The 'Top Weighted' EDGE

Lets face it my friends,

The game of poker has changed dramatically over the last couple of years...and will continue to change...and evolve.

I think its safe to say that most of you picked up the game like everyone else did during the rush. Ya saw ol' Chris on ESPN one day a few years ago, and thought to yourself..."Holy shizznit, if that hillbilly can win the WSOP and get rich overnight...so can I !!"

So one day you decide to log out of Yahoo Pool for a couple of nights....found a spare $50 after rent and cable tv was paid up, and threw down your stake on the road to riches brimming with confidence.

It didn't go so well out of the gate did it ? Yea.. those pesky flush chasers and river 2 outters kinda took the wind out of your sails. But you kept on plugging. Bought a few books, started learning your odds, and then you started to realize you had it all figured out. Saw Phil Helmuth’s DVD pimping the 'top 10 starting hands', and boy oh boy you were locked and loaded and ready to start kicking a$$. Got the the tools, got the the talent and nobody was going to stop you on the road to fame and fortune, strippers and blow.

Won a couple of $5.00 dollar sit and go's and then 'made it deep' in the Hubble Freeroll, and then before you knew it you were dreaming of nut flush draws for the WSOP main event bracelet in your sleep waking up with a chubby. It was your 'destiny' to be a pro, and it was pretty damn obvious that you were a better player than anyone playing poker alive. OBV

This is about the point where the sh*t hits the proverbial fan...

You grind out a semi-sizable bankroll after countless hours of making all the 'correct' plays, and maybe winning a few SnG's with the occasional cash in a few MTT's along the way. After so much hard work and intense study, you managed to jack your roll up a few bucks after a nice heater in the micro ghetto when that little voice whispers….

It's time to 'take a shot'

Coming home from the 9 to 5 grind one rainy Friday afternoon, all you can do is daydream about poker, staring at brakelights in traffic. You finally park and rush in just in the nick of time to open Stars and register for a big buy in tourney a way over your roll seating in 2 minutes.

Man-oh -man your competitive juices are flowing like Niagra Falls. Your adrenaline is surging early and you come out firing with confidence building an early stack. Playing for prize money that would definitely launch you to another stratosphere has got you fired up and focused. You know you've got the game and before you know it you are ITM with a huge stack and can just taste that big payoff. You’ve put so much time and energy into your game and this is your time....you can feel it deep in your testicular region.

It’s crunch time....deep in the tourney, and the suddenly the blinds catch up with you and wham, its push or fold short handed. Your heart is thumping and your palms are sweating. You have a medium stack and not really sure whether you want to play tight and climb up the pay ladder or go for the win...When out of the blue when you were starting to thinking you wouldn't catch a hand when it mattered most....you catch red Aces on the big blind.

All you can think about is how you are going to get that crunch time double up, praying somebody jams into you….everyone quickly folds around to the small blind who pauses for a few seconds before...

he pushes his entire stack...

you quickly click 'call' and he turns up 7/2 offsuit....a blatant steal....and your heart skips a beat

The flop comes A/x/x with a couple of spades, and you privately pump your fist on the flop thinking you are golden...and then in all the excitement notice that you don't have a spade and he has the

The turn delivers another spade and all of the sudden your nuts shrivel up to the size of a cranberry.

As the river sends you to the rail, you violently pound your keyboard and scream a multitude of obscenities cursing the poker Gods with everything you've got left.

______

This is obviously a fictional story..(although I'm certain a familiar scenario to many of you) and I realize it was a little over dramatic, but I wanted to illustrate a very important point.

Poker is a game with almost infinite possibilities when it comes to combining all the various elements that it takes to succeed and be profitable.

* ego
* instinct
* bankroll
* experience
* variance
* judgement

the list here is literally endless in terms of what being a successful player means. The problem with online poker is that none of that really matters.

Let me cut to the chase....

My theory is that online poker is 'top weighted'...so to speak. Meaning that there are literally 'platoons' (for lack of a better word) of well bankrolled groups of players at the 'high stakes' level...playing $100.00 rebuys, the 150K nightly on Stars and the Sunday Million every week and dropping $5000 or more on buy ins every night on every major tourney on all the major sites. Even the inviting $10.00 r/a 55K on Stars is chock full of 'ranked' players on a regular basis.

Simply put...the solo recreational player (regardless of his/her skill level) is fighting an uphill battle before he/she ever clicks that 'deposit' button on the cashier page.

By no means am I suggesting 'collusion' as we as players, or Stars/UB/FT admins presently define it. But yes, I am suggesting that there are scores of veteran players out there in poker cyberspace with some pretty deep pockets...who are ready, willing and able to invest in promising (or not-so promising) players who aren't rolled to play at the higher limits...not to mention buying pieces of each other in every event they play regardless of buy in.

I mean if you think about it...the vast majority of the collective online poker community are mid to low limit recreational players/grinders who make the occasional deposit...win the occasional SnG, and maybe pop a nice score now and then…and that’s a best case scenario.

Then there is the clique' of 'elite' name players who you read about constantly...making literally 10's of thousands of dollars a month (if not more) on a regular basis who seem to have the ability to defy all odds and seem to have some kind of mysterious skill that 99% of everybody else is trying to figure out.

