Probably the best plog in the world

Originally posted by Padelbro
Well Veikkaus definitely doesnt have the softest games.. Also the app is or at least was just hideous couple of years back.

Rake is lowest percentage-wise, but they dont have any rakeback still I guess? Also it depends stakes I guess, if the rakecap is same as other sites, percentages doesnt really matter.

It is literally like 7-8 times lower rake than at GG poker which has pre-flop rake, which makes it basically unbeatable. I'm not sure your making any point with rakecap (it cant be higher than anywhere else either) and rakeback is just a net lowering to your rake . If the rake is super extreme then it helps a bit but doesn't make it better than playing site with the lowest rake.

I have a double digit winrate playing holdem there and I play up to high-stakes on that site . Reason its softer than elsewhere is Finland and Austria are not places filled with guys who want to make money - they are unambitious countries due to the social system . Take then all the East Euro countries and countries like Brazil and put those guys to your games and you can be ensured they have big incentives to win at any stakes they playing and they are hungry to improve every day . Hard seeing this being any different at the plo .

Doubledigits WR in a modern day NLHE high stakes rakeback effectively calculated in winrate due to very low rake? That sounds unbelievable, cant say im a expert on the subject though.

Originally posted by JoePlotter
Doubledigits WR in a modern day NLHE high stakes rakeback effectively calculated in winrate due to very low rake? That sounds unbelievable, cant say im a expert on the subject though.

not claiming to have such a winrate at high-stakes , what I meant is overall playing that site and Ive played there plenty of 50-200nl bcz slacking action above but when there is action its good so winning a lot from there also however hard to present real winrates nl400 and above due to volume from that site being low - surely its not 10bb / 100 there but way less however at 50-200nl certainly have a massive wr

what determinates your wr is pretty much 1) rake 2) how many fish / table and their vpips 3) do you have edges over the regs ? ... or do you leak money ? ...

sort of feels like a fruitless discussion if you refuse to believe its a good site then so be it , then you should play at GG poker or something

Lower rake is the same as higher rake with rakeback. Especially at low stakes PLO, where the rake is high, rakeback should be included in the winrate,

Example:
Rake is 5%, making it around 15bb/100 for Player Joe. He makes 2bb/100 winrate pre-rakeback, thinkin he sucks. Rakeback is 40%, giving him 6bb/100.
On another site the rake is 3%, being 9bb/100. Player Joe has the same edge in that pool, but now he is making 8bb/100 without rakeback, thinking he is a crusher.

Making +10bb/100 at 2,5% rake doesn't sound that far. Not sure what the rake is at Holdem, but I would assume something between 8-10bb/100 at 5% rake? Making 10bb/100 at 2,5% is the same as making 5bb/100 with normal rake. And at low traffic sites the edge is usually higher than what it is at "grinder networks".

edit: Just checked, Veikkaus has 3% rake with 10bb cap at PLO10, 4bb cap at PLO25 and 3bb cap at PLO50. Comparison, at Party the cap is same at PLO10, but 8bb at PLO25 (3-5 players) and whooping 12bb at full 6max table. At GG cap is 3bb at PLO25. At Party and GG rake is 5%.

Party's 8bb/12bb cap is a killer.

At Veikkaus, in PLO25 the max cap is hit at around 133bb pots. At Party the lower 8bb cap is hit at 160bb pot and 12bb cap at 240bb pot. In other terms, at full table, if you go all-in for 100bb stacks and win, at Veikkaus you pay 4bb rake and at Party you pay 8-10bb rake.

Would you tighten your opening ranges from those gto 15/20/30/50 if rake's that high? Personally I feel those 15 and 20 are a little bit too loose for my liking anyways. I guess you'd have to stay out of flippy preflop calls too, mostly those big one after someone has cold called it after the raise.

That's a good question: How to adjust at small stakes preflop.

Solver tightens up when rake gets high. Depending on how sim is set up, especially SB tactic slides towards more 3bet/fold. In early solver days I saw a sim where SB was pretty much 18% 3bet and 80% fold. EP ranges got also tighter. So that adjustment is easy. But what if (as they mostly are) opponents are playing very non-solver pre and postflop? When opp doesn't fold to 3bets at all, solver tightens up 3bet ranges. When opponents call too much, solver opens more.

And even in solver, high rake sim, the EV of hands that are fold with higher rake and open with lower is very close to 0. That assumes opponents play perfectly. In reality they are not, and hero should have an edge versus them (why would hero be on the table otherwise?). So when that postflop edge is included I would say that "normal" RFI ranges are just fine even with a bit higher rake.

What I am saying is it doesn't really have much impact on your winrate whether you open 14% or 15% from UTG. 15/20/30/50 are "old school" numbers, at higher rake most solver sims open quite the same from EP and MP (about 15%), then more from CO and BTN. The bigger your postflop edge is, the more you can open from late positions. And as always, we don't really make money with preflop calls, except the very strong hands (= no brainers). So all those borderline preflop calls are just that, borderline in the long run. Unless the opponent is a good customer in some way.

