This is one of my very long posts folks because I want to analyse the Doug Polk interview of Cate Hall. I've highlighted MIB211's earlier post and my reply to it below as the posts are very relevant in trying to work out which, if any, of the two players are good at poker and if so, in which particular areas or aspects of the game do they excel at and in which ones could they improve in.
The interview was very revealing for me and I have adjusted my view from what I posted below in my reply to MIB211.
Massive props to Doug by the way on the interview, this man is a brilliant interviewer and a total natural on screen.
Originally Posted by MIB211
I think I'm making a slightly different point. I'm saying that it sounds like Mike places value on these things above and beyond their effect on the bottom line wins or losses.
In other words, take two hypothetical players. Player A plays a tight game, never tilts, never gets out of line, but doesn't bluff much, doesn't make sick calls, won't fold the top of his range despite some tell he may be beat, etc. Basically a good, TAG/ABC player. Player B plays looser, is involved in more hands, mixes it up more, bluffs more, can make some sick calls (though obviously also gets taken to value town more), etc. They play the same games. Player A has a slightly higher win rate than Player B (assume we can know their "true" win rate). I think Mike would say that Player B is still the better poker player, due to his style, because "anyone" could play like Player A, while Player B is using some innate natural poker/people reading ability to allow him to play the wilder style.
SageDonkey reply:
Yes I totally agree with all of the above. Mike is definitely a people person by the very nature of his life, his history, and the business he runs, plus he is a street smarts guy so it stands to reason that he would be much, much, better at reading people than most other players.
So he is player "B" in your example above but also has some but not all of the qualities and skills of player "A".
Player "A" on the other hand by playing, learning and studying more can become an even better version of "A" as time progresses, but probably will only progress a small amount in learning or gaining the skills that player "B" has, so is capped in their learning ability in that area, because as you say player "B"'s skills are more innate than learned and/or are partly learned through environment and not through academic studying.
So one could argue that player "B" has the ultimate potential advantage and edge over
player "A" because player "A" will never be able to learn all of the skills that player "B" possesses, whereas for player "B" it is possible that they could learn everything that player "A" knows................ which is where in Mike Dentale's case The Dream Team comes into play!
If he can make himself into an A+B player he could have an edge over almost anyone. Even a 75% A + 90% B version would be very dangerous.
The Doug Polk interview of Cate Hall
Firstly, I was pretty shocked that during the interview Cate said that Mike Dentale "can go f*** himself", she didn't even use "f" instead of "f***" which had she done is a toned down version and might be perceived as a little more pejorative and less downright nasty and vicious, she used the full word version and said it with feeling.
So who is behaving like trash in this confrontation? Mike in his interview yesterday gave Cate some praise and never lowered things to that level. I can understand that she is upset, but as the viewer, you watch both interviews and you decide whose tone was more aggressive towards the other and who was or wasn't civil in respect of the other player.
Mike was right and has said many times, "that she started acting like a dude towards me which is I why I retaliated verbally like a dude". So there is some hard evidence of this in her interview that he had a point.
Clearly Mike, as they both have, has trash talked a lot on Twitter, but a live interview is something all together different, true reality on YouTube, versus virtual reality on Twitter you might say.
Furthermore, I believe it is an error of judgement to go on a video broadcast which might remain in the public domain indefinitely and use such language, particularly if you have any desire or need in the future to go into (back into) a professional role. "Here is the lawyer we have assigned to your case", "You know, the one that said Go F*** Yourself live on YouTube to a poker player in 2017"
This error of judgement may be a small indicator of the difference in intelligence between a criminal trial lawyer and a contracts lawyer.
I will just use one Bang Bang right here, right now. Insert others for yourself as you see fit during this piece, as I am not officially authorized by Joey Ingram to use his catch phrase!
Coming back to Doug Polk; well it's obvious to all that he is super intelligent, you only have to listen to the speed and fluency at which he speaks, his ease of description, analysis and comment on a wide range of topics, not just poker, and his interaction with others, to know that he has some massive brain power.
On the other hand, when you listen to Cate speak (and I have noticed this before in other interviews) she speaks for the most part quite slowly and deliberately with a fair amount of hesitation. Close your eyes for a few moments and you can hear the voice of an 80 year old American woman on her rocking chair speaking. B___ B___
This leads me to think that she is not super intelligent, but she clearly comes across as believing that she is by claiming that she'll study her way to the top in poker and overtake nearly everyone because of her natural strengths and capabilities.
