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The One You Love
Nov. 15th, 2006 09:43 pmFull Tilt continues to be the kiss of death for me, only partially or sometimes more than completely covered by spells on other sites. I'm going to carry on manfully until I've worked off the reload bonus, but after that I may have to face facts and admit that I'm a loser there, at whatever level. I'm up to 25,000 hands now and, not including bonuses, I'm about $700 down. This actually is a near-$1700 loss since October 17.
From this I can assume that one or more of the following factors are in play:
a) I have got worse.
b) the opponents have got better.
c) I am running bad.
I suspect that it's a combination of all three, although Pauly seems to think that the players at FTP became more donkeyfied. Perhaps it's me, then. However, if all of the good players made the effort to shift from Party to FTP, and only some of the bad players did, then one would expect the quality of opposition to go up. But I am seeing plays at the lower levels that I really would not have expected to see a few months ago.
Similarly, I probably am running a bit bad. But if it doesn't turn round by the time I have used up all the bonus, perhaps you have to face facts and say that it's a matter of, as Mr Ward once termed it, sucktuation rather than fluctuation. If I'm running better elsewhere, or the opponents are worse, or, for some reason, I haven't got worse on those sites (only on FTP), then it's stupid of me to bash my head against a brick wall.
In one book or another I once read of a very good Blackjack player who went skint. He analysed everything and concluded that, mathematically, the chance of what had happened to him was less than 0.5%. He talked about this to a grizzled old friend, described what had happened and where he had played, and got the answer, "you were cheated".
Sometimes the Occam's Razor principle might be better. Maybe I'm getting paranoid about the bots, but the styles I'm coming up against on FTP are tougher to play and, for the first time, I'm finding it harder to summon up the motivation. I might get better, but the remaining players are going to get better still.
BDD said that ring games were likely to be safe from bots, but I don't think so. What bots want is a head-to-head confrontation post-flop, and in today's tighter ring games, that's quite often what you get. They play a mathematical algorithm that is most effective heads-up from the blinds or three-betting from the button against a loose raiser. They also raise very thin from the CO and from the button, because they know that most human opponents do not defend the blinds as well as they, the bots, do. I've actually used the bot blind defence (or my version of it) against serial raisers in the CO and on the button, to some effect. But sometimes I really wonder why. All that will happen is that a new adaptation will appear. Or the human opponents will get better. It's not as if I need the money; semi-meaningless scraps of paper, indeed.
All of which sounds more depressing than I feel. I'm actually quite sanguine about the situation -- looking forward to future developments, as it were. What propelled this particular post was the new software at Ultimate Bet. Whether this has anything to do with bots, or Pokertracker, or what, I do not know, but it is now impossible to keep the Hand History perpetually open, using Ultimate History to generate the hand history request. After 10 hands or so, you get blocked out, and have to manually close the hand history window and re-open it. Coincidence? perhaps, perhaps not.
Well, this is a mild irritant, but I only play two tables on Ultimate, so I can just about keep up with the closing and re-opening, in order to keep the UB stats up-to-date on Pokertracker. It will inconvenience other parties (particularly the data-mining bots) more. However, this was one more step in the "why bother with this perpetual struggle?" mode that I feel in at the moment. Maybe I should start focusing on my live game again, trying to avoid the more scummy side of the semi-scum. However, that seems like an even more undesirable existence, living a kind of confidence-trickster life, pretending to like people you dislike, solely because they are losers. A bit like real life, really, which poker is meant to be an escape from.
On the plus side, I managed 5K in 23 minutes 22 seconds on the rowing machine today -- easily a PB, and this was after a tough session on the cross-trainer and on the new, masochistic hamstring-worker machine. My right side is still a little bit dodgy, with full lung expansion causing some discomfort, but I was very pleased with myself and felt good afterwards. Sometimes you come away from the gym feeling like shit!
Basically ANY track from Muse seems to be good for the gym, not just the better known ones. They seem to have a beat in just about the right time.
From this I can assume that one or more of the following factors are in play:
a) I have got worse.
b) the opponents have got better.
c) I am running bad.
I suspect that it's a combination of all three, although Pauly seems to think that the players at FTP became more donkeyfied. Perhaps it's me, then. However, if all of the good players made the effort to shift from Party to FTP, and only some of the bad players did, then one would expect the quality of opposition to go up. But I am seeing plays at the lower levels that I really would not have expected to see a few months ago.
Similarly, I probably am running a bit bad. But if it doesn't turn round by the time I have used up all the bonus, perhaps you have to face facts and say that it's a matter of, as Mr Ward once termed it, sucktuation rather than fluctuation. If I'm running better elsewhere, or the opponents are worse, or, for some reason, I haven't got worse on those sites (only on FTP), then it's stupid of me to bash my head against a brick wall.
In one book or another I once read of a very good Blackjack player who went skint. He analysed everything and concluded that, mathematically, the chance of what had happened to him was less than 0.5%. He talked about this to a grizzled old friend, described what had happened and where he had played, and got the answer, "you were cheated".
Sometimes the Occam's Razor principle might be better. Maybe I'm getting paranoid about the bots, but the styles I'm coming up against on FTP are tougher to play and, for the first time, I'm finding it harder to summon up the motivation. I might get better, but the remaining players are going to get better still.
BDD said that ring games were likely to be safe from bots, but I don't think so. What bots want is a head-to-head confrontation post-flop, and in today's tighter ring games, that's quite often what you get. They play a mathematical algorithm that is most effective heads-up from the blinds or three-betting from the button against a loose raiser. They also raise very thin from the CO and from the button, because they know that most human opponents do not defend the blinds as well as they, the bots, do. I've actually used the bot blind defence (or my version of it) against serial raisers in the CO and on the button, to some effect. But sometimes I really wonder why. All that will happen is that a new adaptation will appear. Or the human opponents will get better. It's not as if I need the money; semi-meaningless scraps of paper, indeed.
All of which sounds more depressing than I feel. I'm actually quite sanguine about the situation -- looking forward to future developments, as it were. What propelled this particular post was the new software at Ultimate Bet. Whether this has anything to do with bots, or Pokertracker, or what, I do not know, but it is now impossible to keep the Hand History perpetually open, using Ultimate History to generate the hand history request. After 10 hands or so, you get blocked out, and have to manually close the hand history window and re-open it. Coincidence? perhaps, perhaps not.
Well, this is a mild irritant, but I only play two tables on Ultimate, so I can just about keep up with the closing and re-opening, in order to keep the UB stats up-to-date on Pokertracker. It will inconvenience other parties (particularly the data-mining bots) more. However, this was one more step in the "why bother with this perpetual struggle?" mode that I feel in at the moment. Maybe I should start focusing on my live game again, trying to avoid the more scummy side of the semi-scum. However, that seems like an even more undesirable existence, living a kind of confidence-trickster life, pretending to like people you dislike, solely because they are losers. A bit like real life, really, which poker is meant to be an escape from.
On the plus side, I managed 5K in 23 minutes 22 seconds on the rowing machine today -- easily a PB, and this was after a tough session on the cross-trainer and on the new, masochistic hamstring-worker machine. My right side is still a little bit dodgy, with full lung expansion causing some discomfort, but I was very pleased with myself and felt good afterwards. Sometimes you come away from the gym feeling like shit!
Basically ANY track from Muse seems to be good for the gym, not just the better known ones. They seem to have a beat in just about the right time.