Point being that many of us curse these 'donks' who chase gut shot draws and suck out on these ridiculous 2 outters and every other bad beat under the sun when it matters most....and all too often we start to question our own ability to compete or whether we truly understand the game. But this is not the problem. The problem is that when you have a surplus of well bankrolled players competing at levels with little or no impact on their roll, they make seemingly -EV plays that all too often rip your heart out and make you question and second-guess everything you ever absorbed about tourney strat and game theory.

'Collusion' and/or 'multi accounting' is rampant in online poker, this is a fact

As long as you are aware of what you are up against in terms of your competition, you'll enjoy the game a lot more and not get so pissed off when you get 2 outted or runner/runnered when you flopped a set and got all your money in. The online poker scene is not that much different than American society when you think about it.....the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting screwed. It's really got nothing to do with ability, intelligence or your understanding for the game of poker as a whole, it’s just about your overall comfort level within the limits your playing, and accepting the fact that so called ‘correct’ play is not always going to get you to the final table. There is a good reason why the same players are succeeding online and cashing huge week after week. It’s all about the fact that they are abusing scared dead money who value their buy ins more than they do. These guys are car-pooling with who knows how many other top players who give them the thumbs up to make 40/60 plays with infinite reserves.

Personally I believe that the ‘skill level’ of poker has been exposed and essentially devalued via hole cards on TV combined with sites like cardrunners/pokerxfactor, various forums 2+2, P5’s etc.

IMO the definition of the word ‘collusion’ needs to be redefined within our community of poker purists. whether you want to admit it or not. Not in the sense that ZeeJustin made so (in)famous, but in the sense that bankroll sharing and deep pockets have given a collection of saavy insiders the means to exploit recreational players and alter the thinking behind what is the right way to approach tourney strategy.

Wow, there's a lot of "weight" here, many cogent and valid points........ and, at least IMO, a couple of major fallacies.

I don't play in the kind of high level stakes you're concentrating on here, not on a regular basis. But, like many other "recreational" players, I kinda follow the big money scene, at least on Stars.. And, I see a little of what you're hinting at here, but I don't buy the fact that it's as widespread as you make it out to be. Nor do I think that "40/60" players aree controlling the online gaming sites. I mean, a donkey with money still has long ears, and if he gets 'em stepped on 60% of the time, sooner or later he's gonna need plastic surgery.

If you play that kind of maniacal style for thousands of $ a week, every week, unless you're a Gotti or a Rockefeller, or you're servicing Paris Hillton, the well will dry up. Maybe not this week, or even this year, but IT WILL dry up. What % of these players truly make it big over the long haul, do you think? For that matter, what % of the "top" pros do, over the long haul.? I mean, discounting the TV jobs, the book deals, the sponsorships and all, none of which are readily available to online sharks.

And where does your view of the situation fit in examples like Alex Jacob, Falad Friedman, justto name a couple. These are not constructs of the well heeled, nor bots. Like 'em or hate 'em, they worked hard attheir craft, and talent will out.

I may be naive in many ways, but I didn't fall off the turnip truck last week, either. There's some validity in whar you have to say, and you said it very well, but it's far from the whole story.

No offense Ripptyde, but is this your own writing or is it a c/p from somewhere? The posting style is different than your other posts in text styles, content, and flow.

If this is an article or other such published material, then you need to credit the original author in your post. Post that info here and I'll edit it in for you. thx.

This discussion sounds oh so familiar.

no actually its something I had written a few months ago. I just signed up with cardschat and was planning on contributing some other stuff soon but I found that 'rant' and just thought I would post it here just to get something on the board. I think the 'flow' was different from some of my previous material because A: I was clearly on TILT and I was probably intoxicated

I'll definitely write something soon just for CC

I liked the 'story' part. Well written, easy to read, and sooo on spot!

I am happy you take credit for being the author. Your poker riches my firend might not be at the tables, but writing about the tables.

As an aside;

Several of us here are currently reading "What No One Is Saying About Online Poker", by Carl Varrone. He too takes a cautionary stance about the game. I've got to say tho his style is not as exciting as yours. Carl was kind in replying to a post made here about his book and in personally addressing that particular post, and the thread that followed.

At about the halfway point I realize, as he points out, that his book is not about the play of the game so much. Rather it is about the environment in which the game is played.

The latter part of the OP here is something that we probably all need to be aware of, but avoid because we aren't sitting at a table deciding this or that about the cards we are holding. We are, for the most part, past the point of deciding whether or not we should even be here, given all the nebulous aspects of gambling online or even live. We made that decision, hopefully sober, and are living with it daily.

Again, very good, if not great post, and as well written as anything we've seen for a while.

Great Post. There are a lot of valid points in your aguement. And with any aguement such as that you will get dissenters. What you are putting forth is that there are a group of players who are bankrolling dummies to play sort of like a bot. What you are postulating is that with enough of these droids playing they are hitting money pots no matter what how they are playing. It sorta like the roomful of monkeys theory taken and put to a poker room.

I see how that is a tempting theory to set forth. If you have unlimited resources you are gambling that the wins will always exceed your losses. And you are taking into account that there are always donks to keep your bankroll moving up. And if you have an occasional winner against you it won't matter because your bankroll can take hits.

It's an interesting theory. Better than the usual rigged stuff. So what is the sense of keeping on playing if you are going up against these droids and their puppet masters? The only counter would seem to be to stay in the lower limits and never attempt a move up. This way you stay with your own kind and let the PMs eat each other up.

Either that or play well enough to get noticed by a puppet master and become a droid yourself.