Great post yourself Steve. You obviously have a lot of poker knowledge. Are you a player, too? If so, what and where?
Steve Lipsky said:
You can break and run against Efren, but you're not going to break and run the set on him. And if you don't, unless you are a super-top player, you're going to lose the set.
True, but you are not going to win sessions against a tough table of players. It's not about winning hands (like winning individual games of pool), so even if you get "lucky" on one hand, you're not out of the woods unless you quit. I'm just saying it's easier to get lucky enough to beat one opponent, than it is to get lucky enough to beat several (and not getting beat yourself).
But any idiot can easily bust Phil Ivey.
I about wet myself when I read this. This is probably the funniest thing I've heard in a long time! The only way an idiot is going to beat Phil Ivey,or ANY good player) is if he got very lucky and cashed in on a long shot hand against a very strong hand from Phil. Phil (or ANY good player) will realize that their advantage is to both grind a bad player down slowly with his ability to out play him, and only get the big money in when he's a huge favorite. By definition, if the bad player wins in that situation, it was luck... and it surely was not easy. Let's look at the whole thought though...
But any idiot can easily bust Phil Ivey, especially late in a tournament when stack size relative to the blinds is so low. His advantage of being able to outplay postflop is nullified, as you see by the all-in fests late-tournament action becomes.
Actually this is an example of a small sample size, or "Selective Memory", as it's called. MOST of the idiots are not around late in a tournament. They get busted out more frequently than the big players do, but, since there are WAY more idiots than known good players (and specifically good
tournament players), it seems like the idiot is a "Super idiot", instead of just one idiot out of a large pool of idiots that happened to get VERY lucky at a very opportune time. Think of it this way: If you put 10,000 white marbles in a bucket, along with 250 blue marbles, it's pretty easy to see why after picking marbles, there are still a lot more white left than blue. Also, if Phil Ivey (or whoever) gets all his money in with say a set, against somebody that catches a runner-runner straight, that player has made a huge mistake and got very lucky. They were a huge underdog in the hand and figured to lose the vast majority of times. You don't hear about all the times that they lose, since they just fade into the background of all the bad players. You hear about the guys that got lucky an made it big. It's kind of like investing. You hear about people that made a bunch of money on some undervalued stock becuase they are in the lime light. You don't hear about the countless day traders that loose money on stocks since nobody wants to hear about them.
Even before late-tournament play, bad players make outrageously bad calls all the time.
True, that's why 99% of them are watching the rest of the tournament from the rail
But that's why large tournaments like the WSOP Main Event are such mine fields. In fact, as you know, one of the main advantages any knowledgeable poker player has is the ability to make moves. But there's a lot of literature (and you see it all the time) about the danger of making moves against bad players - they don't realize what you're doing/representing. They call you down with third pair when 9 out of 10 times you'll be destroying them. So when the idiot wins that hand, was it difficult? Not at all, he just refused to fold and wound up with the better hand.
Again, proving that the vast majority of idiots don't even make it that far, since they have made enough of these calls to eliminate themselves from the tournaments in the early round, where you do NOT want to play aggressively.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there is no luck to winning a tournament. In fact in Dan Harrington's book, he says something like, "In order to win a major tournament, you are going to have to come back from the dead. That's just the nature of tournaments. The winner always got lucky somewhere, but they didn't rely solely on luck", or something to that affect. The point is that while a few people may be selectively lucky, NOBODY is lucky all the time. You need to make a lot more money on skill to be around for the few times you need to cash in on luck.
Even cash games, which are more difficult, have this phenomenon. Guys have their session bankrolls busted all the time by less skilled players. It doesn't matter that over the long run you'll see who's better - for that one day, or that month, the bad player emerged victorious. Nothing like that will happen at the top level of pool.
Actually in cash games this doesn't happen as frequently as tournaments since the blinds don't change and you can play more of a "Set" style instead of having to change your strategy based on the increased blind structure. While it's true that bad players can get lucky, this is a good thing, and by definition "Bad beats" happen to good players. As a good player you are going to put bad players in a position where they have to get lucky to win. Most of the time they lose, but they win enough times to keep them coming back.
Here's another thought as to why I believe poker is more difficult than pool. I'm even talking about one game here. The fact that you are dealing with
multiple opponents in poker, makes it
WAY more difficult than playing against one opponent in pool. Especially since your opponent may not even come into play in a pool if you run out. In poker, your opponent
will get to react to EVERY decision you make. If you make a big bluff against Phil Ivey, and he doesn't pick it off, any live player still active behind him still might.
Finally I'm not too worried about the internet bill. Eventually even something as stupid as congress will realize the tremendous amount of money that they can make (and use for whatever they want) if they just regulate it instead of trying to eliminate it.
Again, these are just my opinions, and I apologize to anyone if they came across harsh.
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