"What no one else is saying about online poker" From the author

[aliengenius]

Anyone else read this book yet, or did I stop you from even attempting it? I think this thread would benefit from some new voices in it...

Replies in bold.

Yes, I agree that having a bad player or players at your table is always an advantage. There will always be a percentage of players that are not and may never be a good poker player. When you go to your club or casino, that same percentage will most likely exist.

I my opinion there are way more donks playing live than on line. The typical on line game plays far more tough than a live (playing $1/$2 NL live is like playing 0.05/0.10 on line).

But online the doors are opened to millions of players 24/7. Of course there will be a great deal higher percentage of bad players at the online tables. Having a better game is the obvious goal to defeat your lesser opponents. But, as a talented player you will find online your hands getting cracked by suck outs, which equate to bad beats, at a much higher percentage making success much harder to achieve, as a direct result of this fact. It is great when you beat them, but with that ratio, we are in turn beaten much more.

There seems to be some confusion here between winning pots and winning money. Ancient poker saying: "He who wins the most pots loses the most money". The corollary should also be true: if you are getting sucked out on more often, you should be making more money at these tables. If for some reason you did not read the links refuting the idea of "schooling" please do so here and here.

Of course in the long run we should be able to overcome this obstacle, but you need deeper pockets and allot more time to do this. Many players don't have the deep pockets to fight this obstacle consistently.
You better be able to reach into your pocket again after a idiot that took all your money needing 4 clubs on the table to spike the flush with the 2c in his hand. Or someone else is going to get his and your money.

Claiming higher variance online means you need a deeper bankroll is one of the only points made that I might start to agree with. However, I don't think it is as large a difference from live play as you seem to be claiming, and I for sure don't think that you need to be super wealthy to be able to overcome this increase in variance. Certainly Varrone's claim that cash games are unbeatable is ludicrous.

Now I'm not saying this doesn't happen live or anywhere else. But online the ratio of getting cracked is massively higher. And may I add this is only one of the lesser obstacles your facing when playing cash games online. Read my statement above.

Please see above. IF your aces get cracked a greater percentage of time (which I am not willing to necessarily agree is a statistically significant amount greater than live play), then you should be making all that much more money on the ones that do not. As a previous poster pointed out, claiming that this is some kind of "obstacle" (lesser or not) is silly. Poker is about profit, not pots!

But this is a obstacle playing online, that for some reason no one wants to admit.

No, no it's not. It might be something you have to adjust to, a slight shift in attitude from live play. It might require a deeper understanding of the nature of poker and the role of variance in the game. But absolutely, in no way, is it an obstacle to making a profit/succeeding in the online cash games. Drawing the conclusion that you shouldn't play cash games is beyond extreme, it's idiotic.

Beating lesser talented players of course is every poker players goal, which is allot easier then counting on the cards.

This ratio online is the reason so many players start threads about the sites being rigged.

See schooling links above...

 

[Egon Towst]

Anyone else read this book yet, or did I stop you from even attempting it? I think this thread would benefit from some new voices in it...

Yea sorry, AG. I will read it, but it might be next month (when I am on holiday) before I can get the time to finish it.

I promise I will post my thoughts when I have.

 

[quads]

I agree with you AG. We need other opinions here. Although I agree with the author about bad player ratio online, and because I believe it is more of an obstacle then a benefit, in the long run you should be able to overcome this obstacle.

I started a thread which I believe is still on page one named "online poker vs. Live Play, which comments are also in this thread. I would like you to respond to those thoughts, on that thread so we could get out of this one.

I believe the bad player ratio which slows down progress is the least of the problems faced playing online cash tables.

 

[Jack Daniels]

Well, i continue to trudge through this mess, er, book everytime I "have a seat", so I'll post my personal opinions once I've finished reading the streams of conciousness. It probably won't be a voice of reason, but it will be another persective.

 

[jaymfc]

no comments on the book !! lol just wanted to thank ag for the 411.thanks ag.

 

[aliengenius]

Well, i continue to trudge through this mess, er, book everytime I "have a seat", so I'll post my personal opinions once I've finished reading the streams of conciousness. It probably won't be a voice of reason, but it will be another persective.

It doesn't start to get really "good" until around chapter seven....

 

[quads]

I Googled the authors name and found some interesting stuff about him. From what I could gather, he was involved with some big firm on wall street, and had to return over a quarter of a million dollars.

