Training Sites <<< Solvers <<< Courses giving away MDA
I never took it seriously when members of the poker community were saying how bad training sites were, for the future of this game. Maybe I took it a little more seriously when solvers came, but I was wrong, most people were using, and probably some still are using solvers in a bad way, where it solves leaks in certain nodes but creates other leaks in other nodes.
The thing is, real opponents have leaks, and knowing what those leaks are, and how to exploit them, is what gives serious players an edge. And the good thing about this is that learning all that, the correct way, requires a lot of resources and some understanding of how to analyze data. But, every single course maker, and apparently CFP owner, and their mother, father and daughters, seem to be willing to sell courses giving it away. And obviously, we all know a high price tag (and it is not even that high) means nothing in a world of cheap resellers.
I am not disputing the right of those guys to sell whatever they want to sell that is legal in the real world, but all this seems to me like these coaches are finally (almost) publicly recognizing poker is dead and they want to make a quick $ out of the stupid people who still dream of making money playing this card game. They are giving away accurate data on how fish plays, can you believe that? The only player type we can't ever get rid off if we want tables to be +ev.
Or maybe the next frontier is in developing RTA and playing cat and mouse with the sites for the foreseeable future.
Opinions?
23 Replies
Now, it's not all gloom and doom, I can even see some solutions for myself. I don't want to talk about my ideas on this topic tho. You know, if they end up working, I think my ideas have to be worth at least 10-20x what those guys are charging right? 😃
Sites and solvers and MDA has made the game tougher, but the majority of people saying “poker is dead” are people who can only win when games are the absolute softest.
Fish don’t use any of these tools. While good tools make the fish lose more and faster to the better players, IMO this isn’t the leading driver of a smaller fish population. Poker just isn’t as popular as it was during the Boom. The issue is less fish in not too many fish out.
Very few players claiming to take poker seriously are using any of these tools in a near optimal or even reasonably effective way.
The median income in the US is $40K. Assume to compare that to poker you 1.5X it for insurance and such. $60K/yr in live 2/5 or $100 online MTTs is very very reasonably attainable and yet the vast majority of players can’t come near that. The winning player population is always restricted by the overall populations unwillingness to put in the work required to win.
I get and agree with some of your points.
Wow, I knew the median income in the US was nowhere close to the GDP per capita, but 40k definitely surprises me (as too low).
I think the bigger threat to the games is just RTA becoming so widely available that it's just too easy for people to cheat.
Poker will never go away because the average person wants to gamble and poker is a game that also has a skill element.
They don't want to watch courses, they don't want to open solvers and they definitely don't ever want to hear about "mass data analysis."
To grasp high level poker concepts, apply them and do so consistently without issue will continue to be something that extremely few people do.
What training sites do is polarize the field. Players who care about developing their skills will sign up for them. Players who don't, won't. The result is games that are somewhat tougher than they otherwise would be, but there will still be a foundation of terrible players.
To NV8020's point, though, I would not say that grasping high-level poker concepts applied consistently is something that relatively few people do, but not extremely few.
Moreover, online at least, the better players are going to be playing many tables at once, multiplying the effect of their presence in the field. The games wind up with one or two fun players at a table and four or five regs -- and this would not be much different whether the training sites are leveling people up or not.
Courses giving away MDA? That's disgusting! Which training site? I mean there's so many of them, which one?
Poker really could use crypto boom, QE, whatever spike it could get. Some live games in EU are terrible nitfests.
I bought some used books off Amazon I had 15 plus years ago. No limit theory and practice I got from this site for free. But i spent less than 100 bucks for both super systems. Maybe 4 or 5 other books.
I need to get out and play. I love studying and maybe courses would help me.
I really need to just play with people and return to this question
Very thoughtful
Courses giving away MDA? That's disgusting! Which training site? I mean there's so many of them, which one?
I won't tell you. Because of the implication!
What training sites do is polarize the field. Players who care about developing their skills will sign up for them. Players who don't, won't. The result is games that are somewhat tougher than they otherwise would be, but there will still be a foundation of terrible players.To NV8020's point, though, I would not say that grasping high-level poker concepts applied consistently i
It is extremely few. I have roughly 10 years of hands in my database with roughly 100k players, of the 100k, I'd say there are maybe 1000 winners (probably closer to 500). Of the 1k winners 100 are what I would consider to be big winners (well into the 6 figures) which isn't some massive win rate either.
Then you can go look at the high stakes tournaments and replays which are basically the same names over and over again.
Poker is mostly solved yet the average person who even tries poker has no idea about any of it, nor do they have any desire to watch hundreds of hours of dry training courses explaining it either. Poker is just a form of gambling/fun for them.
It's like being concerned that google and calculators will make everybody a physicist. The amount of people that even get through those courses is probably 10% of people that buy them who are already 1% of the poker playing population.
I think the bigger threat to the games is just RTA becoming so widely available that it's just too easy for people to cheat.
like most online games with 'hackers' this really isn't even an issue.
the providers have ALL the user raw data if they want it.
