Have I been missing out on the money?

I don't play a lot online, but the little that I do has been absolutely dismal lately. I was whining explaining this to Cardgrrl the other night, and she suggested trying limit hold'em cash games. She said that specifically she had found the $1/2 limit tables (full, not short-handed) on Full Tilt Poker to be eminently beatable with a practically brain-dead, automaton approach, even doing several tables at once.

It's true that I hadn't tried anything like this, despite repeatedly reading Shamus saying that LHE games have been his bread-and-butter poker this year. I sort of pooh-poohed this with the thought that I'm a no-limit player, and should stick to what I feel I know best.

Well, I'm here to tell you that I may have been wrong.

Tonight I tried an experiment. I logged on to Doyle's Room (nothing against Full Tilt; I'm just trying to spead the action around a little, and I had a small cash in a NLHE tournament a couple of days ago on Doyle--which is now part of the Cake network--finding it just unbelievably soft) and opened two $1/2 LHE tables, full ring games. I only had about $70 on account at the site, so I split it up, $30 on each table, leaving a bit in reserve for rebuilding in case I went completely busto.

I need not have worried. I stopped the games one hour later. Table 1 was up to $71.25, and Table 2 was up to $72.50. That's $83.75 profit in an hour--way more than I usually make playing $1/2 NLHE in casinos. To be fair, though, I was also playing a $.50/$1 razz cash game on PokerStars at the same time, and lost $15 there, at least in part because I wasn't paying as much attention as I otherwise might, what with the three-tabling. Even taking that into account, though, I'm thrilled with $65+ an hour anytime it happens.

Mind you, I am by no means a limit hold'em specialist. Nor was I playing in any sort of advanced, sneaky, super-secret, Jedi mind trick way. It was just bet and raise when I had something good, fold when I didn't, and play few hands from out of position. (Brilliant strategy, eh? I thought it up all by myself!) Well, I guess there was a little trickiness, in that I did things like bet the river with nothing to induce a fold when I thought an opponent had been calling me on a draw that missed--lest he show down a better nothing than mine for free--but I still consider that completely basic, A-B-C poker.

I hit a few nice draws and got paid off, but it certainly didn't feel like I was running smoking hot. I had pocket kings once, queens twice, jacks once, aces never. A turned set of tens accidentally got folded because of a misclick, or the total would have been even higher.

Obviously, this is a ridiculously small sample size, but it has certainly caught my attention. Most of the players at this level are bad beyond the capacity of my meager words to describe, but "clueless," "weak," "passive," "endlessly hopeful," and "desperate" come to mind.

This experiment definitely warrants repeating in the near future. There just may be gold in them thar hills.