A post I've wanted to write for a long time (LONG)

[SA125]

I think Josh's input into the analysis and play of a given hand are up there with the best around. He stopped posting for a while, came back in, got more than a few requests to post more, and has been.

His AKo hand was good discussion about the merits of a call on the river and a good thread. Regardless of the outcome. Although I do think it really blows not saying what UTG had and doesn't make everything results oriented by knowing what they were. Still a good posted hand.

Maybe this post wasn't the best, but it was well intended. Give the guy a mulligan.

[Tommy Angelo]

"Poker changes."

But the songs remain the same.

A moment might come for you Josh, when you have nothing to prove to yourself or others, when you will just sit there and play. In that instant you will know the greatness of poker, and it will be blissful, unfulfilling, and secret.

[sweetjazz]

[ QUOTE ]
#1. Success in poker comes not from our own skill, but from the difference in skill between us and our opponents. Granted there are different kinds of skills, and different skills serve different purposes on every betting street. To assume, however, that beating a bunch of "17/10 nits" is easy, is foolish. If these players have the discipline to play that solid, against standard oppositon, it won't take them to long to asses your style of play, and adapt accordingly. Nobody with the discipline to play winning 17/10 poker lacks the intution required to make such adjustments. Doing so, however, requires attention to every detail of the opponentes game. Why bother? They can just as easily ignore you, or go to a game with 6 other 38/14 monkeys and play 600 hands an hour with out thinking. Don't assume just because these people choose not to try outwit that they are incapable of doing so. To make that assumption would be a huge mistake.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are underestimating here the amount of work needed to go from being a good ABC player who beats 38/14 players to being a good player who has an edge over (or is breakeven against) a tight but tricky 17/10 player. Obviously, we would expect that two 17/10 players who faced off would not have much of a difference in preflop skill. (There could be a small difference in which particular hands they are playing, but it's probably insignificant, as learning the proper hands to play preflop is relatively straightforward.) However, proper postflop play against such opponents is quite intricate -- it involves a willingness to make counterintuitive plays (without the recklessness of trying to make such plays when it is inappropriate to do so), a detailed observation of an opponent's tendencies (which requires forming tentative opinions based on rather skimpy data at first and an ability to modify those opinions based on weighing new data appropriately), and some understanding of game theoretic concepts to avoid giving away too much information to your opponent and to maximally exploit any weaknesses that you find.

Are most of the people who play winning ABC poker at higher limits capable of developing these skills? Of course they are, as there is a plethora of resources available to someone who is willing to study and learn. It is not easy and for the average person, I suspect it takes a lot of reading and several tens (or hundreds) of thousands of hands played and analyzed before they come close to mastering the subtle nuances of the game. (I am in the middle of this process and still have a lot to learn despite my already significant investment in studying these concepts.) Many posters here (CardSharpCook, for one) have indicated that they are not interested in making that investment because they are happy beating looser games.

If I understood Josh's point correctly, it was that the presence of these ABC tight players makes the tight games still beatable (with a lot of work). Moreover, the long term trend is for games to get tighter (as loose players bust and the decline in the poker boom lessens the number of replacement suckers), so that future winnings will depend more and more heavily on being able to exploit postflop mistakes made by tight players.

And while this is nothing new, it is something that bears repeating. Theoretically, the games should converge to ones where nobody can beat the rake. Obviously, that won't happen because variance will keep some losing players in the game for long periods of time (and also knock out some winning players) and because there will always be an influx of bad players into the game. Unfortunately, that influx is likely decreasing as we speak and will continue to do so; moreover, a consequence of the poker boom is the rise of many more skilled players, meaning that each new fish that enters a game has a shorter expected life in the game before busting. Blah blah blah, fish is a relative term in terms of what game you are in, it's not inconceivable that an ABC tight player could be a fish (= slight loser or marginal winner) at one of the higher limit games at some point. (Some, I think, have even claimed it to be so now.)

