The ‘people I don’t know’ blog entry created a bit of a controversy. Someone decided to link it over at P5’s and given my description of most live pros I was branded a hater and egomaniac by some, which you can read about here: http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-forums/7/Bond18-on-playing-live-players-_2800_funny-stuff_2900_-2781881
As the first reply put it “I think Bond 18 has a lil sugar in his tank, never has much good to say about people, ill lay odds that no one has a bigger ego than his....”
I’d already been wondering lately if I’d become hyper critical or whether my descriptions were fair but when I look back at the post I don’t think I’m out of line. I’m fully willing to admit when I think people are better than me, but I’m also willing to say when people play bad. Inevitably, I end up coming down on the side that many online players play well, and many live players play poorly. The online vs live player debate has been raging for a couple years now, ever since online players began filling out the player fields in major live tournaments with a totally different playing style.

The basic way to sum up the online players side of the argument is as follows; the guys who cut their teeth online can go into live tournaments and be very profitable at the highest levels. Meanwhile there is a very short list of live players who would be profitable at high stakes online tournaments. Some reading this might think that’s ludicrous, especially since the highest buy ins live are 10-50 times the stakes online. However, it’s simply the truth of the matter. More and more online players are being backed for the highest live tournaments because serious backers like Bax and Sheets know how massively +EV they are in those fields. Most live players have a few recurring and consistent leaks: they limp too much, they call out of position way too much, and most of all they fail to understand stack sizes and what that limits them too. You see live pros like Hellmuth raise/folding a 6.5 BB stack, you see David Pham calling reraises for 1/3rd of his stack with suited connectors hoping to connect big on the flop, you see Scotty Nguyen changing the size of his raise with the strength of his hand with near 100% consistency. I’ve got leaks, I’ve got more leaks than I could possibly count, but none of them are as huge or as glaring as the ones I see every time I sit down with 95% of name live pros.

At this point in poker, live pros are at a disadvantage. Online players put in more volume in a day than they do in a month. We network with more talented poker minds, talk more strategy, use more tools to figure out equity, and play so many more hands. Also, because live poker has such huge variance and each tournament takes up a full day or more of a live player’s time, I often see them more emotionally involved. Emotion is a weakness in poker, which isn’t to say you shouldn’t care at all, but when you play you can’t let your emotions interfere with your decision making.

I think a lot of the animosity and competition that’s developed between the two groups is somewhat inevitable. Live pros feel like online pros are disrespectful. If a live pro has spent 10-40 years playing poker and some 22 year old kid rocks up and talks like they’re all clueless, how could they not be insulted? Meanwhile online pros see live pros getting all the camera time, invites to easy tournaments with tons of overlay, and corporate sponsorships that are sick free money, despite the live players being considerably worse at doing the same thing they do. That’s kind of like being coworkers with someone who gets all the promotions, attention, and higher pay despite being way worse at his job than you are. Who wouldn’t feel shafted?

In order for there to ever be a balance, online players will have to learn how to be marketable, likable, and keep dominating the live scene. For live players to adapt they need to understand the threat online players pose and take steps to make themselves better fundamental players with a fuller understanding of the math behind the game. TV makes the game look glamorous and fast paced. If you believe what TV tells you poker is a game of incredible reads, huge dramatic shoves, and using tells to make awesome plays. That’s simply not the case. Poker is a game of math, where despite there being an enormous amount of variables there are some things that the math makes absolute. Calling a reraise for 1/3rd of your stack with 76s will always be –EV, no matter how sick your ability to read people.

If poker stays popular long enough, there will eventually be no such thing as the ‘live pro’ and ‘online pro’. The live pros who don’t adapt will eventually be phased out and lose enough money to the point they can’t keep playing. Those who do adapt will often do so using a computer, and the line between online and live will blur. Online players will continue to surge into the live scene and some will spend enough time there that they no longer label themselves as one or the other.

