Ok, I can not be sure about the reasons for other players, so the following is mostly my reasons for posting less. I will formulate in the general terms, using the words like ‘development of a poker player’ as I believe that it applies to most of the players, but one should keep in mind that I am talking from personal experience.

Development of a poker player.

When we just start to learn playing poker we read books and forums, post hands and discuss other people plays. Mostly the focus is on the post-flop play, as it is there where the mistakes cost most. Then after sometime we have a general idea how to play certain types of hands in certain conditions. This is the first stage.

Later we start to understand that preflop play is just as important as postflop play, and one shouldn’t limp in early position with speculative hands, one shouldn’t call raises with small pairs when it costs more than 10% of effective stacks, etc. Still preflop and postflop play are existing separately. We make the kind of posts, like ‘disregard preflop’, or ‘I decided to limp in order to mix up my play’. (I find it hard to respond to such posts, don’t limp Axs UTG, point. )

On the third stage we understand that preflop and postflop play are interconnected. The same hand could and should be played differently postflop for different preflop strategies. (As an example, a LAG can’t possibly fold AA postflop, while TAG should be able to do it sometimes.) We stop to play separate hands, we start to play hand ranges.

At this point we start to understand that it is the overall strategy is important. There is no more important or less important hands. (You see it first here. J) The blinds that you steal or the pot that you take with CB are just as important as the big pots where you stack your opponent. It just seems that big pots matter more. In reality the weight of the wins can be distributed differently. One could enter most of the big pots as an underdog and crush the games due to all small pots that he wins along the way. ( Doyle’s strategy of quasi-freerolling.)

There are many different ways to play poker. One could play a showdown poker, winning most of the money at the showdown. One can have less than 50% W@SD, and be a winner due to all the times when he rises his opponents out of the pots. These small edges of stealing 2 more times the blinds in 100 hands or taking one pot more by CB, than the average opponent accumulate to produce a winner.


Discussing strategy. Why we post less?

I find it very hard to discuss the overall strategy. First, it is hard to do on the public forum as people don’t like to reveal a winning strategy. (Cardrunners and coaches do it for money.) Second, it is very time consuming as one needs to virtually look at every hand, why it was folded, raised, CB etc. The format of separate hand histories doesn’t suit well this kind of discussion. Videos or hand histories of the whole sessions are much better.

Another important issue is that for higher stakes psychology becomes very important. ‘Tilt’ control, abstraction from the money, monitoring one’s condition so that one doesn’t play when he’s tired, etc. These factors are often more important than rightfully playing a separate hand, and they are rarely discussed in the NL strategy forums.

Finally, determining the game conditions and developing reads, that’s a basic cognitive tasks which is of foremost importance for determining the right play. As soon as we put our opponent on a range the rest is a math, quite complicated, but still doable. While the first part is very hard, the more details one can grasp about opponents the better he will play, and this is one of the biggest factors separating winners from losers. We don’t discuss it.

Summary.

After a certain period of development, the separate hand history format discussion that we use on the forums doesn’t suit the needs of the players, this is the main reason for better players to post less.

I can only speak for myself about why there is less posting. I wasn't a big poster in this section at any point anyway, but I've even stopped reading it here (and on other forums where I used to post a lot in strategy).

Replying and helping others is really only done if one thinks they can get some help of their own out of it. Quite honestly I feel I'm past the point of gleaning any new info from a 1/2NL hand history that someone has posted about, and I also don't think much of substance can be offered as far as replies.

I'm much more a fan of longer strategy posts about single subjects, or longer narrative posts about single hands (Roy Cooke style). But reading a hand history and filling in the textbook-approved answer at the end- so 2005. I learn by thinking, not by answering quizzes.

Eli