State of the nation
Jun. 25th, 2006 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksIt is an established scientific fact that 90% of everything is bollocks.
Well, not exactly an established scientific fact, but as good as.
The problem is, you have to read the 90% of crap in order to find the 10% non-bollocks quota. There was a marvellous moment in Nathan Barley where it was suggested that someone write two columns a month, so that people could read the one that was good. The one sane person in the editorial meeting (and anyone who knows anything about editorial meetings at consumer or "hip" magazines will be aware that the presence of even one sane person is about six-to-four against) could not get over the fact that you had to read both before you knew which one was good.
Anyhoo, 2+2, and blogworld, have their fair share of the 90%s. In the 10% region, Andy Ward in Secrets of the Amateurs (http://www.secretsoftheamateurs.blogspot.com/) writes a nice piece on how best to play something like 1.3 big blind's worth when you are under-the-gun in a speed tournament. It's not so much what he says about this particular point, as the general point that, quite often, the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.
David Young (http://overlay_uk3.tripod.com/sleepless/) mentioned something that comes from the similar conventional wisdom mode. A large number of winning poker players win through experience, rather than experience and thinking. This is fine, provided the game doesn't evolve, and provided they stay within their own little cubbyhole (such as, for example, Gutshot, or the Vic). Because their method works there, they think that it is a universal truth. Hence their puzzlement when they go elsewhere, such as online, and get royally stuffed.
Even shifting between sites, or playing the same site at a different time of day, or shifting a single level in stakes can cause untold sorryfulness for the player who is winning through experience rather than through experience and thought.
(((Yes, I do know the correct word is "sorrow". However, since I'm awaiting my use of the word "predatee" to be cited in the next edition of the OED, I reckon that if I want to invent a word for playful effect, I will. Got it?)))
David's point was that a number of Pot Limit players at the Vic couldn't figure out why they lost when they played online. The point was obvious to the Youngster. While at the Vic you might be sitting down with 400 Big blinds, online you couldn't sit down with more than 100. To anyone who spent a moment thinking about the game it would be clear that the implied odds available from playing some less than premium hands pre-flop at the Vic just don't exist when you are online. Since in the NL game you might get raises just a bit higher (on average) than the pot-limit raise at the Vic (say, 4x to 5x the BB) the implied odds are even worse.
A thinking and experienced player can adjust to this, because he or she understands how these things work. It might take time to win at a decent rate, because you do not have the experience at the new style of game, but at least you can see why things are different. For a large number of players, it's more "I just can't win at that site. It's full of donkey chasers". Or "I can't win at limit. In no limit you can make them pay to chase..."
Negative EV (http://foolandhismoney.blogspot.com/) has shifted from limit to no limit and is playing at lower stakes. He's written some interesting stuff and has linked through to Schoonmaker's and Miller's thoughts on the matter. Ed Miller makes some good points about the $50 buy in game, enough to make me think that, if the game is as he describes it even I could beat it. This is notwithstanding the fact that under Shoonmaker's conditions, I should never go anywhere near No Limit.
Unfortunately, I suspect that any NL $50 buy-in game that I found would be nothing like the ones that Miller plays or describes (certainly the limit games that I play are rarely like the games described in Small Stakes Hold 'Em). What Ed does not mention is that these games, like limit games, are almost certain to vary significantly from day to night. However, I await his book on low stakes NL with interest, if only because it might be of some use when I go to Vegas in December.
I keep looking at the NL games and asking myself "should I switch"? I know that I would need to play $100 buy-ins at least and probably $200 buy-ins to stop myself going mad with boredom and tilting off the money with one stupid laggy play. That is partly where I fail the Schoonmaker test. I tend to make silly mistakes. Only one or two a session, and I spot them when I make them, but I make them, nevertheless. If it was a $50 buy-in, I can imagine myself getting shafted by these kinds of mistakes. I would have to play at a sufficiently high level for me to think about my bets carefully enough to avoid crass stupidity.
