Quote:
Originally Posted by hedgecock
Was it ever proven that Hastings, Townsend and Cole DIDN'T collude during the actual match-up?
I was there. There was zero communication going on between those guys. The hand history stuff is laughable as well. Their "analysis" of HH's was basically like, wow, this guy is actually as bad as we thought. For a week or so, everyone in the high stakes community was thinking that he was bad but the game (PLO) was in its infancy. He ran so well for the first week or so that there was a possibility that maybe he was some mad genius that had the game solved and thought about it differently than the rest of the player pool.
Uhmmm, nope. Variance is just crazier in PLO than anyone understood. I would bet that around those matches no one in the high stakes world had any idea how many hands constituted a significant sample size to determine winrate in PLO. People thought they were the best for winning big over like 50k hands. lol.
You realize that the CR guys each wanted his money for themselves right? If I remember right, cole and aba were stuck to isildur. While they're friends with Stinger, I'm sure they were both disappointed that they didn't win all the monies.
It was just a matter of time that he went off for a number like that. Hastings got lucky that it was him but any number of guys were that much better than isildur at PLO. Obviously, thats why he got that much action. Fanboys ITT don't have a clue at how bad he was at that game. In fact, around that time, I would argue that everyone playing high stakes PLO was probably terrible by todays standards and yet had a significant edge on blom.
We were all studying for midterms or finals. Everyone that had the roll was waiting online all day hoping that isildur would sit them. One minute stinger was studying for a test in his room, the next minute blom sits him. 4 hours later he had the money.
I remember we went out for beers after and it was incredibly surreal.
TL;DR I'm biased. IMO the isildur thing was blown way out of proportion. Most of you give high stakes players too much credit. 99% of winning like that is right place, right time. PLO was the wild west back then, nobody had a clue.