Playing theoretically optimal is not the most profitable way to play in many lineups and dismissing live tells is obviously terribad but Doug Polk is getting pretty old (in poker years) and probably has little desire to improve at this point. That is not unusual or surprising. I doubt he even plays that much poker anymore.

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I think Doug is a great player and he comes across as a great guy too, but I do think that he places far too much emphasis on blockers. Sure if you have a blocker it changes the percentages of your opponent having certain hands or of being on certain draws on the streets but the amount it changes it is quite small, especially when it's a suit blocker rather than a card rank blocker.

I know that he is over stating the importance of blockers because I basically only play PLO and in PLO it is so easy to over strategise the role of blockers, and PLO is obviously more of a nut hand game compared to NLHE so blockers are very, very important in it but nonetheless they are not as reliable or as relevant in practice as you might think.

I am not dismissing Doug's strategy advice that centres around or includes blocking card factors, but I am saying that he has IMO incorrectly convinced himself of them being more significant than they really are in NLHE.

And what has very likely happened in game play is that his strategy regarding blockers has worked for him. Why? Well because he plays an aggressive style that involves betting his current, or even backdoor, equity aggressively as well as putting his opponents to the test on the river, and as we all know hardly anyone ever has a hand in NLHE, so his style works.

But IMO it only has a very small part to do with blockers, hard to quantify how much of a part, but on an arbitrary unit % scale, if he thinks it's 10% I'd say it's more like 2% to 4%, because he talks about, "us having a nine", "which blocks our opponent having called us on the flop with a straight draw on a T83 flop", as if there is only one 9 in the deck and not four of them, and as if the straight draw is a massive part of the opponent's reason to call range on the flop, when again it is not a massive part of it like 67%, but often much less.

So he's over valuing the significance of blockers but because he's playing so GTO in virtually every area of the game it feels to him as if he isn't.

Doug has actually said himself that NLHE is less about blockers and more about frequencies. ie in a certain spot you need to be bluffing x% and while blockers do not have the hugest affect on opponents ranges esp in wide range spots, it is the best way to pick your spots and gain that extra 2 to 5 to 10% extra folds or calls in a given spot.

Okay, fair enough, I have watched loads of his hand analysis videos which are excellent, but I have never heard him assign a % value relating to the effect of a blocker, but if he's ever mentioned it being as high as 10% then that is clearly mathematically way too high. It might be a bit more accurate/feasible specifically for river bluffs because we now have more hand information with which to narrow down what our opponent has likely got to the river with, but 10% is much too high on the streets when making flop and turn decisions.

(He does talk an awful lot about blockers, like in virtually every hand he ever analyses.)

The other thing he is not accounting for is that the mere fact that an opponent is still in the hand does on average increase the chances somewhat that they have the card that you don't want them to have or expect them to have, even if you have a blocker yourself.

This is the exact issue in PLO, where if you get too crazy betting or raising with blockers and it doesn't force your opponent out, then guess what, they have it even though you have some blockers. Yes this is a different sort of principle to blockers in NLHE, but experiencing this phenomenon in PLO tells me clearly the general value or otherwise of blockers, and in turn how the values would translate to NLHE.

Laughable sense of entitlement from Americans itt who think that it is mandatory to tip, and they are better than anyone who doesn't.

I am from London., live in London, play in London and the UK. It doesn't feel like you have that much experience of seeing how hard dealers work, the long anti social hours they work, and the fact they cannot make a mistake or freewheel or sit out for a bit like a player can.

Or if you are aware of all of this, then you simply have no empathy for someone working hard in a service industry where it is accepted convention for you or I as a customer to directly contribute something towards their pay.

This.

I swear, it's like Americans are culturally conditioned to be sanctimonious *****.

edit: I guess it's not just Americans.

Yea her charity is a complete ****ing joke which isn't surprising. Wearing sunglasses is also fairly comical.

Hearing deeb and polk commenting was really good.

Man I hope you are not lawyer. It's not good defence...

aside from all the hands he vpip'd he played well yeah

Granted, Mike's charity is obviously more immediately beneficial to a large group of people, especially in Western nations, but Cate's charity has a lot more relevance in the Eastern Hemisphere. The state of journalism in China and some Middle Eastern countries is absolutely abysmal, there basically is no concept of freedom of speech. You can be heavily fined and even imprisoned if you publicly criticize governmental policy. It's pretty easy to take the ability to question your government openly for granted in the Western world.

Definitely not fair to categorize it as a complete ****ing joke, both are noble causes worthy of support.

This I agree with.

I would never troll about something this important.

So did the dealers get nothing in terms of salary in the hopes of getting a tip, or just minimum wage?

Cate did ultimately tip them. There was a long twitter controversy about it that blew up overnight that was painful to read.

Example 3,644,764,873 of someone dissing all Americans and then discovering they are individual people just like everyone else.

