I don't think good players are really all that worried about un-creative marginal regs reading poker articles and suddenly being competitive with their own skills. Think of your favorite regfish - do you really think he's smart enough to read what I have to say and stop you from printing money snapsitting him? (I mean that generically, I'm not sure if it applies to you specifically)

The very good poker players will take on all comers and laugh at the thought that the regs they are beating now could become more skilled than they are. Those hanging on by a thread as they start to fear the game passing them by are the ones who start worrying about what new content is available to the public this week. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the people in the second category who feel entitled to stay at the top, especially when they often learned a lot from freely available strategy content as they came up, too.

At any rate, we've had this debate tons of times now, all the way back to when I first started making videos for the site. People constantly forecast all sorts of doom and gloom, especially for superturbos. Those people have consistently been proven wrong.

so you do blame him?

Also, I tried to make this clear in my post, but "giving back to the community" credit should mostly go to ChicagoRy - he's the one who wants to use the articles he purchased from me for a free ebook and is betting on getting a lot of value out of it later that way. I'm not trying to make myself out to be some saint. But I am also proud that the content will be produced this way and I certainly won't shed any tears for scared nitty regs who aren't evolutionarily capable of maintaining their current levels of success. And I'll be happy for the people with balls who work hard and develop their natural talent and make themselves successful, especially if this ebook is even a very small part of that.

No I do not blame him at all. He is a great coach who deserves to profit from coaching. But all these training sites and wealth of shared information have done a lot to destroy the games. I do not really feel like getting into the reasons why, but I am very confident in this belief.....There is no point in continuing a debate on this. Best of luck to you both, really. Ill keep on watching the HU SNG vids while hating that they even exist in the first place .

imo...

re publicity..
whatever revenue the site generates for the owners<<<value lost from sitting fewer fish/poorer regular players with huge glaring juicy leaks due to free quality information available

re meritocracy..
you got to where you are by doing alot of work, asking alot fo questions, thinking about alot of situations..... you paid your dues and deserve the benefits you have achieved.

If you can cram enough quality information into an Ebook that allows the average player who desires to improve to achieve growth comparable to 50% of the knowledge you have amassed in 20% of the time it took you to grow by the same margin its not growth based on the same merit

More of a concern than fairness is that flooding the lobbies with higher quality regs is going to siphon fish money out of the economy faster, and make it harder to sit fish yourself

now initially this may actually work to the advantage of m/HS players who are at the top of the food chain and will grow fat for a brief period as those who really take to the new information offered grow their BRs and move up too fast

BUT it is possible that this will be disasterous for the long term health of the HUsng economy as the "training ground" for people who might otherwise pick up the game will be relatively reg infested and even bad regs are hard for novices to beat/survive


that got a bit rambly for my tastes but feel like i need to post it anyway urge you to think more carefully about what the "sky is falling" people are saying

I watched 45/180s dry up as fields became filled with people who understaood at least a bit what jam fold play was about, even bad regs are 10x harder to beat that fish in that format.

Im new to HUs (trying to become a "former" 45/180 grinder) but a month into learning them a little bit i hear a great player is going to make a ton of high quality content free and i think "**** yeah! im gona devour that stuff!" and then i think "aww ****, i was already expeccting HUs to eventually dry up and not be so juicy as more regs get in the game and dilute the fish population but how much will this fast track that climate shift"

it will slow my personal growth and BR growth initially for you to not release the Ebook, but i think it will be in the best interests of my long term results if you do not. (everyone like me willing to do the work needed without the cliff notes is going to be winner anyways and most of them have likely already found your site)

i think all the training site owners and players who have made videos for them have sold themselves out a bit and though i appreciate that i have benefited from them i have a pretty clear cut feel that it is actually harder for the average player to make a decent living because of them

if you want to set up residuals ask for an hourly +10% for 3 months +5% for 2 years and take on serious students

if you want to be altruistic, dont move the expected ROI of the average match any closer to nil by making the Ebook the first thing that pops up on google when someone types in "how do i beat HUsngs?"

this looks quite contradictory to me.

also, i dont agree with your choice to make the forum public, but whatever floats your boat. gl!

edit: just read your explanation on making it public mers. Awkward.

