Some sound advice: Noise/content ratio (very long)

[kazana]

After a couple of months' studies of this lovely game that makes the players flock around forums like these, every now and again, I have heard someone stating something about the noise/content ratio. In my opinion, this is a concept everyone seeking solid advice must be aware of.

Many players who have played for several years by now have stated that a typical noise to content relation would be about 90% noise vs 10% real content. At first I thought these guys must be exaggerating. The noise can't be all that high. Can it?

To give a quick answer: Yes, it can. And it is true.

So be aware of that when you get more and more into "serious studies" of this game. The remaining problem is, how to distinguish between noise and good advice. I mean, if we knew which replies are good vs which are just plain crap, we wouldn't need to ask any questions in the first place.

I've come up with a general guideline to distinguish between the two. The things to keep in mind are:

1) The majority of players are losing players. That is a fact. People may argue whether that means that 70%, 90% or even 99% are losing players, what remains is that most players are.
How does this affect us? Simply put: Even though the proportion of losing players on message boards may be lower than in general (after all, they are trying to improve their game, thus they should on average be somewhat better than the average player not studying the game) there still are many awful players roaming these boards. Keep that in mind.

2) High post-counts are not a sign of quality posters. Neither does it mean that someone with many posts necessarily is a bad player. Keep that in mind. Just because some guy has a Pooh-Bah title doesn't automatically mean his advice is better than the guy's who is making his 20th post.
In fact, it is a lot easier to blast out many, many posts with absolutely no real content than writing many quality posts. My favourite sorts are those posters with 15 gazillion posts, but whenever you see any of their posts it's a one-liner in the form of "Push, obv." or "Worst. Call. Ever."

3) Posters trying hard to use cool-lingo (teh more teh better omfglolz0rs!!!111!!) in every single post often give horrible advice. In most cases, those specimen are around only to boost their ego rather than give proper advice. They'd rather be the cocky little dog barking than the doberman having the cocky little dogs for breakfast. The only thing they're interested in is virtual cock measuring.

4) Players regularly belittling or even insulting other players/posters often give horrible advice. This is typical behavior for "experts" labeling every single opponent at their table a donk/idiot/retard. If you don't take your opponents seriously, it is a sure sign that you think you're the best player around anyway. So why improve your game? It's a lot more fun to go out there and tell the world how great you are. And while at it, they can engage in pissing contests. Steer away from those.

5) Posts with long elaborate descriptions of villain's stats and behavior only rarely make a worthwhile read. This is true for independent reasons. If someone is making those long explanations about villain's typical range, how he played a few hands before that, what he had for breakfast, and so on, chances are, that this poster is trying to justify a bad play. He knows calling that all-in sucked, but by putting his villain on a range that will make his call fit is his main concern.
Another reason is, that for the few posts where that type of information is valid (thus the poster is not trying to justify a mistake), very often the situation is far too specific to be worth studying. You'll rarely run into that specific situation.

6) If the poster can't explain to you what his reasoning is, there often is no good reason. Some concepts may be very hard to wrap your head around. Nevertheless, someone giving advice should know exactly why he is giving that specific piece of advice. If he can't explain why, you can't understand why. If you don't understand a concept, you're in danger of misapplying it. Ignore those posts.

7) Aware of posters stating their BB/100 ratios to gain more credibility. If anyone opens a post with a line like "I've been playing 1000NL 6max for two years, winning 12BB/100 over 120k hands..." don't take that as sure sign that this person is knowing what he's talking about. It is easy to be a winning player on a message board. Being one at the table is a lot more difficult.


There are many other signs that indicate that certain posts just have low quality, but by looking out for these major indicators, you should be able to steer away from the broad majority of the noise on these boards. Don't waste your time reading useless information. It's a garbage in - garbage out situation. You can't expect to become a better player by studying bad advice.