So yes this is all old stuff, but it's a reminder to look at the game of poker itself in perspective. It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day play of hands that one becomes oblivious to whether the games are changing and how to properly adjust their strategy. Even though you don't always see them posting here, I suspect that some small winners have turned into losers or marginal players by simply failing to adapt to the gradual slight toughening (tightening?) of their game, to the point where variance was capable of taking away their entire bankroll.

[limon]

you're losing money. not necessarily because you'll learn any new plays but because you'll have a better idea of what your opponents are doing/thinking. i've been a winning player since my 1st .10 ante 7-stud game in high school. i havent learned anything from a book in a decade but i still read them to see what my opponents are up to. read harrington on holdem then go play in a no limit tournament every other player is doing EXACTLY what he says to do in the book...it's comical. i used to say i would never play on line poker because it was an assualt to my senses and that was, and still is, true...but, i was losing out on alot of info in my cash games due to the fact that all of the new players were playing in a style that was shaped by the on-line game so i had to go on and learn, not about poker, but about my opponents.

[davehwm]

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't enjoy sitting down and reading books, so I don't think it's +Life EV for me to read it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Regardless of the topic, I think anyone that doesn't read books is making a -Life EV move. And it's not even close.

[Dazarath]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Josh,

While I, and i'm sure others, appreciated what you took the time to write, you aren't exploring new territory here. In fact, the only reason you're getting such a volume of responses is the brash and condescending manner in which you presented it. No offense intended.

I enjoy reading your posts, especially the ones I disagree with, as you at least take the time to include a "why" with your "what".

Ultimately, however, your post boils down to two often tred topics.

#1. Success in poker comes not from our own skill, but from the difference in skill between us and our opponents. Granted there are different kinds of skills, and different skills serve different purposes on every betting street. To assume, however, that beating a bunch of "17/10 nits" is easy, is foolish. If these players have the discipline to play that solid, against standard oppositon, it won't take them to long to asses your style of play, and adapt accordingly. Nobody with the discipline to play winning 17/10 poker lacks the intution required to make such adjustments. Doing so, however, requires attention to every detail of the opponentes game. Why bother? They can just as easily ignore you, or go to a game with 6 other 38/14 monkeys and play 600 hands an hour with out thinking. Don't assume just because these people choose not to try outwit that they are incapable of doing so. To make that assumption would be a huge mistake.

#2. Success in poker is realized by recognizing that difference in skill, and exploiting it. Tommy wrote a wonderful post on "making a difference" that explained this, albeit using a vagueness that only Tommy has mastered. I suggest you search it.

I look forward to another one of your poker epiphanys, hopefully the next one will be slightly better received, and much more original.

lf

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the assumption that someone who has the discipline to play 17/10 also has the ability to adapt to changing game conditions is too strong. It takes a minute to learn 17/10 preflop play, but it takes years to learn correct postflop play. I've seen plenty of preflop "TAGs" whose WtSD is way too high because they refuse to lay down their preflop "powerhouse" hands.

As for the post itself, I enjoyed it. Is it something revolutionary? No. I already knew most of the points made in the post. What is it good for then? For the best players on this forum, maybe they have absolutely nothing to gain from it. But this forum also has regulars who are intermediate players (like myself) and small stakes lurkers. The rest of us do have something to gain from it. Sometimes, we need a post like this to sort of slap us over the head and remind us that ABC-play can be limiting. It's a lot like that post J_V made. Even though he got criticism from the better players on this forum, I (and I'm sure others as well) gained from it. And I appreciate it when people do make posts that remind us that we should be learning to get better at poker, not to hone our ABC skills.

[CardSharpCook]

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker changes."

But the songs remain the same.

A moment might come for you Josh, when you have nothing to prove to yourself or others, when you will just sit there and play. In that instant you will know the greatness of poker, and it will be blissful, unfulfilling, and secret.

