What percentage of the posters are just flat out liars?

[Jacob_Gilliam]

I'm refering to winnings, BB/100, etc. Not all of these people can be winners, and I think that some of them are really inflating their winnings. Although I enjoy the formus, there also seems to be an extremely high number of egomaniacs on here. Thoughts anyone?

[Pov]

I don't see many posters actually quote their winrates. I suspect there are a few losing players who pose as winners, but they probably don't stick around too long. But there are probably a decent number of winning players who are only winning because of bonus whoring, etc. - I used to be one of those not all that long ago.

Unfortunately the old signal to noise ratio has slowly gotten worse over the last couple of years (I lurked quite a while before officially joining ranks) and now you have to do some reading to figure out who really knows what they're talking about. However - bad advice is generally jumped on pretty quickly. When I post I'm usually 70% trying to help and 30% seeing if someone will correct me. Being willing to be wrong is one of the best ways to use these forums to improve.


edit: Also, egomania is part of poker - check the blogs / quotes from pretty much any big name player and with few exceptions you'll find a very healthy ego (the others do a better job of hiding it). I read blogs from Negreanu, Phillips, see quotes from Sklansky, Greenstein, Hellmuth etc. and trust me, none of them are in short supply of ego. They just happen to be some of the few who can back it up. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Raymer and Ed Miller were long-time posters here before they became WSOP Champion and the NPA respectively and I don't think you would have had trouble figuring out they were pretty good even before that happened.

[SheridanCat]

There are surely some who have inflated their win rates. Though, as Pov pointed out, few people talk about their overall rates. Most who talk about their BB/100 rate are usually talking about such a small sample that it's meaningless anyway.

Are there egomaniacs? Sure, just as there are everywhere. The thing about poker is, it can make you feel godlike. You probably know the feeling - you can't lose, you know what's coming, you're a huge winner. Poker is also great for exercising one's ability to deny fault. Losing is always bad luck or the other player's mistakes. Poker is great for making people delusional about their own worth - that's part of the allure.

So, yes, there's lot of bluster. Figure out who the good posters are and read them. Don't pay any attention to how many posts someone has or what their forum title is, since I see a tons of post inflation by people who contribute nothing at all.

[evans075]

I'd say some might be telling a little fib but also it could be the number of hands that they are showing the have played. For ex. .5/1 PT has me winning at 3.5BB/100 thats way higher than I should be at but thats only 4k hands. Therefore I expect that I will hit a bad few sessions say lose at 1.5BB/100 hands for my next 4k hands and put me winning at only 2BB/100. Thats a small sample size in comparison to alot of people that post on here. I wouldn't belive someone that says they are winning at 10BB/100 after 25k hands, but who knows they could be. I guess you just have to trust what they say. A screenshot of PT usally can back up what people claim their win rate is.