Ok, Here is what CVCX spit out
I forgot to ask you if there was late surrender. If there is, these numbers aren't accurate. I set the sim with no surrender.
Ok. The 1 - 12 spread I laid out above was pretty accurate for this game even though it is european no hole card.
for a 1 - 12 spread the optimal spread looks like this:
TC
0....$5
1....$10
2....$30
3....$50
4....$60
You'll make about $12.28/hr . Your DI= 5.12 and your c-score= 26.23 . This is with 80 % pen .
If you only get 70 % pen, it changes. The above numbers look pretty good but I bet it is hard to find 80 % pen. You have probably been playing 70 % pen. Your c- score for this game is a terrible 15.13 and DI=3.89 . This isn't good and if you play 1 - 12 on a game like this, it will take you much longer to get into the long run. This could be why you feel like something is wrong and like you are paddling upstream.
Let's take the 70 % pen and increase our spread to 1 - 24. Playing $5 to $120 boosts your c-score to almost 22 and DI=4.68 . Or you could play 2 hands with a max bet of $ 60 . You get about the same results. 2 hands 5 to 60 gives 22.03, DI=4.69 and 18.77/hr .
2 hands
TC
0....2x 5
1....2x10
2....2x40
3....2x60
Boost it to $5 to $100 which you may be able to get away with. Gives:
C-score = 30 DI=5.44 31.39/hr which is much better. The NO for playing this way is 33,700 which I think is playable. Compare this to the 1- 12 spread earlier playing one hand which was 66,000 . Basically, if you play optimally with that 1 -12 spread you are playing with a NO of 66,000 which is pretty big. I would say that if you aren't playing optimally it is probably more like 75,000 . NO is the number of rounds you need to get into the long run. Hope this helps.