Episode #388 - November 19th, 2015

Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - This week on the Pokercast: A fan favourite from the November Nine, and we bust open the mailbag! First off Adam and T share some thoughts about Paris and the huge Ronda Rousey upset this week then jump into the news. In ICYMI There wasn’t much going on this week but stories include a new 6max Limit Hold’em bot in Vegas and an article about Jason Somerville and Twitch poker in the New Yorker. There was a lot of discussion about taking too much time to act in tournaments in our forums this week, tournament director Matt Savage joins us from LA to talk about his take on the situation, and game of golf that incited a strange prop bet. After a break, Neil Blumenfield joins us. Neil was one of the “old guys” that made the November Nine this year, finishing in 3rd. He joins us to talk about how he improved his play so much leading up to the final table, choosing not to play poker for a living and more. We then induct a new member to the IPWOF, talk to Matthew Hilger at Pokerstars and read a ton of great mail from you! Before we call it quits, we review some of Ross’ hands from the week and of course the password to the Pokercast invitational is in the show!

Music: Skegss - L.S.D (2015), OHD - Priorities (2015)

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Invitational IDs:
PM - 1385925165
$1 - 1385925527

First??
yiss

Second

I'll never get this close to First again

Podium

Back and 4th.

WPT final table

Sent from my Nexus 10 using 2+2 Forums

Six pack!

Bermuda

1st to be 8th!

9th

Quick reply after hearing the ISIS discussion:
I always felt the same way as Adam about these random and nonsensical terror attacks. After hearing some experts talk about this, it does make sense actually.

ISIS don't just want to kill some sinners just for the sake of killing. Maybe thats the individual terrorists' goal but ISIS leaders do have a clear goal in mind:
They want the western world to hate muslims and go to war with ISIS. This will unite the muslim world under ISIS and lead to desired total war.

Obv its just as nonsensical to want a total war but if that is your goal and you actually think hated muslims will unite against the western world, their strategy is actually not that dim...

Aren't the also actively trying to bring about the apocalypse, end times?

Dozen take long to miss out on a podium

Yup, don't really want to talk ISIS, but I think Adam was off base a bit. I'm almost certain that terrorist's/ISIS's actions are rational responses to their abhorrent goals and the geopolitics of the situation. One of the clues was the discussion Terrence had about 2 minutes later about media and public responses vs actual levels of activity.

Also, I think the 'poker players are logic thinkers' thing is massively overrated, and an example of whatever that cognitive bias is where you are good at one thing and therefore think you're good at not-very-connected things. Yeah poker players are good at certain types of decision, and those types of decision have some wider applicability, but they're also massive bags of cognitive biases of their own.

Haven't listened yet, hope this made it in "140 or less" https://twitter.com/ekul604/status/666494582264205312

Moments like this make me appreciative that we have a forum for an otherwise all-audio podcast. Pure gold.

I totally agree with the first long email in the show this week - the one describing the experiences of the fish, and basically the regs are whining about the VIP changes because they put short term greed ahead of the game being fun on-line for the fish. I also agree with Adam that they are bound to do that.

I've had email conversation with stars support numerous times over the years complaining about having to wait ages for multi-tablers to act. I've suggested 'solo' tables (where you can only play one table at a time) on several occasions, as a way to solve the problem, but it hasn't happened Again, Adams suggestion of max 2 tables works for me.

Only a tiny percentage of players 'aspire' to move up towards SNE. Plenty aspire to build a bank roll and move up as a consequence, but that's a different motivation. Its a very good thing IMO that stars wants to reduce the number of break even or losing players who only profit from rake-back - those players are killing the on-line experience for the majority of others.

Thought the interview with Neil was great. Really refreshing to hear someone break the 'old guy' stereotype and also put ego aside.
Imo everyone should be trying to put in that much work to prepare for the ME final table but it's pretty interesting that he was one of the seemingly few guys in recent years who have done so.

