No Maroon love
 

Why does The Poker Chronicles' Matt Maroon hate 2+2 so much?

Re: No Maroon love
 

He hates everything.

Re: No Maroon love
 

You've got a link where he trashes 2+2 or something? (Got his book, btw.)

Re: No Maroon love
 

i used to enjoy reading his blog, now i might check it once a week or something. he really enjoys fellating himself as seen in his most recent gem:

"I used to enjoy them for some odd reason, but I really don't anymore. Perhaps I've finally deprogrammed myself of the "tournaments are cool" meme that I and almost everyone else have suffered from over the last few years. Or maybe it's just the fact that $100k just isn't as much money as it used to be. I used to drool over the prospect of winning that in a tournament. Now I think I'd rather just play ring games and win it every month with no variance."

*yawn*

Re: No Maroon love
 

Yeah, but he's also right that there's a ton of terrible advice in the limit strategy forums here. Recently, I've been apalled at the sheer volume of "don't believe the turn raise" posts.

Re: No Maroon love
 

His beef with 2p2 started back when the forums sucked less though. In general he was suggesting a high vpip/high prf style that to some extent became the norm in SH games. His beef with 2p2 seemed to be the same as anybody who has beef with a message board. He assumes that 2p2 functions as a monolithic hive mind and that people follow the dogma without nothing. It wasn't a fair statement then, and I'm not sure it is now either.

Just from his few posts on here and his blog, he seems like a pretty significant douchebag.

Re: No Maroon love
 

db,

I think it's mainly because he's jealous that there are a number of guys here who spend less time on poker than him but have more talent and have learned far more and are now crushing huge games like 50/100NL and 300/600 and higher LHE as well as dominating huge buyin tourneys.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Who the [censored] is Matt Maroon?

Re: No Maroon love
 

Sponger,

A mid-limit online grinder with a blog.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Wow how exciting.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Sponger,

I believe he wrote a book too!

Re: No Maroon love
 

His book has been mentioned by some as a pretty good book for limit SH (I believe it's also the ONLY book for limit SH). It's nothing new to anybody familiar with HUSH over the past two years from what I understand.

Re: No Maroon love
 

The SH section of his book is only 20 small pages, though.

Re: No Maroon love
 

I saw him bitching up a storm in the 30/60 2-7 game on UB the other day after the guy to his left kept drawing out and winning the max from him. Wonder if that will make the blog.

Re: No Maroon love
 

whats his ub name?

does he still play crazy 40/30 style capping anytime someone 3bets him and just all around spewing chips?

Re: No Maroon love
 

http://princesadelguisante.bitacoras...bugs_bunny.jpg
What a maroon!

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
whats his ub name?

[/ QUOTE ]

If my memory serves me correctly, it's "themaroon"

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
Recently, I've been apalled at the sheer volume of "don't believe the turn raise" posts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haven't you heard that the turn raise bluff is the new flop donk?

Re: No Maroon love
 

Hi Masked Man:

I have a theory about some of these people and it looks like you have the exact same theory. They have a need to be recognized, especially if they write a book, and they are blocked by people associated with these forums.

Also, I've read his book and it's not very good.

Best wishes,
Mason

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
His book has been mentioned by some as a pretty good book for limit SH (I believe it's also the ONLY book for limit SH). It's nothing new to anybody familiar with HUSH over the past two years from what I understand.

[/ QUOTE ]

que es "HUSH"?

Re: No Maroon love
 

Heads Up and Short Handed. It's now been split into 3 forums, mid-high ss, small stakes sh and heads up.

Re: No Maroon love
 

First of all I don't "hate" 2+2. There are very few things/people in life that I do hate. None of them are related to poker and certainly none of them are message boards or publishing companies (though I have a very strong dislike for my publishing company due to the errors they introduced into my book). And, while I may come across as a bit of a curmudgeon in my blog, anyone who has met me knows it is mainly for humor value and that I am about as happy-go-lucky as a human can possibly be. I sit on my reclining couch 20 hrs a week playing a game and make hundreds of thousands per year doing so, overall I have very little to be angry about. That fact may seem lost on me when I'm needling some donkey about bad beating me in 2-7, but it isn't.