Forum won't likely be public.

Hokie and Mers overstate things just so that everybody is clear, but much ado over nothing, it's not like January will come around and you can just click on the forum to view everything there. Hasn't been finalized but it will likely be a member only thing (for premium or maybe premium and standard members).

Will membership prices stay the same still?

edit: oooops wrong thread

Probably.

Been kicking around an idea to limit standard downloads per month to something like 40-50 and lowering the price of that option.

I think it would allow some more lower stakes guys to subscribe to the standard videos, and get people paying less per month but sticking around for more months in a row on average, which should have some positive impact on the site.

If anyone has any thoughts on the above idea shoot me a PM, curious to hear.

Premum will likely stay the same, with or without the addition of the FT private forums to it. It's a great tool, but like anything else, the benefit is for those that work hard, study and most important play lots of focused volume. That happens with or without, so while the hardest working people will likely swear by the huge value of the program, a random lazy guy hoping a private forum will turn him into a winner overnight will still be disappointed.

In any case, the premium price will likely depend on who is making premium videos in 2012, which is far from set in stone (as usual). No plans to change it at the moment though.

I don't really want to increase price on anything though, US players are devastated and player pools are smaller now on worldwide sites. We need to grow the game, get as many new players as interested as possible to keep it growing as it has been the last few years. That has more to do with adding a bunch of solid free content though, and less to do with the premium membership I suppose.

Yeah I think it is clear cut. I highly doubt these coaching actually believe they are giving back to the community, they cant possibly be that deluded considering how clearly they think about poker. What they are doing is fine, but don't blow smoke up everybody's ass by pretending its something it is not.

I am running the FastTrack program for a few reasons: 1) I think I'm really good at it. 2) I want to be able to live in the US post-BF, so having a source of income that doesn't rely on poker site cashout delays or paying crazy amounts of vig is really +ev for me. 3) thinking about poker very frequently, and being challenged with questions from talented students makes me a much better player long term. 4) I really enjoy teaching - was a semester away from teaching high school history before poker really took off for me.

So it's all pretty selfish for me, and I think there is nothing wrong with that. It's a job to me, and a job that I really enjoy.

I do genuinely believe Mers and ChicagoRy about giving back to the community though.

Ryan: probably had 3500+ posts on 2p2 of unnecessarily good quality on this site before the idea of opening husng.com even existed (was already a mod). He received virtually nothing for that at the time.

Mers: If I remember correctly, he donated 10%+ of his years winnings to charity in the past year or so.

It's just in these guys nature to "give back." They have proven themselves over a long period of time to be genuinely charitable professionals.

Stop complaining about your diminishing winrates and get to work. I am still crushing my competition, and you can too (I could improve my game a lot still too). I will never stop improving, and I will always work harder than the vast majority of my competition. If you aren't capable of that, get a job (or keep your job) - poker isn't for you anyways.

Lol at complaning about giving free material to the community. they probs used it themselves when starting, got to a point where they are confortable with their mediocre skill and now its time to stop all forums, all free material, all comunity, the less the better

I hope those comments arent misdirected at me

ive played 3,000 husngs lifetime, 2,000 of which are this month

im just beginning to learn the game and plan on putting in a ton of work


please dont focus on the comment about altruism either, im not attacking anyone's character, just their lack of foresight

it would be more "giving to the community" to not flood the game with newly not as ****ty as they used to be regs than to make some sort of guide available widespread


@Hokie i never complained about the fast track program, its clearly geared towards players that are already regs and taking the game seriously (not the soft spots that i hope will still be there en mass to pad my ROI in the future)

i do think you can read my comment about residuals and aim a little bigger in how you structure your compensation (small%s over LONG periods of time>>> 15% for a short period of time) and i hope you find considerable compensation however you go about your business but i do urge you not to make the mistake that contributed to the slow agonizing death mttsngs are currently halfway through undergoing




there should be a rule that good players dont publish Ebooks on how to beat any format of poker for free unless they are pure 100% misinformation

oh, i see your point
u think they should make the content available but u would need to make an QI test where if u get higher then x amount link is available to download. whereas only u and a handfull of other ppl would get it, so unworthy ppl dont

if u have an high QI or a large penis (or w/e u need to suceed in poker) u will make the most out of their content and get more info then the unworthy, if u disagree ull have a serious problem in life cause thats how it works

nash chart is public already, and easy tu use; it's not like fish are using it....and it would def. make them better at hypers.