But in my opinion she is a person who sits within roughly a 40% block section of the population who *are* intelligent but not to any staggeringly high level that would set them apart from the masses.
The slowness and uncertainty of speech is something that I link directly to a slowness of thought, which may go a long way to explaining why she took an inordinate amount of time to call with AJ for a 1/4ish of pot bet on the river on a board that went I believe 26777 or something as bricky, your AJ is good >80% of the time, as that. B___ B___
I was also distinctly unimpressed by any of her answers regarding specific strategy that Doug asked her about in relation to his course that she viewed and the poker strat books that she said she has read. Most/all of her answers were essentially based around the concept of how she is learning and things she has noticed about the learning process, rather than direct or actual descriptions of playing strategies. So this for me is an indicator of someone studying a lot of information but not building the information she has read into proper blocks or entities that can be applied in game play.
Sure, she showed some little signs here and there of picking up some new concepts, but seriously if I'd read numerous poker books, which I haven't, and watched 30 hours of one the world's best NLHE HU player's coaching videos, which I haven't, I would be able to talk fluently about a multitude of different poker playing concepts in at the bare minimum a semi-convincing way. Cate was not at all like this, it was all rather wishy-washy from her.
Being delusional about one's ability is not a crime, it is simply an innocent incorrect evaluation of ones self, but I believe that Cate has displayed this by stating that she can study her way to an approaching infinite level of poker playing skill.
I would be amazed if she can, based on all of the above. I do not rule out a slow, slightly unsure of themselves talker from being super intelligent, it is possible, however when you combine this with a display in her interview of no obvious stand out poker intellect, it looks very unlikely that she can study her way to poker supremacy.
Let's for one moment think about how the likes of Fedor Holz (not even in his native tongue) and Charlie Carrel speak and how they dissect poker theory when they talk about it. I mean there is such a massive chasm between them and Cate in this respect, that it has to surely be an indicator that her maximum poker skill ability is very capped.
So going back to the player type "A" and player type "B" examples near the start of this post, I do believe that Cate still tends very slightly towards being an "A", however I don't think she'll ever be a great "A", and I think she will have to rely quite a lot on her other very good skills and abilities, of which she has many, for her to have an edge in live MTTs. E.g composure, live reads, BRM and hard work and determination.
However, there is a clear and obvious route for her to bypass what IMO is a lack of innate intelligence barrier, and that is not just to run good, which everyone will get from time to time, but for her to be backed or partly backed into very big buy in tournaments. She is clearly a capable player, if not a brilliant one, so she, or almost any player for that matter, will have some kind of realistic chance of winning $500K or a million if they enter just some, or many high buy in tournaments.
So it is very possible she will turn up with some big scores because of this. If this does happen then it is likely that we will see a lot more of her hands on video, or in blogs, so an evaluation of if very good play was a primary factor in her results will be much easier to make.
I do agree with Cate that there are a lot of live tells on offer if you study people enough at the table and that most players are not paying enough attention in general at the table to what is going on both when in or not in a hand, so this is a big strength of hers. This is why I am re-evaluating Cate as a combination of a type "A" and a type "B" player with no significant bias towards either A or B.
Coming on to Mike now.
Yes there were many extenuating circumstance to him playing, what he must know deep down was some of his worst poker in the HU match. To be totally honest he did hand the match on a plate to Cate. The bad cards he got accelerated this process but in hindsight I would imagine he is kicking himself because it also made her look good, when she is not good at HU, and quite possibly not that good at full ring live MTTs either, she is just average or average+ IMO. B___ B___
So dependent on whether he is happy to play sometimes very good, as he often does in tournaments, but also accept that sometimes he does not play his best game, or whether he wants to improve areas of his game, and has the time required to fit this in and around his outside of poker life, then if it is the latter I do believe that he really could be a very good type "A" player, as well as further improve himself as a type "B" player, which he is already good at.
Becoming a very good "A" + "B" player, which I believe is possible for him is of course a great combination that has so much potential to do fantastically well at live poker.
I hear the crowd cry, "a great type "A" player, you must be kidding!".
Well I think he can because unlike Cate, (B___ B___), I think Mike has a high degree of innate intelligence that can be applied to most things, including high level poker and poker related theory.
Regarding the "bet" with Cate about if she earned $500K in a year as a lawyer. I think that he is technically correct that the bet was not actually struck, but morally wrong if he chooses not to pay it.
Last edited by SageDonkey; 03-25-2017 at 08:35 PM.