I don't dislike the publishing company. Their books, for all of their inaccuracies, were among the best for a very long time. They certainly made me a lot of money. Granted, some of the inaccuracies cost me money and took a while for me to discover, but on the net they had a very positive effect on my poker development. I wish Small Stakes Hold'em had been around when I was playing $3/$6, as it is truly much better than the Lee Jones book (in fact it is by far the best book 2+2 has every published) that helped me so greatly to understand those games.

Contrary to Mason's assertions (which I'll forgive him for since his theory probably applies to many and he likely doesn't read my blog) I've never been "blocked" by anyone having anything to do with this site and I began ridiculing 2+2ers long before I was asked to write a book. If anything I've done it far less since. I never had any serious ambitions of writing a book until I was contacted about it, don’t have any of writing any more, and don't really care how many copies the one I wrote sells. And even if I did, please give me credit for at least the small amount of intelligence it would take to realize that I would sell more copies by being nice to large poker forums than by ridiculing their members.

And contrary to El Diablo's idea, it's certainly not out of jealousy. There are very few people who post here with any regularity that make more in a year of playing poker than I do, on average, and almost all of them play twice as much. I'm sure there are some on this forum who can sustain a higher hourly rate than me over a period of years, though I highly suspect Diablo isn't one of them, but the few there are comprise a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the posters here. It's pretty silly to assume that I would be jealous of a forum because 0.01% of its members have more success at poker than I do, but given some of the emails he has sent me in the past (and the fact that he has posted on here almost 21k times) silliness is what I've come to expect from him.

I'm also certainly not jealous of anyone whose life is so dull that they post here thousands of times annually. I'd rather be flat broke and spend my time doing something worthwhile than be rich and spend even five hours a year of my life here. This site has entirely replaced a social life for some people, I don't envy them. It's something more like pity.

If I could be said to have any "beef" at all with this site it would be for two reasons. The first is the signal to noise ratio. That's nothing endemic to 2+2, I have the same beef with RGP and the poker blogoshpere. The only real difference between the three is the extent to which the forums I've read here focus on poker strategy, where noise can be very damaging to one's development as a poker player. I really do think that posting and reading here is actually harmful to someone learning, at least at short handed hold'em, which is the only forum I have spent any time lurking on.

When I was playing a lot of $5/$10 and $10/$20 6 max a couple years ago I spent some time lurking here. It was very helpful to me only because a lot of my opponents posted here and I was able to determine the logical flaws in their game (which were many) by reading hands they posted and their discussion on them. In the very few instances when I actually attempted to give them some meaningful hints the result was humorous to say the least. Which is fine by me, I make my money by playing poker, not by teaching others.

The second "beef" was touched on by Dids, when he said "He assumes that 2p2 functions as a monolithic hive mind." I don't assume it, I know it. It's true. Sure, not everyone here is part of the hive, but most are. See El Diablo's baseless personal attacks on my character in this thread as evidence. Or dig back to the thread where one of my readers posted my stats at $5/$10 6 max and dozens of people chimed in saying it was impossible to win that much, or impossible to win at all playing those preflop stats.

Groups here come to conclusions about what win rates are possible, what VP$IP and PFR percentages are optimal, and things of the like. People who speak out against them are ignored, ridiculed, called liars, and personally attacked. Again, that's not universal, and I suspect that this forum suffers from the same illness our countries political system does, which is that the less intelligent people are the more likely they are to vote or, in this case, post. The intelligent few are drowned by the idiotic many. That's the way of the world and, unsurprisingly, the way of this forum.

So I don't hate the 2+2 publishing company. I don't hate everyone who posts here (some of my good friends do), and most of my "beefs" are the same ones I have with every large, unmoderated forum, online or off. When I refer to "2+2ers" I'm generally referring to the people I play with who play the exact same style as the people who I read here back when I played the lower limit short handed games. Overly tight preflop, overly aggressive postflop. They all understand very little poker theory (despite having ostensibly read it in 2+2 books) and are all predictable except when they intentionally make terrible plays to be less predictable. Now obviously everyone who posts here doesn't play that way, but people take my generalizations as absolutes, which is just plain foolish. But most do.

