Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 290 Location: Mississippi
Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 12:07 am Post subject: broad question and seeking advice re current state of poker
I posted regularly on this board years ago. I appollogize for spelling in advance
Due to family and business commitments I've played virtually no poker for the last 2+ years. Other than a few home games where they insisted on playing no-limit with predictable train wrecks for most players. Didn't take the losers long to figure out they were getting outplayed.
I am now sticking my toe back in the water and the games look totally different.
At on-line, limit, NL or SNG (all low limits) I have gone from being one of the best 2-3 at the table to the bottom 2-3. And there seems to be no really bad players like back in the day. At a turbo SNG everyone seems to be playing the same style and it turns into a luck box in the late rounds.
Limit games seem funner, but harder to come by, especially in casinos unless you want to play 2-4. I played some 4-8 in Tunica and the overall play was bad, but my game was off with stuff like missing a value bet on the river and later betting the losing hand on the river. It also struck me how much the rake and tips suck off the table over time. Has play overall evened out so much that any edge most players have gets eaten by the rake?
Are my general observations correct? Have yesterday's marginal players become today's fish? Assuming that I don't have the time or desire to put 20 hours a week into poker, should I let it go? Or play in MTT's and hope to get lucky?
I'm heading to Vegas next month and want to play some fun games if there. Any reccomendations? NL at certain casino? play the Caesar's tourneys? It looks like the casinos spread mostly no limit with a few 2-4, 3-6 tables for gooffing around in? So you almost have to play no limit? How are the players in Vegas cash games and medium ($500) buy in tourneys?
Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 3358 Location: Quebec, Canada
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:21 am Post subject: Re: broad question and seeking advice re current state of po
Hey pwtjax welcome back!
pwtjax wrote:
Are my general observations correct? Have yesterday's marginal players become today's fish?
I have no real experience playing live, but I would say that this observation seems correct for online poker. With the UIEGA, we lost a lot of fish. The casual player does not want to make efforts to put money online. He wants to use is credit card, put 200$ online and see how long he can last with it. Not so anymore, putting money online for American can be quite a challenge and the casual player simply will not do it.
The other effect the UIEGA had on Americans is that a lot of good players decided to move down a few limits, not because they could not beat the higher limits, but because they took money out. Being the good players they are, they moved down in limits because of bankroll consideration and not skill consideration.
I think these are the two major reasons why online poker got tougher.
The third reason, to a lesser extent, is that people are now more poker savvy. With poker books, poker forums, poker site who offer training (CardRunner StoxPoker, etc...) the average player has learned the game. I say to a lesser extent because a lot of player do not want to spend the time to study poker.
Studying poker takes a lot of dedication to the game and it can be time consuming at times. Reading a book does not mean you understand it. Reading a books is not the same as studying it.
pwtjax wrote:
Assuming that I don't have the time or desire to put 20 hours a week into poker, should I let it go? Or play in MTT's and hope to get lucky?
If you take poker seriously, you will have to put time aside to study. The minimum you should do is put some time in reviewing your play through a poker software like PokerTracker if you play online (not sure how the live players do it).
I think you should decide on how much time you want to spend on poker each week and assign 1/5 of that time to the study of poker (including reviewing your session).
GL at the tables.
Last edited by Fumseck on Sun Sep 14, 2008 10:24 am; edited 1 time in total
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