What is this last paragraph about? Nobody is complaining about their diminishing win rates. People are just pointing out that a wealth of free information and poker sites have causes the games to become much worse.

Also I doubt that anybody really thinks its unethical to give information for your own profit. It is one thing to do that and its another to do it and call it giving back to the community.

bump

So if I buy the Full Access, I receive the extra right to ask questions? Is that the only difference?

sorry, missed this.

full access = you can post in any of the threads in the forum. you get to start your own personal thread where you can ask me unlimited questions. there is also a mersenneary-only thread, where you can direct questions to him as well.

read only = not posting, just reading.

What kind of threads/articles are there in the forum? I mean, can you give some titles. I love your and mersenneary's videos and I wonder if it's worth purchasing the read only access. Is there a lot of info that hasn't been discussed in the husng.com videos? I play $100-200.

definitely a lot that wasn't discussed in videos - but even for stuff covered in vids, it's just so much more in depth in the forum (esp in Mers' articles). Mers' articles are so good. I spend almost all of my time in the forum answering questions in pretty extensive detail in the personal threads.

this is the list of articles and stickied threads for the FT forum:

Article Discussion Threads

How and when to 3-bet light 30-75bb deep

Reacting to People who 3-bet wide 30-75bb deep

How and when to check/raise light

Endgame Strategy Interview

Correctly Applying "Shove or Fold" Endgame Strategy

Taking Advantage of Image against riyyc225, h2olga, and livb112

Errors by Erik Seidel, Chris Moneymaker, and Vanessa Rousso in NBC HU

Jamming expectation against a wide button opener 20bb deep

Readless Ranges: What to do 20bb deep from the big blind against an unknown opponent

Leak Plugging: Do you call too tight OOP?

11-14bb with marginal hands from the Small Blind: Raise, Openshove, Fold, or Limp? (Advanced ROFL Theory)

Chubokov: What it is, what it isn't, and how to separate its useful information from the useless dead ends of Sklanskyland

By Request: Calculating pot odds and how often your opponent has to fold to your bluff

Threads started by Students

XXX's HH thread - A MUST READ for all superturbo players

XXXXXX HH thread - Recommended for reg speed/turbo players.

Bankroll management discussion

PrimordialAA answers a few questions

theloner and 22riverrat22 are morons. hookie came to barcelona a week early and helped out my students nearly as much as FT and I did. he went out of his way to do this. he did not receive anything extra for doing this, he is a natural teacher and enjoys teaching.

talking about "profiting from spreading information" is beyond ******ed. look at the top 5 players in the world, do you see them doing videos? the answer is no, because getting $1k for doing a video and giving away secrets is not worth it in the long run; it has a negative expected return. the ppl that make videos and coach are doing it because they enjoy the challenge that poker gives them and they want to see the game continue to grow and a develop and they genuinely enjoy the rewards of teaching others.

anyways, haters gunna hate. stop being such an elitist and assuming that just because you were able to get to a certain stake without others help that other ppl cant do the same. There is a reason that fish at higher stakes are better than fish at low stakes, and that is because they play the best in the world every day. ppl learn, the game gets tougher, grow some balls and deal with it.

edit: oh and rypac does a ton of free deals all the time. I remember a few months ago he was giving away free subs to husng.com to ppl that contributed to these forums. this cost him money in terms of subs and making the games tougher. he had nothing to gain from this, and when I asked him about it he told me "since BF the forums have had decreased activity and trolling has increased. hopefully this will have the reverse effect". So to say that he does things solely based on profit is not fair and ignorant.

I will be doing full hand history reviews for the returning full access students in November (those who had October full access and renewed). Pretty much the same format as the Spamz0r hand history reviews stickied in this forum.

I'll probably continue this indefinitely following this month. Anyways, a little additional value and change of pace from personal threads/articles for the same price.