And Mason, I would be eternally grateful if you would email me or PM me and tell me why you thought my book "not very good".

Re: No Maroon love
 

Maroon is mostly full of it. Back when he was Roshambo'ing with the Phil Gordon crowd, he made himself sound like quite the player on his blog, yet after our first meeting and my first time playing and dominating him thoroughly: he was insantly flattering and thought I was likely some sort of Roshambo prodigy, instead of admitting that he probably just blows =)

Re: No Maroon love
 

Haha. I want a rematch.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Well I did win $50 when you thoroughly thrashed Phil himself when I had half your action, so I am open to the possibility that you are quite talented, but I am in fact a prodigy.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Mr. Maroon,

If I recall correctly, the "silliness" I wrote you had to do with your idiotic statement that you knew someone who made hundreds of millions of dollars by holding on to the stock options they were given as a door greeter at a Wal-Mart or Home Depot.

Hey, a quick search of your blog was all it took:

HAhahahahhahaha

"I disagree with that statement because I know of people who worked as door greeters for Wal-Mart or cashiers for The Home Depot who are now worth half a billion dollars or so and they never got paid more than $7.50 an hour in their life."

It is a testament to how easy poker is right now that someone that dumb can actually make a living playing online poker.

Re: No Maroon love
 

One of the Walton granddaughters was in my class at Wake, and it's really unfair that someone so rich could also be both cool as hell and hot. The reason new wealth isn't being created in this country is because the buddy of mine she decided to date also happenned to be the richest guy.

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
And contrary to El Diablo's idea, it's certainly not out of jealousy. There are very few people who post here with any regularity that make more in a year of playing poker than I do, on average, and almost all of them play twice as much.

[/ QUOTE ]

A great number of the regular posters here in the high limit and mid high limit forum I know personally to be top players in the 30/60-300/600 level. For someone with admittedly modest cash game results for most of this year and has admited to playing bad in some major live tourneys, I'm very suprised to hear you make such an outrageous and baseless claim.

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
First of all I don't "hate" 2+2. There are very few things/people in life that I do hate. None of them are related to poker and certainly none of them are message boards or publishing companies (though I have a very strong dislike for my publishing company due to the errors they introduced into my book). And, while I may come across as a bit of a curmudgeon in my blog, anyone who has met me knows it is mainly for humor value and that I am about as happy-go-lucky as a human can possibly be. I sit on my reclining couch 20 hrs a week playing a game and make hundreds of thousands per year doing so, overall I have very little to be angry about. That fact may seem lost on me when I'm needling some donkey about bad beating me in 2-7, but it isn't.

I don't dislike the publishing company. Their books, for all of their inaccuracies, were among the best for a very long time. They certainly made me a lot of money. Granted, some of the inaccuracies cost me money and took a while for me to discover, but on the net they had a very positive effect on my poker development. I wish Small Stakes Hold'em had been around when I was playing $3/$6, as it is truly much better than the Lee Jones book (in fact it is by far the best book 2+2 has every published) that helped me so greatly to understand those games.

Contrary to Mason's assertions (which I'll forgive him for since his theory probably applies to many and he likely doesn't read my blog) I've never been "blocked" by anyone having anything to do with this site and I began ridiculing 2+2ers long before I was asked to write a book. If anything I've done it far less since. I never had any serious ambitions of writing a book until I was contacted about it, don’t have any of writing any more, and don't really care how many copies the one I wrote sells. And even if I did, please give me credit for at least the small amount of intelligence it would take to realize that I would sell more copies by being nice to large poker forums than by ridiculing their members.

