Alright ill give you a little bit of background, i started playing online about 4 or 5 years on party poker when i was 15(this isnt about playing underage, i did it so did alot of other players blah blah its really not that big of a deal).

Back then the biggest games they had on the site were 1/2 and 2/4. I remember just getting into the game and being completely poker illiterate limping the cut off/button, a 3 bet to me always ment QQ+ Ako+. But now thinking back on it i think thats how everyone played, way more "cards oriented" people really wouldnt play ahead of the curve and if you were one of the few that were ahead of there time you were crushing the game. In mtt's back when i used to play them it was the same concept, alot of limping "stealing the blinds" was unheard of and 3 betting with less then JJ was condidered absurd. Somehow i was still able to pull good profit and i really cant see how i was doing that... running good? playing perfect ABC poker? i really couldnt tell you.

Fast forward a year or 2 and i remember having a bigger bankroll and 4 tabling 2/4 and palying the bigger mtt's where i finally started developing some new "advanced" strategies... 3 betting lighter in position, stealing blinds, semibluffing. Just a few things that at that point were agead of its time, which in turn would lead me to be a very profitable player at what i was playing. I kept playing these games until the curve and everyone caught up to me and i felt like i had little to know advantage anymore.

Alright now we come to about a year and a half ago and i started playing hu's. started at around the 110's-220 range and (at this point they didnt have hu cash tables) would just run them over. I would take what i had learned from the cash games and just open my game up even more since we were playing HU and not 6 handed. It worked well for about 6 months until people started evolving and adapting to the new "lagtard" trend that was taking over. From then until today i still play the same type of style (cash included nowadays) and have moved past the 220's up to the 550's 1k's and the style still seems to work as it did before but the edge is still smaller then it was (probably due to stakes as much as the games change).

But what im wondering is whats next for poker...? i cant really think of what could be the next huge game difference. As i see it geting maximum value outta your hands, hand reading and just playing volume and exploiting your small edge over a course of time is what makes the profitable players profitable.

PS. i dont really have the credentials and information to really talk about the game change in MTT's so i thought id just leave that up to you guys

JMprodigy

ya not a shock that this has 1 reply but jj bullshit gets like 600...<3 p5s

From what I've seen and heard, it seems that evolution is actually changing games. Now Omaha seems to be getting bigger and bigger each day. I know I personally just discovered heads up play, which is quite addicting, not unlike potato chips.

Fair play.

This post is actually awesome. I always feel like poker has pretty much been discovered, that there is already a set optimal strategy, but this makes me think maybe theres things that are still left to be discovered

There are hundreds of people that understand flawless poker play, the logic behind it and how to mathematically prove it.

I don't think the top top top of the poker community will get that much better over the years because they already understand everything there is to understand.

I do think that the middle to lower level players will begin to play better and catch up to the peak as they get older, more experienced, and learn. The average age of a poker player now is like ~25-30 and clearly have many many years to improve before their ability decreases because of age.

The poker community has been fortunate enough to only lose a few of the elite poker players. I think the quality of poker will continue to improve until today's elite players begin to pass at the same rate as new ones enter the community.

 

Originally Posted by SCTrojans

There are hundreds of people that understand flawless poker play, the logic behind it and how to mathematically prove it.

I don't think the top top top of the poker community will get that much better over the years because they already understand everything there is to understand.

I do think that the middle to lower level players will begin to play better and catch up to the peak as they get older, more experienced, and learn. The average age of a poker player now is like ~25-30 and clearly have many many years to improve before their ability decreases because of age.

The poker community has been fortunate enough to only lose a few of the elite poker players. I think the quality of poker will continue to improve until today's elite players begin to pass at the same rate as new ones enter the community.

hello mr buzz killington

 

Originally Posted by SCTrojans

There are hundreds of people that understand flawless poker play, the logic behind it and how to mathematically prove it.

As someone with a strong math background (ive taken graduate math courses) I am curious if you have a reference for the proof of what perfect play is. I assume you mean a rigorous game theoretic proof, the reason i ask is that i find it hard to believe one exists.

I dont mean any disrespect sctrojans, i know you are a top player, I really liked the original post and I dont want to see it get killed so quickly.

I think mathematics is very useful for analyzing the game in a very general situation over a long period of time. But when you are faced with a really tough decision, there are so many factors to consider, that a rigorous mathematical approach would be very tedious, and probably not very enlightening. Making the right move when you are faced with one of these super tough decisions is a big part of what poker is all about, what Im trying to get at is that there is a non mathematical part of the game.

The way your opponents are playing has a dramatic effect on what the optimal strategy is (meta game), so how can you claim there is a single optimal strategy? I think the OPs point was that the metagame has changed a lot, and hes trying to start a discussion on good ways to adapt to the current metagame. You have clearly taken the position that there is no way to adapt other than playing the one optimal style, but if there is no rigorous proof of this, then you have to admit its at least possible that there is a better strategy out there for this metagame, waiting to be discovered.

ya, the higher volume players just need to keep exploiting there small edge over large volume and new players will obv keep coming but i was more along the lines refering to new game "tendencies and dynamics".

thot this was gonnna stir up more of a discussion, ill give it one more chance... so bump

lol @ all the redic posts from this thread, flat pre, try and get to showdown and if he has AA high five monitor IMO

 

Originally Posted by 99NvrLosez

<p>&nbsp;one of the smartest people i know told me that he thinks JJ wasnt/isnt even THAT amazing, it&#39;s just he figured things out before everyone else...he figured out that 3betting light was the way to go...and THAT is why he killed it so significantly...<br></p>

lmao yes not THAT amazing... that is only called a genius in any given discipline

 

Originally Posted by dpottz

a coach who never punts

Studies have shown that football teams would score more points if they went for it on every fourth down from any field position.

Since when do c-bets work in live cash games?

There was always more to the TAG or LAG style than just C-bets. I just used that as a style descriptor.

 

Originally Posted by calhoun137

As someone with a strong math background (ive taken graduate math courses) I am curious if you have a reference for the proof of what perfect play is. I assume you mean a rigorous game theoretic proof, the reason i ask is that i find it hard to believe one exists.

I dont mean any disrespect sctrojans, i know you are a top player, I really liked the original post and I dont want to see it get killed so quickly.

I think mathematics is very useful for analyzing the game in a very general situation over a long period of time. But when you are faced with a really tough decision, there are so many factors to consider, that a rigorous mathematical approach would be very tedious, and probably not very enlightening. Making the right move when you are faced with one of these super tough decisions is a big part of what poker is all about, what Im trying to get at is that there is a non mathematical part of the game.

The way your opponents are playing has a dramatic effect on what the optimal strategy is (meta game), so how can you claim there is a single optimal strategy? I think the OPs point was that the metagame has changed a lot, and hes trying to start a discussion on good ways to adapt to the current metagame. You have clearly taken the position that there is no way to adapt other than playing the one optimal style, but if there is no rigorous proof of this, then you have to admit its at least possible that there is a better strategy out there for this metagame, waiting to be discovered.

Nice post. This didn't get nearly enough love