[jojobinks]

Originally Posted by beekeeper

I'd much rather watch a telivised match between Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Carlos Mortenson, Joe Awada, Scott Fishman, Phil Ivy, Ted Forrest and Freddy Deeb than watch that kid with the big "jew" fro, the guy you mention in your thread, and their ilk play--but that's probably just a reflection of the state of my understanding of poker.

brunson: maniac
mortenson: maniac
fischman: maniac
ivey : maniac
ted forrest: maniac

they're just big-name maniacs.

[beekeeper]

Originally Posted by jojobinks

brunson: maniac
mortenson: maniac
fischman: maniac
ivey : maniac
ted forrest: maniac

they're just big-name maniacs.

I have good taste!

[hachkc]

Originally Posted by beekeeper

I'm guessing that a lot of internet players post on 2+2. There seems to be a method to their madness, but I come away from reading 2+2 thinking, "I guess I'd rather be lucky than good."

That's part of the problem with 2+2, you have to wade through a lot of crap to find the useful nuggets of information there.

As to the original post, change happens for better or for worse. Eventually, things will settle down to what works best which may or may not be the aggressive tourney styles you are discussing here. I personally believe you need to be more aggressive in tournies than in cash games which is probably why I like cash games better.

It happens in every sport, someone finds something that works well, someone either comes up with a counter to it or someone passes a rule to minimize its impact if its hard to counter. In most professional sports, there are various rules made to alter the game play which are geared toward making the sport more enjoyable to the masses. Maybe poker will institute those at sometime in order to keep audiences entertained as I hate to say this but televised poker and especially the ME and WPT is becoming more audience driven than poker driven.

How different would the ME be if it were LHE or even PLHE. Both of these would limit the impact of aggressive players to certain degrees. Would it be as interesting to watch for the masses?

[TheMightyJim2k]

Originally Posted by beekeeper

I don't even bother registering on 2+2 because, frankly, the discussions intimidate me. People are either flaming others for voicing an opinion, or saying something is an easy decision, DUCY, when I'm still trying to figure out the writer's question. (Or going off on tangents about how hot, fat, ugly, or slutty any given female player is). I'm guessing that a lot of internet players post on 2+2. There seems to be a method to their madness, but I come away from reading 2+2 thinking, "I guess I'd rather be lucky than good."

You should give 2p2 a try. Sure all of the things you mention above are present and annoying, but if you learn to navigate and ignore the silly stuff it is without a doubt the best wealth of poker knowledge available anywhere. Even if you just read the stickied Poo-bah posts in the NL and Limit HE forums you can gain as much or more knowledge on the game than by reading just about every book on the market.

the site can be a little intimidating at first, but you can browse it to your hearts content without ever signing up or replying. I lurked for a long time before finally joining, and now I consistently read and post in the limit strategy forums.

also jojo is right. Nearly every successful tournament player plays a variation of a loose aggressive style. The reason being that their edge (because of experience, intelligence, feel or whatever) is only going to help if they take advantage of it as much as possible. ie the more hands they play the more of a chance they have to exercise their edge in playing the game. Obviously aggression is a must to be successful with any style, but if you have the ability to play loose-agressive (aka maniac) then you will give yourself a much better chance of taking advantage of the mistakes that other players make.

There are very few successful pros, whether they are internet players or old time road gamblers, that aren't loose aggressive. The internet players that are having a lot of success can't even be considered inexperienced, because as Doyle himself said, they likley have played more tournament poker in the last few years than most of the "big name" pros have in their lifetime.

a more interesting topic than whether or not hold'em is de-evolving (of which I believe the games are being played better and are tougher on average now than anytime in the past) is how the tournament meta-game is evolving.

I wrote a post on that a few months ago about my opinions on tourney meta-game due to the prevalence of HOH strategy. I think it is a more robust topic, and one that could spark a lot of debate in a separate thread......

[w16227]

Originally Posted by jojobinks

ps: semi-spoiler warning: internet maniac currently in the process of wiping out the bellagio cup main event final table.

Ah - but there are maniacs and there are MANIACS.

Stu was so good because he was the best at reading a player - bar none. He was able to put a read on and go with the read. This allowed for him to play many more hands than others. He was more of a MANIAC - but had the skill to back is up. The big difference between his style and the ultra aggresison today is that there is much less skill behind the raising.

Some of this will be cyclical. One of the owners of cardrunners wrote an article for cardplayer recently commenting on this (in reference to cash games). His take was that the ultra aggressive style that was very effective in recent years when tight was right is now very dangerous as there are too many players practicing it (and many do not have the skill or roll to play this style). Tight is now making a comeback since it is getting a lot easier to rake in large pots by targeting the maniacs.

