How bad were amateurs at WSOP?

[Zoe's Echo]

As I recall - Juanda went all-in preflop in LP/short-stacked with his 88's and got called by AA the 8/A on the flop was post the action. No?

[trillig]

One thing: The pros bluff a lot! Concentrating on that going in...
They can be picked off...

I think the masses are better than they used to be, but I have to give someone who won their way in via a sat, SOME credit, I almost got in the main this year via the cheapo route, I'm definitely taking more than 1 shot if needed next year. I doubt I'll ever just plunk down the big buyin $ for any tournament.

I think a lot of players are definitely highly nervous at the WSOP and I have to factor that in some... Once you play tough competition a few times, it gets much easier, did wonders for me last night.

-Bri

[RFJ]

There are some pros that i believe to play well. Some are just lucky one time blunders. Have you seen things like four people all in preflop early in the tournament maybe the first hand. Everyone has pocket pairs from AA to 44. The 44 wins. He wasn't the first one to push all in. He was the very last. I've seen it happen. So how do you win against luck like that? early on he now has 4x the lead. Also it's the bubble close to the final table. You see someone making a move all in or raising pretty much making a power play. Another guy pushes him all in with KK because he knows this. The guy who was making a move has 3 6. Basically he raised half his stack preflop to steal the blinds. Now he has the option to fold, but he calls the all in. The flop gives 3 6 two pairs. He wins the pot. Now the KK had him covered. He wins the pot and gives the lame excuse i had to do it i was pot commited. How lucky is he? Weak players can make bad moves and make so many chips with bad beats that they can afford a couple of beats. I find myself short stacked in most of my tourneys sometimes i feel like pushing it with weaker cards. It's not my ability read what others may have, but i can never seem to get lucky enough.

[cferejohn]

[ QUOTE ]
There are some pros that i believe to play well. Some are just lucky one time blunders. Have you seen things like four people all in preflop early in the tournament maybe the first hand. Everyone has pocket pairs from AA to 44. The 44 wins. He wasn't the first one to push all in. He was the very last. I've seen it happen. So how do you win against luck like that? early on he now has 4x the lead. Also it's the bubble close to the final table. You see someone making a move all in or raising pretty much making a power play. Another guy pushes him all in with KK because he knows this. The guy who was making a move has 3 6. Basically he raised half his stack preflop to steal the blinds. Now he has the option to fold, but he calls the all in. The flop gives 3 6 two pairs. He wins the pot. Now the KK had him covered. He wins the pot and gives the lame excuse i had to do it i was pot commited. How lucky is he? Weak players can make bad moves and make so many chips with bad beats that they can afford a couple of beats. I find myself short stacked in most of my tourneys sometimes i feel like pushing it with weaker cards. It's not my ability read what others may have, but i can never seem to get lucky enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "lucky" players will be losers in the long run if they keep making those plays. The unlucky ones will be winners if they keep getting their money in with way the best of it. Just don't expect it to balance out in one tournament. Or one month. Or one year...

Example: I won $4400 by placing 7th in the Party Super Monday this week. When I tell non-poker playing friends about this, they say things like "wow, $4400 for one nights work." Well, that's really not true. I've probably played those "super" tournaments on party a dozen times in the past couple months. I've sqeeked in to the money once before, not even doubling my buy-in, but they were all filled with their share of bad-luck, bad beats, etc. If you are making the right plays, you will win eventually. And in tournaments, when you win, you win big. This is countered by the fact that the *vast* majority of the time, the best tournament player in the world will not even make the money in an event where ~10% of the field is paid.

Poker is about taking small-to-medium edges over and over again to make money. You need to have sufficient bankroll and patience to take advantage of this. Let's say you had $5000. I have a 20-sided die (or better yet, *you* have a 20-sided die you big nerd) and I say that we'll bet $1 and I'll roll the die. If it's a 1-9, I win, if it's a 10-20 you win. We'll make this bet until you are tired of making it. Would you take it? Of course you would. If it came up 1-9 8 or 9 times in a row, would you bemoan that its impossible to win? Of course not, you'd keep doing it until I ran out of money.

If the bet was say, $2000 with your $5000 bankroll, you'd have a very good chance of losing all your money of course. If you did, would you say that the game was impossible to beat? Of course not, and you'd take it again in a second if you had the money to spare. Well, in a tournament you have, defacto, a limited bankroll. You're making bets with the biggest edges you can manufacture, but in poker, those edges are not *nearly* large enough to prevent the risk of ruin from being very large, plus the fact that in a field of 200 (or 1000, or whatever), while you may be better than the field, there could easily be players out there who have a small edge against you.

A lot of rambling to say be patient, keep getting your money in with the best of it, and turn around and place your hands on the hood of the car while the BAD BEAT POLICE frisk you.

[patrick dicaprio]

to me it seemed like the pros played worse than the amatuers. if you cant play a guy off a hand dont bluff. this is a lesson they learned the hard way.

