![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Poker Bits and bobs
Apr. 12th, 2010 02:14 pmPokertableratings has come in for a lot of stick on the 2+2 sites, but it's done a lot to redeem its reputation by helping expose Stoxtrader as a colluder. Much of this had been running in 2+2, but I go there too infrequently to keep up. So PTR is actually a good news source for me, as well as a useful way to check up on how 'good' or 'bad' a player is on Stars or Party. Previously, I had my own HEM stats to work with, but it's surprising how even a database of several thousand hands can be askew from the total history.
NoahSD approached PTR to ask for some stats on Stoxtrader in an attempt to establish whether or not there had been collusion. Now, we aren't talking about 'Superuser' exposures here. These are trivial. You put a sample picture together and the Superuser is just off the scale. No, collusion when it just involves soft play (failing to compete with one particular person) is notably hard.
NoahSD came up with his remarkably thorough conclusions here: http://www.pokertableratings.com/docs/StoxtraderCollusionAnalysis.pdf
and to my mind the man deserves a medal.
And so, once again, a sad truth emerges. Someone who appears to be better than everyone else is, quite often, either a liar or a cheat. No-one can deny that Stoxtrader is a good player. He just gave himself a little extra edge.
But the most interesting thing here is how it shows the difference between live and online play. Because in live play, non of this could ever have been proved. It's only online that the data is available and it's only online that you can "prove" collusion without even seeing the players' hole cards.
Now, live, this has been going on for years. Why would Andy Beal only play the other top players heads-up? Because he isn't stupid. As the saying goes, if you'd been in a big pot in the old days against Brunson, he would have played it tough. If you'd been in a big pot against Slim, he would have played it tough, and if they'd been in a big pot against each other, they would have played it tough. But very rarely (well, probably never) would you, the sucker, have found yourself in a big pot against Brunson AND Slim at the same time. Any three-bet that Slim had put in against Brunson would have sent out the real messagge "I know that you think you have a hand that can beat this guy, but I KNOW that I have a hand that can beat this guy". And so, Brunson, without even agreeing on collusion, would sensibly fold a good hand. Beal knew that this would be the case if he sat against seven hotshots simultaneously, and he didn't have to prove it. He had the money, he could set the rules.
Online, the tools being deployed by some of the 2+2 private detectives, and the sample sizes available, are enough to catch these people. This, to be honest, is brilliant.
Here's the 2+2 thread. Two inteeresting points emerge:
1) The remarkable maturity expressed by several of the posters (presumably because the kiddies simply didn't understand/got bored by any post too long to appear on Twitter)
2) That a significant proportion of 2+2 posters (which, in a way, are the elite of onluine poker players) didn't "get it".
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/investigation-into-softplaying-between-stoxtrader-kinetica-littlezen-very-very-tl-dr-757267/index14.html
++++++
IPoker this morning announced that the minimum buy-in would rise to 30BBs. I assume that it can only be a matter of time until Stars follows suit.
I have mixed feelings on this. Unlike most full stackers, I like playing the games with seven or eight short-stackers. The simple rule is, don't play with a full stack either one or two to your left. Terrence Chan recently wrote on why he didn't like this situation, because if the full stack to your right raised with a wide range and you wanted to flat-call, using your post-flop positional advantage, you ran the (high) risk of a shove from one of the short-stackers to your left.
But he failed to mention the number of times that it is an advantage. Flatting with AKo, for example, becomes easier, not harder (because you know that a full-stack behind you won't flat as well, because there isn't a full stack behind you). Hands that are passed round to you become, in effect, small-stack hands (because all of the remaining players are short stacks). And, most importantly, short-stackers tended not to be very good. By this I mean that, a $40 entrant in a $1-$2 NL game would probably be, on average, as good as a full-stack player in 25c-50c games (where he would be putting down $50). So, although it is easier to learn 'perfect' short stack play than it is to learn 'perfect' big-stack play (where 'perfect' is a kind of loose term for 'efficient enough to not lose money') the poorer general quality of the playing pool meant that only the same proportion of players actually managed so to do.
So now the 'average' short-stacker will be putting up $60 rather than $40, and I suspect that his average quality will rise accordingly.
On the plus side, a whole raft of people will have to learn a new set of (more complex) tables to see what the 'right' play is. And at 30bb, this necessarily includes some post-flop play. There's a big difference between a shove with 20bb over a 3bb raise being right and a shove with 30bb. Indeed, the difference is so large that the standard "shove or fold" strategy won't work, because your "fold" side of the equation will be so much higher.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
+++++++++++++
The antibotics have been at work for five days now and I am getting better day by day. I have to go into the office tomorrow, mainly because I have a dental hygeineist appointment at three! We'll see how rubbish I feel later tomorrow afternoon!