And contrary to El Diablo's idea, it's certainly not out of jealousy. There are very few people who post here with any regularity that make more in a year of playing poker than I do, on average, and almost all of them play twice as much. I'm sure there are some on this forum who can sustain a higher hourly rate than me over a period of years, though I highly suspect Diablo isn't one of them, but the few there are comprise a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the posters here. It's pretty silly to assume that I would be jealous of a forum because 0.01% of its members have more success at poker than I do, but given some of the emails he has sent me in the past (and the fact that he has posted on here almost 21k times) silliness is what I've come to expect from him.

I'm also certainly not jealous of anyone whose life is so dull that they post here thousands of times annually. I'd rather be flat broke and spend my time doing something worthwhile than be rich and spend even five hours a year of my life here. This site has entirely replaced a social life for some people, I don't envy them. It's something more like pity.

If I could be said to have any "beef" at all with this site it would be for two reasons. The first is the signal to noise ratio. That's nothing endemic to 2+2, I have the same beef with RGP and the poker blogoshpere. The only real difference between the three is the extent to which the forums I've read here focus on poker strategy, where noise can be very damaging to one's development as a poker player. I really do think that posting and reading here is actually harmful to someone learning, at least at short handed hold'em, which is the only forum I have spent any time lurking on.

When I was playing a lot of $5/$10 and $10/$20 6 max a couple years ago I spent some time lurking here. It was very helpful to me only because a lot of my opponents posted here and I was able to determine the logical flaws in their game (which were many) by reading hands they posted and their discussion on them. In the very few instances when I actually attempted to give them some meaningful hints the result was humorous to say the least. Which is fine by me, I make my money by playing poker, not by teaching others.

The second "beef" was touched on by Dids, when he said "He assumes that 2p2 functions as a monolithic hive mind." I don't assume it, I know it. It's true. Sure, not everyone here is part of the hive, but most are. See El Diablo's baseless personal attacks on my character in this thread as evidence. Or dig back to the thread where one of my readers posted my stats at $5/$10 6 max and dozens of people chimed in saying it was impossible to win that much, or impossible to win at all playing those preflop stats.

Groups here come to conclusions about what win rates are possible, what VP$IP and PFR percentages are optimal, and things of the like. People who speak out against them are ignored, ridiculed, called liars, and personally attacked. Again, that's not universal, and I suspect that this forum suffers from the same illness our countries political system does, which is that the less intelligent people are the more likely they are to vote or, in this case, post. The intelligent few are drowned by the idiotic many. That's the way of the world and, unsurprisingly, the way of this forum.

So I don't hate the 2+2 publishing company. I don't hate everyone who posts here (some of my good friends do), and most of my "beefs" are the same ones I have with every large, unmoderated forum, online or off. When I refer to "2+2ers" I'm generally referring to the people I play with who play the exact same style as the people who I read here back when I played the lower limit short handed games. Overly tight preflop, overly aggressive postflop. They all understand very little poker theory (despite having ostensibly read it in 2+2 books) and are all predictable except when they intentionally make terrible plays to be less predictable. Now obviously everyone who posts here doesn't play that way, but people take my generalizations as absolutes, which is just plain foolish. But most do.

And Mason, I would be eternally grateful if you would email me or PM me and tell me why you thought my book "not very good".

[/ QUOTE ]

Woah there, grumpy head. Pretty verbose for being happy-go-lucky. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
Their books, for all of their inaccuracies, were among the best for a very long time.

[/ QUOTE ]
I would be curious to hear what books (not counting your own) you consider to be the best today.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Congratulations, you just sold a copy of your book.

I'm surprised you don't see many benefits to being an author, particularly if you really think your approach is superior to that of the 2+2 "hive" and can justify it in print.

[ QUOTE ]

And Mason, I would be eternally grateful if you would email me or PM me and tell me why you thought my book "not very good".


[/ QUOTE ]

I hope Mason gives us a review, as I value his opinion, though I don't always completely agree. I guess my connection to the hive mind must be haywire.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Guys,

I don't see how you can question this guy's results. If there's anyone who knows about wealth creation, it's Matt Maroon. I know people who have built multi-billion dollar companies who only made a couple hundred million. Yet he knows door greeters and cashiers who have made half a billion dollars from intelligent management of their stock options and $7.50/hr salary. Obviously, when it comes to wealth creation, Mr. Maroon is the guy to pay attention to.