Good Lord, stop the political posts, and post more about how poorly Dentale played.

I didn't watch the match, but thanks for this response. I hate the idea that so-and-so is a great poker player, except he tilts too easily, wasn't prepared or a in a good mental state to play and played too many hands. However, he's better at high-level thinking or some other esoteric skill than his opponent, so he's the better player. If you asked me, two of the most important skills a live poker player can have are patience (i.e. the ability to let go of a lot of hands pre) and tilt control.

It reminds me of two guys I play with a lot. One is a very good, deep poker thinker. If you played with him only for the first hours of his sessions, you'd think he should be a pro. He's great at ranging his opponents, knows when to let go of hands, is good at getting value, etc. However, when he gets drunk and/or goes on tilt, he's awful. He calls too much pre flop then folds a ton post-flop to pressure because he's so sure he's getting sucked out on. He talks a ton and then just spews. This would be bad enough once in a while, but probably happens at least half the time.

The other guys is a nit. He'll play 5-10% of hands, and play them aggressively. He wins (though not a ton) because he's usually putting money into the pot with the best hand.

A lot of people say the first guy is the better player. If only he didn't drink/tilt, he'd crush the game. Of course the second guy can win, he's waiting for aces. I always disagree. The ability to avoid tilt/spew is a huge part of poker success. First guy's A game is better than the second guy's A game. However, the first guy's C game is awful, while I'm not sure the second guy has a C game, and the first guy is playing his C game a lot.

The way you keep score in poker is the chips. If one players is winning more chips than another, the fact that the other could be better under some circumstances is irrelevant. If you want to argue that Mike is better than Cate, the point to make is that a best of 3 HU match proves next to nothing, not that he's have played better if only he had been more prepared, or hadn't tilted, or whatever, because doing those things are part of his skills or lack thereof.

Nice post, and it's hard to disagree with much of what you said. My earlier posts, to which Howard Treesong responded, and then you to him, were to point out that some balance should be applied when analysing the match and how the players played / how good or otherwise they might be.

I stated that it was a perfect storm (for Mike) of bad cards, bad flops, being outflopped, and not being as well prepared as he could be for the match (which I agree this part, lack of preparation, is 100% down to him) that greatly contributed to a one sided result in the match.

I can kind of get why he was relaxed about preparation, because he is a family man and running a business with a lot of employees, so you can see how he doesn't have as much time or inclination as a full time pro to prep and study etc and it has now come out that both players were bought in by PNIA for the match, so the incentive to prep would perhaps lessen when you are free rolling.

I also stated that I don't think Cate is that good, with my main point being that she was very average in game 1 despite viewing a 30 hour coaching video by Doug Polk and likely getting in game coaching and previous hands fed to her by friends.

Your points are very relevant to what makes a successful poker player and it seems likely that Mike is more in and out temperament wise at the table than Cate who is more level in that respect.

Again, maybe it's less crucial for Mike because poker isn't his job but it his her job.

So she is probably going to always make some money in live cash games because there are enough players out there who have some of the negative tendencies you describe, however, it's a different ball game in live MTTs as they are not the degen attracting environment that cash games are and on the contrary they attract a significant number of players who have solid or great skills in both the technical areas of the game and the behavioural/emotional areas of the game, so it is a lot tougher for her or for anybody to achieve a sustained and long term significant edge in live MTTs.

I've been there, as a full time live cash grinder, and even when you are consistently doing well with a very good edge, it's still IMO mostly an undesirable existence and way of life for a number of reasons.

Couple of good posts there.

Is it confirmed they both didn't have to buyin? Lol

I believe they bought in but I don't know for sure.

Cool, I can't disagree with any of this either. I have a pet peeve with the idea that the "easy" skills to master (patience, not tilting, etc.) are less important than the "hard" skills (leveling, ranging, etc.) but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying. Completely fair for Mike to only invest so much time in a free roll. More generally, I'm a cash game player, so don't have a good sense of what makes a winner in live MTTs.

I'm also usually completely uninterested in poker personalities/grudge matches, my interest was piqued because I happened to be at Sugarhouse on Saturday and saw some of the ads for this match. And then when I read a bit more, I thought Cate's back story was cool, since I'm a lawyer as well. Her legal credentials are impeccable, and I think it's interesting she left her job to pursue poker. Something I've always day-dreamed about, though I'd never do it because I'm further along in my career than her, don't actually dislike my job that much (on most days) have a wife, a couple of kids, a mortgage and the stereotypical "golden handcuffs", and I'm not good enough at poker to justify it.

They get paid less than half of minimum wage, so yeah, they 100% took the job in hopes of receiving tips. No tips, no dealers (unless casinos were to start paying them a livable wage).

lol it takes luckboxing to win mtts

it takes tons of luckboxing to win an mtt.

Number 1 requirement, ainec is luck.