Two Plus Two Newer Archives - Last Words on The Kenny Patrik Thing

When I first asked Kenny his opinion it was totally for my curiosity and I had no thoughts of posting his answer. But since I expected a number between 3 and 12 I was surprised at his "zero" and later on asked him for permission to post it. Because I'm always searching for serious posts that will get a lot of response. Any other reason pales in comparison for me.

The question was not regarding internet players who presently play in the big live games. It was regarding how many of them would be in the top 20 if they did. As of this moment. I didn't ask him to speculate about how they would do with months of experience. I did also ask him how many would be in the top twenty in online nine handed games and he said it would probably still be zero. But his answer was much different for six handed. I didn't ask him about six handed live games. But I certainly wasn't tailoring my question simply to fish for a provocative answer.

While big, live, NLH games are fairly rare, most are in fact nine handed. Those posters who say otherwise are wrong. So again my original question was reasonable.

Since many posters said I should ask Patrik, I did. He prefaced his answer with the statement that some internet players would probably break into the top twenty with experience but none are there at the moment.

For a variety of reasons I am almost positive that they were both being honest with me.

My comments about the games being easier to get into during the tournament were in direct response to those who claimed they can't get into them. But it is also true that it would be good for business if this debate doesn't go away quickly.

As for my own opinion, I must first say that it is based only on specualtion as I have never really played online with the top players and rarely played live with them.

There is almost no chance that a live player is favored over the best online players in six handed, medium stacked, no ante games. If you change it to nine handed, deep stacked, I'd expect at least a few of the online players to break into the top twenty when there is no ante. But I believe this is a key consideration even though nobody is talking about it. The fact is that when there is no ante you don't even have to be very good to beat world champions who are usually playing only when there is a live one or two in the game. They all play a lot of starting hands and any reasonably good player could pick them off for a little money by playing tighter than them.

But when you add an ante things change. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe any online cash games have an ante. If so this is a pretty big factor. A bigger factor, I think, then ultra deep stacks or the ability to fold big hands. The world's best non ante player is playing a significantly different game if a big ante is added and would therefore indeed have trouble cracking the top twenty in an ante game. Which is how those big live games are normally played.