B,B, or V?: lilholdem interview!

[nath]

Man, when Chump Change gets riled up about something, he's one of my very favorite posters

And seriously, how is "wigger" not racist? Has anyone in this thread who used it to describe Chad NOT used it in a derogatory manner? Has not said "You're a white guy who acts like a black guy" and meant it as an insult? Again, how is that not racist?

[Bakes]

What is the proper term for lilholdem's style of dress?

[mirrorman]

hood.

[JayTee]

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What is the proper term for lilholdem's style of dress?

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Wafrican American?

[shaniac]

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What is the proper term for lilholdem's style of dress?

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B-boy-ish?

[shaniac]

ghetto fabulous?

[IcarusJam]

Cue grill pics?

[aislephive]

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Is eveyrone in the first few pages of this thread leveling? You guys seriously think taht Chad isnt a winning player in MTTs and plays bad. LMFAO.

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No, i'm pretty sure they said that the comment "he is a winning player" cannot be proven due to sample size. His style of play is a high-variance style. To say that his ~2000 or w/e MTTs is a big enough sample to show anything remotely close to his true ROI is just plain dumb. Yah, he's won alot of money, does that mean his edge is really as big as anyone is making it out to be? No. This is the problem/awesomeness of donkaments. With large field tourneys, anyone playing a slightly more aggressive style than normal can go on a hot run of cards and in a small sample size be at the top of the world. The problem is we have to hear from all of them about how great they are. The awesomeness is that the majority of them think they play like a god and then attempt to play real poker (cash) and lose everything. I give the kid credit on 1 thing, he has confidence and expects to win. That alone will take someone far in the poker world. But it has its limits. Eventually variance will bite harder than they ever thought possible, the confidence dies, and then we never hear from them again. Whether or not that will play out in this case has yet to be seen. But to deny it's a possibility is really ignorant.

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His sample size is at least 4-5k tournaments, which probably comes out to 500k hands or something. Plus, the play in tournaments is much worse than in cash games so I'd expect those who have a big edge to have good results over a reasonable sample often even though the large fields makes tournament poker a variance monster. I think people overestimate how big of a factor luck is in tournaments. You do have to have coinflips go your way, have your hand hold up when ahead, and you even usually have to suck out from time to time. But you can absolutely run over some tables and build your stack without getting into many big confrontations.

Point is that while tournaments definitely have a lot of luck involved, you can do a lot of damage without seeing showdowns. Brute aggression is a lot of times enough to get you deep into a tournament, and if you have some hands go your way you have a good shot at a FT.

I feel kinda dirty defending LH, but some of you guys are just being ridiculous.

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There is a big misunderstanding here on what the counterpoints of aejones, yeti, and myself have posted. I dont think any of us are saying he's a losing player. We are simply saying he isnt AS GOOD as people claim he is. I think you accidently backed us up when you said "the play in tournaments is much worse than in cash games." Yes, it is, thats why beating tournament fields doesn't automatically make you a great player. As for how much luck is involved, lets look at his actual results,

Total played for Stars,Party,Full Tilt, Paradise: 4150
Total estimated profit according to OPR: $1,026,585
(Note: these profit numbers tend to be higher than the truth as the sites that track them cannot keep an accurate record of the amount of rebuys bought in rebuy tourneys, therefore they typically use the average number of rebuys according to the prize pool)
Big Cashes:

Party Million - 3rd for $57561
Party Million - 1st for $210000
Full Tilt $535 - 1st for $212894

Total from big cashes: $480,455

Now, yes, it is painfully obvious that he is a winning player. But as far as being the best, or one of the best, that claim is based on something variance has a large part of. 46.8% of his total online winnings are from 3 cashes in tourneys with HUGE fields. Why does this matter? If 3, yes, 3 coinflips didnt work out his way, he's won half of what he has now and he's just another "good tourney donk." I could take this analysis further and probably prove that (this is a guess) 80% of his profit has come from <2 dozen cashes. I'm not saying any of this proves whether or not he's a good player, I'm saying that the pure nature and structure of tourneys causes variance to be a MAJOR factor in distinguishing the good players with a decent edge and the supposedly "great" players.

