Winning at poker is hard, and a good chunk of the live poker community claims 10 big blinds per hour to be just about the maximum one can win in a raked game of Texas Hold’em Poker.
One man decided to put that theory to the test in the summer of 2024, going back to his roots and trying to win $100 playing in a live $5/5 game at Hustler Casino.
That man is Marc Goone, the founder of Hungry Horse Poker and one of the most successful live poker players in LA.
Goone, who owns a coaching for profit business, decided to show his students and everyone else watching that massive win-rates could be achieved using a relatively simple poker strategy based on logic and player tendencies rather than GTO solutions and balance.
But can he actually do it, what are his motivations, and how far has he come so far? Let’s take a deeper look into Goone’s poker vlog, whose first episode you can check out below:
Who Is Marc Goone?
A former bus driver turned poker pro, Marc Goone turned poker pro in 2017 and has been playing poker in the LA area ever since.
He is one of the most well-known live poker players on the west coast and has long graduated from playing the low stakes.
Marc is a musician, and a part of his original plan coming out to LA was to try and make it in music, but the love and talent for poker were simply too alluring. Over his poker career, Goone has built up a substantial poker bankroll, and even played the game on live poker shows like Hustler Casino Live and more.
He eventually partnered up with a few other pros to start Hungry Horse Poker, a for profit coaching business, which helps up-and-coming players go from slight losers to big winners in the games.
Today, much of Goone’s focus is on his various business endeavors, including his coaching program, his YouTube channel, and more.
Yet, in 2024, he decided to go back to the basics and show his students and everyone else that he still has what it takes to win in the games that made him who he is, and that he can do so at a win rate most players consider impossible.
Is $100 Per Hour Possible at the Low-Stakes?
Goone’s challenge, which started in August, was to win $100 per hour playing low-stakes poker in LA, namely at Hustler Casino.
His game of choice is $5/5 with a $1,000 buy-in cap, which includes plenty of straddles and PLO double-board bomb pots, which he considers to be highly profitable.
This is quite a juicy low-stakes poker game, but winning 20 bb per hour is still a task few poker players would even consider, as it is widely accepted that big winners win about 10 bb per hour, a half of Goone’s goal.
Yet, Marc believes in the Hungry Horse Poker methods and his exploitative approach to poker, and he wants to show the world just how good it is.
The first episode of the vlog was aired in August 2024, and he has uploaded a total of 14 highly entertaining and educational episodes since then.
You can check out all the 14 episodes of the $100 per hour challenge on Goone’s YouTube channel @hungryhorsepoker, along with plenty of educational videos where he teaches his approach to poker sprinkled in-between.
Can Marc Win His Challenge?
The parameters of Goone’s $100 per hour challenge are a bit vague, as he did not set a fixed number of hours he will play for the challenge. His goal is to play about 250 hours at the low-stakes in total, and he is getting pretty close to that number.
To the surprise of many, he has actually been maintaining a win-rate of about $100 per hour throughout the challenge, winning fairly consistently over more than 200 hours of play.
If you think he has been sun-running the whole time, think again! In fact, it seems that every episode that’s uploaded, Marc loses at least a few massive pots (for the game), but that has not hindered his progress at all.
With the 250-hour mark approaching, it seems that Goone will be very close to proving his theory, and even if he falls slightly short and wins $90 per hour, it will be a feat few other players could duplicate.
You may be wondering how he is managing to do it and whether you could follow in his footsteps, and showing you how you can is the big goal of Marc’s entire endeavor at the low-stakes tables.
How Is Goone Crushing the Low-Stakes?
When you hear of a poker player winning huge in the low-stakes games, your mind may wander to the idea of some GTO bot who plays unexploitative poker and makes optimal decisions every minute of every session.
While he loves studying the solvers, Marc could not be any further from a GTO bot, as his game is based entirely on exploiting the population tendencies and playing far from optimal poker.
Marc is a student of the game and understands the value of equilibrium, but also knows that few players, if any, actually play close to the equilibrium.
For that reason, he plays a game that forces players to make mistake and advertise the strength of their hands (as they do).
With his approach, Marc is able to make amazing deductions in terms of his opponents’ hand ranges, and take the appropriate line in the majority of situations.
If you want to crush the low-stakes, Marc preaches throwing the idea of a balanced game out the window and adjusting to the way your opponents play to punish them to the maximum.
In his low-stakes poker Vlog episodes, Marc showcases these methods, consistently playing a game that with many lines diverging from optimal, but also consistently getting favorable results across different positions and board textures, and against different opponents.
If you are a live poker player struggling at the low-stakes, we highly recommend checking out High Horse Poker as one of the best teachable poker vlogs on the internet right now.
