Its amazing ...

fuzzbox

Its amazing to see how many people believe that they would do better playing higher stakes because the other players are good, and that the all-in donkey fests at lower stakes cause them to lose.

I guess that some people just dont know how to adjust, and continue to back their stack with top pair Vs 4 calling station opponents.

........
try hitting a flush, and then go for your stack - I bet it works out better.

corblimey

fuzzbox, do you not think that the calling station mentality fades as the stakes rise? that ability to hit bottom pair on the flop and then not be chased off by anything, no matter how many scare cards there are on the board is surely a symptom of the lower levels.

fuzzbox

corblimey wrote:

fuzzbox, do you not think that the calling station mentality fades as the stakes rise? that ability to hit bottom pair on the flop and then not be chased off by anything, no matter how many scare cards there are on the board is surely a symptom of the lower levels.

Yeah - it sure does. But its MUCH easier to beat the calling stations out of their money.

You make money BECAUSE they call you with worse hands. In fact, most of the money you make, while player poker is because people call you with worse hands. (some is made when they fold better hands). The more often they are to call with worse hands, the more money you make.

Shortstack

From what I have seen over the last few months at the higher levels, $5/$10 to $10/$20 there are just as many bad players as at the lowere levels. If anything they are easier to spot as well.

In the two biggest pots I have played all I have had to do is press call when flopping the nuts. It's a sweet feeling to see them drawing so thin in $4k plus pot.

Example:

the Worlds 4914560-139196 Holdem No Limit $10/$20
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Hand Start.
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Seat 2 : 1jackace has $826
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Seat 5 : Lucky-Blind has $3,769
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Seat 6 : SepticWkr has $1,607
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Seat 7 : mrpillowtlk has $4,398
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Seat 8 : ship it has $2,330
[Mar 11 06:53:52] : Lucky-Blind is the dealer.
[Mar 11 06:53:53] : SepticWkr posted small blind.
[Mar 11 06:53:53] : mrpillowtlk posted big blind.
[Mar 11 06:53:53] : Game [139196] started with 5 players.
[Mar 11 06:53:53] : Dealing Hole Cards.
[Mar 11 06:53:53] : Seat 5 : Lucky-Blind has Td 9c
[Mar 11 06:53:57] : ship it called $20 and raised $40
[Mar 11 06:53:58] : 1jackace folded.
[Mar 11 06:54:04] : Lucky-Blind called $60
[Mar 11 06:54:06] : SepticWkr folded.
[Mar 11 06:54:12] : mrpillowtlk folded.
[Mar 11 06:54:12] : Dealing flop.
[Mar 11 06:54:12] : Board cards [Jd 8s 7d]
[Mar 11 06:54:19] : ship it bet $80
[Mar 11 06:54:23] : Lucky-Blind called $80 and raised $320
[Mar 11 06:54:28] : ship it called $320 and raised $1,870 and is All-in
[Mar 11 06:54:30] : Lucky-Blind called $1,870
[Mar 11 06:54:30] : Showdown!
[Mar 11 06:54:30] : Seat 5 : Lucky-Blind has Td 9c
[Mar 11 06:54:32] : Seat 5 : Lucky-Blind has Td 9c
[Mar 11 06:54:32] : Seat 8 : ship it has Th 8h
[Mar 11 06:54:38] : Board cards [Jd 8s 7d Kd Ks]
[Mar 11 06:54:38] : Seat 8 : ship it has Th 8h
[Mar 11 06:54:38] : ship it has Two Pair: Kings and 8s
[Mar 11 06:54:38] : Seat 5 : Lucky-Blind has Td 9c
[Mar 11 06:54:38] : Lucky-Blind has Straight JT987
[Mar 11 06:54:38] : Lucky-Blind wins $4,687 with Straight JT987
[Mar 11 06:54:43] : Lucky-Blind : ty
[Mar 11 06:54:48] : Hand is over.

Samba

In Cash and STT play - give me a table full of donkeys, as Fuzz said, just hit a hand and stick your chips in - you will get called - Mike shows a perfect example.

1v1 Play I have difficulty playing against Donkeys as reading them is near to impossible. When I am playing a donkey in 1v1 - i literally sit back and wait for a hand, sometimes they don't come and you have to make do with what you are dealt.

You lose alot of potential chips with donkeys as bluffing them is a very hard game to play - Normally approx. 70% of the chips I accumulate v average - good players would be through bluffing, I would put in very small steals against donkeys, so I do lose out quite a bit in that respect, they will call you down with A-J high - any pair, any draw


My recent tourney play has been a disaster, getting my strong hands cracked all in PF only to see 5 callers - much to my disgust (even after the re-buy period)

Again - I want donkeys in the tourney they are the ones who will double you up and make you CL.


Lucky-Blind : ty - Ouch that stings

Edit again - I think this answers the is poker becoming less profitable thread.

ionapaul

What I don't understand, and probably never will, is why or how these people can waste (not enjoy, just waste) so much money at these high stakes, without knowing how to play the game? I know what people will say, these are very rich people who don't care about the odd $10k, etc...maybe it's me, but most wealthy people I know actually value their money. Also, how exactly do these people justify their five figure cash game losses to themselves as entertainment, when the same figure will get you a few weeks in Tahiti or most of the way (in the States) towards a convertible sports car? I just don't know. Obviously too many idiots have too much money in this world...if they lived in West Cork they'd be happy pyramid schemers right now!

ollyk1

I think people complaining about poor players don't really grasp the long run of poker.

