The future of poker

[Felonius_Monk]

Very good post Kuso, you make some persuasive arguments.

[kennyg]

kuso... who's journal is that? do you know the guy?

[Kuso]

wintermute is a prodigious poster on 2+2 in the plo8 forums. i don't know him, but i read gergery's (from o8poker.com) blog, and it referred to wintermute's blog. as i like wintermute's posts on 2+2, i thought it would be worth a read -- i was not disappointed.

[kennyg]

IMO from his post about the trip to AC, he sounds horrible. I think playing that LAGgish with so many fish around is less profitable, and a hell of a roller coaster. That's why he had such a bad first session. I give him more credit for short term luck on that big win then anything else, honestly.

That being said, I didn't read the rest of his blog. So maybe I'm judging him too harshly.

[Kuso]

my thoughts on wm's blog:

- he's a o8 player and knows that he's not very good at nlhe (at least compared to o8). i don't think he was counting on this to be a +ev trip. he's a winner at fairly large buy-ins (claims to be hovering around the $100k mark for the year), so i don't think he was worried about the idea of dropping a grand or two for chuckles and giggles at live nlhe tables.

- i like the constant raising at these kinds of tables. i've seen plenty of weak-tight tables where SO many people limp hoping to see the flop cheaply. wm pushed a lot, and i think that this was a bad move. a pot-sized bet (esp. in lp) or $20-$40 bet would have been more than enough to piss some people off and loosen up the table a bit with MUCH less variance to his BR..

- i like the way he loosened up the table -- a bit over the top, but still effective. i think of it as a bit of MK or TW action. i've been thinking about how i can do this iin my games to loosen things up. sadly, i think miost of the people in the games i play wouldn't notice or adjust to my play if i played really LAGgy for a few hands or a few orbits. again, i think that the people who loosen up the games will be sought after and rewarded by poker sites and b&m card rooms.

- one reason i linked to the post was to highlight the motard he was playing with. while wm was just screwing around, i think that the other guy was actually trying to win -- a perfect example of how far the typical game needs to improve before easy poker profits dry up.

- wm knows that nlhe is not his best game, so he has low expectations for winning. as i said before, i don't think he was worried about dropping a grand or two. something similar often happens at o8 tables. sometimes a $100+ nlhe player wants to give plo8 a try, and he doesn't care if he donks off four buy-ins at the $25 level. similarly, plenty of $100 or $200+ plo8 players come the the $25 and $50 tables just to "blow off steam" (greg from o8poker.com explicitly says that he loves to sit at the $50 tables for this purpose). furthermore, you get people playing over their heads when they are stuck and losing TONS of chips (wm chastises himself in his blog for doing this very thing at the $2000 tables). anyway, the point is that there is plenty of low quality action coming within the poker community, and i imagine that this phenomenon will continue. the great players will certainly adapt, but i'm think most "winning" players will remain one-trick ponies.

anyway, just some thoughts.