Judge Keenan entered a Final Default Judgment of Permanent Injunction against Carl Varrone and ordered him to disgorge $254,996.01 on November 13, 1991.

Maybe he knows more about cheating then we think.

 

[ShouldaWoulda]

Alien, I'm going to take this a little off-topic, but I have to address your comments regarding blackjack and third base. My knowledge and success with BJ is much greater than with online poker. The reason I feel it is important to comment on this is because based upon your language and criticism I was inclined to believe this book as next to worthless, until your analogy to BJ. The players at your table, and especially the play of third-base can be critical to your success, or lack thereof. When third-base plays consistently "by the book", which they always should, the house advantage is close to even, better if you count cards. Inconsistent, or emotional play greatly affects the statistical style of play of consistently successful BJ players.
Aside from that criticism the rest of your comments got the wheels turning, and I would like to ask you a question. For me, online poker is a hobby, I'm not looking to get rich, I enjoy the challenge, but would like to cash out more often. What resources or reading material would you recommend in achieving that goal?
Thank you for your time.

 

[aliengenius]

Alien, I'm going to take this a little off-topic, but I have to address your comments regarding BlackJack and third base. My knowledge and success with BJ is much greater than with online poker. The reason I feel it is important to comment on this is because based upon your language and criticism I was inclined to believe this book as next to worthless, until your analogy to BJ. The players at your table, and especially the play of third-base can be critical to your success, or lack thereof. When third-base plays consistently "by the book", which they always should, the house advantage is close to even, better if you count cards. Inconsistent, or emotional play greatly affects the statistical style of play of consistently successful BJ players.
Aside from that criticism the rest of your comments got the wheels turning, and I would like to ask you a question. For me, online poker is a hobby, I'm not looking to get rich, I enjoy the challenge, but would like to cash out more often. What resources or reading material would you recommend in achieving that goal?
Thank you for your time.

It doesn't matter what any other player in any other position does in blackjack regarding your hand. A third base player is just as likely to save you as to help you by picking a random action. Of course, since you are a human you will naturally have a recall bias toward remembering the times when the other players' actions harmed you. I recommend you read the 'Blackjack Myths' in Fred Renzey's book Blackjack Bluebook II for a good discussion of misunderstanding like these. If you are are looking to learn to count I recommend Knockout Blackjack by Olaf Vancura, Ken Fuchs. The KO system is one of the easiest out there, and has been shown over time to stand up to advanced multilevel counts.

As for poker books, here are my starting recommendation.

Hope those help, and good luck!

 

[starfall]

Having a high proportion of fish leads to higher variance. This is a challenge in that the downswings can be hard to accept, and do lead to some otherwise competent players going on tilt.
However, the players who are 'sucking out' are by definition the ones playing hands where they have poor odds, which has to be in the long run to the benefit of all other players at the table, so long as the other players have the emotional maturity to cope with those outdraws.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that the rake as a proportion of the pot is generally higher when playing live than online, so this improves the potential for making a profit.
With the higher number of hands played online, you'll see the odd-ball long shots occur in a shorter space of time. This can also contribute to the feeling that things are somehow unfair. Where you have a question about the fairness of a site, the thing to so is to resort to something like PokerTracker, which will allow you to collate together stats from endless hands, and look at the occurence of different hands, to confirm to yourself whether a site is 'on the level' or not.
For all that there are various avenues of cheating available online, an unscrupulous card dealer at a live game can heavily stack the odds in favour of a player, and the additional levels of communication available between players make it easier to collude. Online games tend to have means to check for signs of collusion - such as the same players playing at the same tables at the same time, while it's common for regular players at a club to play against other players they know, and it's not exactly unheard of for some soft-playing or other cheating to take place, so some forms of cheating are more likely in live situations.

I've not read the book to be able to comment on its accuracy or standard of grammar. In a purely mercenary sense, you could argue that the book is good for proper online poker players who will always benefit from the fish being left alone by other players who take an interest in poker strategy.