I just played in a table where solver preflop was thrown in trash bin. One opponent was a weird bi-polar maniac-passive. Or he was just really drunk. Had stretches of mania, where he potted every hand preflop and was very aggro postflop. And he had stretches of limping every hand, and being very passive postflop, and slow playing good hits. Other 4 players were limpers, who were passive postflop. Except one limper, who opened every now and then random hands and went 3 barrel bluff when missed the board.

I didn't really play solver preflop (nor postflop, lol) there. Limped a lot, opened a lot from CO/BTN if unopened, and called a bit more than usual versus those two guys (I had position on them). Strategy was simple, waiting to hit versus two aggros and extract thin value from the rest. And one-stabbed those when they checked twice. EZ game.

Your making a statement that rb evens itself out in comparison to site with lower rake and no rb and then you dig to some numbers . Fair enough .

We must however with GG take to account they rake pre-flop also! Which makes the rake way higher than one would think. This does not happen anywhere else.

Also I must point that the site has a system of decreasing your rb the more your winning and they are not very willing to be explaining how it actually works but for winning players the rb numbers are not what they are presenting . There is quite a few discussions of this at other platforms .

Isn't GG preflop raked only in 3bet pots? At small stakes, very few 3bet pots end preflop.

Party rakeback is tricky, as you get extra on some hours. And then there is the boost. Most grinders have 5% boost, which makes the rakeback at fast forward to be about 40-45%. If played at 4h window, it will go up to 80%.

GG rakeback is tricky too. The normal rakeback in form on fish buffet is advertised as "normal" but affected with PVI (player value index) that drops it to 1/3 or less. So the rakeback itself is around 10%. They have bad beat promotions, but money for those is taken from tables so they are actually -EV promotions for grinders. There are the freerolls daily for bad beats and high hands, and those have very good value for PLO10 and lower (in terms of bb's). Decent value for PLO25, and lower for higher stakes.

I didn't say anything evens out. I am talking about the net rake in the end. Low rake, no rakeback might be better option than high rake with rakeback. Or not, depending on the numbers.

The point was originally to bring up how having double digit winrate at Veikkaus isn't than hard compared to winrates pre rakeback on other sites.

Most players don't give a poop about rakeback. GG and Stars are the biggest sites, both having 5-10% rakeback. GG adds up 5% rake, with some preflop rake. Insanity.

Yes , its good point , if no rb then your winrate is supposed being few bb higher for it to make sense in comparison to if you get rb!

Also think your right at GG when the 3-b is in place rake starts running.

Partypoker has 40% rb paid weekly and not uncommon seeing 2 fish at a table up to 200nl .

Thinking its just disliked site due to software being from 1990s or something , but certainly a site I would recommend people to play instead of chasing those pirate chests on pokerstars or paying GG rake

If you play cash games, you get around 20%. On Fast Forward you get a bit over 30%. On Fast Forward there are happy hours running from morning 12 hours, giving more points up to double.

Good rb it is on partypoker

cant even compare results of party vs GG for a winning player , GG is like a sperm bank takes your depos and thats it good bye

Have been playing for a while at our national network. Kinda fun as the low stakes are not reg-fests. I have seen some very nice (=profitable for me) lines, but today I saw one of the optimistic calls of all time.

Opponent is good customer, passive but likes to make 1bb stabs when flops are checked. Even in multiway pots. Haven't seen him bluffing.

Was quite fed up with Party, and same couple aggros just hitting their super wide 3betting range all the time. Got very genorous reload bonus from them, aand took it. First session, and those two aggros just crushed me with wide 3bets. Didn't matter if I 4bet AA or called their 3bet, they just hit every board. And I got something, but not enough. Down few buyins and I started to wonder are they legit players at all. I get it that sometimes they hit flop, but when I 4bet and 9/10 times they hit the board with all kinds of hands, day after day after day, it seems just weird.

Anyway, I played few days on different time (outside peak hours) and things started to go normally. In the end booked nice profits from the bonus and from the games. There were quite many lines (especially passive) from opponents that I just didn't get. Here is one:

Got quads vs quads for the second time of my life!

Flop was 884, I bet with 44 and opponent calls. Turn is 4, opponent bets and I raise, opponent calls. River is 8 and I puke. I check, opponent bets and I really, really, really wanted to fold. This opponent would not call turn without an 8 nor bet the river without an 8. But then I though that if I fold quads I won't get sleep next night as I probably would second quess myself all night long. And the pot wasn't that big in terms of $$$ as it was quite low stakes. I called and he had the 8.

This is something I have been trying to tell poker players for some time. Performance level.