Re: No Maroon love
 

I wouldn't read "half billion dollars or so" literally.

I have read only couple of chapters of Mr. Maroons book yet (I'm reading several poker books currently), but his strategy advice on SH seems very good and I liked the chapter on plugging the leaks too. I'd really like to hear what Mason thinks is flawed in the book.

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't see how you can question this guy's results. If there's anyone who knows about wealth creation, it's Matt Maroon.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're trying to be sarcastic, but he has played for a living for several years, moved up in limits, and bought a house. Those are pretty good results.

Re: No Maroon love
 

That isn't the silliness I was referring too, in fact I didn't even know it was you. I was referring to the idiotic crossbooking wager you offered me this year. You wanted to make a wager for what amounted to hundred of thousands on a crossbook over a very short time, despite the fact that we don't know each other, and that I suspect you have little or no money at all.

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
For someone with admittedly modest cash game results for most of this year and has admited to playing bad in some major live tourneys, I'm very suprised to hear you make such an outrageous and baseless claim."

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised to hear you say that. If you are who I think you are, you're one of the few people on here I've met personally and your play is exactly what I refer to as 2+2 style. I don't know where you got those impressions, they certainly weren't from anything I wrote. With the exception of one recent week I've killed the cash games this year. I'm at over $700/hr total. That's far from modest. If anything I'm running hot.

And I've played one major tournament, in which I went broke with KK to QQ. Bad play, I know.

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And contrary to El Diablo's idea, it's certainly not out of jealousy. There are very few people who post here with any regularity that make more in a year of playing poker than I do, on average, and almost all of them play twice as much.

[/ QUOTE ]

A great number of the regular posters here in the high limit and mid high limit forum I know personally to be top players in the 30/60-300/600 level. For someone with admittedly modest cash game results for most of this year and has admited to playing bad in some major live tourneys, I'm very suprised to hear you make such an outrageous and baseless claim.

[/ QUOTE ]

2+2 and internet messageboards are inherently hostile. People act more aggressively and arrogantly on messageboards than they they do in real life. If you threw 99% of internet messageboard fighting participants in a room together, they'd be docile and get along quite nicely.

As someone who lurks here often enough, I know there are some really good poker minds here. However, as someone who obviously doesn't, and was met with "idiodic hostility" the time he did post here, is it really surprising that matt jokingly pokes fun at 2+2'ers in his blog?

Re: No Maroon love
 

Maroon,

Yes, that is correct. You made some claims that were absurd and thus I offered to crossbook against you. As I always do in such situations when there's an outrageously profitable opportunity, I offered to escrow the money w/ a reputable firm and pay all fees, so the not having money part does not apply at all. If you can dig up whatever that wager was, I'll likely happily offer it again, whatever it was (I believe it was something like you making more money 2-tabling than me 4-tabling the same stakes or something like that). And if you'd like to up the stakes, I'll match any amount you're willing to escrow against the wager. I'd also be willing to wager that I've been involved in many individual transactions that are all greater in size than the entire amount of money you've made over your total poker career if you're looking for more wagers.

Re: No Maroon love
 

[ QUOTE ]
Congratulations, you just sold a copy of your book.

I'm surprised you don't see many benefits to being an author, particularly if you really think your approach is superior to that of the 2+2 "hive" and can justify it in print.

I hope Mason gives us a review, as I value his opinion, though I don't always completely agree. I guess my connection to the hive mind must be haywire.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ka-ching. Another $1 in my pocket. I should post here more.

There really aren't that many benefits to being an author, or at least a poker one. It's fairly meaningless. Saying "I wrote a poker book" is about as meaningful as saying "I won a WPT event", but with a substantially lower cash prize.

I hope Mason reviews it too, or at least tells me what he found to be the problem with it. Opinions from anyone who knows anything about poker are of interest.

Re: No Maroon love
 

Roswell,

Those are indeed good results, but they are not in the same league as many on this forum. Matt does not appear to realize that simple fact.