Link to Adanthar MTT CardRunner vids on YouTube

Check it out - it's not the best vid I've done, but it's a pretty good one and has a nice summary of blind defense/pot odds in MTT's in Part 3 somewhere.

Update: Looks like it's got some pretty bad audio sync issues. These don't exist in the actual CR vid, I swear :p

I've noticed something about the scene. Since UIGEA, it's a lot easier to find a nosebleed game - every site out there now has at least 50/100 NL and most top out at 3/6 - but the games that used to be called high stakes, those bread and butter 5/10 and 10/20 games, run at the same rate they did two years ago and at 10x the difficulty rating. They're still very beatable, but you have to know what a TAGfish is to beat them, and have to know what a dolphin (the LAGfish eating the TAGfish) is to crush them. The same thing applies to tournaments; we don't notice it because the donks we play in the first two hours are almost as bad as ever, but, increasingly, a vast percentage of the people ITM in the bigger stakes events are at least TAGfish. The ROI of a tournament player, which is - invisibly to most people, because they don't get there that often unless they play 29802389489 tournaments - determined largely by final tables and the ability to win them, is affected by these guys even more than in cash, because while they might be fish postflop, they do know how to pushbot.

Okay, so, your ROI's dropped because people suck in different ways now. What does that mean?

Most of the people I know came up in poker through the SNG/MTT scene; comparatively few started out playing cash and almost none started at 6 max (nobody starts there; it's an online midstakes thing you kinda have to graduate through.) The first of us started in '03-'04, many more in '05, and a bunch in '06, but due to UIGEA and the fact that only fourteen months have gone by, comparatively few people that are good, well rolled HS players today started playing after last October. The upshot is that those of us who are already here only have the BR management that was required of us *last year*.

What did I know about BR management and moving up? Not a damn thing. As recently as '05, I was told to play a whopping 10K hands in fixed limit (which took me a month or so two tabling it) to know when to move up. Over in SNG land, most people used to think 30 buyins was enough, and some of us made do with 20-25 in a pinch. We'd basically just kinda rush up the ladder (which maxed out at 200NL and 15/30 limit at Party anyway...very very few people even wanted to play Spirit Rock at 10/25 on UB and no other games even really existed), eventually stick when we didn't thoroughly suck, and beat the games in spite of ourselves because they were full of complete idiots. Nobody I know has a BR management background because we all had mid five figure or six figure rolls by the time anyone cared.

So now a bunch of people are sitting there with, say, 100K-200K and decide they're rolled for every game they want. This means playing the big 1K MTT's online (possibly/probably all three of them), another 2K in buyins worth of random tourneys a night, and/or, if they play cash instead, probably 8-12 tabling midstakes for another 10K on the table. Except, ROI's have gone down, aggression [meaning variance] has gone way up, and every 6 max table from .50/1 to 10/20 has 4 regulars, 3 of which have Cardrunners/stoxpoker subscriptions and 1-2 of which probably teach somewhere. Despite all this, the games are still beatable - but the days of 30 buyin rolls are so long gone, it's laughable, and just because you can beat 10/20 or even 25/50 does not mean you can beat the next level up (which, BTW, is a gigantic freaking jump, because for some reason we're all primatefish that love round numbers and don't stop to consider how much easier it would be on everyone involved if there were about 5 more widely played limits between 10/20 and 50/100.)

So, to sum it up...guys who have never lost in poker at any stakes, because they skyrocketed up and are used to considering themselves at the top of a ladder, keep climbing up, not thinking how far from them the next rung is, who currently occupies it and how much effort it's going to take to stick to it. Then they go on six figure 'downswings' which are really about half variance, half playing bad after losing the first 50K, drop down and rebuild, quite possibly playing worse due to lack of confidence. Repeat. Somewhere, Phil Ivey is laughing (and, by somewhere, I mean 300/600 on FTP. Seriously, he's probably there right now.)

Prediction: the good '07's that come up will be much more likely to stick at the top rung right away than any one of the people I'm taking about. They'll be used to playing in tougher games with 50-100 buyin rolls, taking variance as a sign of playing bad and immediately retreating, etc.

Further prediction: a lot of people will go busto (enough to be on near permastakes) in '08, and a lot more will get rich - at the cost of ever-increasing variance to them, as well - backing them. By the end of this year, well known, "good"* players like me, who might have live staking deals but retain their own action online, may be in the minority.

*(I maintain that I'm not good, I'm just better than them)

Sunday was a relatively pointless 0 for 4, some tough breaks blah blah blah, whatever. That isn't really the point of this post.

Since it's Dec 31 (and I'm about to log off the Internet to go have fun), people have been posting their yearly results. Yeah, okay, The Bryce won 2.5 million in nosebleed limit because he's God, a few people have 500K-800K years because they're freaking insane, whatever.

leatherass (a Supernova Elite who grinded 80 billion hands at midstakes) was breaking even on the year and needed a spectacular 100K month to get anywhere?

Daut44, one of the better 25/50 Stars regs (IMO) and a good tourney player, is up a total of 100K online?

Gobboboy is down money total on the year which *does* count his 250K (after staking) Aussie cash 2'nd place???

WTF??? How do I have higher numbers than any of these people? It's not like I play a lot and it's not like I'm *that* good!

I think I need to make a detailed bankroll management/skill management post and IM it to everyone I know. The fact that so many people are not keeping the money they win is unacceptable.

Other than that one Sunday and a couple of tourneys today/tomorrow, I'm taking a break until the New Year. Nothing particularly important - I just wanted to be refreshed for January and the Borgata WPT.

Tallying up the year, it looks very good; even though I didn't win a six figure Sunday event like last year, I still had some huge scores and great results for how little I play. My new year's resolution, other than the cash thing, is to put in more hands in general and take those results to the next level. Aside from that, though, I'm pretty happy with my life and the way things have worked out.

Again, happy holidays, and, except for tomorrow, see you in '08.

Feeling way better about poker in general (although, of course, the guy from my last post wound up finishing fourth obv.) I even put in a Sunday where I built up some pretty big stacks [and then blew them off, one in spectacular fashion that will get my replacement CR vid tomorrow laughed at :p. I blame leftover tilt and/or the one big mistake of the month I'm allowing myself to make.]

Regardless, after a mandatory couple of days off to recover, I'll be back playing a big MTT schedule and probably mixing it in with some MSNL 6 max after New Year's. I need to get myself in a frame of mind to finally get over cash variance and just grind out some hands, because regardless of how good I am getting at MTT's and how much I'm going deep in big events, I can only get as aggressive as I need to get by learning to crush midstakes. I've always crushed every cash game I played in regularly except maybe high stakes razz, but most of that has been full ring and I've just never taught myself to play deep shorthanded poker without TAGging it up. That beats 6 max anyway, but I'd like to develop my LAG gear a bit more.

Up next, I've got an 'emergency replacement' CR vid tomorrow (already done), a couple of videos for a European mag of some kind in the next week or two, and the Borgata WPT event in January in between Sundays and whatever other tourneys I wind up playing. There should also be some stuff relating to tworags that a lot of people will like.

Happy holidays :)