TOP: Obviously, tough players beat weak players

[Pokey]

On page five of Theory of Poker, Sklansky says:
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(Obviously if you can beat tough games, you will have little trouble destroying easier games.)

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*Is* this obvious? I’ve seen Fimbulwinter’s post about the things that small-stakes players do better than large-stakes players, and I think it reveals a different *flavor* that prevails in a small-stakes game. Yes, the players are generally softer, but I assume they are softer in ways that require significant adjustment in your game. If you walk into a $25NL table and try to play the same way you would at a $1000NL table, you’re not going to make NEARLY as much money as a great $25NL player would under the same circumstances. We can’t just learn how to beat the best games and assume that means we can beat any game.

[gabbahh]

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...and I think it reveals a different *flavor* that prevails in a small-stakes game. Yes, the players are generally softer, but I assume they are softer in ways that require significant adjustment in your game. If you walk into a $25NL table and try to play the same way you would at a $1000NL table, you’re not going to make NEARLY as much money as a great $25NL player would under the same circumstances. We can’t just learn how to beat the best games and assume that means we can beat any game.

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Tough to answer this. But let's reverse it: no $25NL who walks into a $1000NL game will beat it. He might win a session, but if he stays too long on the tables, the good 1000NL players will eat him up.
A winning 25NL player however, who has played for an extended period on the 25NL tables, knows how to play near optimal at the 25NL tables. This has a lot to do with knowing the enemy. It will probably be very easy for a 1000NL player, to get to know the enemy at the 25NL tables. He will probably get to know his opponents much much faster than the 25NL-er AND will be able to beat the 25NL tables at a much higher rate.
So to me the key word is: adaptation. If you do not adapt to the playing styles of your opponents you will not win as much as you could, if you win at all. I think that a 1000NL player is better at adapting in general, then a 25NL player. And therefore, over time, a 1000NL player will be beating the 25NL table for a higher rate than the best 25NL players.
If the above is not the case then the 1000NL probably is not as hot as he thinks.


So yes, in general, I agree with you.

[Gelford]

I think you underestimate the better player

Poker is a lot about reading people, and perhap a strong player that just sits at 25NL game will need time to adjust, but time in this case will be a case of one seesion. I doubt that it will take any longer to realize that most players are donks

Then he will just slid into the wait for the nuts and push style of the 25NL 'pro'and do at least as well as the 25NL 'pro'

And the thing is, that he like the 25NL 'pro' is not only able to stack of fish, he will be able to identify the 25NL "pro"'s at the table and beat them senseless, while it is more likely that fellow 25NL 'pro' repect eachother as being good players and mostly avoid clashes preferring to feed on fish.


This is kind of like a reverse 'If I played for higher stakes, where people would respect my raises, i'd be a winning player' argument

It is the 'Winning 1000$NL players only win because they play in an enviroment, where people respect their raises, they should try the 25NL' kind of thing.


But actually there is one reason that a highstake player might not do well at the 25NL .. He might simply not be able to take the stakes seriously and simple not play his A game'

When used to 500$ pot or bigger every hand, it is hard to get exited about a 3$ pot. Barry Greentstein mentions this among others. This has nothing to do with skill though.

[Isura]

[ QUOTE ]
I think you underestimate the better player

Poker is a lot about reading people, and perhap a strong player that just sits at 25NL game will need time to adjust, but time in this case will be a case of one seesion. I doubt that it will take any longer to realize that most players are donks

Then he will just slid into the wait for the nuts and push style of the 25NL 'pro'and do at least as well as the 25NL 'pro'

And the thing is, that he like the 25NL 'pro' is not only able to stack of fish, he will be able to identify the 25NL "pro"'s at the table and beat them senseless, while it is more likely that fellow 25NL 'pro' repect eachother as being good players and mostly avoid clashes preferring to feed on fish.


This is kind of like a reverse 'If I played for higher stakes, where people would respect my raises, i'd be a winning player' argument

It is the 'Winning 1000$NL players only win because they play in an enviroment, where people respect their raises, they should try the 25NL' kind of thing.


But actually there is one reason that a highstake player might not do well at the 25NL .. He might simply not be able to take the stakes seriously and simple not play his A game'

When used to 500$ pot or bigger every hand, it is hard to get exited about a 3$ pot. Barry Greentstein mentions this among others. This has nothing to do with skill though.

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I agree with most of this. Whenever I drop down to smaller stakes, the games are just as easy to beat. There aren't that many "adjustments" that a good player can't make in a short period of time.

