This may be Dan Druffesque...

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
These are the types who will spend the rest of their lives grinding it out at the 20/40 or lower.

[/ QUOTE ]

If someone makes 1.5 BB/100 grinding it out at 20-40 and plays 200,000 hands a year they make $120,000. How these grinders must suffer in grinder oblivion [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

[mach3]

damn - i'll be favoriting this thread. thanks phish.

[Schneids]

It's a big mental fvck test. I got stuck $8000 in 10 minutes today and just turned the volume of the music up while grumpily mumbling to myself. The swings are definitely roller coaster rides at times and I regularly tell a few people on here that I'm never going to play high games anymore, yet I always do anyway. I think for me it's this huge strive to try to be the best of the best, and part of that includes beating the highest games online. From a purely profit and sanity standpoint I think you are probably making the right choice (though multitabling party 30's presents itself with a separate set of sanity issues [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]).

[rigoletto]

Hi Phish

Nice post. It does however imply that good preflop play consist of only one particular strategy (the 2+2 way). It also (probably not purposely) imply that pre- and postflop play are not interdependent. So allow me a little follow up.

There are people out there who play an unorthodox preflop game that works because it works well with their postflop game and it seems to me that the average 2+2 poster is very fast to categorize players by their preflop standards ('he raised 79s UTG+1, what a donk!') and in turn make mistaken assumptions about their poker skills.

The 'correct' preflop play becomes less important when the game is very agressive postflop (typical for very high limits). The money that goes in postflop dwarfs the preflop pot and preflop mistakes are often made up in postflop unpredictability. Any player who apply standard 2+2 preflop play in these games are not playing optimally and will be to easy to read.

I agree that some players just have the 'instict' to be good postflop without book knowledge. But I also think that the 'bookish' players' have to trandscend their book learning - both pre- and postflop - to be expert.