DERB

[droidboy]

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one of the most meaningful strategy discussions in the entire forum.

- Andrew



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A comment from the previous DERB thread makes me think you know something we don't. Do you? And could you be prodded into throwing a bone.

John

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I know a lot about some things, other things less so. Truthfully, I have no clue who this fellow is, I don't recall ever playing with him, and I'd have to dig in the threads to find his handle.

I have played a lot of poker though. The idea that there is a single winning style of play is false beyond reason. The fact that people can't even understand that players like DERB exist and win, and win a lot, goes a long way in illustrating how little some people know about poker.

- Andrew

www.pokerstove.com

[Ulysses]

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I have played a lot of poker though. The idea that there is a single winning style of play is false beyond reason. The fact that people can't even understand that players like DERB exist and win, and win a lot, goes a long way in illustrating how little some people know about poker.


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[Boris]

Please give us a general description of DERB's style of play, both pre-flop and post flop, and explain why this is such an awesome style of playing full table limit poker.

I'm really curious and I really, really want to win more money playing poker. Otherwise, I'm going to place this comment in the file of "Andrew Prock telling us how smart he is but not making any illuminating comments".

[James282]

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I have played a lot of poker though. The idea that there is a single winning style of play is false beyond reason. The fact that people can't even understand that players like DERB exist and win, and win a lot, goes a long way in illustrating how little some people know about poker.


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There isn't a single winning style of play. There are, however, several losing styles of play. His is one of them. Maybe he is a marginal winner, but the supposition that he is the biggest winner in the game(expectation wise) is just absurd. It's also slightly absurd that his biggest advocates are people who have played virtually no hands against him.
-James

[BradL]

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It's also slightly absurd that his biggest advocates are people who have played virtually no hands against him.
-James

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If you are refering to me, i am neither an advocate of his nor do i believe that he should be written off as a lucky maniac. Also i have played 30/60 with him since the game was offered on more than 4 tables as well as 50/100 since the split.

Edit: You seem to be taking offense to the notion that there may be something to be learned from a player with a non-conventional sytle, even if his style does turn out to be a losing one.

Edit: Im not sure why i assumed you might be refering to me... you can pretty much disregard this post.

-Brad

[James282]

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It's also slightly absurd that his biggest advocates are people who have played virtually no hands against him.
-James

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If you are refering to me, i am neither an advocate of his nor do i believe that he should be written off as a lucky maniac. Also i have played 30/60 with him since the game was offered on more than 4 tables as well as 50/100 since the split.

Edit: You seem to be taking offense to the notion that there may be something to be learned from a player with a non-conventional sytle, even if his style does turn out to be a losing one.

Edit: Im not sure why i assumed you might be refering to me... you can pretty much disregard this post.

-Brad

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I was not referring to you.
-James

[Nigel]

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Maybe he is a marginal winner, but the supposition that he is the biggest winner in the game(expectation wise) is just absurd. It's also slightly absurd that his biggest advocates are people who have played virtually no hands against him.

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James,

As someone who as played a large number of hands against him, and someone who has gone on record as not seeing any genius in his post flop play, I would hardly say that I am an "advocate" of his.

However, as Brad pointed out, and I think many other people feel, there has to be something to be learned from his style. His success seems to be reasonably well documented, and when I sit on the 50/100's for 4-5 hours I notice almost all "pros" (most of whom I know see playing 20/40 or 30/60 because I assume they are breaking even at best) floundering between 1500 and 3500 in chips, all day. You glance at DERB's chip stacks and he's sitting with like 8k, 6k, 4k, and 10k - it's simply ridiculous. On the surface he appears to be doing something that the 16/12/2.5 style just can't (as in, literally impossible) do, regardless of how well you play post flop. It seems that his opponents are either unwilling to adapt to his style, or completely unable to exploit it.

I am hoping you'll elaborate more on the above and explain why you think he is only a marginal winner. You deny that what he is doing is working? You may indeed be correct, but I just don't see it.


Thanks,

Nigel

[kidcolin]

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It's also slightly absurd that his biggest advocates are people who have played virtually no hands against him.


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This isn't true. They have the least biased opinion and can evaluate his numbers freely. They aren't conditioned to believe he is a loser simply because he capped middle pair on the turn a few times against them.

Note: I'm not accusing you of having a clouded view of this. I just wanted to clear up the above fallacy.

[James282]

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It's also slightly absurd that his biggest advocates are people who have played virtually no hands against him.


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This isn't true. They have the least biased opinion and can evaluate his numbers freely. They aren't conditioned to believe he is a loser simply because he capped middle pair on the turn a few times against them.

Note: I'm not accusing you of having a clouded view of this. I just wanted to clear up the above fallacy.

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Thanks for "clearing this up" for all of us. It's not about evaluating the numbers. The numbers alone make it very likely that he is a big winner. Any high school kid could look at the numbers and arrive at that conclusion. What I'm saying is, the numbers don't get remotely close to telling the whole story with this player. There is plenty to be learned from this player, but emulating his style for full ring limit hold 'em is a losing proposition, in my opinion. It's also the opinion of J_V, paluka, 1800gambler, bk(any of you correct me if i am wrong), and pretty much every high limit player i know who has a decent number of hands vs. him. Why would so many players disagree with what seem to be completely damning evidence? I'm not sure. Maybe the jury is still out on DERB. Maybe his ace high call on the hand where he gets three-bet on the turn above was a good one. Anyways, I'm all set as far as arguing this point with people. It's obvious that neither side will budge and not obvious that both sides are even arguing about the same thing. I really don't feel very passionately about this as I hardly play limit currently, so you all can feel free to debate it!
-James

[adanthar]

I am not a limit expert, but I've looked through all of the DERB hands posted in this thread and, from that dozen or so, already see two common plays. At least one of them is something relatively difficult to exploit theoretically and unobservant opponents will never catch on. (Specifically, when he runs into resistance with any overpair, he's almost automatically raising when the board pairs. Coupled with his aggression on prior streets, he probably doesn't get reraised often.)

I have no idea how he plays outside of that, and some of those river calls are horrible. But I think he is at least attempting to study the game - either that, or being trained by someone who does.