Lastly, I don’t see the problem in being vocal about people’s leaks. I wouldn’t hate solely for the sake of being rude or insulting, but if people play bad or behave poorly on the table I think it’s total bullshit for me to hold my tongue out of politeness. I would never berate anyone on the table who didn’t really bring it on themselves (actually, I still haven’t done it, though I’ve made a smart ass comment here and there to someone who was being rude to another player or dealer) but I’d also never lie or play nice for the sake of being ‘PC’. People who insist everything be PC are the kind of two faced pretentious douche bags who never have the balls to say what they think or mean, and would rather play nice than have an honest conversation with someone.

If a person I considered a friend or acquaintance came to me and said “Let me tell you about this hand…” and I think they played it terrible, I’m going to tell them so, and I’m going to tell them why. Saying something like “well that’s not quite how I would have played it buddy, but to each his own” is the kind of useless shit advice that nobody will learn anything from. I don’t tell someone they played a hand poorly to make them feel bad, I tell them so they learn. I remember when Ajunglen started coaching me; I’d had some people look over my play before, but I never quite understood how massive the mistakes I was making were until he told me things like “that hand was a total disaster and here’s why…” It took honesty like that for me to ever have it sink in that what I was doing was not only not optimal, but a mistake on a huge margin. Accepting the mistakes you make and seeking out how to change them is imperative to your development as a player, and having an ego about your game is useless.

I will state, at this point, despite my ‘reputation’, ranking, the articles I’ve written, or the time I’ve put into this game I highly doubt I’m among the top 100 tournament players online. There are so many players who simply don’t put in the volume yet do it better and cleaner than I do. Almost everyone I spend serious time talking poker with (including every person in the ‘people I know’ entry) is better than I am, either by a little or a lot.

The reason most people think I’m good is because I’m able to write strategy in a way that seems like both quality advice and is still understandable. This doesn’t mean I have a greater comprehension of the strategy I write about than those around me, it simply means that the only real edge I have over my contemporaries is the ability to be eloquent, and that’s not exactly a mandatory skill in the poker world. The fact is, I’m an above average player who has the robot like ability to put in enormous volume without having a mental breakdown but who still has considerable spew problems, patience problems, and major leaks in his deep stack game. Admitting this though, gives me a chance to rectify the problem, and if you can’t admit your faults as a player by behaving honestly, you might never get the same opportunity.

Anonymous says

Good post. I enjoy your no-holds-barred writing style Bond - long may it continue!

04/15/08

Anonymous says

Hi Bond, 18 Bond. I agree with everything you say about live players leaks, despite the fact that the only live tourneys I've played are those pub poker ones. What I don't get is why would you want to tell what they are doing wrong? Don't tap the tank I reckon.

Also, I can't believe these guys haven't even read Harrington or some other basic MTT strategy lol.

04/16/08

Bond18 says

I see your point, but I don't really tell any of them. I highly doubt anyone on that list reads my blog, and I don't go into lectures on the table.

As far as Harrington on Hold'em goes, I think a lot of live players feel like they really are the top players in the world. They likely see themselves beyond things like a book written by Harrington or any number of their comtemporaries. I obviously can't speak for all of them, but many seem to be very stuck in their ways and haven't adapted to the changing land scape.

Some guys really have adapted pretty well and you see them continue to maintain their success. Guys like Gus Hansen, Lee Nelson, Dan Harrington, Barry Greenstein, Phil Laak, etc etc, have made the effort of continual self improvement and evolution, and I think guys who make the effort will continue to do well.

04/16/08

Anonymous says

As a primarily live tournament poker player, I do agree with you that alot of name pros do have glaring leaks. I take issue with the fact that you imply that these live players are -EV in most of the tournaments they play. Despite these leaks, most (but not all) live poker pros still play a profitable game against the weak fields they frequently face.