Say you are a reasonable player playing live MTTs with ~60 runners twice a week. Say the buyin is on average €60. You guesstimate your advantage over the average player as double the chances of an the average player. i.e. your edge is equivalent to a double starting stack (this is quite high and unrealtistic in the "fast" tournie structure that are mainly played around Dublin but it will illustrate my point)

Therefore your EV going into a game is twice the buyin less the reg fees (lets say that reg is equal to 10% of buyin on average). Therefore your EV in a game is 2*60 - 6 = €114. Lets say 65% of the prize fund is payed out to the top 2 positions and the remaining 35% to the next 5 players and if you finish from 7th to 3rd inclusive you win 7% of the fund on average (i.e. €252) and in the top 2 you win 32.5% (i.e. €1,170) on average.

so how many times do we finish out of the money based on getting in the top 2 spots 3 out of 7 times we finish ITM (because we are a good player and if we make the money we get into the top spots more times on average)?

I reckon we finish out of the money 81.4% of the time.

((3/7 * 1170)+ (4/7 * 252) ) *(1-X) + X *0 = 120 Solving for X.

So 8 out of 10 times we don't finish ITM and 57% of the time we do finish ITM we only make a return of 300% on our initial buyin on average (not enough to really float your boat). Thinking about this logically its not hard to imagine playing 50 tournaments and only making decent money (top 2) once or maybe twice. Its also not hard to imagine making a loss over that period and yet fundamentally being a "winning" player.

People moan about bad beats and bad players but you have to undersatand that without bad players or people calling you when they are in bad shape (and getting lucky occasionally) your edge would drop big time to maybe 1.25 times a buyin. Now what happens to the numbers? Suddenly your expectation from a 6-7 hour tournament is €10 after you pay the reg. If you are a reasonable tipper when you do win your suddenly a "break-even" player and the long run will be very long for you my friend.

In conclusion don't tap the tank and be grateful for every bad player you see in your game this game is hard and long enough as it is.

MrPillowTalk

That hand was fairly hillarious.

In ship its defence he seems to be an overall winner who occasionally makes idiotic moves like that one.

Look at it another way though, if your sitting with AJ in that spot do you call?

I think he did play it terribly though, he should have given you credit for at least the top pair in that spot.

I dont think the higher online tables are full of rich doctors/dentists etc donking off their money, I see the same players there day in day out and the value in the game comes from players moving up too quickly or else, and this happens every day, you get a good solid 2/4 3/6 nl player who beats these games most days and has a bankroll on site of maybe 5k, he has a run of attrocious beats in the usual game he plays and against all his senses decides he is going to put 2k in the big game and either double it or draw a line under poker for good (this happens all the time) these guys and their style are easy to spot. They dont play bad starting hands or theoretically bad poker however and here is the crux, they play their strong hands either too cutely trying to trap or else way too aggresively, their viewpoint is all wrong they look for the double up instead of the hourly rate, as soon as regular players recognise this all of a sudden everyone starts calling this guys 3xbb raise with medium and even weak hands in position because you know that if you can get two pair against this guy he will commit his whole stack.

Saying all this the first time I played 10/20 was because I was after losing 1500 playing 3/6 and was so pissed off I wanted to double up 2k and show a profit for the day, I was the other side of the spectrum though I played exactly as above but managed to have the deck hit me in the face and turned that 2k into 8 in an hour and a half. That was on prima three years ago, at the time I was working in a bar every friday saturday and sunday to make some money to cover college expenses, my score that night was equal to 6 months working every weekend.

I dont work in a bar anymore.

Goodluck2me

what is expected varience?could someone explain it please....

RoundTower

goodluck2me wrote:

what is expected varience?could someone explain it please....

It means that you won't lose the same amount every night. Suppose on average you lose $300 a night: some nights you may lose $1000 and sometimes you may win as much as $500. Online, the word variance means "running bad."

roryc

variance.... *does not compute*

TacT

I don't understand it myself, I play .50/1 and 1/2 9+ seater ring games. Give me donkey calling stations any day of the week please. If you're going in as a favourite then you should be winning. Yes the calling stations will crack your hands but the bottom line is if you're in as a favourite and they're in as a dog to win the hand then you should be winning in the long term.

roryc

This probably doesn't make too much sense, but I would only really apply this to STT's and MTT's. I was playing 10c/20c, and have recently moved up to 25c/50c and 50c/1, and I've found it a little easier to profit. Obviously everybody wants to play against donkey's, there's no question about that, but I just think if you have a table full of them, it makes it very hard to play.

You want a few decent players at the table so you can build up an image. Usually I play best when there are 2/3 donkeys at the table, and the rest are decent enough, obviously not too good. You can pick off the donkeys, and choose when to clash with the decent players.

hotspur

TacT wrote:

. Give me donkey calling stations any day of the week please.

You play on the Action poker network so you *do* get donkeys every day of the week, congratulations