Cash game strategy no-limit hold’em rake win rate bankroll management jackpots live poker; More Stories. A Multiple Semi-Bluff Opportunity in a Las Vegas $1/$2 Game. John is a regular at the $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em cash game at the Bellagio. Because he keeps good records (something we strongly recommend all players do—you can use the app, ‘Poker Income’ or ‘RunGood’ to easily track your records), John knows that he has won $2,000 in the last month/50 hours of play—including tips and rake. Nov 08, 2020 Cash games require a different strategy than tournaments, as tournament structure is typically winner-take-all. Cash games are all about value. Deep-stack cash games are more intricate than tournaments and require you to make more difficult decisions because more chips are under threat. Feb 01, 2018 The best 1/2 no limit cash game strategy is to play a tight and aggressive style both preflop and postflop. You need to hammer on the loose passive recreational players and avoid going on tilt when they get lucky against you. The best 1/2 players can make $20 an hour or more in deep stacked games with this strategy. Our focus is on No Limit Texas Hold’em poker because it’s the most popular format, but we have articles on other poker variants too. Every improvement you make in your cash game strategy will reap rewards today and for the rest of your playing career, so don’t hesitate to improve your knowledge with the assistance of FTR.

Measuring Success in Cash Games

Limit Holdem Strategy

Nl Holdem Cash Game Strategy

Limit Hold'em Cash Game Strategy

Before we discuss the strategy in cash games, it’s important to define what success means. Success in cash games is measured in what’s called a win rate. Your win rate is the difference in skill between you and your opponents, minus the rake. Win rates can be negative if your opponents are better than you or the rake is too high (this most commonly happens in private home games where the usurious rake renders the game unbeatable).

Win rates online are measured in big blinds per 100 hands whereas win rates live are measured in big blinds per hour.

Here’s a simple example. John is a regular at the $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em cash game at the Bellagio. Because he keeps good records (something we strongly recommend all players do—you can use the app, ‘Poker Income’ or ‘RunGood’ to easily track your records), John knows that he has won $2,000 in the last month/50 hours of play—including tips and rake.

To calculate his hourly rate is simple: $2,000/50 = $40 per hour. (Therefore his bb/hour is 4).

To measure his win rate (in big blinds per 100 hands or BB/100), we first have to know how many hands he plays per hour on average. While the true number of hands dealt may vary slightly from casino-to-casino (depending on the speed of the game and number of players seated at the table), I’ve calculated that on average John can expect to play 27 hands per hour:

John has therefore played 50 x 27 = 1,350 hands.

John has won $2,000/10 or 200 big blinds.

John’s win rate is 200/(1,350/100) or roughly 15bb/100.

John should be proud; that’s an incredible win rate: although statistically insignificant, since 1,350 hands is not a large enough sample size. (For more on how to calculate win rates and variance, in both tournaments and cash games, see my definitive guide to bankroll management).

The truth is that 90% of poker players will have a negative-win-rate; therefore, any positive-win-rate should be considered an accomplishment. Assuming that you have a positive-win-rate, you can begin to compare your win rate against other players with positive-win-rates.

Breaking down the 10% category of positive-win-rate players even further, we can calculate various levels of win rates for live poker. Keep in mind that these are just estimations and possible win rates, and that games vary incredibly from casino-to-casino and player-to-player.

Online win rates will be reduced dramatically. Anything above break-even online is considered
great, whereas typical win rates at mid stakes games are 2bb/100 (or 0.5bb/hour), a testament to how competitive the games have become.

For live poker, I’m basing my estimations on some diligent records I kept over the years playing live poker in Macau and talking to other winning players, clients and readers whose games I respect. In my own experience, I regularly won 15BB/hour in Macau for the several years at stakes as high as $10,000/$20,000 HKD, No Limit Hold’em (roughly $1,250/$2500 USD)

– Amateur: Losing win rate.
– Good Player: Anything above breaking even, or > 1BB/hour
– Very Good: > 3BB/hour
– Great /Pro: > 5BB/ hour
– Excellent: > 10BB/hour*
– World Class: > 15BB/hour

*If you are regularly winning at 10BB/hour, I would advise moving up to the next limit to test out the competition and sharpen your skills.

To get a statistically significant sample size, you must play thousands of hands to determine that your win rate is not the result of luck or variance, rather a true skill advantage.

For more information about variance in cash game poker check out this video:

Playing in games with a lower rake is one way you can immediately improve your win rate in cash games. Casinos such as the Commerce in Los Angeles and the Bellagio, Aria or Wynn in Las Vegas offer safe, secure cash games with competitive rake. (They even give players rakeback in the form of food comps).

Online poker usually has the lowest rake, but since the level of competition is higher, it usually means that your overall win rate is still lower online than it is live. Most people will profit more in live poker games because the influx of recreational players makes the game much softer.