[thedustbustr]

One thing that is great about dropping down to the 25s is that the weaker players tend to define their hands. Hand reading is far easier at small stakes than it is big stakes.

Sure, playing my A game at mid limits includes some fancy plays, perhaps a little bit of moving weak players off their hands, a little bit of representing hands I don't have, other forms of fancy play syndrome. Bring these to a small stakes table and they're probably marginally losing plays. This is probably what Pokey is alluding to. That said, I doubt that these plays make a very large difference in winrate.

[mikechops]

Game theory says there is an unexploitable strategy for every game. This is known as the game theory optimal strategy. It may be possible to increase your win-rate by diverting from this strategy to exploit opponents not playing the optimal stategy. But if you do this, you will lose to an opponent playing the optimal stategy.

The complexity of poker is such that nobody knows what this optimal strategy is yet, but we do know that it does exist.

It would seem to me that as you progress up through to the tougher games, the strategy you need to beat them, will have fewer exploitable weaknesses. In other words your game should be closer to the game theory optimal strategy.

If this is so, you should still be able to win at lower limits by playing the same game you use at the higher levels. However, someone adapting to the many weaknesses of the opponents would have a higher win-rate.

[matrix]

[ QUOTE ]
On page five of Theory of Poker, Sklansky says:
[ QUOTE ]
(Obviously if you can beat tough games, you will have little trouble destroying easier games.)

[/ QUOTE ]

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I think this is pretty obvious as long as you bear in mind that whenever we are talking about "beating games" we mean to beat them over a long period of time and not just an individual session - or a single pot.


p6 "it is important to realise that you are not playing in individual games. Each session is part of one big poker game. You cannot win every session you play any more than a golfer can win every match that they play..."

Over and over again we are encouraged to think about poker long term and not think about short term results.

So yes in this context after a small period of adjustment a great player at higher limits will have little trouble destroying a small stakes game.

Of course whether they would want to - and how excited they might get about winning a $5 pot rather than a $500 pot is a different story altogether....

[water16]

I must have missed the point, but I thought the object was to relate TOP to SSNL games. I thought there were two messages that might be important for the SSNL player. The first is the need to work hard to calculate the most likely holdings of your opponents, which seems to be an element of poker missing in much of the low limit play. The second is that at the lower limits the blinds aren't going to eat your bankroll so fast that you can't afford to play a tighter game, keeping in mind the need to occassionally change speeds.

[dd323]

[ QUOTE ]
On page five of Theory of Poker, Sklansky says:
[ QUOTE ]
(Obviously if you can beat tough games, you will have little trouble destroying easier games.)

[/ QUOTE ]
*Is* this obvious? I’ve seen Fimbulwinter’s post about the things that small-stakes players do better than large-stakes players, and I think it reveals a different *flavor* that prevails in a small-stakes game. Yes, the players are generally softer, but I assume they are softer in ways that require significant adjustment in your game. If you walk into a $25NL table and try to play the same way you would at a $1000NL table, you’re not going to make NEARLY as much money as a great $25NL player would under the same circumstances. We can’t just learn how to beat the best games and assume that means we can beat any game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you being serious?!?!?

Come on, if the top earner in the world at 25NL had a contest with Phil Ivey as to who could make more money in a month, and the winner got $5 million (to make it worth the time for Ivey), who do you think would win? Being a good poker player at high limits means being able to adjust to all different sorts of games. Like there are any special skills that a 25NL specialist has that all good players don't, and couldn't figure out in 2 hours of playing. If you think there are name them.

Have you ever moved down after playing at a higher level? Sure you might make a couple mistakes at the beginning (assuming people are paying more attention than they are), but quickly it feels very easy.

[dd323]

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The second is that at the lower limits the blinds aren't going to eat your bankroll so fast that you can't afford to play a tighter game, keeping in mind the need to occassionally change speeds.

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Actually, this isn't true. When Slansky talks about game structure, he is talking about the size of the antes (or blinds) in relation to the bet sizes. In the case of NL, the bet size is capped only by the amount of money in play, therefore the comparison that is important is effective stack size compared to blind size. This is not really relevant, because it also means that implied odds goes way up as well as stack sizes go up. So he is really talking about ante structure in a fixed limit betting game (10-20 7stud with a $1 ante and $5 bring in, versues 10-20 stud with a $.50 ante and $2 bring in play very differently).

1-2 NL with $200 stacks has the same exact structure as $10000-$20000 NL with $2,000,000 stacks.