Quote:
Originally Posted by Garick
SRT, you need to understand that comparisons of edges live and online are apples to oranges. I beat $5-15 SNGs for a decent, but not amazing, ROI and never beat $10NL over a significant sample size pre-Black Friday, and yet whenever I played live $200NL, I was far and away the best player at the table. Hell, back then I actually played, for significant money, against players who didn't know basic rules like "only best 5 cards count" on a pretty regular basis.
Live $200NL isn't that soft anymore, but it is still way softer than $10NL was pre-BF. I mean miles softer. I am definitely not some amazing player, and I don't study other than ITF (though I participate in strat ITF more than the average bear), and I can duplicate many of the WRs reported ITT. Of course, it's possible that I've been running hot AF for years, but I certainly haven't seen an WR well over AI EV-adjusted. I think live just offers much bigger edges than most online regs can imagie, especially after one realizes that almost no one is exploiting you and you start playing super exploitative against the massive leaks of so many live players.
So, I'm actually 100% willing to believe you. I started playing poker when the moneymaker money started to dry up, so my views are a little colored by the fact that I'm used to playing against tight-passive players, and all my baselines are derived from trying to apply uSNL and SSNL logic to live (I try to divide stakes by 10 to get a plausible baseline), but I'm willing to accept that if that's wildly inconsistent with the experience of most regs, I have to be the one who is incorrect.
The reasoning about there being exponentially more lucky meh-winners than unlucky exceptional winners is sound, but I probably need to shift the baselines around substantially with more experience :/