I know that live play can see some very loose play... there is one question, though. Players seeing too many hands is only one aspect of things. The proportion of aggressive players to passive ones also affects the variance, profitability, etc. I suspect that you see some of the most aggressive play online, which increases the variance, and is often a harder style to play against than the more passive players. Some strategic players may find it harder to deal with a table full of loose aggressive players, than one with a few decent players and a few loose passive ones. Is there any indication that this kind of factor may be the cause of the authors opinions?
In Limit poker this can be a significant factor, as if there are too many aggressive players then the betting may often be capped most of the time, leading to a situations where you have little opportunity to vary the size of the pot with your own betting strategies, so too many bad players can reduce the ability to leverage certain poker skills. Of course, those same aggressive betting patterns render an ultra-tight starting hand selection process more likely to be profitable, so it's more that it changes the value of different playing strategies, rather than automatically making things less profitable

 

[Egon Towst]

Ok, I finally finished the book. Here are my thoughts. I have purposely not reread any of the posts above before writing this, in order that my comments not be unduly influenced by those of others. You must forgive me if that means I repeat what others have said before.

First and most important. The major lesson to be learned from this book is this:

If you ever feel the urge to write a book and you are not academically inclined and never mastered grammar and punctuation, for heaven`s sake have mercy on your readers and hire an editor.

This book is a truly painful piece of writing and, if it weren`t for the fact that I felt obligated on account of the author`s kindness in supplying a free copy, there is no way I would have trudged through it all.

On the positive side, there are a couple of chapters which are quite interesting. The author`s warnings about the dangers of cheating in online poker provide food for thought. Also, his ideas on satellite-ing into big tournaments are worthwhile, though hardly very original.

Unfortunately, much of the rest of the book contains bad advice.

I recall that there has already been much discussion of the eccentric notion (which runs through much of the book) that you must play against good players, because you are (according to the author) more likely to win against good players than against bad ones. I do not think I need comment further on that.

There are other equally silly ideas:

The author argues strongly that you must never play online cash games, because they are unwinnable. News to me. Several members here (including me) win consistently at cash games. At the lower buyins at least, if you are a strong player, they are free money and can be used to top up your bankroll almost at will.

He also argues (page 58), that you must never multi-table, because you are certain to lose that way. Again, this is nonsense. There are several successful multi-tablers here at CC. I am not particularly skilled in this area myself, and I understand what the author says about the difficulties of maintaining your standard of play across multiple tables. Even so, I routinely play two tables at a time and win at both, and there are other members here much better at this technique than I am. To say that it can`t be done is simply ridiculous.

He says several times (page 97 especially) that you must not play rebuy tournaments, because they are allegedly unwinnable. It was when I read this that I finally realised what is going on here. As recently as a year ago, I might have accepted this view myself. It is a view which, although incorrect, is quite widely held even among passably good players.

It is significantly more difficult to achieve consistent success in Rebuy tournies than in Freezeouts. It is perfectly possible to be a winner at Freezeouts but not at Rebuys. However, once you advance that extra level and “get” Rebuys, precisely because they are more difficult to play well, your advantage over the fish is greater and consistent success is easier to come buy. I know that several of the strongest tourney players at CC enjoy Rebuys and, personally, I now reach the final table at least twice as often in a Rebuy as in a Freezeout.

In other words, Carl Varrone`s hatred of Rebuys is a pretty good pointer to the fact that, despite his claims of expertise, he is not actually a first class poker player. And, once you realise that, it makes perfect sense that he also can`t handle multi-tabling and can`t win consistently at Ring Games.

Therefore, my conclusion is that “What No One Else Is Saying About Online Poker” is a book by an author who lacks a sufficient grasp of his subject and can`t write worth a damn either. Save your money.

 

[quads]

The author never said you need to play against good players to win. He said the over abundance of bad players online, make it harder then easier.
I know and read already all the mathematical outcomes based on theory's of the schools of fish playing online and all the benefits they bring.

Sooner or later every online player will get to read these proven theory's, and before long everyone will be a winner.

Yet, I am certain you would have a tough time convincing most online players of all the benefits these bad players do bring.

I wish there was a way to know how all these consistent alleged winners online are really doing.

Not living up to all the inherent and obvious negatives playing online brings to the tables, I'm starting to think that allot of the posters are somehow related to poker rooms.

 

[aliengenius]

Not living up to all the inherent and obvious negatives playing online brings to the tables, I'm starting to think that allot of the posters are somehow related to poker rooms.

And I'm starting to think you are related to Carl Varrone.

Egon got it right all the way. I too concluded that CV simply didn't understand poker to any depth, and this clearly is reflected in his beliefs about playing online.