When players want to improve as poker players (= make more money), they often focus on strategy. Solvers are a big thing and there is a big market for all solver based apps that you can get easy access to solver outputs.

But the truth is that strategy is only a small thing that affects our performance. If we ask random non-pro players how big affect on their strategy knowledge is to their results, I am quite sure that most of them would answer that the impact is very significant.

Here is a short list of things that affect our performance (poker, work, school etc.)
- Environment
- Our expectations
- Our ability to adapt and adjust
- Motivation and goals
- Skils and strategy
- Our mental and physical resources
- Health
- Life situation
- Stress

We are all individuals, and the amount that each thing affects us is individual. For some, the meaning of strategy skills is very minimal if all others are not in good shape. For some, they can perform high quality strategy even when other things are quite bad. I will start to open those from the list above a bit more in the next post.

Why is it that EVERY SINGLE TIME these deep stacked insane bad beats go to opponents favor?`

Got another 800bb pot with that guy, my top set+straight vs his bottom set and backdoor flush draw. Take one quess who won the hand...

Anyway, back to my last post; life is not Madden. That "Madden" refers to video football, where every player has an attribute and always performs according to that. Pixels don't have good and bad days. Our performance every day is varying constantly. For some the variance in performance is quite small, meaning that the difference of good and bad day is quite small. For some, the difference is huge. Both might have the best top level performance (their poker strategy skill is the same) at same level, but due to variance the overall EV at tables is very different. Therefore if we only focus on strategy and how to improve that, the impact on our overall EV at the tables might not be affected that much.

ENVIRONMENT

If you have kids, you know whether they increase or decrease your EV if they come to you while you play. There might be a construction workers outside your window, or someone is making noises at your house. Your chair might a bit uncomfortable and so on. On the other hand, good environment works for your favor. Nice setup in a nice room, where colors comfort you. Maybe a plant or two and a good scenery from the window.

OUR EXPECTATIONS

One of the most common mental game flaws is to expect the money you will win. We think or know that we are winning players. And when you sit down on the tables, you might already think how much you might win. Problem is when it doesn't happen, it creates a negative feeling. And any feelings are poker player's worst enemy. Stronger the feeling (positive or negative), the less we can use our rational thinking. Another problem might be that we expect ourselves to play really good poker. And when that doesn't happen for some reason, we see it as a failure. We might be disappointed to ourselves, creating another negative feeling.

On the other hand, realistic and good expectations can help us when poker tries to give us negative feelings. If the expectation is to play as good poker as possible, while understanding that we can't play our A game always, it helps us to monitor our game level realisticly and cope with minor drops in our level.

Those days... Played a session, -8bin under EV. Run started to even towards the end, but in the beginning it was typical night at low stakes. Getting money in constantly with 70-80% equity, but just couldn't hold. And on the other hand my own draws couldn't connect. Then there was a 600bb pot, where I flop the nut straight in HU hand and raise opponent. Opponent calls, and donk pots blank turn. I shove, and opponent had QT66ss on 345r flop. Turn opened backdoor flushdraw and of course he hit it. But he calls my flop pot raise with just blockers to donk bluff turn When SPR is low. And got rewarded.

Ev was profitable, so I should be happy. My brain just doesn't co-operate, as I don't feel happy.

Gotta love this opponent:

I open pre from UTG, he calls from the blinds. Flop is QJJr, he check-calls my half a pot cbet. Turn is A, we both check. River is 8 and he pots.

He had 8322r. And he's doing this all the time. Doesn't want to give up any flop in HU pots, and once you give him the rope he hangs to it. Funny thing is that he keeps doing it against me over and over again. Good Customer with capital GC!

Hmm. Not sure how to feel after this session.

OUR ABILITY TO ADAPT AND ADJUST

I am quite sure that most of you immediately thought that this is about adjusting to opponent's strategies. Well, part of it is that. But we need adaptation skills when everything else is not optimal. If there is that annoying sound from construction site, how do we react and adapt? If we are tired, do we react on strategical level? When we run bad, do we change our strategy?

To that last sentence the optimal answer is of course not, as changing strategy there would lover the EV. To be precise, it lowers the EV of our TOP LEVEL PERFORMANCE. If this was Madden, we wouldn't have the need to think about that. But in reality, we might start to play worse when running bad. Well, not just "might" but we do. Everyone of us will drop from top level performance when running bad enough. The key is to be self aware and realistic about our own thresholds and dangers. So sometimes changing strategy lowers the EV less than continuing without adjusting.

Also, we get information on poker table constantly. The more we look for it, the more we get it. Without huds, every single hand gives us information on every other player. Solver doesn't care about reads, info or notes. If we focus too much on solver output, we lose our ability to use those pieces of information to gain bigger edge to our opponents, and therefore incease our EV. It's good to remember, that solver output is never the optimal strategy versus any opponent. Never.