plasticelephant

also OP do you feel zoom games have got significantly worse since the table change? I've been monitoring the lobby and seems 500 particularly, 200 to a lesser extent but still noticeable have been really terrible at times.

As ever, nice month OP :D

jm88
I don't think mindlessly playing more hands is better, but agree there are enough opportunities to expand your pf range that you should take.

If you don't have a plan or reason for expanding beyond monker though I think you should err towards the nitty side, rake is a serious deal. And you should adjust heavily to the rake structure on your chosen games.

I would reccomend regular tables over zoom every time since leaerning to game select is so important in poker, and may as well get in the habit from the lowest stakes (plus extreme rake pushes me towards selecting harder at lower honestly). Also play somewhere with good rb (hello RIO poker :D). I cost myself soooo much just mindlessly playing fastfold at times in my career when the bb/100 at other tables at much higher stakes can be much higher.

I think you will crush 500z as long as you use some kind of game selection (eg not playing those weird all reg pools which sometimes happen). There are slightly fewer completely braindead regs, but still plenty.

good stuff OP - love the part on downswings, so true.

sick month, nice one!

Somehow managed to delete my whole reply - but the gist was:

1) Apologies, I guess my responses appeared to insinuate yours and Saulos results were fake. That is 100% not the case, I have played enough with you and studied this game enough to know you both would be at the upper limits of what I believe to be possible. My response on fake results was more to the point Saulo made about graphs on social media etc.

2) Yeah over 7bb is definitely possible, I'm just using the data I have to judge that is very hard. You and Saulo consistently say you aren't very good. I would say likewise about myself when compared to true equillibrium. But relatively all three of us are very very good poker players. I can only speak for myself here, and my long term winrate is a fair click below yours, but I spend at least 3 hours a day on average talking about or studying this game, and constantly trying to think of new ways to improve. This has probably been the case for the last 2 years, coupled with being very lucky in the people I know to prod me in the right direction, and probably lucky that I ran hot when I started and didn't quit.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that just because we aren't playing perfectly, doesn't mean it's not exceptionally hard and in my case, required a lot of luck to get to the point of playing professionally with a strategy supporting this hourly/bb/100.

Outliers have a tendency of not believing they are outliers, looking at their own path deterministically etc, attributing success to hard work and grit. I would say almost anyone playing poker professionally is an outlier one way or another.
Pretty big derail and I am just kind of spewing words at this point so I'll bow out here - apologies again on point 1), my original intention was just to come in here to post how sick those results were and how much I related to the moving up question :) glgl.

Very sick results Saulo, obviously you are one of the top top regs at 200z but still absolutely sick to maintain that over that sample. EDIT: also just re-clicked and realised you are 13k below EV - run better :D and pm'ed on 2+2, because couldn't figure it here.

I think you misunderstood slightly on the advertisement point.
We are guilty of it too - unfortunately people love seeing these pop off samples and it's the best way to generate buzz and attention. I agree with what you say but personally think there are a few issues though:

1) Some results consistently shared publicly I'm certain are fake, others just fairly confident. Delete bottom 1% of hands, purge random bad sessions etc, all definitely happening in untrackable games.

2) There is an overwhelming tendency for people who have these samples to believe they are an accurate reflection of their win rate. Many people think they are running bad, very few think they have run good, but insane outlier w/rs tend to select for running good.

3) People maybe have a conscious understanding of variance, but I find even top top players don't really get it. Not so much of a problem with bigger samples, but a random 50k sample will buy way too much credibility.

It's all not that important really though, just my feeling on the state of play and think as always on the internet, there are a lot of rogue actors out there. I personally find one of the hardest thing is explaining to students and getting them to really accept the extent of variance, and these are top guys and players, so would presume that for a lot of lower tier regs it's more of a problem. Obviously this all contributes to where we find our edge, but poker can be a savage game sometimes, and I think sharing and discussing this stuff is mostly productive.

Interested to hear your thoughts and if you do come to any conclusions on playing higher stakes, it has been a constant internal debate for me.

RE winrates: I have yet to see above 7 EV over meaningful sample size and we've had a lot of very strong players come through bitB. I'm also generally sceptical of rogue claims due to lack of ability to verify and experience of people lying in the past, particularly from random twitch guys who stand to gain a lot from posting modified results.

I guess there is going to be some 5bb true winner that runs at 10bb for 300k hands at some point, and they are guaranteed to spam it all over social media / set up a coaching package etc so then everyone will consider the bar raised.

If you choose not to move up and keep working, I look forward to seeing you refute all of the above with your next 500k hand sample!

Very sick results over 500k hands, congrats. I have actually not seen anyone with a higher WR at 200z over this sample. We used to play a fair bit (you-mad-br0), seem to have different timezones now though, but have used your stats as an example to show students what a 200z optimal bot would look like :D

I have similar feelings to you about moving up. In general the decrease in life EV associated with the bigger swings/ lower w/r has always been a trade off I have struggled with.

It is a definite mental game leak, as I'm sacrificing $ EV for life EV, but as Saulo said, poker is just one component of life overall.