Why dont people like Moneymaker?

[M2d]

I don't think there's much if any crack in Columbia. Then again, those ivy leaguers are often rich and do know how to party...
BTW, There's probably not much crack in Colombia (the country) either.

[Sloats]

[ QUOTE ]
It's not just online players who might look on him negatively. The pros do too.

I was in Vegas in Feb. and talked to some pros. I asked them to rate Moneymaker as a player on a scale of 1-10. One of them tried to be diplomatic, but the other came right out and said "A 5 and a damned lucky 5 at that". They went on to analyze his playing and you had the feeling that he may have been the winner last year, but his still considered "dead money" by the pros.

Donna

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are a 10 but considered a 5, then you have a damn good persona going for you. You can forget about playing up the drunk/youth/noob facade.


I won't put him on anything. I can not base my opinion on the footage EOE showed. I was HIGHLY subjective. I would say EOE was trying to sell poker to America and I will say they did the job. I personally have set up a $100 bankroll for Party, bought 5 books, a table, and a chips.

[J.R.]

You do realize that crack is just a more refined form of powdered cocaine?

"A coca leaf typically contains between 0.1 and 0.9 percent cocaine. If chewed in such form, it rarely presents the user with any social or medical problems. Indeed coca-chewing may be therapeutic. When the leaves are soaked and mashed, however, cocaine is then extracted as a coca-paste. After the organic solvent used has evaporated, the coca-paste is 60 to 80 per cent pure. It is usually exported in the form of the salt, cocaine hydrochloride. This is the powdered cocaine most common, until recently, in the West.

Yet old-fashioned cocaine hydrochloride still wasn't good enough... Yet there are very strong cultural prejudices against injecting recreational drugs. So a smokeable form was developed.

Since the hydrochloride salt decomposes at the temperature required to vaporise it, cocaine is instead converted to the liberated base form. Initially, "free-base" cocaine was typically produced using volatile solvents, usually ether. Unfortunately, this technique is physically dangerous. The solvent tends to ignite. Hence a more convenient method of producing smokeable free-base became popular. Its product is crack. To obtain crack-cocaine, ordinary cocaine hydrochloride is concentrated by heating the drug in a solution of baking soda until the water evaporates. This type of base-cocaine makes a cracking sound when heated; hence the name "crack". Base-cocaine vaporises at a low temperature, so it can be easily inhaled via a heated pipe."

source

[M.B.E.]

LetsRock -- I really don't understand what you're driving at. Are you criticizing Moneymaker, or not?

Yes he became a poker celebrity overnight, but why do you consider that a bad thing? (By the way he still is an accountant, as far as I know.)

I just don't understand why you think the WPT should not "pay attention" to him if he chooses to play a WPT event.

If he were making appearances calling himself the best player alive, or issuing books and tapes with strategy advice, and whatnot, then you might have reason to be critical. But he isn't doing any of that!

As for whether he played well in last year's WSOP, I've seen three of the hands debated on 2+2, and much of the time it turns out that the people criticizing his play didn't really understand how the hand went down. (For example, people criticize him for calling a big raise from Brenes with 88, when in fact Moneymaker was the one raising.)

I've played against him a bit on PokerStars, and based on his chat he doesn't have an overblown opinion of his own abilities. But he is a very good poker player. Not the best in the world by any means, but certainly in the top 100.

[Greg (FossilMan)]

[ QUOTE ]
But in some ways, isnt that a good thing for everyone, that he got lucky in a tournament and won millions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course it's a good thing. But it would have been a much better thing if *I* had won the 2.5 million.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[Cosimo]

Sorry to pick on Rock here, but the arguement I usually see is "you don't get to the final table on luck alone." That's a really weak argument. That divides players into two camps: those that think Moneymaker is a very good player, and those that think he got there on luck alone. The latter is obviously bogus, so obviously anyone that doesn't think that Moneymaker is a good player must be a crackpot. This way of arguing is a false alternative--to present two sides and say that there is no middle ground.

There is a middle ground, and I stand there. I agree that one can't get to the final table on luck alone; Moneymaker had to have a good bit of skill and experience to last that long. However, he got a lot of luck handed to him. He made some bad calls and some questionable bets, and then drew out on his opponents.

There is no 100% accurate record of the event, however, so really all I'm talking about is an impression that I weight as strongly as the evidence that I have. If I sat down at a table with him and watched him play for five days, I'd have a much stronger opinion.

Finally, I think some of the pros that have said good things about him have done so for political reasons--because it is good for the sport, because it brings out the fish, in order to stay friends with the whales, to avoid pissing off friends, etc.

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
There is no 100% accurate record of the event

[/ QUOTE ]


are you serious? like it's a mystery what happened at the wsop.

[jwvdcw]

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry to pick on Rock here, but the arguement I usually see is "you don't get to the final table on luck alone." That's a really weak argument. That divides players into two camps: those that think Moneymaker is a very good player, and those that think he got there on luck alone. The latter is obviously bogus, so obviously anyone that doesn't think that Moneymaker is a good player must be a crackpot. This way of arguing is a false alternative--to present two sides and say that there is no middle ground.

There is a middle ground, and I stand there. I agree that one can't get to the final table on luck alone; Moneymaker had to have a good bit of skill and experience to last that long. However, he got a lot of luck handed to him. He made some bad calls and some questionable bets, and then drew out on his opponents.

There is no 100% accurate record of the event, however, so really all I'm talking about is an impression that I weight as strongly as the evidence that I have. If I sat down at a table with him and watched him play for five days, I'd have a much stronger opinion.

Finally, I think some of the pros that have said good things about him have done so for political reasons--because it is good for the sport, because it brings out the fish, in order to stay friends with the whales, to avoid pissing off friends, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

great post

[Cosimo]

What I meant was that we don't have hand histories for every single table, every single day. The ESPN coverage was edited, and I don't doubt that they played up Moneymaker's luck factor in order to pump up the drama. We can't look at hole cards and play for the entire event and say whether ESPN's coverage was biased toward or away from his lucky hands.

I won my first big tournament, a 170-person event. The blinds crept up faster than B&amp;M, but it was still hundreds of hands before it was over. I had a lot of luck on my side, and I know the same amount of luck plays into the big one.

There's a reason why many of the same names appear at the final few tables every year, and there's also a reason why dark horses get there, too.

[HiatusOver]

Clark, how well do you think he played? I have played with him online in some big games and thought he was usually a spot in the game, though definitely not a huge one. A little too loose-aggressive IMO, I also think his starting hand selection was ok, but definitely had holes. Do you think he could make around a BB/hour playing 30/60 at the Bellagio for 2000 hours?