Why Lowering Stakes is Actually Better For Your Income 

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Thanks! Best of luck in the gardens streets!

I seriously appreciate the time to write a positive comment. I hope you find a path to work where you feel passionate 👍 good luck my man

Thanks 🙏 yeah I think if I’m gonna show this journey, then honesty is such an important part

😂

Ah that’s awesome! Congrats! Keep it up 👍

Thanks brother

Ahhh that’s so awesome to hear! Good to see you last night and best of luck on the felt!

Thanks 🙏

Totally hahaha

Thank you my man

Thanks!!

Appreciate you my brother

Thanks! I’m not stopping! 😁

I never say no to an easy online survey 😂

😂😂😂

Hopefully so! Should be a good time with more content coming!

Thanks! And I agree ☝️

Thanks so much for this - yeah I think of this venture as very similar to any other entrepreneurial path. Full of uncertainty, but with the support of my partner, there can be a lot of benefit down the road

Thanks man

Appreciate you! And totally agree 👍

😂😂

Thanks my man - always an honor to see you watch a video of mine. Luckily things have been going much better for me this past month 🙏 best of luck to you on the felt as well

Thanks man I always appreciate your encouragement and positivity

Thanks!

Thanks Lee - I think it was the right move as well; at least for now. And 😂 yeah I better watch out

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

Thanks 🙏

Oh man - best of luck getting out of the downswing

@@BrantzenPoker Same to you bro I think a lot of your viewers play 2-5 anyway so watching you play 5-5 is more attractive. Good luck. Don’t go on hustler for a while lol it’s gonna fuk up your mindset. HCL play is nothing like every day grinding at a casino against regs. Fukin nutz 😂

@@UnknownWarriorZz hahaha totally 😂😂

Great points

@@BrantzenPoker I commented initially before watching the video. But you are C betting on boards where you have no business C betting like the A8 hand. That will add up. And be sure to pay attention to stack sizes. I think you are blinded by the runbad and ignoring the fundamentals that got you here. Go back to the basic. Which hands to open, raise, which boards to bet or check and you’ll see a massive improvement.

@@SqueakyClean87 I will say, I think in a 3 bet pot in that configuration, I should be cbetting near 100% on that board

You’re always the best, my man

That’s for the $5/5/10 but I’ve had a pretty decent hourly in that game, as there’s usually decent game selection

Totally agree, great points 👍

😂

Thanks 🙏 but money is also pretty important to live 😂

The $5/5 is definitely a much lower variance route

Cali poker sounds like shallow caps & insane rake. Not worth it

@@ericdoheny9108 Yeah, but there is no other choice. And the Garden is a very nice poker room. It could be worse, we could be living in Alabama. By the way, here is a dad joke, "How do you call a girl in Alabama who runs from her cousins?"

Runaway bride? 😅

@@BrantzenPoker A virgin. Yours work as well.

It’s an honor to have you comment on my video brother

Doin my best - that’s my goal! Trying to up the content now

🎉

😂

I think it just seems that way. These were the best hands I got over a 7-8 hour session

Thank god I was right 😂

He first needs to figure out if hes a winning player first. If he actually is then its just variance. If hes not then hes gonna be bleeding money no matter what

😂 I think my last few thousand hours would suggest that I am a winning player

@@BrantzenPokerthe need for you to justify makes me think you might not be a winning player. Maybe through all your sources of income RU-vid merch ect you’re a winning player but not so sure with poker. Took time to justify to him but not other positive fans leaving messages on here.

@@hippieflipp3213 Except that by the time he posted here he had already responded to numerous other people and then continued to respond to rmore after. Even if the "you answered so therefore you're lying by the rules I just made up" logic was set aside, your direct claim that he responded here but not to other people is completely, verifiably false.

3-4

👍😁

Totally!

Well you do have to understand this session is over 5 hours - and a lot of the bigger decisions will be in 3 bet/ 4bet pots. So it may seem more likely than it actually occurs. And every time, it was a pretty nutted holding

@@BrantzenPoker got you. Appreciate the content man. Hope you run it up this month

Very dependent on if you have a different source of income, what the buyin is, and your avg win rate

Missed opportunity 😞

Definitely - very fortunate to have a supportive partner

Genius

I’ll do my best!

There’s definitely a lot of money in plo but unfortunately I’m not the best at it myself

Maybe someday! But the gardens is so much closer for me 😂

@@BrantzenPoker it’s really close to me as well. But my nursing school is in Alhambra so commerce is right there. But I always have better games there. My luck at gardens plus player interactions have always been bad 🥴

Just have to shop plans through the public marketplace

Totally - a lot of people’s egos get in the way of their success

That would be true except for the fact that around 85% of my subscribers came from short form content. If they were all long form content watchers then this would be true, but as is I make around $7-$10 per 1,000 views. So this video made around $150, and I spent around 7-8 hours editing it

It’s a $600 cap but I typically just buyin for $500

Backup plan

Hahaha it’s a crazy ton of bomb pots - though you learn how to navigate them better as you play more

True true

There’s no 2/5 game at the gardens. It goes from 2/3 to 5/5. You can’t buy deep at either game. 2/3 is max $200 and 5/5 is max $600.