And, at most No Limit levels below the big stakes, it seems to be mainly a matter of avoiding crass stupidity, avoiding Fancy Play Syyndrome, and knowing your opponents. Now, when it comes to knowing my opponents, I'm not bad at all, well, I'm not bad at limit. If it's a matter of calling ranges of hands, I've got it down to a fairly fine art at limit, so I guess that, after a year or so, I'd have it fairly well-taped at mid-level no limit. And there actually seem to be fewer variables when it comes to situations (but a greater number of variables when it comes to bet sizes). Sets, straights, flushes, pot control, Top pair top kicker, overpairs. Study, see what players do pre-flop and post-flop. Exploit.
But even Negative EV is sticking to much lower levels. I would need a year to get it taped. It would be a tough year, and, at the end, would NL still be as good? This shift to new territory would be fraught with risks.
So, I think about it like the above, and then I decide that I would rather be a good limit player and, maybe one day, a great limit player, than I would want to be a great no limit player. Aesthetics rather than profit seem to be playing a part.
+++++++
This month has been one of the most frustrating one step forward, one step back, one step forward, one step forward, two steps back kind that I can recall since, well, the last time it happened. I swear that if I have Aces and see an eight on the flop one more time then I am just going to pitch the aces in the muck. Three times it's happened in the past couple of days that my raise with Aces (no fancy-play syndrome here) was called behind by 88, and three times an 8 came on the flop.
Do you think that the Chinese play 88 and 44 more often than we do? I've seen an increasing number of China residents at the tables in the past month. It's this that makes me wonder whether the No Limit extravaganza might have longer to run than I thought. Already there is greater emphasis on Europe, but Asia and Oceania, well, there's a big fishpoool. If they go mad for No Limit I think that you could expect massive profits and massive variance.
One of the "advantages" of these frustrating sessions going nowhere is that at least your rakeback for the following month will be significantly higher, because you tend to play for much longer (until the weak players leave, in fact). But one of the disadvantages is that you get too desensitized. This happened to me last year as well (at the same time), and I moved up to $15-$30. And then, as suddenly as it came, I felt uncomfortable throwing many hundreds of dollars a day around as if they were confetti, and I returned to the lower stakes. Weird.
Even when losing at the stakes I am playing at the moment, I feel as if I know exactly what is going on (well, there are a few players on Virgin where it's just impossible to know what's going through their heads, but you know what I mean). 95% of the players are utterly predictable. Of course, limit being limit, that doesn't guarantee a profit, and, as a rule, I've been keeping the losses to a minimum. When you miss the flop for what seems like the 20th time on the flop, it's horribly tempting at $2-$4 to enter some kind of bulldozering super-laggy mode. This is the worst thing that you can do. You just have to keep repeating the various mantras such as "don't worry about getting even, you already are even" and "$20 is $20, whether you are $200 up, $200 down, or level for the session". These thoughts really help your game and help you forget the latest suck-out to which you have been subjected.
+++++++
I'm developing another theory on players' names on Party. Generally speaking, players are what they say they are. A rock-like name is a rock-like player, a loosey-loosey name is a loosey-loosey player. However, if you find names with "777" or some other set of numbers like that after a name, this also might indicate a weak player. Why? Because if you choose a name and it is already taken, Party suggest the same name with a set of suffixes like "007" and "777" or "1971". If a player just clicks on "OK" for that, it indicates an impatience to get started, as well as an "I don't care" attitude.
Now, if I see a player from Asia with "888" after his name, I reckon I've got a gambler.
I might do some work in looking to see if AA does relatively worse if an 8 appears on the flop. I know that it does for me!.
Well, not exactly an established scientific fact, but as good as.
The problem is, you have to read the 90% of crap in order to find the 10% non-bollocks quota. There was a marvellous moment in Nathan Barley where it was suggested that someone write two columns a month, so that people could read the one that was good. The one sane person in the editorial meeting (and anyone who knows anything about editorial meetings at consumer or "hip" magazines will be aware that the presence of even one sane person is about six-to-four against) could not get over the fact that you had to read both before you knew which one was good.
