Serious Rant about telling people about 2+2 (Long) but w/ content IMO

obviously a great percentage of low limit profit derives from poor opening play.

take away that percentage, and the profit necessarily falls.

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I agree with you in part. I have no problems telling people about 2+2 in person because, really, they probably won't put in the work. However, mentioning 2+2 at the table is STILL a bad idea. You don't want anyone at the table to actually think you're a good player. They may start playing better against you (either by bluffing more, or by folding more, typically), or worse yet, leave. There's no harm in talking up this board at any other time, however.

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As a relative noob, I greatly respect several of the opinions I've read here. I did run across a situation yesterday that may be an exception to "2+2 table talk".

A fairly tight player was berating the table fish about "not respecting pf raises, etc". After several of us asked him to stop the berating, I tried a different tactic and suggested he check out this forum to learn more about variance (or why his best hands will get sucked out on from time to time). Another good player asked me when this guy busted out & left why I tried to help him?

My reason was - if this guy does get better, he will realize ON HIS OWN to not spook the fish.

BTW - I dod not notice any difference in play from the fish, but the 2 other good players that I had ID'ed pretty much left me alone which was actually +EV for that session. Clearly I have not played nearly enough to consider that a conclusion.

[MrWookie47]

Eh, it looks like you did it semi-alright, assuming it shut him up. One alternative to defusing table coaches that I read about here is to tell the person who's being berated, "Don't let him put you on tilt. Just keep playing your game." It not only encourages the player to keep playing their game, but it villifies the TC at the same time, encouraging the table to play against him.

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obviously a great percentage of low limit profit derives from poor opening play.

take away that percentage, and the profit necessarily falls.

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Hey lyingtheif I thought your first post was really enlightening. And I totally agree with you. The rake at the small stakes games is like 3BB/100. You're not overcoming that just by "outplaying" people. You need lots of bad players making lots of big mistakes.

[deception5]

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obviously a great percentage of low limit profit derives from poor opening play.

take away that percentage, and the profit necessarily falls.

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I agree, there are many who would struggle at tight tables. If every table became a "rock garden" the games would be tougher to beat if the player were unable to adapt.

My point is that if these players are poor hand readers they will spew chips unnecessarily in cases where, for example, it is obvious that their top pair (or second pair) is no good. Calling down too much is a more expensive mistake than playing too many hands preflop, but no preflop chart will tell you that.

My other point is that on party .50/1 is the lowest limit. Players who are just there for fun or who think they have the game mastered will never care about correct preflop play. I have some very intelligent friends who will never believe that they should fold any 2 cards before they see the flop, because you just never know if you'll hit 2 pair. I've seen players at high limits who follow this same strategy.

You can talk about horseracing and I'll freely admit I know nothing about it. But poker is more about playing the player than following rigid guidelines. As long as there are worse players than the "tag" in question, whether they are worse preflop or postflop, there is money to be made (consider the fundamental thoerum of poker). And bad is a relative term.

[deception5]

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Eh, it looks like you did it semi-alright, assuming it shut him up. One alternative to defusing table coaches that I read about here is to tell the person who's being berated, "Don't let him put you on tilt. Just keep playing your game." It not only encourages the player to keep playing their game, but it villifies the TC at the same time, encouraging the table to play against him.

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I agree, villifying the TC is the best way to keep the fish feeling comfortable. Trying to educate the TC is not usually helpful because the TC already thinks he knows everything and allowing the TC to continue is usually annoying to the fish. I like making statements like:

"Hey obviously it worked".
"Poker isn't a 2 card game".
"Any 2 cards can win".
"Wah".
"Welcome to poker".

I think these issues being raised are great, but I do not agree with several of the underlying assumptions. Right now, poker is experiencing nearly exponential growth, something which is not sustainable. That is not the same as saying that new - and completely naive - fish don't get spawned on a permanent basis.

