NL Cash games

Over the past few days I've been playing some $1/$2 blinds no limit cash games. Some of you might be thinking "Wait a minute! Aren't you supposed to be some sort of super poker stud? What the hell are you doing playing anything that involves $1 or $2 anything?"

The size of NL cash games can be a little deceiving. What happens is you start with blinds of $1 and $2, but things escalate quickly because the size of the bets you make is tied to the size of the pot. For example, let's say you're playing in a $1/$2 blinds game, you raise to $6 and get called by both of the blinds. Now there's $18 in the pot when you see the flop. At this stage if anyone is going to bet it will be somewhere in the $10-$20 range (in most cases) because if they bet much more then that they're risking too much to win the $18 in the pot and if they but much less they're making it too cheap for their opponents to continue. So let's say you bet $15 and one of the other players calls. Now we've got $48 in the pot. If you bet $40 on the turn and get called you'll have $128 in the pot. On the river if you still like your hand you might bet $75. If you get called one of you is dragging a $278 pot which all started from a grand total of $3 in blinds in a hand that didn't even have any raising after the flop.

When I played the $10/$20 blinds no limit game at the Bellagio (which is 10 times the size of the game in the example) I bought in for $1,000 and had less in front of me than any of the other players (I ended up winning $2,000 in about 4 hours but almost had a heart attack every time I played a hand). Clearly these games are a little bigger then they sound.

Anyway over the past few days I've played 7112 hands and won $584 which is 8.2 cents per hand. I'm also earning FPP's at the rate of about 2.7 cents per hand so my net profit has been about 11 cents per hand. This sure doesn't sound like much, but if you do the math it's a nice living. I've found I can play 3,000 hands a day (playing six games at a time) in about 6.5 or 7 hours of playing time. Which means at 11 cents a hand I can make $330 a day. $330 a day times 20 days a month is $6,600 a month which is $79,200 a year.

Of course the end result gets REALLY interesting when you consider that I think my actual expectation might be in the 15-20 cent per hand range instead of 11 cents per hand. Last year in January I had a streak that lasted about 3 weeks where I was playing $3/$6 blinds games (four at a time) where I made over SEVENTY cents a hand. It was like money was falling from the sky.

Anyway for now I'm going to shoot for 10 cents a hand plus the 2.7 cents a hand in FPP's. While it may sound like a lot 7,000 hands isn't a big sample and I'll need to play more to come any remotely firm conclusions. I'm planning on taking tomorrow off, but between Saturday and next Friday I'm hoping to knock out close to 20,000 hands.

In other good and interesting news I got the following e-mail from pokerstars yesterday:

Hello,

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were working together in our Sit & Go tournaments to the detriment of other players. You were involved in at least one tournament with these players and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

The players' accounts were closed and their funds frozen pending a thorough investigation, which is now complete. Fortunately the problem was identified quickly and they had only played in a few tournaments before the accounts were closed.In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the colluders' winnings or balances and to distribute them to the players affected by their actions in as fair a way as possible.

I regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated. Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or players in question. Suffice to say that they have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance to us and we will not abide cheating or collusion in our games. We work hard to police our games and prevent such instances. In the rare cases where collusion has actually occurred, we make sure that any players affected are compensated appropriately.


After reading this I thought "Wow I hope those bastards really screwed me over! I might really cash in here!" My dreams of huge riches were dashed when I looked at my balance. But, while not a whopping sum, the $68 I got back was certainly as splash of icing on an altogether pleasant day.