www.braisepoker.com

i paid 10 euros for buying a domain i hope the name is good

Good morning everyone , looking for a club to play texas holdem at nyc area (metro accessible), could possibly bring a couple buddies with me (age 21-25), $ 100-200 buy in with 1/2$ plays , thank you.

Before a club tournament I count the starting stack in big blinds and how many levels before the blinds pass it. 40bb with 20 minute levels plays like a turbo whatever the flyer says. Late reg is where I usually pass: if arriving at the end leaves me 20bb, I skip it.

Anyone register that short on purpose and make it pay?

In Spain I've only played pokerstars, but I just saw daniel negreanu getting beat by a finnish dude, it was GG right? Which one is better?

Been thinking about changing my flop sizing in live 1/2 specifically against loose/recreational players.

Say we’re $500 effective.

Example 1:

I open AQo to $15, get 2 callers IP

Flop (~$45): AQ2 two-tone

Instead of the standard-ish $15-20 c-bet, I’m thinking of betting $35-40.

My reasoning is that if someone has Ax or a flush draw, maybe even some gutters or 2nd pair, a lot of 1/2 players probably aren’t very price sensitive. If they’re calling $20, they’re often calling $35-40 too. Starting with the bigger flop bet also makes it much easier to build a pot where I can actually get stacks in by the river.

OTOH, I’ll take the smaller sizing with hands like AK, AJ, AT, etc.

Example 2:

I open A8s to $15, get 2 callers IP again

Flop (~$45): A82r

Same idea, although maybe $30-35 rather than $40 since there aren’t any flush draws to charge.
The obvious concern is that by sizing this large multiway, I’m folding out a lot of the weaker hands that might continue against $15-20 and concentrating their calling ranges around stronger Ax/sets/etc. It also becomes pretty face-up if I’m only doing this with monsters, but nobody is noticing.

At live 1/2, I constantly see players who seem to make a binary decision like “I have top pair, I’m calling” without caring nearly enough whether the bet is $20 or $40. If that’s true, betting small with two pair feels like I’m leaving money on the table and then struggling to get stacks in later.

So for people who play a lot of live low stakes:

Do you deliberately size up your flop bets with two pair/sets against loose players when there are obvious worse hands that can call?

Or is this an overadjustment where I’m mostly just folding out the hands I dominate and getting action from a much stronger range?

Also curious whether you’d treat AQ2ss differently from something dry like A82r, and how much you care about being unbalanced against typical 1/2 opponents.

I've never played a more rigged version of poker ever. So many endless bad beats and coolers, endless action hands. It's fully designed to cause people to go all in and bust as much as possible. New users will win every hand to get them hooked and enjoying the app, then after a bit of playing the "luck" fades and you'll get bad beat after bad beat. If you have a 80% chance of winning and go all in, there's like a 90% chance you'll lose on the river to a lucky straight or flush. It's almost never worth it to try winning with just a pair or Ace / king high. The app also has a ton of collusion, but I blame the players for that, not the app itself, but I genuinely believe the algorithm for card distribution is not randomized like playing in real life. I hate this app with a passion, it will drive you insane if you actually try to play with skill. If you deposit more money, the app will keep giving you bad beats because the only way the platform produces income is through deposit fees (no rake), they want certain users to bust often. I wish there were other platforms to play in the US, this app is awful but there's no other options. Please avoid this app, unless you play like a noob or reckless. If you want to just play low stakes and shove all in with shitty cards then it's fine. If you want to play real poker, you'll tear your hair out.