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Man, I never said that I was under the impression you or anybody believed him to be a losing player, obviously this isn't up for dispute.

And nowhere did I say lilholdem was a great poker player, in fact in this thread I've already said that I think he would not be a winner in any cash game online where money becomes meaningful. I'd say that starts at $200nl or something. So yeah, I don't think LH could currently beat Stars $200nl 6 max games, and would get smoked at higher stakes. I've also already said that I believe LH dresses like a clown, but that's none of my concern and not really relevant to how good he is at poker. Just trying to make it clear that I do NOT think LH is a great poker player, any by that I mean he can't beat cash games which have a lot tougher players and is a more pure skilled form of the game than tournaments.

While I stand by all what I've said, LH is still a great tourney player, and without a doubt one of the top tournament players online. Does being one of the top tournament players make you a great poker player? Not nessicarilly. Tournament poker doesn't adequately brush upon the more skilled aspects of NL holdem like hand-reading, value betting, in general postflop play, and to a certain extent preflop as well. So I wouldn't consider him a great overall poker player until he proves he can beat the bigger cash games. But I'm not arguing how "great" he is at poker, I'm saying he is "great" at tournaments, which is practically another form of poker in itself. Seriously, the differences between cash and tourney play is huge, and so are how are in the other game. I would say any decent cash game player is +EV in almost any tournament live or online, while I would say a much smaller percentage of the decent or better tournament players are +EV in online cash games. And to be clear, when I say "tournament player" I'm reffering to those who play mainly tournaments, same thing with cash.

As for your comments about how a significant percentage of his overall winnings come from a few tournament wins, sure. Ok. And there is no denying that he ran hot in those tournaments either. But it's not as easy as saying "well if he loses this coinflip here, boom he is out of the tournament on the bubble and doesn't go on to finish first for $200k." I'm sure there are plenty of those tournaments with massive prize pools where he loses a crucial coinflip and is squashed of his chance at a top two or three finish which could have netted him a few hundred thousand more or something. Your analogy also is true for a lot of high stakes cash players as well. What if Aba loses a couple big pots when moving up to the big games, he loses his confidence and decides he doesn't like the variance of those massive stakes and decides he'd rather grind $5/10 and $10/20 forever. But no, that didn't happen. Aba won those key hands, his confidence remained high, and he was able to become the biggest winner in the highest stakes games on the net. Hell, look at CTS. He made one final deposit on Party Poker, planning on giving up if he lost it. What happens if Cole's bad run with online poker continued and he took a few more beats at $.50/$1 limit holdem and lost his deposit and never bothered with online poker again? Bottom line is that yes, there is a lot of luck in poker, period. There always has and there always will be. But that doesn't mean people who were fortunate enough to run good only were successful for that reason alone and didn't have skill.

Variance is huge in tournaments, it seems like you're basically saying everybody who has had success in them without a massive sample size, variance was responsible. LH almost certainly ran better than expected to achieve those results, but pretty much anybody would have to be running better than average to achieve those results. LH knows what he is doing, even if he can't communicate it very well.

The guy is one of the best at tournaments, that's all there is to it. Your entire argument revolves around not being able to prove he is good because of your opinion that his sample size is not great enough. Well man, that doesn't prove anything either way. So what's your point? That he might be running above average? That he might not be as good as his results indicate? No sh*t man. This is only news to those browsing p5s.

[obiedman]

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Man, when Chump Change gets riled up about something, he's one of my very favorite posters

And seriously, how is "wigger" not racist? Has anyone in this thread who used it to describe Chad NOT used it in a derogatory manner? Has not said "You're a white guy who acts like a black guy" and meant it as an insult? Again, how is that not racist?

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this is more of an insult to african americans than it is to whomever you're calling a wigger... right?

this question is serious. flame me if you must, but i just want to know how you're all thinking of the word

[Barrin6]

Maybe I was wrong. Poker probably doesn't need that much math. But it still bothers me for the same reason if someone were trying to convince me to invest in them for a business but yet can't properly explain it clearly on how my money is being spent. Just makes me a little skeptical for the same reasons.