I found this article in my email inbox today from the p5s forum and I think it's pretty important to share with certain posters in this forum.
I was in the nightly PokerStars $10+1 $12k guaranteed tournament recently when I found my favorite kind of player. Well, “favorite” might not be the right word. “Intriguing” might be closer – someone worth talking about and analyzing.
Very early in the tournament, another player called Mr. Intriguing’s bets on the flop and turn with Ace-high, and spiked the river to crack a previously top pair and win a large pot. In standard online style, Mr. Intriguing went off about “donk” this and “idiot” that for a number of hands before getting into the real “woe is me” stuff:
“they f me and f me and f me”
“and they feed morons”
“it’s how they stay open”
“feed the nightmares and the real players tilt”“Real players?” What is a “real player” anyway? OPR says Mr. Intriguing has played over 2500 tournaments on Stars, ABI of $24, -41% ROI. By my math, he’s lost almost $26,000 playing MTTs. If that is a “real player,” I should prefer to be “fake” and keep my money closer to my wallet.
After playing so many tournaments and losing that consistently, and still having a high opinion of what he’s doing as a player, he must have some leaks so ingrained that he can no longer see them as problems. Sure enough, before he was done with the initial volley of complaints, one of them generated more fuel for his fire:
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Seat 1: Player A (1797 in chips)
Seat 2: Player B (2260 in chips)
Seat 3: Player C (1370 in chips)
Seat 4: Player D (1625 in chips)
Seat 5: grapsfan (5950 in chips)
Seat 6: Player E (4210 in chips)
Seat 7: Player F (2925 in chips)
Seat 8: Player G (5157 in chips)
Seat 9: Mr. Intriguing (2074 in chips)
Mr. Intriguing: posts small blind 25
Player A: posts big blind 50
HOLE CARDS
Dealt to grapsfan [5s Kh]
Player B: folds
Player C: folds
Player D: raises 200 to 250
grapsfan: folds
Player E: folds
Player F: folds
Player G: calls 250
Mr. Intriguing: calls 225
Player A: folds
FLOP [4c Th 7s]
Mr. Intriguing: checks
Player D: bets 400
Player G: folds
Mr. Intriguing: raises 1424 to 1824 and is all-in
Player D: calls 975 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (449) returned to Mr. Intriguing
TURN [4c Th 7s] [Jc]
RIVER [4c Th 7s Jc] [Qd]
SHOW DOWN
Mr. Intriguing: shows [Td 7d] (two pair, Tens and Sevens)
Player D: shows [Ah Ks] (a straight, Ten to Ace)
Player D collected 3550 from pot---
The size of his raise in relation to his stack (he’s only got 8x the raise), plus being out-of-position, means he should fold a suited 2-gap hand. He will not flop perfectly – two pair or better, plus great draws – often enough to support the implied odds he’s getting on the call. Focusing how good the flop was, how bad Player D’s flop play was, and how unlucky the turn and river were…all of that hides the leak. Mr. Intriguing shouldn’t have been playing that hand in the first place.
We all have leaks preventing us from being the best we can be. The only way to fix them and improve is to ignore whatever we think we know about the game, and our results in it, and focus on what’s true. Use unsparing, unflinching honesty. That's the brutal truth.
I’ve had winning results in SNGs on every site I’ve played, and MTTs on every site I’ve played other than PokerStars. The size of the fields and the relative small sample size in my Stars history mean my data is still relatively fluctuating. Winning a couple key flips here and there, and I’d be well into the positive…we all would.
It would also be easy for me to blame my negative results on running bad. I certainly have hand histories to support a theory that nobody runs worse than me. That’s not true, though. We all have those hand histories. Playing too tight, and not giving yourself a chance to catch a draw or a well-hidden flop, always waiting for the nuts and never letting luck balance itself out…that’s a leak, not a virtue, in today’s world of poker tournaments.
Playing bet- and stack-sizes poorly is a leak as well. I play a short stack well, probably because of my experience in SNGs. And I can find good spots early in tournaments, making adjustments to what the table gives me. However, I consistently spew away big stacks early, and have trouble making the right table adjustments in the 30-50 BB range when the average stacks are shrinking in the middle of a tournament. Knowing what to do in the beginning and end, but not the middle, is another leak.
Blaming your losses on the site being rigged…well, that’s a leak too. This is probably Mr. Intriguing’s largest leak – worse than playing T7s to a 5x raise out-of-position, worse than remaining on tilt from a bad beat long after the next hands are dealt, worse than all of the other problems he must have to show such a long history of negative results. From the time of his beat above to his elimination, we were all treated to a steady stream of:
"like i said they screw the real players all day"
"its their way of keeping idiots with no clue believing they can play so they stay all day long and keep feeding the rakes"
"do you get phuked like that 1/2 the time?"
"you see you players see so many bad beats (UNLIKE REAL GAMES) that you enjoy seeing other players get screwed and you expect it it is so sad"At certain points in his monologue, I asked repeatedly, “If you think it’s rigged, why do you play here at PokerStars?” He never answered. He wasn’t as interested in thinking up an answer to my question as he was in complaining. After all, complaining is easier than facing logical inquiry. If the site truly is rigged against you, the “real player”, but you can’t stop playing anyway…that’s the worst possible leak.
But if he quit, then he’d have nothing to complain about. He’d lose the ability to think of himself as a “real player.” If you’re not strong enough, keeping your excuse for losing is worth suffering the losses themselves. And that’s the brutal truth.
Here's the basic facts: no one plays real money poker expecting to lose as a result of their own ability. No one plays thinking "Everyone is better than me here and I'm going to lose". However variance allows players to think they're better than they are, and that's why we have fish in poker. Ego keeps players in the game - people who continually deposit over and over again do so because they think "these donkeys can't keep fucking me over every time" and severely overestimate their own ability. grapsfan summed it up pretty nicely - if losing players like these are "real players", then I much prefer being a fake player and making money.
People here are willing to help you if you have an OPEN MIND to criticism. Just because you saw something on TV at the WSOP 4 years ago that worked doesn't mean it is the right play in a microstakes cash game. In fact, never try to learn from poker on TV for one big reason: you're not ready to think on the level that the pros do, and when you can't hear their thoughts behind each action, it's completely useless to you.
When people like me, NightFrostASS, ihufa and other diamonds troll you on this forum and respond sarcastically all the time, it's because we see the same shit over and over from fish. Responding the same way to every stupid question is boring and redundant for us when you're too lazy to look back at old threads. Read old threads before you ask a question, since chances are its already been answered. There is a search function at the bottom left of each forum page, put it to good use.
We all have leaks. Put your ego aside and listen to the experienced players on this forum because many of them are willing to help you if you're willing to put in the work too.