Pat

[RFJ]

I think i'm a pretty good player. I'm not too bad. if i had a good bankroll i'd be playing the big money tournaments...but i know that even if i had a money i wouldn't bet everything on just one tournament. It's just those bad beats that kills me. I qualified for last sats 200k. I took 194 out of about 1400. Although I was out i did check out the last table. Some of the things they were doin was incredible. All in with 66 and 77. He may have thought he pushed all in with AK or something so his 66 would be a 50 draw, but it was amazing. I mean although it was the final table it was not short handed. It was a full set of people. I'm like wtf everyone is going in with these small pockets put me in. Sometimes i think though that's how they made it to the final table. With luck. They may have won one tourney, but hey it's one big one. I mean I can place, but it's real hard for me to place in longer tourneys only because i find myself short stacked and taking a bad beat. The longer the tourney is the more bad beats i can take. I stopped play the rebuy tourneys because someone would always have a 10x lead over the table before the rebuy period was done. I like to play the cards on the table. If my friend is looking over my shoulder and asks me what i think the other guy has i'd tell him and i'm usually correct. Even if i don't know 100% what he has I know if i'm beat. One time i was close to the money. I had A9 the flop came an A x x. The guy bet my friend was like call man he's just making a move. You have top pair what do u think he has? I told him i though he had the A too but probably with a K or Q kicker. Just to prove it i said watch and called him, which otherwise i would have folded. Yeah i was right he had the K. It's just hard to keep up with people going all in preflop. Just now i was playing a game QQ vs QJ he makes a straight, but he could call early on he made a 4x lead over the whole table. This was about the 5th hand in the game. Another game i was playing a freeroll about 300 people in it. Only 2 players left him and me. We started with about the same amount of chips but i kept increasing my lead slowly little by little. Now i have AA so i make a raise. He reraise. by now i know he has pockets so i raise him enough to make him push all in. We go all in. He get's 99 on board makes four of a kind. This was all in preflop. So now the lead i had we back to even chips again. It's time to leave so i just push it all in with any cards at this point. If i win i win if i lose i lose. I take second. I would have played him till the end but didn't have time. i take 150 instead of the 300. If you'd ask me to play the flop i'd have a better chance. I'm a pretty tight player. If i think i'm pretty much beat i won't call with JJ or some other top pair. maybe 1 out of 10 times i might have been lucky to have made sets to beat out the other player, but preflop he had a 80% lead over me.

[cferejohn]

1. The "enter" key is your friend. Use it. Your post reads like a James Joyce novel.

2. Bad beats are part of poker. They are good. They mean someone else is making a mistake. Other people making mistakes is what makes you money.

3. Nothing in poker is very improbable. 27o beats AA about 1 time in 5. If the best hand always won, the bad players would not play. Would you go up against an NBA basketball player for $100/game? No, because you would always lose and there would be no way to rationalize it as "bad luck". However, a bad player can and will sometimes beat a good or great player. If they do it once, they'll start thinking they are good and keep making bad plays. If they think they are a good player, they will remember the times they won more than they remember the times they lost (or they will think of all the times they lost as "unlucky").

If bad beats kill you, and I am being completely serious here, don't play poker. If you are never taking bad beats, then you are never getting your money in with the best of it. If you are never getting your money in with the best of it, you cannot win.

Chess is a wonderful game. There are no bad beats. It is also a game where the better player will win the overwhelming majority of the time (and the degree to which this is not true is due to the incredible complexity of the game, rather than luck). However, while it is possible to be a profesional chess player, there in nothing like the leagues of "fish" you see in poker, lining up to get their money taken away.

Bad beats are statistically inevitable. If you play long enough (especially online where you can see many many more hands), you are going to see 3 outers, 2 outers, 1 outers, runner runner perfect cards, etc. If you are going to be thrown off your game every time you see one, I honestly implore you to quit now.

[RFJ]

Sorry for the long posts and if it seems like i'm being a whinner. It's just that my game seem to be a stricken with bad luck. Well yes i do know you want people who try to give u bad beats. Just forgot for awhile because i would get them so close to the money. If it was early on then i wouldn't feel so bad, but most of these I spent so many hours in the bubble. It makes everything feel so close, but yet so far away..I can almost taste it, but it makes it all bitter when i'm so close. At least i took 2nd to qualify for the PP $1 mil yesterday. It makes me feel a little better.

[BAD BEAT POLICE]

OK, IVE LET THIS GO ON LONG ENOUGH. HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK, SIR.
------------------------------------------------------------

PEOPLE HAVE 1 OF 2 REACTIONS TO YOUR BAD BEAT STORY:

1. THEY DON’T CARE.

2. THEY ARE HAPPY.

PLEASE POST YOUR BAD BEAT STORIES AT www.RIVEREDAGAIN.com AND QUIT CLUTTERING UP MY FORUM.

-BAD BEAT POLICE [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

P.S. YOU OWE ME $1.