Scotty Nguyen, as you mentioned, consistently sizes his raises based on his hand strength. This leak, however, isn't very bad if nobody exploits it. Scotty gets most his chips from typical live amateurs who frequently give off reliable tells and have completely transparent betting patterns. Since they don't adjust to Scotty's bet sizing errors, his bet sizes are actually profitable against them. As for the other leaks you mentioned, yes they are sick but the players you mentioned still play profitably combining solid feel for table dynamics, a good understanding of their opponents proclivities, and otherwise decent fundamentals. Yeah, most couldn't beat the stars 100r but they're still +EV against the fields they normally play.

Tourneys are surely getting tougher with the surges of more experienced players, so the time will come where live pros need to adapt or lose their edge, but at this point in time, the edge is still there.

lastly, I agree with you in the absolute importance of the mathematical aspects of the game (which is why I frequently work to improve my fundamentals) and this is an area where alot of live players are lacking. Please understand though that alot of the game's other elements (tells, opponent profiling, exploiting opponent proclivities, feel for table dynamic) are not obsolete, though they may be over rated, and having a good feel for these elements can give you a big edge in live tournaments.

04/16/08

Anonymous says

u r a good ritr

04/16/08

Bond18 says

4th comment,

Nice post, and good point about their raise size not being exploited and in a strange way perhaps becoming optimal. I agree with you fully that a lot of these guys are easily +EV in the fields they play, so I guess what's really coming through is the nit picking technical elitism you get from logging so many hours and thousands of hands online. We spend so much time trying to iron out the smallest of leaks that when we see guys with basic ones they seem enormously so. Like you said though, that doesn't mean they won't still crush, for a time.

I think we can both agree though, that those who don't make the effort to rectify their errors will become obsolete over enough time. Sounds like you know exactly what you need to do though, so best of luck.

04/17/08

Anonymous says

I have heard many people suggest reading Harrington on Holdem. I have considered buying the book, but was thinking that if everybody reads it and plays the way he suggests, won't I be playing the same style of game as everyone else who has read it? Does the book just point out some fundamentals and strategy and still allow for some mixing up in hand selection and calling ranges. If you could let me know as I am not really too good of a player online, just a little less then break even player I am, and the book is about 40 bucks so would be helpful before splurging on the book. Thanks Marc

04/17/08

Bond18 says

7th comment,

I address this a little bit in the latest entry in the 'things it took me a while to learn' series which is currently on the front page of www.pocketfives.com. If it doesn't answer your question, feel free to ask me on here or via PM.

Cheers, Bond

04/17/08

lakeoffire says

Keep up the good work,Bond!

04/19/08

Anonymous says

I think in this post, as well as in many of your other critical articles on the way live player think, you're missing a really important point that balances the situation heavily. I think that the top live player are much, much patter at exploiting weak live amateurs if inducing huge mistakes from them using live bet sizing tricks and manipulating betting patterns. This is essentially why Phil Hellmuth crushes tournies; he continues chopping at players with his small bets to the point that he causes them to play very transparently and make huge mistakes. While online have alot less leaks and play much closer to game theoretically optimal, they're not quite as good (in my experience) at manipulating individual weak players and getting the most value out of their specific tendencies and betting patterns. I guess I could relate this is Sklansky's "swapping mistakes" concept, but really it's just having adapting better to individual situations rather then playing consistently unexploitable.

I'll also add that the "fundamentals" you're referring to are based on a specific theoretical framework. While they're certainly valid, an argument can be made that different approaches can be just as practical in ways that are much harder to quantify. For instance, Hellmuth's "leaks" are so amazing for his metagame that it's worth considering that he may make up for the value he loses, especially if tournament survival does indeed have some value - you obviously think it doesn't, but Hellmuth certainly thinks it does and the arguments for that have to be worth considering. That weighs the playing field alot, if in fact it's true.

06/03/08

Log in with your TwoRags.com account. Click here to register. Email: Password: Remember log-in information