Party Poker Blog

Wow has Poker changed in the last year...You used to go into a Poker Room and sure there were bad players at your table....Great ! I mean it would be you and 5 or 6 others regulars and a few fish (Smelt) sitting at your table. I mean if you had AK and pre-flop raised and a K hit the flop...you bet 6 regulars folded and 2 smelt called...You only had 2 fish to beat in any given hand....Not so hard. I mean if a 3 came on the turn it was a save perfect card for your AK.

But not any more...

That 3 is a monster.....there are no safe cards left in any deck, anywhere....None !

Now, because of the World Poker Tour and all of the TV coverage on Poker.....It has all changed....

You go to your local card house and sit down in your favorite game and look around for old Frank, or Buddy or Sammy....your old buddies...and they are no where in sight...Everyone at your table except maybe one player you have ever even seen before....the fish are schooling....You are now like the fish in a tank of barracuda's....not very smart Barracudas either...They saw the WPT on TV....They know a 3 might come on the turn or river......YA that's the new way to play it...You now get AK and there is 7 or 8 smelt seeing the flop and 6 or 7 seeing the river every time, hand after hand...There is no safe card in any deck...The deck is covered....Your K on the flop with top kicker the A is no good....you have to improve it to win. If the flop was K, T, 8 all different colors....the 3 on the turn now just gave one of the fish a pair of 3's with a 4 kicker...and of course a 4 will come on the river.....or if a 2 comes on the turn and a 7 on the river, one of the fish rolls over 7, 2.....Ya I saw it on TV and that is the way you play this game......I saw it! You can now be a math pro, odds pro, EV pro, check raise pro, player reading Pro, you can be so on your game you are like Obi Wan Jedi Master Poker Kanobi.....and it makes no difference to the smelt...You have to flop sets, make flushes and open ended draws to even have a chance of beating the games right now ...

Poker is now like:

Playing on the Freeway at 5 p.m. rush hour...

Being the Bait at the fish hatchery feeding time...

Being in a Mash Pit at a Rock concert...

Being near the door of a indoor concert and being crushed to death by all of the people coming out...

I know, I know you online pro's are saying bring on the fish...I can out play them. I am super Poker online playing man! I mean I am really good....so let me tell you how good I really am!...

In reality....your odds have went way down in the current style of play...You cannot bluff a hand at the river very often......there is still 6 fish to call behind you...You cannot check raise....the fish don't know what you are doing anyway and they just think, wow a bigger pot for me with my monster 7, 4 off suit....

Remember: I saw it on TV and it must be True...........

Does this mean that you don't know how to bluff less, value bet more, and check-raise for value more?

This is the old "you make more money playing against good players" fallacy.

Yes, the games have changed. Learn to adjust. They're more profitable than before if you can figure out how, instead of wasting your time whining about it.

This is about the 51 zillionth post on this subject, and the answers don't change. The seasoned veterans and pro's are still right, and the newbies and rookies to the game are still wrong.

A young Chris (Jesus) Ferguson endorses Bonus Code IGGY

ON NATIONAL TV, MIKE?

Mike Matusow, why would you EVER want to act like such a complete and
total prick on national televison? Very impressive display. Classy.

Keep up that disrespectful, insulting attitude and eventually somebody is
going to yank your shit right over the felt and out the door where the
street will then be mopped up with your ass.

Phil Helmuth isn't the only one who can get his ass kicked you pile of shit.

I just watched the wsop from tuesday night.........It was finally good to see Doyle Brunson show off his amazing skills....Many new players to the Poker world only think Doyle is a myth and have never seen his abilities......also I thought Fischman appeared to give Doyle alot of respect in the hands that i saw.....It appears to me Fischman is "growing up a bit more"..Doyle even said he was a good player..i feel the same....I know he is a bit cocky but I think some of that is good for the game...also mike the mouth is a complete IDIOT

>>.Doyle even said he was a good player.

Doyle has been telling losers that they're good players who got unlucky for 50 years.

This title is mine.
I read Brunson with great ease.
Oops. He has two kings.

I wish I could remember exactly what Fischman said, but it was after Doyle had outplayed him once again. As Fischman was talking some smack about all of his poker knowledge one of the other players at the table said to Fischman

"When is your book coming out?"

I literally LMAO

At peak times, more than 100,000 players are playing online poker from the convenience of their homes — betting, bluffing, check-raising, and cussing out their opponents. It's poker, as it will predominantly exist in the future.