What will the stable equilibrium for the poker-playing demographics look like? I would guess it will be very similar to what we have now ... a very wide base of really bad players, a very narrow peak of extremely good players, and most of us 2+2ers somewhere in the middle.

There seems to be this assumption that this base of bad players is going to go away, but this is ignoring a very important part regarding population dynamics of any group of individuals ... the fish of tomorrow are NOT the same as the fish of today. Advertising is not going away ... which will mean a steady population size with recruitment.

Just because the growth of the population slows down does not mean that the proportion of fish decreases.

Anything we can do to feed the fish (direct them on how to get more reload bonuses) makes them more valuable to us. All fish eventually will disappear ... either through learning, or out of money. Personally, I think that giving people the means to increase their playing money (reloads), coupled with the illusion that they could get better easier (read a book, read a forum) will be higher EV than ignoring them. Most people will not work hard enought to translate what they read into effective practice. I would guess that most people are a best unaffected by what they read, and many likely become worse players. Those that actually become better are a very small proportion (in my opinion). Similarly, discouraging them through being rude at the table, or even just ignoring their big pots can only be -EV.

[tassie]

The number of people with VP$IP > 30% and calling others at the table 'fish' constantly amazes me. We are all fish to someone.

As for telling people about this website. It aint called the information age for nothing. Thanks to Sklansky etc for telling me about their ideas. Having said that I don't feel any need to give tips as I am not getting paid for it.

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I sympathize with the OP; however, I think he seeks to close the gate after the cow has left the pasture.

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I stopped reading here. Skimming indicated an Extreme Dryness Alert.

I did get that you missed OP's point, though.

[bravos1]

Obviously since I opened the orginal thread, I was at that table.

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As a relative noob, I greatly respect several of the opinions I've read here. I did run across a situation yesterday that may be an exception to "2+2 table talk".

A fairly tight player was berating the table fish about "not respecting pf raises, etc". After several of us asked him to stop the berating, I tried a different tactic and suggested he check out this forum to learn more about variance (or why his best hands will get sucked out on from time to time).

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I had no problem with you saying something to the likes of.. Dude, it's variance, get over it. But, you kept on putting variance in his face, and he came back with "explain your brilliant philosophy to me beach". When I saw that, I was thinking.. "great, here we go, now the whole table is gonna tighten up because there now appears to be 2 table coaches". You actually came back with the awesome answer of: "would take 2 long". Then like 3 -4 hands later, out of the blue, you told him to go to 2p2 to look it up. Arrrrgh I said inside my head [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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Another good player asked me when this guy busted out & left why I tried to help him?

My reason was - if this guy does get better, he will realize ON HIS OWN to not spook the fish.

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Let me try to explain a bit about this guy. I have played w/ him for quite some time, before poker tracker was available for FT. I've probably played 250 or so hands with him. He is tight, very tight, BUT, he doesn't know how to fold after he has decided to play his cards. Go back and look at that session. He folded 4 times at the flop, with 3 of them when he was in the blinds (2 BB, 1 SB). He then proceeded to NEVER fold either on the turn or the river. I had this in my notes about him after maybe the first 30 hands with him and he has still yet to prove me wrong. So while he is not your normal fish, I still make a nice chunk off of him on the expensive streets.

Another thing, this guy ALWAYS tries to stir the pot and make players want to go right for him. Because he is tight preflop and typically has a decent starting range, he wins a bunch of these situations. If you notice, when everyone started ignoring him, he basically shut up. But, then you had to egg him on later asking him why he was so quite and if he was still pondering about variance! Why would you do that? He stopped berating the players, yet you wanted to rile him up again?

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BTW - I dod not notice any difference in play from the fish, but the 2 other good players that I had ID'ed pretty much left me alone which was actually +EV for that session. Clearly I have not played nearly enough to consider that a conclusion.

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I did notice a difference. One guy who is typically a 60 VPIP was a tight 25-30ish (*tight for him) for that session. Now it could of just been the cards, but I know this guy plays a lot of things like QTo from UTG.