Anyhoo, 2+2, and blogworld, have their fair share of the 90%s. In the 10% region, Andy Ward in Secrets of the Amateurs (http://www.secretsoftheamateurs.blogspot.com/) writes a nice piece on how best to play something like 1.3 big blind's worth when you are under-the-gun in a speed tournament. It's not so much what he says about this particular point, as the general point that, quite often, the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.
David Young (http://overlay_uk3.tripod.com/sleepless/) mentioned something that comes from the similar conventional wisdom mode. A large number of winning poker players win through experience, rather than experience and thinking. This is fine, provided the game doesn't evolve, and provided they stay within their own little cubbyhole (such as, for example, Gutshot, or the Vic). Because their method works there, they think that it is a universal truth. Hence their puzzlement when they go elsewhere, such as online, and get royally stuffed.
Even shifting between sites, or playing the same site at a different time of day, or shifting a single level in stakes can cause untold sorryfulness for the player who is winning through experience rather than through experience and thought.
(((Yes, I do know the correct word is "sorrow". However, since I'm awaiting my use of the word "predatee" to be cited in the next edition of the OED, I reckon that if I want to invent a word for playful effect, I will. Got it?)))
David's point was that a number of Pot Limit players at the Vic couldn't figure out why they lost when they played online. The point was obvious to the Youngster. While at the Vic you might be sitting down with 400 Big blinds, online you couldn't sit down with more than 100. To anyone who spent a moment thinking about the game it would be clear that the implied odds available from playing some less than premium hands pre-flop at the Vic just don't exist when you are online. Since in the NL game you might get raises just a bit higher (on average) than the pot-limit raise at the Vic (say, 4x to 5x the BB) the implied odds are even worse.
A thinking and experienced player can adjust to this, because he or she understands how these things work. It might take time to win at a decent rate, because you do not have the experience at the new style of game, but at least you can see why things are different. For a large number of players, it's more "I just can't win at that site. It's full of donkey chasers". Or "I can't win at limit. In no limit you can make them pay to chase..."
Negative EV (http://foolandhismoney.blogspot.com/) has shifted from limit to no limit and is playing at lower stakes. He's written some interesting stuff and has linked through to Schoonmaker's and Miller's thoughts on the matter. Ed Miller makes some good points about the $50 buy in game, enough to make me think that, if the game is as he describes it even I could beat it. This is notwithstanding the fact that under Shoonmaker's conditions, I should never go anywhere near No Limit.
Unfortunately, I suspect that any NL $50 buy-in game that I found would be nothing like the ones that Miller plays or describes (certainly the limit games that I play are rarely like the games described in Small Stakes Hold 'Em). What Ed does not mention is that these games, like limit games, are almost certain to vary significantly from day to night. However, I await his book on low stakes NL with interest, if only because it might be of some use when I go to Vegas in December.
I keep looking at the NL games and asking myself "should I switch"? I know that I would need to play $100 buy-ins at least and probably $200 buy-ins to stop myself going mad with boredom and tilting off the money with one stupid laggy play. That is partly where I fail the Schoonmaker test. I tend to make silly mistakes. Only one or two a session, and I spot them when I make them, but I make them, nevertheless. If it was a $50 buy-in, I can imagine myself getting shafted by these kinds of mistakes. I would have to play at a sufficiently high level for me to think about my bets carefully enough to avoid crass stupidity.
And, at most No Limit levels below the big stakes, it seems to be mainly a matter of avoiding crass stupidity, avoiding Fancy Play Syyndrome, and knowing your opponents. Now, when it comes to knowing my opponents, I'm not bad at all, well, I'm not bad at limit. If it's a matter of calling ranges of hands, I've got it down to a fairly fine art at limit, so I guess that, after a year or so, I'd have it fairly well-taped at mid-level no limit. And there actually seem to be fewer variables when it comes to situations (but a greater number of variables when it comes to bet sizes). Sets, straights, flushes, pot control, Top pair top kicker, overpairs. Study, see what players do pre-flop and post-flop. Exploit.