Appreciate you reading my email this week. Having heard it back I know I would write it a little differently (and certainly a bit shorter!).
I think nosebleeds will still run so there will still something for new players to aspire to. Also I'm not really sure how often 5/10, 10/20, 25/50 etc run currently; I imagine most of the guys in those games also play 2/5 fairly regularly as well already so I guess the games might not be impacted as much as I initially thought.

Also I do agree with the points that the previous email made about protecting the rec players. I'd welcome changes that aim to reduce scripting etc and make the games more enjoyable. However, I'm not really sure that reducing rakeback is the best way to go about improving the rec player experience and it could potentially do a lot more harm than good.

HighStakesDB covering the IPWOF:

https://www.highstakesdb.com/6321-in...pat-isaac.aspx

You can leave us a message now at 1-(702)-799-9949. Questions, comments, drunk dials will be played on the air as long as they are good!

In regards to that_pope's email:
Did it actually say you are suppose to speed up at a yellow in the US, or just that is what happens?
It means to slow and prepare to stop, but unfortunately most people take it as I better hurry and get through this intersection.

When they introduced red light cameras here they explained how the camera would work, that you wouldn't be ticketed if you were already in the intesection when the light changed to red.

That wasn't how it had been taught or enforced previously, so everyone went from trying to stop on the yellow, if it was safe, to only stopping if the yellow had been on for a while. This change in perception caused several accidents.

I also agreed with a lot of the points raised by the long email. As a good recreational player who has played stg's, mtt's, Hu's and spins there are two things which have annoyed me the most:

1) Players playing too many tables and slowing the games down, as they try to grind out a small roi and rely on rakeback. I also raised this with stars once and they said if they restricted players to a certain amount of games these players would only play more games on other sites (a pretty negative response, but not untrue). There are lots of players who can multi table without slowing the games down - for example Katie Dozier has a video of her playing 50 stgs at once and she never slowed the games down. But on the whole these slow players really make the experience a bad one for recreational players. The frustration of seeing a player timeout hand after hand preflop drives me up the wall!

2) Cartels - I used to play a lot of HU's, but moved to spins as the games dried up. The fact that players can form cartels and basically bully players to not playing the same games by their actions. I never really played the higher games where these are in place, but the fact that stars have allowed this to continue was really strange - this is not fair play. With players ensuring they would play the rec's only and stop other player by sitting with them constantly until they either stopped or tried to join the cartel is completely against the spirit of the game. The fact that in Spins at the higher level SpinWiz was being used and is now banned is excellent, as again these meant that good players would avoid each other, which is not good for the recreational player.

As to the changes by Stars I am not convinced. On the whole I think the rake is still too high, which encourages rake back for players to make the most money. Stars have reduced the rake back across the board and are putting more money into promotions and advertising (so they say). What they have not done is look at the rake across the games and made any positive changes. The fact that for spins rake is from 5% to 8% (it was much less initially when introduced) seems very high for a hyper turbo. I mean a 5% rake on a $100 hyper seems absurd to me.

Also for MTT's the standard 10% rake for anything under $100 also seems high. In the UK my local casino regularly has a tournament which is £50 + £5 with a add on / rebuy of £50, which I would say 90% of people take. So for 5% rake you get a dealer dealt tournament with free soft drinks. Sure they are expecting people to play the casino games and maybe cash poker, but this is a much better deal that the standard 10% rake for playing the Big 55 where you are playing 60% of pros.

I guess time will tell as to how the changes will affect the games. If more recreational players are introduced to the games and their money lasts longer and good players still have the opportunity to win then maybe this will be seen as positive.

Ross really enjoyed the 1-10 drops.

So wish you would have included this one for #11.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOO5S4vxi0o

Many traffic laws are different state to state in the US. As far as yellow and red lights go, they are also different. In some states, as long as you have entered the intersection before it turns red, you are OK. In other states, like Oregon where I am, you have to be completely thru the intersection before it turns red.