Why Great Players Often Like My Stuff More Than Good Players

[raistlinx]

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There isn't much of anything in poker books that will help you beat high stakes games. There are books that will help you on your way to that road, by helping you at the beginning and intermediate level.

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Barry,

Is this simply because at the high stakes it is so much about having a correct read (which must be learned not read about) or because there are concepts applied at that level that are just not in print?

[7n7]

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There isn't much of anything in poker books that will help you beat high stakes games. There are books that will help you on your way to that road, by helping you at the beginning and intermediate level.

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It's the second part of this paragraph that needs to be emphasized. You ain't gonna' beat the Brunson, Iveys, Greensteins after reading TOP and the multitude of other 2+2 books, but...

Take 2 random players: one who has read a few strategy books and 1 who hasn't. Neither have any playing experience. Have them both walk into the Bobby's room with a decent-sized roll. Who lasts longer?

Same 2 players, only they have the same amount of experience, but again one has read a few books, one hasn't. Who survives longer?

I mean how can you multi-level (e.g. he thinks I think he thinks I'm semi-bluffing) if you have no clue what a semi-bluff is?

I do understand what Barry is saying, it's just that the way he states I guess. He's basically saying there's no way a book could teach you to beat the highest stakes game. I agree with that taken literally. However, in order to gain the knowledge to beat the highest stakes, well you gotta' learn somehow. If I were to take up playing poker tomorrow and my goal was to play alongside Barry within 5 years (and please, let's not argue how long it would actually take). Assume I know nothing about poker except for the ranking of hands, structure, how to bet, etc., I'd have to very quickly eliminate as much of the learning curve as possible. Books do this. They teach/preach the fundamentals. Hand-reading, leveling, whatever, is where mucho experience is required.

And btw, I love that Barry posts in this forum. His responses are always concise and exactly to the point. He never dodges the actual question asked like some pros would be prone to do.

[fraac]

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I mean how can you multi-level (e.g. he thinks I think he thinks I'm semi-bluffing) if you have no clue what a semi-bluff is?

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Semi-offtopic, I'm sure that multi-levelling and metagaming are the skills most naturally occurring without regard to domain knowledge. They're what everyone does to different degrees, depending on how healthily you were raised, in all human interaction. (There are only 2 levels, btw. Barry perhaps knows this. Sklansky doesn't.)

[phydaux]

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This might not be the place for it, but I was told long ago by a pretty reliable force that Chip reese, Doyle, Stu unger, and others basically played as a corporation. in that they didnt cheat but split profits, so basically anyone coming from the outside had little chance in the long run. Im just curious why the best players supposedly in the world would sit arounfd playing eachother night after night ?

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Stu Ungar?? you do know he has been dead for several years?
Besides he was way to unstable to have been included in any part of a corporation. Now several of the top players have pooled thier money together to play headsup games againist a Texas billionaire Andy Beal and that has been called the corporation. Like you said though not sure why you posted that here.

RZ

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In S/S, Doyle states that during his Texas road gambler days he, Amarillo Slim & Sailor Roberts all played from a common BR, sharing wins and losses.

Three out of towners show up and ask to join the four locals at their regular game. Because the out of towners have deep pockets, the locals say yes. A seven handed game, and three of the players are playing from a common BR. Even if we assume they would never stoop to coluding, wouldn't that cut down on the out of towner's overall varience?

Could three players pull that off these days? Maybe. The biggest problem would be finding two other players worth staking.

I had a buddy who staked three of his friends and they tried to take over Foxwoods SnG circut. Thing was, since his pals weren't playing with "their own money" they donked off his entire BR. He had to get a day job.

[7n7]

Let's not side-track this thread. We should post these type comments in another thread and/or forum.

Edit: Sailor, Doyle, and Slim all blew threw their combined bankroll the first time they went to Vegas. So much for reducing variance, eh? That was it for pooling their money if I recall. Yeah, yeah, I just got onto everybody for side-tracking, but couldn't help showing how smart I was. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[David Sklansky]

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First off:

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It really is true. And I'm not going to say something mean like the merely good players don't fully appreciate me. That's not the reason...

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You just did you moron.

Second, What is lacking a person that has to make a claim like the one in this post in the first place?
I say anyone that feel a need to claim in words in a highly frequented forum how good/kind/clever/smart/sexy/what-have-you they are, probably are quite frustrated they and their mothers seem to be the only ones thinking so.
If you have to claim in words traits others do not recognize in you, you are delusional. Go back under your rock and just write me another book, because I do like the ones you have written so far - despite the fact you're one strange bird...

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At first I wasn't going to reply to your post. But that might make some pople think I didn't notice it or I had no reply. Anyway the fact is that I made my original post because of posts stating that Ed Miller has written that he has learned a lot about No Limit after helping me with my book. It was solely related to the fact that theory doesn't help much if you can't do an accurate job of putting people on hands.

[David Sklansky]

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scientize,

There isn't much of anything in poker books that will help you beat high stakes games. There are books that will help you on your way to that road, by helping you at the beginning and intermediate level.

I am the only poker book author who plays in and beats the high stakes games. (Doyle had collaborators.)

Your post reminds me of when Michael Konik suggested that all of the players in Poker Superstars 2 had read The Theory of Poker by Sklansky. In actuality, half of the field were born in other countries and had probably never read a book in English.

And to the person who thinks that there are teams in the biggest game, there aren't. Not all the players are as good as you might think. And it often depends on which games are played. Lately, I have decided to only play when we play at least 6 games. I don't want to fight the specialists, because my edge is too small or nonexistent playing other good players' best games.

Barry

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I take that as an admission that I was right when I stated a few years ago that the mega stakes players would not gladly admit "tag teams" composed of 300-600 specialists.

As to your comment about teams, do you think you could catch it if the top players did nothing but tell each other their hole cards but did NOT play the same money?

As for the fact that perhaps only half of the most successful 500 players have not read TOP I will reiterate what I said before. Which in a nutshell is that since less than 5% of ALL aspiring poker players have read it you are ten times as likely to succeed if you have.

[*TT*]

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As to your comment about teams, do you think you could catch it if the top players did nothing but tell each other their hole cards but did NOT play the same money?

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u lost me here David. Please elaborate.

[MicroBob]

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Which in a nutshell is that since less than 5% of ALL aspiring poker players have read it you are ten times as likely to succeed if you have.

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David,
I vageuly remember where you went through and came to this conclusion and explained it. Feels like the post might have been 1-2 yrs ago and I really suck at using the search-function on here.
If you could briefly re-explain this one I would appreciate it and I think many others would find it interesting.

(or if someone can dig up the post where David explains this that would be cool too. Surely I'm not the only one that remembers that post)

[David Sklansky]

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As to your comment about teams, do you think you could catch it if the top players did nothing but tell each other their hole cards but did NOT play the same money?

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u lost me here David. Please elaborate.

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If two or more world class players played their own money but still signaled to each other theie hole cards, whether they were in or out, they could add perhaps a small bet an hour to their hourly rate, even if they were very careful to avoid doing anything that appeared out of the ordinary.

But I have no reason to believe this is actually happening.