The Life Cycle of a Poker Player (and my thoughts on live vs online)

[Micturition Man]

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The story of my poker life in 07 is that I was a big loser online, but I was the biggest or second biggest winner in live poker from May-August. On the whole, that has left me pretty flush.

My online play has suffered from some bad life management... I've been living a bit too fast, trying to do everything on a high level. It is ridiculous to play the biggest online games in hotel rooms while you are on respite from the biggest live games, and, yet, this is what I've been doing. Moreover, I basically didn't have a home from May-early November, and I was dealing with the stress of a broken engagement. I feel that my level of poker knowledge is at a world-class level, and in the past (especially 05) that led me to good success online, but this year my online endeavors have been a failure. I can't say how much of that is due to variance and how much is due to bad play.

Here's a good illustration of the difference b/w live and online....
David Peat (Viffer) is one of the best live NL regulars. Online play is all about optimizing one's bluffing/value-betting ratio based on the tendencies of your opponents. Well, for six months, Viffer had a policy of never bluffing Kenny. That is, if he bet big on the river against Kenny, he was never bluffing. For him, that was optimal... if Kenny knows when you're bluffing, your optimal bluffing percentage is 0. Something like that just makes no sense in the context of online poker.

Brandon

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i've played with viffer live and online and think he plays very mediocre poker in both contexts.
however, when i played with him live he was best friends with all of the fish and succeeded in getting himself invited onto antoine walker's private jet so they could continue the game when antoine had to leave. this didn't actually happen, but antoine and his friends were fairly serious about it.
i have no doubt viffer makes a lot of money playing live poker, but i really don't think its because he's one of the best no limit hold'em players around. i don't think he could beat a table of first rate online 5/10 players, even if they were playing live.

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I think this anecdote about Viffer kind of proves the point of how futile it is to seriously rank poker players.

If Viffer were able to talk his way into a HU game with that Mexican guy who is now the richest man in the world and win $200 M, would that make Viffer the greatest poker player of all time?

Poker is just not a game that lends itself to objective ranking... even cash game $ winnings is a very weak proxy for poker skill.

Another example - if one could imagine a duplicate David Benjamine who was 20% more game selective, that person would have far higher career winnings than DB. Would he be a far greater poker player just because he avoids HSNL hu matches with better players?

[Sponger.]

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Online play is all about optimizing one's bluffing/value-betting ratio based on the tendencies of your opponents. Well, for six months, Viffer had a policy of never bluffing Kenny. That is, if he bet big on the river against Kenny, he was never bluffing.

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6 months live never bluffing 1 guy in big situations? So this probably made a difference in about 3 hands.

[VitoT]

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I think this anecdote about Viffer kind of proves the point of how futile it is to seriously rank poker players.

If Viffer were able to talk his way into a HU game with that Mexican guy who is now the richest man in the world and win $200 M, would that make Viffer the greatest poker player of all time?

Poker is just not a game that lends itself to objective ranking... even cash game $ winnings is a very weak proxy for poker skill.

Another example - if one could imagine a duplicate David Benjamine who was 20% more game selective, that person would have far higher career winnings than DB. Would he be a far greater poker player just because he avoids HSNL hu matches with better players?


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very good post, and true.