While governmental regulation and its effect on transferring funds into and out of games may cloud the horizon, the Internet game is here to stay, and will be the foundation of poker's future.

As I'll discuss at greater length in a later column, an important concept in the Internet poker business is keeping games "live" and encouraging future action by having rules and policies that are designed to some extent to assist weaker players, such as offering a note-taking feature. Keeping "live" players in the game longer serves the interest of the game on many levels.

The note-taking feature made player recall strengths much less important and replaced them with good organizational and note-taking skills. It also made playing multiple games less mentally taxing, allowing players to play longer hours more effectively. Additionally, it strengthened the position of the serious player who was willing to make the effort to take notes, and weakened the position of the recreational player who found that making that level of effort took much of the fun out of the game.

Because the note-taking feature significantly increased the edge of serious players at the expense of recreational players, I encouraged my company's management to resist the trend to add the feature. As time went on, more and more sites added the feature, until it became clear that we would eventually have to add it for competitive reasons. Although it might hurt the game in the long run, by shifting money from softer players to tougher players faster, the competitive marketplace dictated the adoption of the feature.

Young players

From: Tad Perry

I've said I love all the young players before. They're so dumb. I remember
posting about one who raised and raised and raised and caught perfect to
beat me. That was interpreted as a whine. Well, it wasn't. It was more of a
warning than a whine, because I definitely know what it means when I see it.
It means, YOU WONT LAST LONG.

As I've said before, if you can't beat one limit why would you go up and try
to beat a bigger one?

Forget about debates for a second. I have friends that keep records and beat
4-8 with a 3 plus 1 (jackpot) rake, so I wouldn't be interested in a debate
with one of the "low-limit raked games can't be beaten" crowd. Those people
are just refusing to admit to their own short-comings as a possible reason
for poor results, because it CAN be done. Even I've done it.

In any case, a young kid was playing 30-60 in my game today, and he was
making some really rookie mistakes.

And I was wondering, "Wouldn't he rather learn these lessons at a lower
limit?"

Okay, part of me wants him to learn it right there in the 30-60 game with me
taking his money. But is this big ego thing that drives himself to dress and
look like Daniel Negreanu (right down to oversized sportswear) really
necessary on his part? Isn't it a self-destructive case of a guy falling for
his own shit?

I'm just wondering out loud.

I've been of the opinion (and some of you hot young players will hate me)
that you have no outs against someone who's 10 or more years at that level.
Why sit there at the 6-month mark?

I'll even allow for people who catch on quick, because I have seen it. So I
wouldn't argue that it's impossible, but just that it's very rare and the
vast majority of you are not progidies.

I'm not going to pull that guy aside and say anything. No way. He can lose,
lose, lose for all I care. But, just in case any other youngsters out there
are sitting in games too high, I want YOU to ask yourself if you've EVER put
together a record of 200 hours of winning at ANY level.

If the answer is "no," stop playing bigshot and go back to a smaller limit
and build a track record of winning.

Remember, if you already have a winning record, I'm not talking to you.

PS: Both young players in question in my post of last year busted out and
had not been seen on the local poker scene for months and months, until one
hit the 30-60 game again last night and busted. At least, he was on his way
to busting when I left, and I figured I'd just give him credit for a bust.
After all, he wasn't back today. Meanwhile, this post isn't about that kid
but a completely new one that showed up today. Certainly I'm happy that he's
in my game, but I'd feel a lot better knowing he had millions of dollars in
back rather than a wife and baby and silly dreams of being a professional
poker player.

tvp

Maintaining emotional control: You say you are mystified by the phenomenon of tilt. Suppose you would be put to death if you did not make a profit by 6 am. Imagine then how you would play if you got stuck. Imagine your emotional state if you lost a rack to a 1-outer! As you got more and more stuck and it got later and later, you would become increasingly desperate, and quite logically so. Instead of stepping down in stakes due to shrinking bankroll and poor emotional state, you would step up in stakes. At 5:55 am, if still stuck, you would play *every* hand, in a quite logical attempt to get even and avoid the guillotine. This is my theory of why players act this way. They place great value on winning today, little value on winning overall. My prescription to remedy this problem is to track your winnings and graph them, concentrating on making the graph go up, learning that
the little dips are just inevitable noise. If you're too lazy to do this, at least keep your poker "wad" banded and separate from your personal money, and concentrate on making the "wad" grow.

The Fundamental Attribution Error is a pretty straightforward concept, which has been supported in countless studies across all types of behaviors. Essentially, what it means is that individuals have a tendency to attribute other people's behaviors to internal rather than external causes.