99% of rta doesn't distinguish for node locks.
if a player is constantly near gto rta they are essentially a 'hacker' in online poker parlance. force them to play on a live recording for a week from their normal isp and if stats diverge (which they will) ban! if a player is close to rta in this day and age they can afford to accommodate this request... ez pz, and very simple to institute.
the sites are complicit.
as Nacho just said on a recent broadcast when pressed by Ike about his bad pub
Ike: "you can just play with gtowisard open and they don't know?"
Nacho: "I don't think they care"
THAT'S THE PROBLEM!
"but what if the bots use mass data analyses of the player pool, node lock exploit, and run off that?" which they do (hello ignition!).
adjust and scan for that. this isn't hard. its about cost. in a contracting market with constantly changing legalities nobody thinks this is a good investment.
may or may not currently be true for all but it is for some, imo.
legal providers should REALLY be pushing the envelope here.
heck, I would personally rather have marketing dollars spent here than there.
Poker will never go away because the average person wants to gamble and poker is a game that also has a skill element.They don't want to watch courses, they don't want to open solvers and they definitely don't ever want to hear about "mass data analysis."To grasp high level poker concepts, apply them and do so consistently without issue will continue to be something that extrem
Well if you had coaching from the best in the world like LLLinusLove im sure he could explain how to beat midstakes+ to someone in less then a day, even if theyve never played poker before.
Poker requires so much from someone that I do agree with you most people can't do it...
Poker will never go away because the average person wants to gamble and poker is a game that also has a skill element.They don't want to watch courses, they don't want to open solvers and they definitely don't ever want to hear about "mass data analysis."To grasp high level poker concepts, apply them and do so consistently without issue will continue to be something that extrem
I only play live and would say that only a small percentage of winning live players continue to work on their game away from the table after they become winning players.
Away from the table the only thoughts about poker most have is to wonder why their downswing is lasting so long.
Well if you had coaching from the best in the world like LLLinusLove im sure he could explain how to beat midstakes+ to someone in less then a day, even if theyve never played poker before.
Poker requires so much from someone that I do agree with you most people can't do it...
I beat low-midstakes online myself, I've never been able to successfully explain it to a non poker player, some didn't grasp the game, some didn't grasp the strategy and some didn't grasp anything, all decently to very smart people or maybe they just didn't care.
I have taken a few break even/small losers to winning, but even then they just stopped playing for whatever reason.
The amount of players that win and win consistently continuing to learn/upgrade their game vs the amount of players playing is probably .1% to 99.9%.
The average player will never really grasp poker, it'll always continue to be some gambling adjacent activity that they do for fun.
Well if you had coaching from the best in the world like LLLinusLove im sure he could explain how to beat midstakes+ to someone in less then a day, even if theyve never played poker before.
Poker requires so much from someone that I do agree with you most people can't do it...
Well LLLinusLove could teach a midstakes grinder how to beat highstakes 1knl+ in less then a day.
Most people who are beating 200z/200nl now a days for 5bb+ can teach someone how poker works in one day.
***
Its always been about the information you give out and i've come to realize that poker works like a business... you need to network, and find out answers for yourself which can take a while.
Thing is once you start giving people free information in the poker world, its going to come and bite you in the ass.
If you know something that someone else knows, why tell them, whats the incentive? Are they going to do business with you down the line? Are they genuinely good people and you want to network with them?
What value do you add?
I beat low-midstakes online myself, I've never been able to successfully explain it to a non poker player, some didn't grasp the game, some didn't grasp the strategy and some didn't grasp anything, all decently to very smart people or maybe they just didn't care.I have taken a few break even/small losers to winning, but even then they just stopped playing for whatever reason.Th
I mean yes that is true to some extent, but if you look at how many international and grand masters of chess there are in the world (a lot of them), youll realize that people will grasp it eventually.
Why? Technology. Mainstream influence. Changing landscapes. Etc.
Well if you had coaching from the best in the world like LLLinusLove im sure he could explain how to beat midstakes+ to someone in less then a day, even if theyve never played poker before.
Well LLLinusLove could teach a midstakes grinder how to beat highstakes 1knl+ in less then a day.
Most people who are beating 200z/200nl now a days for 5bb+ can teach someone how poker works in one day
If it really were that easy, the online pool would be filled with horses from hundreds - if not thousands - of stables, all the edge the learn-winning-poker-in-a-day crowd would be arbitraged away, and the games would suck even more than they do now.
Nick Howard's Poker Detox stable recruited from graduates of its 30-Day Training Camp program, which worked students pretty hard over the course of a month to learn a basic MDA-based strategy. A month is more than an order of magnitude bigger than a single day. And by no means all of the participants came out the other side as winners.
Basically, I believe that the claim that an expert player could teach anyone to play winning NLHE at any stakes in one day is horseshit
Well LLLinusLove could teach a midstakes grinder how to beat highstakes 1knl+ in less then a day. Most people who are beating 200z/200nl now a days for 5bb+ can teach someone how poker works in one day.***Its always been about the information you give out and i've come to realize that poker works like a business... you need to network, and find out answers for yourself which ca
Linus could stand behind someone playing online poker and tell them *exactly* what buttons to push and I guarantee you a lot of people would still simply not listen to him.
Linus could stand behind someone playing online poker and tell them *exactly* what buttons to push and I guarantee you a lot of people would still simply not listen to him.
I couldnt agree more on this. I could never understand the root why this is happening either