How’s a man to know 😂

I also don’t believe this is true. A lot of lower stakes players don’t want to balloon the pot pre because there’s no guarantees but overplay/overcommit when they flop top pair

California is expensive - plus it’s a family’s expenses not an individual

I wish

July

@@BrantzenPoker When in July?

I agree with a lot of your statements, but my main goal is to build a reliable income around content creation. Eventually, I hope my poker income won’t be something I have to rely on, but instead, just icing on the cake

It’s a much different goal than just pushing the envelope as a pure poker player

Living in Southern California as a family of 3 is pretty costly. I’d say that’s pretty average or on the low end of where I’m at when you factor mortgage, bills, insurance, food, gas. And life has just gotten more and more expensive

I mean a lot of these players are like that. I mean it definitely depends on what card room you’re at. At the gardens, most of the aggressive players are playing higher stakes than the $5/5, so most of the $5/5 players have an insanely tight 3! And 4! Range

$120,000? Definitely not, though that’s an extremely conservative roll

@@BrantzenPoker conservative and realistic if you are married with a child...! 🫨

@@TomRauhe touché. I think 120 buyins is way more than enough for a cash game bankroll, but you’re 100% right as far as for supporting a family. Wish I could say I started with $120k.

@@BrantzenPoker you were talking about 5/5/10 or something, the buyin there should be around 2500, for which 40 BBs is 100k. And 40 buyins is the utmost minimum for a cash bankroll. You will be on 30 BB downswings with which you will have to deal. If YOU have to deal with that, that's not an issue. If a family has to deal with that, that's a whole other story

Ah - yeah, the $5/5/10 I play is an $800 cap, so it’s definitely a different story than a $2.5k buyin game. I assume you’re talking about a 30 buyin downswing vs a 30 BB downswing, but if you are losing 30 buyins in a 250 BB game, that’s a 7,500 BB downswing, which, I’m sorry to say, I don’t think is really a downswing. I think that would be a pretty clear indicator that you’re losing in that game

I’ll do my best - working on the next video as we speak

@BrantzenPoker thanks for your reply, wish me luck as I'm off to my 2/5 game. Try mixing up with your variance in lower stakes by being aggressive, I find it works mostly for me as everyone see me as loose

@@robmckrill3134 good luck!

like what

😅

This…

I think I’ve already opened that box up though, of full transparency, and what it looks like to play poker as more than just a hobby, to support a family. I think it would be more dishonest to pretend like it’s totally easy to support a family on a sole income of playing poker

@@BrantzenPoker To what the original commenter said. I think in this hyped social media era, where people only show the highs, and not the lows, just to keep gaining viewers, likes in the drive for more income is just not genuine. I agree, there is a lot that people share or overshare, and as a choice, someone can unsubscribe, as freely as the person who shares more or shares an honest view of their journey. Brantzen is showing that he is human, he has the same "life" situations as the rest of us, and is humble enough to share. I can bet there is more to it, but he opens up enough to give the viewer an understanding. Brantzen, I met you at HG with only 5k followers (2yrs ago), you are doing something right, heck you even got a guy to comment and follow you and he knows nothing about poker, hahah...You are genuine as they come, keep being you man.

I think he's aloud to share what he wants and is comfortable with. Don't tell others what to do.

Nah we need the entire picture for those of us interested in poker as a career. Keep ur mouth shut kid.

Thanks!

This is all for clout. There’s no way RU-vid doesn’t pay more that that with 130k+ subs

@@jameskim3116 it's about the backend stuff off RU-vid is just the funnel for them

Child labor, smort smort

True

Hm to be fair I’ve never had a job I made more money in than playing poker, so it might actually result in making things more difficult

​@BrantzenPoker that comment makes no sense if losing $1200 in one month forces you to go to lower stakes. Someone who is trying to play poker for a living needs at least 100 buy ins (which is $5,000 if you are buying in for $500), although 200 buy ins is much better, and at least 6 months of expenses (at $7500/month, that would be $45,000). So AT MINIMUM you should have $50k set aside. If you don't have at least $50k in the bank all the time, month in, month out, you are doing your family a HUGE disservice and you'd be better off getting a full time job. And just as a side note, you'd need a win rate of roughly $47 an hour, playing 40 hours a week just to cover your $7500/month expenses.

⁠@@EricLeetFishingyou’re talking about bankroll management, and he’s talking about money. If he’s never had a job that makes $30/hr, making $35/hr at poker would be much better regardless of the stakes he’s playing. So even if he’s not making that $47/hr he’s still doing better than jobs he’s previously had.

M9

To be fair, the main goal is for sponsorships and RU-vid ad revenue to comprise the bulk of my income. I’d love to not have to rely on playing poker. For now, my wife and I will be balancing our roles so it takes a lot of stress off me individually

Haha I’m not much of a PLO player but that’s awesome

@@BrantzenPoker better value than 2 cards imo