A brave new world for poker pros? Yeah right.

[SinCityGuy]

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Everyone should quit whining about the "bad players" and focus on playing the poker needed to BEAT the new wave...

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EasyE,

My observations on this, FWIW:

The players who are suffering the most from the influx of mid-limit idiots are the old-time weak/tight players and the "fancy play syndrome" players.

The old weak/tight players are caving in and folding too many winners to the morons, and the "fancy play syndrome" guys are wasting their chips trying to outplay them. As I mentioned in another post, the secret to beating these guys in the long run is through dominated hands. The swings are not for the squeemish, but eventually they lose their money.

[adios]

Before I get started I really respect what you have to say about poker. I like your posts a lot and I really like your approach to the game. What you seem to be saying too in my mind is that importance of reading hands has diminished in certain games as opposed to other skills. I'm not saying that reading hands isn't important, just that the importance of other aspects of sound play go up in value as people play in a way that makes them harder to read. A long time ago, somewhere in the old archives, there was a discussion that involved Ray and Dave regarding the importance of different skills related to type games and limits. At the time it was an eye opener for me.

[turnipmonster]

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What happened is that they could not beat the "newer contingent" of player who is difficult to read. Because the "newer contingent" I am describing makes so many errors (both before and after the flop, it often requires the pros to pay off more at the river and to put more bets in on other streets.

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while it is true that terrible players are hard to read, very good players are hard to read also. IMO, that's what makes them "very good" as opposed to "ABC".

the internet is a huge factor in this. joe the internet pro plays more hands in a month than most B&M pros get in a year. also, limit games on the net (as a general rule) have a much larger variance and require a much much bigger bankroll to play successfully.

there's a lot to be said for a pro avoiding a high variance game they can't afford to play.

--turnipmonster

[bunky9590]

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limit games on the net (as a general rule) have a much larger variance and require a much much bigger bankroll to play successfully.

there's a lot to be said for a pro avoiding a high variance game they can't afford to play.


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Hence my move from limit holdem online into NLHE. I am a limit animal with very good earn and 6 years experience who has moved to NL online to reduce the variance and earn more money. They want to make mistakes? Let it not be for one bet but for their stack.

[PokerBabe(aka)]

Two local pros who played 10-20 for years here are now almost exclusively playing NL at Bellagio. They feel the same way as turnip.

Babe [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[turnipmonster]

fwiw, I almost never play anything but PL/NL live, but online I much prefer limit, mainly because I feel that earn is higher (obviously variance is higher as well) than in NL. plus, there aren't enough big NL games on the site I play (party). to me the main value of playing online is the increased volume of hands, and the game where that increases my earn the most is limit. for NL/PL, I don't mind a slow game but need to watch and know my opponents as well as the table rhythm to make good decisions.

--turnipmonster

[eastbay]

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What happened is that they could not beat the "newer contingent" of player who is difficult to read. Because the "newer contingent" I am describing makes so many errors

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This sounds like yet another attempt at the old fallacy: "I can't beat these damn low limit fish who suck out on me too much."

Not to mention that people busting out shows that they don't understand how to manage their bankroll. And if that's the case, are they really that great in the first place?

eastbay

[mrbaseball]

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are they really that great in the first place

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If the "good" players can't beat the "bad" players one has to wonder just how good the good players are and just how bad the bad players are? If you can't adjust to new or different conditions and styles odds are you aint so good to begin with.

People are playing 100's of thousands of hands on the internet and gaining years and years of experience in months. This gives many internet "rookies" far more experience than grizzled B&M veterans. It's a different world now and people have to adapt or whither and die.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

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People are playing 100's of thousands of hands on the internet and gaining years and years of experience in months. This gives many internet "rookies" far more experience than grizzled B&M veterans.

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They may gain experience in playing, but they'll still be at a huge disadvantage to someone who is a good reader of people and plays live all the time. NOT being able to read players is by far the biggest downside to online play. The inexperienced players are very much protected by the internet. Set them in a live game and watch their meager win rates go way down when calculated hand for hand.

That said, I have no doubt that hand for hand I make more playing live than I do on the internet, despite the higher rakes and tips.

al

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

A random musing as to what I view as the fundamental conflict between the "old school" and the "newbies" particularly with respect to NLHE tournaments.

If you play NLHE exclusively in the tournament format, be they multis or SNGs, what you are trying to accomplish is to maximize your ROI based upon the constraints of a fixed risk level (buy-in) vs. a fixed pize structure. To accomplish this you formulate a strategy for moving your game pieces (chips) to accumulate more of your opponents' game pieces. This is the background of the online tournament player; the environment in which they learned the game.

Now, the pro players have learned most of their big bet poker from playing cash games that have no fixed risk and no fixed return. Each individual hand represents real monetary risk and return. This is the environment from which the pros have developed their strategy.

Is there an understanding out there that these two environments may well represent two radically different optimal strategies?

Why do pros bluff more? Perhaps because when that $3,000 that you have to put in to call the bet *really is* an additional $3,000 out of your pocket, the propensity to call may indeed be reduced? That is not the reality in a tournament.

I guess my point here is that it's the pros who have to adapt in tournament poker because the online crowd may actually be playing a different game. The pros learned their strategy by pushing real money to the middle of the table. The online folks learned their strategy by paying an entry fee and playing a board game. The apples and oranges difference between how the pros and online folks treat chips may be the biggest factor of all.