As for the Bellagio cup - I believe that Jojo is referring to BeLOWaBOVe. Yes - he is doing well, along with a big name pro at the FT (I know the result - but no spoiler here in case anyone wants to be kept in the dark).

I have been fortunate enough to see one of his narrated tournaments (full holecard tournament with voiceover). While he is definitely a LAG type player, he is not wildly overaggressive (it was a really interesting vid). The only times that he ever crossed the line from "typical" tournament play were when he had a good read on the other players or the odds pretty much forced him to call. He really did not play a ton of extra hands, though he did like to limp with position ala Gavin Smith.



a quick edit after reading TMJ's excellent post (to clafify my points)-

By tight, I am referring to a tighter style. In cash and tournament games this will definitely mean different things.

In a tourney, I see many players using the ultra aggressive playing style. With strength in numbers, there will be some around for the FT - but they are becoming easier pickings for those pros who have many more gears and can pick them off - like Negreanu and the like. By tighter - I am not trying to say that 5% VPIP is going to win a tournament, but rather more limited use or changing of gears into aggressive style will be more prevalent in the coming years.

lol - I do not think that makes much more sense

[beekeeper]

Interesting and thoughtful repsonses. Thanks.

[_GUN_]

for the record, I wanted to hear as many perspectives as possible and I've enjoyed everyone's respective takes. my post was to entice debate and get opinions, not merely to express my own feelings.

also, for the record, I'm not saying all aggressive players are maniacs. I am saying guys who don't fold the flop/turn/river with no pair and no draw and every hand takes six minutues because it's two goobers trying to outduel each other, that bugs me.

it's one thing when you check-raise all-in with A-high vs a guy you read as weak, a couple times in a session. that's normal, but when every hand at the WS is taking 8 minutes to play because it's 66 vs A9o on K92JT board, that is just reckless to me.

another example: it's 1k/2k blinds, MP limps...BB checks...flop is checked by both players....turn comes, the board has four rags and next thing you know there's 180k in the middle on a 4529 rainbow board and MP has KQ and BB has 8-3 and it's just a game of chicken.

or when it's no pair/no draw versus bottom pair/no draw, no overs and the pot has been raised and reraised and then reraised is suicide.

the Ivey Q-8 hand in Monaco was amazing, it was like no hand I had ever seen. those players, though, had been playing for hours and the bluff was based on previous information and experience. the internet players are trying to basically recreate that hand on every single hand of live tournament play and you just can't play every single hand like that. people do actually make pairs, flushes, and straights in this game and all the crossover players need is to be sold some rope, because they will hang themselves on every street, if you convince them you can't beat top pair.

another thing, which Ivey and Chan said is that they play loose versus a tight table and tight versus a loose table. they don't know their style, till they reach the table. the 20-somethings you see on all the tv tourneys, have one style and that's LAG, they don't tighten up for 20mins, then loosen up for 20mins. if seven out of nine guys are a table, all playing LAG, it just becomes a cluster of sloppy play. no one seems to tighten up and start settling into a counteractive style.

[jojobinks]

Originally Posted by _GUN_

another thing, which Ivey and Chan said is that they play loose versus a tight table and tight versus a loose table. they don't know their style, till they reach the table. the 20-somethings you see on all the tv tourneys, have one style and that's LAG, they don't tighten up for 20mins, then loosen up for 20mins. if seven out of nine guys are a table, all playing LAG, it just becomes a cluster of sloppy play. no one seems to tighten up and start settling into a counteractive style.

who are we talking about? and based on what? i haven't personally seen alex jacob's cards for the whole first 20 minutes he gets to a table, let alone the very large group of people that you're generalizing about.

and let's not pretend stu ungar was somehow not purely maniacal...brunson himself stated that if tptk ever didn't hold up for him, ungar would be out of a tournament. what's more reckless; a naked double barrel bluff at a weak/tight player, or committing all your chips every time you flop tptk?

[_GUN_]

Originally Posted by jojobinks

who are we talking about? and based on what? i haven't personally seen alex jacob's cards for the whole first 20 minutes he gets to a table, let alone the very large group of people that you're generalizing about.

and let's not pretend stu ungar was somehow not purely maniacal...brunson himself stated that if tptk ever didn't hold up for him, ungar would be out of a tournament. what's more reckless; a naked double barrel bluff at a weak/tight player, or committing all your chips every time you flop tptk?

I'm talking about the guys who are grabbing all the headlines and attention right now(Demichele, Mizzi). Generalizations and stereotypes are based on people who make such generalizations possible by consistently cultivating a pattern. I think most of the internet big shots transitioning to live poker are categorically maniacs. I would be shocked if someone could name more recent crossover players who've adapted a tight style, rather than a loose style.