_____________
NoahSD approached PTR to ask for some stats on Stoxtrader in an attempt to establish whether or not there had been collusion. Now, we aren't talking about 'Superuser' exposures here. These are trivial. You put a sample picture together and the Superuser is just off the scale. No, collusion when it just involves soft play (failing to compete with one particular person) is notably hard.
NoahSD came up with his remarkably thorough conclusions here: http://www.pokertableratings.com/docs/StoxtraderCollusionAnalysis.pdf
and to my mind the man deserves a medal.
And so, once again, a sad truth emerges. Someone who appears to be better than everyone else is, quite often, either a liar or a cheat. No-one can deny that Stoxtrader is a good player. He just gave himself a little extra edge.
But the most interesting thing here is how it shows the difference between live and online play. Because in live play, non of this could ever have been proved. It's only online that the data is available and it's only online that you can "prove" collusion without even seeing the players' hole cards.
Now, live, this has been going on for years. Why would Andy Beal only play the other top players heads-up? Because he isn't stupid. As the saying goes, if you'd been in a big pot in the old days against Brunson, he would have played it tough. If you'd been in a big pot against Slim, he would have played it tough, and if they'd been in a big pot against each other, they would have played it tough. But very rarely (well, probably never) would you, the sucker, have found yourself in a big pot against Brunson AND Slim at the same time. Any three-bet that Slim had put in against Brunson would have sent out the real messagge "I know that you think you have a hand that can beat this guy, but I KNOW that I have a hand that can beat this guy". And so, Brunson, without even agreeing on collusion, would sensibly fold a good hand. Beal knew that this would be the case if he sat against seven hotshots simultaneously, and he didn't have to prove it. He had the money, he could set the rules.
Online, the tools being deployed by some of the 2+2 private detectives, and the sample sizes available, are enough to catch these people. This, to be honest, is brilliant.
Here's the 2+2 thread. Two inteeresting points emerge:
1) The remarkable maturity expressed by several of the posters (presumably because the kiddies simply didn't understand/got bored by any post too long to appear on Twitter)
2) That a significant proportion of 2+2 posters (which, in a way, are the elite of onluine poker players) didn't "get it".
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/investigation-into-softplaying-between-stoxtrader-kinetica-littlezen-very-very-tl-dr-757267/index14.html
++++++
IPoker this morning announced that the minimum buy-in would rise to 30BBs. I assume that it can only be a matter of time until Stars follows suit.
I have mixed feelings on this. Unlike most full stackers, I like playing the games with seven or eight short-stackers. The simple rule is, don't play with a full stack either one or two to your left. Terrence Chan recently wrote on why he didn't like this situation, because if the full stack to your right raised with a wide range and you wanted to flat-call, using your post-flop positional advantage, you ran the (high) risk of a shove from one of the short-stackers to your left.
But he failed to mention the number of times that it is an advantage. Flatting with AKo, for example, becomes easier, not harder (because you know that a full-stack behind you won't flat as well, because there isn't a full stack behind you). Hands that are passed round to you become, in effect, small-stack hands (because all of the remaining players are short stacks). And, most importantly, short-stackers tended not to be very good. By this I mean that, a $40 entrant in a $1-$2 NL game would probably be, on average, as good as a full-stack player in 25c-50c games (where he would be putting down $50). So, although it is easier to learn 'perfect' short stack play than it is to learn 'perfect' big-stack play (where 'perfect' is a kind of loose term for 'efficient enough to not lose money') the poorer general quality of the playing pool meant that only the same proportion of players actually managed so to do.
So now the 'average' short-stacker will be putting up $60 rather than $40, and I suspect that his average quality will rise accordingly.
On the plus side, a whole raft of people will have to learn a new set of (more complex) tables to see what the 'right' play is. And at 30bb, this necessarily includes some post-flop play. There's a big difference between a shove with 20bb over a 3bb raise being right and a shove with 30bb. Indeed, the difference is so large that the standard "shove or fold" strategy won't work, because your "fold" side of the equation will be so much higher.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
+++++++++++++
The antibotics have been at work for five days now and I am getting better day by day. I have to go into the office tomorrow, mainly because I have a dental hygeineist appointment at three! We'll see how rubbish I feel later tomorrow afternoon!
_____________
