New players changing the game forever?

[TenPercenter]

You see the pros getting so mad at players on TV. Pros are getting beat by amateurs that play with cards that the pros wouldn't play. Bad beats will always happen. But the more people playing this game, the less chance a pro will have to win a tournament because of unpredictable players.

Do you think that the game will forever change due to the influx of amateurs? Or does this affect the public spectacle of WSOP and WPT only, and the side/cash games are where the pros will still clean up the fish?

Or will the player-pool catch up someday, and the players will start to play "by the book" again so that pros and non pros alike can read what each other might be in with?

Ten

[Webster]

I think the pros are totally 100% happy with the amount of poor players and the game for anybody that knows how to play is getting better.

[Alobar]

I think it will be harder for the "pros" to win a tournament, but placing well in a tourny pays ALOT better than even winning some of them did a few years ago. Add all the fish in the side games and the pros should be very happy about the current situation.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you think that the game will forever change due to the influx of amateurs? Or does this affect the public spectacle of WSOP and WPT only, and the side/cash games are where the pros will still clean up the fish?

[/ QUOTE ]

Winning WSOP probably got harder. But a few nl side games with the fish will clear em out of their 'hard earned' winnings.

Money move from the sucker to the pro so fast in NL cash games that it emits hard radiation from falling into a singularity.

[Rah]

I can't understand why some people seem to think that bad players somehow make the game harder to beat. Study some poker theory.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
I can't understand why some people seem to think that bad players somehow make the game harder to beat. Study some poker theory.

[/ QUOTE ]

A larger field makes it harder to win a tournament, even if the filler material is mostly amateurs. But all in all I think the expected value of the $10k buy-in hasn't gone down all that much for the pros, but their expected chance at the bracelet has gone way down.

[CountDuckula]

[ QUOTE ]
I can't understand why some people seem to think that bad players somehow make the game harder to beat. Study some poker theory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bad players don't make the game harder to beat, but they do have an effect on variance. In order to lay a bad beat on someone, one has to be playing sub-optimal cards by definition. Sometimes, the fish just get lucky.

Another thing to look at, with respect to tournaments, is that the field has become much larger. There are more players to play against, so the pros have to play more hands than they did before. That translates to more opportunities for bad luck to rear its ugly head. Skill will win out over the long haul, but bad luck can hit even the best players in the short run. Pros will still be winning and placing in most of the tournaments, but a few fish will get lucky enough to join them.

-Mike

[Rah]

I don't think many pros, worthy of the title, would prefer lower profit instead of higher variance .

[dogmeat]

The game has been evolving for a long time. In the 1960's, players unfamiliar with the game got their clocks cleaned by the pros in Vegas. In the late 1970's, after David Sklansky's book came out, and then Doyle wrote Super/System, the game had some major changes. In the 1980's, as more and more people learned the game and Card Player and Poker Player magazines became popular, and more books about theory came out, the game changed again. This "new" group of players are no different than the ones from the 1970's, 80's, or 90's. They might be a little better prepared when they get in live games and tournaments, but players have been flocking to Vegas for thirty years.

If you watch the old WSOP broadcasts, every year the announcer at some point asks the "old pros" the same tired question about the "young players". Nothing has changed, just more players.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
I can't understand why some people seem to think that bad players somehow make the game harder to beat. Study some poker theory.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is harder to win the WSOP for any single pro if you add 2000 fish to the 500 pro+semipro pond. This is pretty much certain. Some fish are going to be exceedingly lucky. And though blind escalation isn't so bad in the WSOP main event as in many other tourneys it's still a big factor. And alot of the fishies LOVE to say 'ALL IN'. Being a 51% favorite to win the hand in a ring game makes it an automatic call if it's head's up. In a tourney that's a 49% chance of going home early. With a good bankroll you can make a near infinite number of 51% win-rate calls on all-ins in ring games. You won't survive many coin tosses in a tourney though.

However, the added 2000 fish jacked up winnings, so EV on playing might be pretty much unchanged for the pros.

This off course doesn't not go for ring games at all. In ring games there is a no doubt that a pro will gut and clean 99% of all fish in pretty short order.