But even Negative EV is sticking to much lower levels. I would need a year to get it taped. It would be a tough year, and, at the end, would NL still be as good? This shift to new territory would be fraught with risks.
So, I think about it like the above, and then I decide that I would rather be a good limit player and, maybe one day, a great limit player, than I would want to be a great no limit player. Aesthetics rather than profit seem to be playing a part.
+++++++
This month has been one of the most frustrating one step forward, one step back, one step forward, one step forward, two steps back kind that I can recall since, well, the last time it happened. I swear that if I have Aces and see an eight on the flop one more time then I am just going to pitch the aces in the muck. Three times it's happened in the past couple of days that my raise with Aces (no fancy-play syndrome here) was called behind by 88, and three times an 8 came on the flop.
Do you think that the Chinese play 88 and 44 more often than we do? I've seen an increasing number of China residents at the tables in the past month. It's this that makes me wonder whether the No Limit extravaganza might have longer to run than I thought. Already there is greater emphasis on Europe, but Asia and Oceania, well, there's a big fishpoool. If they go mad for No Limit I think that you could expect massive profits and massive variance.
One of the "advantages" of these frustrating sessions going nowhere is that at least your rakeback for the following month will be significantly higher, because you tend to play for much longer (until the weak players leave, in fact). But one of the disadvantages is that you get too desensitized. This happened to me last year as well (at the same time), and I moved up to $15-$30. And then, as suddenly as it came, I felt uncomfortable throwing many hundreds of dollars a day around as if they were confetti, and I returned to the lower stakes. Weird.
Even when losing at the stakes I am playing at the moment, I feel as if I know exactly what is going on (well, there are a few players on Virgin where it's just impossible to know what's going through their heads, but you know what I mean). 95% of the players are utterly predictable. Of course, limit being limit, that doesn't guarantee a profit, and, as a rule, I've been keeping the losses to a minimum. When you miss the flop for what seems like the 20th time on the flop, it's horribly tempting at $2-$4 to enter some kind of bulldozering super-laggy mode. This is the worst thing that you can do. You just have to keep repeating the various mantras such as "don't worry about getting even, you already are even" and "$20 is $20, whether you are $200 up, $200 down, or level for the session". These thoughts really help your game and help you forget the latest suck-out to which you have been subjected.
+++++++
I'm developing another theory on players' names on Party. Generally speaking, players are what they say they are. A rock-like name is a rock-like player, a loosey-loosey name is a loosey-loosey player. However, if you find names with "777" or some other set of numbers like that after a name, this also might indicate a weak player. Why? Because if you choose a name and it is already taken, Party suggest the same name with a set of suffixes like "007" and "777" or "1971". If a player just clicks on "OK" for that, it indicates an impatience to get started, as well as an "I don't care" attitude.
Now, if I see a player from Asia with "888" after his name, I reckon I've got a gambler.
I might do some work in looking to see if AA does relatively worse if an 8 appears on the flop. I know that it does for me!.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Greatest Hits
Date: 2006-06-25 03:13 pm (UTC)Martin Nicholson
Daventry
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 06:02 pm (UTC)I think the "I only make a couple of mistakes but that's OK because it's limit" idea (I think I may have paraphrased that rather badly) is flawed - at no/pot-limit you're looking to win in buy-ins, not big bets. So you're also going to drop buy-ins and often you'll be correct to do so. Fundamental Theorem and all that. $50 and $100 games can be a good place to pick up other peoples' stacks.
All that said, I think you're probably right to continue working on your strength, although there may be easier money coming through no-limit than fixed if the new markets continue to open up, particularly if they're coming in on the back of televised NL tournaments.
I sort of get what you're saying about names: when I signed up on pokerroom they offered me Mikey126. I was gagging to get in and lose my first deposit so I took it. But then I took it with me to Party and VC, by which time I wasnt a losing player any more. So I dunno.
Mike