On the subject of poker greatness

[Zetack]

So I wrote elsewhere that its really hard to quantify poker greatness. And that got me to thinking why that is so.

I think you have on the one hand, that luck and "short term" variance are simply such pre-valent factors that greatness simply doesn't have the opportunity to be obvious the way it is in many endeavors.

It doesn't help that there simply isn't any recognizable standard for what makes a person great, except perhaps moneuy won, and that's in and of itself.

But I think the crux of it is the counter-intuitive nature of many parts of the game (to steal an idea from SSH).

Take, as an example a player who has raised the art of protecting his weaker hands to a very high level. Say he faces such a situation 2 times out of every hundred hands. Say he makes 10 BB's on average every hundred times he faces that situation.

Now this is a player that could look quite fishy, he'll show down some weak hands, he'll fold on the turn after early agression, he'll check raise odd holdings, we'll see him getting clobbered on some hands... At the same time, an observer won't see the hands that he won before showdown, they won't see that he won hands by driving out the players that would have stayed in and caught, and they won't see the slow accrual of BB's over time.

If that player plays 40,000 hands a month he'll have an extra 80 BB's in his pocket. After a year he'll have an extra 960 BB's in his pocket. At 15/30 thats a nice little chunk of change to the tune of 28,800 dollars.

Yet he's taken a concept, figured out that it has theoretical benefit despite that its pretty impossible in the short term to actually see any benfit, despite that its probably impossible to track the actual benefit from it even over the long term without access to the holding of all his opponents and turned it into quantifiable bank.

That, I believe, would be a great player. And yet, how would you, or I, or anybody recognize that from his assortment of plays that eek him out a tenth of a BB per hand over time when he applies them?

Anyway...I'm just thinking over here.

--Zetack

[willthethrill]

interesting post and you make a good point