Some thoughts on Josh W.'s post

[ggbman]

First of all, nice post Josh, there were a couple of points you made that i agree with. The main factor in how beatable a game is how people play postflop. (Within reason, we're not talking about 70/50 players here) There are many players who are too loose preflop and can make up postflop through aggressive play and handreading.

However, the point that i think deserves more focus is the long term beatability (i don't think thats a word ? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]) of these games. You see, ever since i have been posting on 2+2, people lament how much more difficult the games are getting. Yes, people are finally tightening up, and the same calibur of play wins less now than it did a year ago. But this is a very silly thing to focus on, and here's why:

I missed the "golden age" of the PP 15-30 where everyone agreed it was a ridiculously soft game, and i always used to be a little ticked that i missed out on that cash mine. What i realized over the last few months, is that poker is a game of adapting. Yes we all know this, but think about just how important it really is. Think about how differently you play in the 15, 20, and 30 games now relative to how you used to play at $1-$2. You natrually adapted your game so you could survive and flourish at the next level. Right now, any 2+2er who focuses exclusively on improving their game and does not concern themselves with the play of others will improve at a rate far faster than their opponents.

This means that your hourly expectation can still be going up while your competition is improving, and this is something a lot of people fail to think about. I think this will continue to be true for quite a while. I don't mean to sound harsh here, but i fear that too many people on these baords give themselves an easy way out by attritbuting difficulties to the improvement of their competition. Yes of course this is a factor, but it's not one you can control. By always doing your best to adapt to the current state of the games, regardless of what they, you have the best chance of maximizing your earn.

Now, what i just said is common knowledge to many of you on this board, so i'm sorry i had to bore you with it. This post might be better suited for Small Stakes where more people have yet to adapt this mindset. However, there was some discussion in Josh's thread about difficult the games might be in X months, etc... so i thought this might have some relevance here. There will a point in the future where people's potential hourly earn is not as high. But who cares about when that is? When it happens, it will happen. And even then, i sure we can all live off A LOT less than we are making now. Just some thoughts thrown together...feel free to conradict me or ignore this post becuase nothing i said is new.

Gabe