[/ QUOTE ]

Tommy rocks.
[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[J.A.Sucker]

Hi Josh,

You know how I feel about all of these things, and I don't want to write too much about it, but I will make a few points about the most important things that you discuss.

1. Poker changes. Games always get smaller and tougher with time, because the live ones go broke and only the stronger players are left. The rake continues to go up proportionally to the stakes because of increased operating expenses and greed, hurting you further as a winning player. Inflation kills you too.

2. High limit games are supposed to be tough. That's just the way it works. You're playing for a lot of money, and losers can't afford to lose for very long. Even a very rich man can't afford to be a loser at 100-200 for very long. Let's take a guy who's a small loser and plays 3 nights a week. He loses 1K a night (which is typical for most losers) - remember that the time & tips for this game is about 30 bucks an hour since he probably tips a bit more than he should, or 150 bucks a night. Now he only has to lose 850 a night to get to 1K. Easy to do. In a year, he loses 150K, post-tax dollars. Not many people can afford to lose 250K of earned dollars before things happen. Our fish begins to sell his investments and his wife finds out. No more college fund for little Timmy - whatever. It's a LOT of money. Most people don't realize how much money is at stake in a game of this size. Even 40-80 is more than the vast majority of losers can afford.

3. Ego kills. That's what makes poker so great, but also so dangerous. Lots of players think they're the best, but only a few are. Playing bigger and bigger is usually a recipe for disaster, for lots of reasons.

4. Winning at the highest levels isn't about playing poker by rote. Big cards get the money in good games, but in tough games, you have to be creative and play lots of poker, because nobody makes big mistakes preflop. Hand reading is so important, and it becomes much tougher as you play bigger. Your opponents know this too, and play really tricky. Pretty soon your judgement gets completly messed up and you don't know where you are. As snakehead says, the games are a total "mind f*ck." He's right.

5. The bots will kill online poker. Maybe they are already. Think about it: a lot of players are playing pokertracker poker - VPIP stats, etc. They are winning lots of money this way. I've been told that some players are "killing the games for more than I ever could" by taking statistical measures at various points in the hand (turn raises for example) to make the right decision more often. With huge databases being available, how is this type of play better done by a computer? That's why bots could do this, especially against weaker players. Good players may be immune for longer, since they make plays based on lots of factors, including their particular opponent at that particular time, so they don't have a static strategy. However, given time and enough information, the bots will beat or break even against those players too, I'm sure. Breaking even breaks you because of the rake.

The bottom line is that one should make hay while the sun shines, and the weather is definately good this winter. If you can't do this, the above will kill any hope anyone has of being a long-time poker pro. I guess I did end up writing too much, but whatever.

[ggbman]

I have a VERY hard time believing that multi-billion dollar companies will not invest how ever much it takes in bot detection software to ensure the integrity of the games on their sight when you think about the alternative.

[Josh W]

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker changes."

But the songs remain the same.

A moment might come for you Josh, when you have nothing to prove to yourself or others, when you will just sit there and play. In that instant you will know the greatness of poker, and it will be blissful, unfulfilling, and secret.

[/ QUOTE ]

Believe it or not, Tommy, (and I'm guessing based on the existance of your post, that you don't), that I feel I have nothing to prove. The easiest way to see this is by looking at my frequent, annoying, refusal to post results in hands.

However...this forum is degrading. There is a lot less strategy being discussed. There is very little discussion of postflop hand reading. There is A LOT of "...and it's not close" in dang near every thread.

In short, there is a massive trend here to stop thinking and to stop learning, and to start bragging endlessly. There is more and more discussion of winrates, beatability of games, etc, and less discussion on improving as poker players.

I am not trying to annihilate the non-strategy discussion. Rather, I'm trying to introduce some strategy discussion because I need some.

If I can succeed in promoting discussion (and hopefully removing "and it's not close" because every decision is at least somewhat close), I'll feel that I have a greater chance to improve as a player.

It's not about me PROVING anything. It's about me IMPROVING something....my game.

Josh