My biggest problem with current tv coverage is the glorification of sloppy, reckless play. Aggressive, bold poker is entertaining, but watching two guys play chicken...well I can see that in a P* freeroll. I can believe a Harrington bluff with a 5-9, because he has a tight image. The LAG players at this yr's WSOP caused hands to run anywhere from six to eight minutes, because of all the reraises and the Hollywooding.

I'm not really interested in digging through 100 pages of pokernews.com hand summaries, in order to list four hands in a row that I think Alex Jacob, Michael Demichelle, or Sorel Mizzi misplayed(so I'm not going to). You said 20 minutes, well at 6 mins a clip, that's only three hands, the way some of these guys are playing.

I am quite certain Doyle's TPTK quote on Stuey was made immediately after his first WS win. If that is the case, it can't necessarily be held true for the next decade. You have to also consider Ungar grew up playing stud outside gin rummy. For a stud player, top pair will often take the pot. I've watched the 97' final table multiple times and you never see Stuey take any big hits, so it's hard to judge if he was still a payoff wizard then, or not. From what I've read on hand summaries and seen, 97' Stuey was much more disciplined than early Stuey. The coverage is so edited and so brief, that you never see any J-2 or 4-8 hands. You only see AQ/A4/JT hands. The player Stuey was at the end of his days was obviously not quite the player he was early on; he had a genius IQ, he obviously had to have evolved as a player somewhat over time. Saying all that, I can't give an extended analysis of hands he was playing in 97-98, outside the TV hands of 97' ME.

It's also pre-hole cam poker, which means the legend of Stuey is based on bluffs he flashed, not on the AK's that were never shown. I've read that Stuey was fluid at shifting gears, that he went loose-tight-loose-tight, I just see nothing in the poker wires that suggest Mizzi or Demichelle have two gears.

Here's what I've seen out of them:

A9...a raising hand...
KQ...reraising hand...
99...reraise 80% of the time....
JJ, ok I call your 300k push, you could never possibly have an overpair to my jacks.

There is a funny story I read on barrygreenstein.com---Barry had just moved in on someone with AK, the player called with QQ and Barry won the race. TJ said, “I can see you learned to play in Houston. Those Houston players would come to Dallas and play that Ace-King, but they'd always end up against a pair of Aces. That's why we call that hand ‘Walking back to Houston.'”

TJ was much tighter then, than now, so you have to put that in perspective, but in the last year I've seen AQ become the new AK, I've seen A9 become AK, I've seen 88 become QQ. Many players seem to have no grasp of hand value, everything plays bigger than what it really is.

Another thing on Barry's site is that he offers player ratings of 1-10 in a variety of categories. Barry warns that the numbers are an average based on actual cash game play, that you can't merely put each one head-to-head and get a perfect comparison, but it's an interesting chart, nonetheless.

"Aggressiveness : Measure of style: how often the player takes the betting lead.
Looseness : Measure of style: correlates to percentage of hands played."

Doyle, Chip Reese, and Todd Brunson: all are 5 in aggressiveness, 4 in looseness
Antonius is a 9 aggr, 8 looseness
Ivey is an 8 aggr, 8 looseness
Howard Lederer: 7 in aggr, 5 in looseness
Chan: 6 in aggr, 4 in looseness
Ungar: 9 in aggr, 9 in looseness

[yeltzen]

Originally Posted by _GUN_

the Ivey Q-8 hand in Monaco was amazing, it was like no hand I had ever seen. those players, though, had been playing for hours and the bluff was based on previous information and experience.

Isn't this kind of baseless? I mean, the Ivey hand you're talking about was from a tournament in which they showed a ton of hands on TV. So, obviously, it's easy to say that the hand was the result of previous play. ESPN's coverage, on the other hand, sucks. They show a few hands, jump all over the place, offer little to no insight, and appeal to the lowest common denominator. This is fine for ratings, but for "hardcore" poker viewers, you're missing a lot of what has already happened. Maybe those kids in the USPC were just playing like that to prove their genital size. Maybe they had great reads on each other and were playing poker on the 5th or 6th level. We have no way of knowing.

The TV coverage isn't trying to "glorify" sloppy play. Their goal is not to promote poker and teach people the right way to play. Their goal is to get the highest ratings possible, and those types of hands are the ones that people like the most. It's the same with our local news coverage here. People complain that the Steelers get all the headlines and the Penguins are ignored. Well, it's not the media's job to promote a particular sports team. Their job is to get ratings or sell newspapers. They'll show/print what sells.

As for Barry's ratings, well, I think he'd rate himself higher than God if he were rating potential supreme beings.