I had the opportunity to play against “the best” not so long ago, against players such as:
VBV1990
Jackstack99
Spacegravy
What was the results? Who is good, who is bad? Collusion? Politics? What mistakes did I do?
I will share the answers to those questions – but most importantly how I did it.
Lawboyy vs 1000$ [1.1%evROI]
My power-ranking of the HUSNG scene
1. VBV
...
...
(these dots remarks a drop-off in skill)
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2. Rams85
3. Niemelin
4. Razvanel/Andrechuvak
5. Luis Coppel
6. Jackstack
...
...
7. Spiritdreal
8. Grindation
...
...
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9. Spacegravy
10. Ididntmeanit
*Based on a mixture of: experience playing them, tables, stamina, results in-between these guys
** Bluenowhere not in the ranking, due to lack of knowledge, but Id reckon he is in the middle of the pack
Backstory to the current hyper climate
In 2017 big banwaves hit which wiped bigger parts of the 1000$ and 500$ hyper cartels. This more or less lead to freeroll move-ups from the guys at the stakes under (200$ and 300$ became the new 500$). A few guys from 500$ got into the 1000$ cartel with less than 1000 games played, even when showcasing mediocre results. This is what formed todays cartels where basically weak and strong guys shares the lobbies together. Some guys basically haven’t battled at all, due to protection and promotion from their “stakers” (being a horse to the right guy or team is worth gold in this climate). Now to give credit where credit is due, to bumhunt and friendship your way to 10,20,30 and 40k a month-salaries is an impressive feat itself and shows for very skilled social intelligence – it just doesn’t score high in the power-ranking (therefore you can see the ones at the lower end of the powerranking as highly skilled in this art).
The misunderstanding of HUSNGs profitability
It has been a long trend of talks about HUSNG dying, being less profitable than spins, and so forth, and although the action becomes less there is upside that is being forgotten.
1. The misconception of good EVROI against fish.
Players has this theory about what evROI is possible against fish, and a good reg is “supposed to have 5-6-7%”. Some announce themselves as being the biggest fishcrushers, by showing numbers of 7 and 8%evROI.. Now if they only knew, that the best guys, silently prints 10-11%evROI– hereby DOUBLING the earnings from what their cartels friends are making. It is safe to say that there is a lot of HIDDEN money in HUSNG that a majority of the regs basically gives up, because they are mediocre fish players.
Is it easy to perform +8%evROI? Of course not, these guy worked very hard to attain these results, but its 2019 and there is a lot of technology and information nowadays to help people figure out how to crush as hard as possible. I am not referring to GTO-solvers – they will not give you 10%evROI against fish, because fish dont play close to GTO, and if you dont have a good evROI chances are that you dont really know how fish play, and how to exploit that real hard.
2. The pools got softer and sweeter. Nowadays there is only a few people that is in que, and since the skill-gap is so different, it makes a big difference if you que with somebody taking 10%evROI of each game, or somebody that take 3-4%.
3. Spins is a full-time grind. HUSNG leaves a lot of time, stuck by the computer, but still time to invest into other projects, while waiting around for whales to throw money in your already rich belly. It is hence a time-effective grind.
Fish evROI power-ranking
1. VBV/Rams85
2. Andrechuvak
3. IDiditmeanIt/Jackstack/Spiritdreal
…
The rest (3-6%)
*The data which this is based upon is a mixture of 2017 and 2019.
– How I got 1.1evROI against the 1000$ hyper cartel –
Shooting 1000$, I lacked experience, this was my second year as full time poker player. I lacked bankroll, only had money for one single shoot, so trying out and failing was not an option. Now the dream was always to play the best, and become a 1000$ reg. Even when I started playing 5$ hypers I was watching the lobbies of the high stakes, trying to learn. My opponents had experience, they had money, and it was me against everyone else. Not the easiest road, but my dream was aligned with these obstacles, so I had to try.
Im gonna let you in on a little secret – which may come as a big surprise. I did not run a single GTO solution 6 months prior to me starting to battle, nor did I study with PIO, instaGTO or anything of the kind during my entire shot. I even livestreamed a major part of the shoot, due to cheating accusations from a few opponents.
Reality: F#CKGTO = 1.1evROI.. In a world where everybody is consumed by it.
I do have solid GTO understanding, so I am not by any means stating that it is unrelevant.
Now there is three big advantages that gave me edge.
1. Information advantage
-Superior HUD
Prior to shooting I built myself a very advanced HUD that basically gave me opportunity to exploit leaks that my opponents would not see in their less-advanced HUD, or that it would take a long time to realize. Most of these old school guys sit with the worst tech, to see this firsthand check out jackstacks PT4 HUD from 2000 B.C on his twitch.
-Comprehensive analytical tools
6 months ago, while I still dabbling in spins I built my own postflop population tendency database for spins and heads up. This was a huge project which amounted to thousands of hours of hard work and programming. It made me learn exactly how population (reg/fish) plays postflop – in every single line. This gave me 4 years of poker experience in once single program, and therefore closed the experience-gap my opponents had on me.
With this system I could setup lines where my opponents would make huge deviations from GTO.
*The upside of playing spins for a couple of years, meant that I had a lot of data to analyze
Across the years I worked very hard to build the best preflop charts imaginable, again, with the aspect of exploiting, but also taking into account GTO (preflop is insanely complicated when it comes to the theory aspect).
*After years of work and changes I can recall my Heads Up REG preflop charts from memory with 80-85% accuracy – This made me gain edge against the best pre, and based on what I saw some of my opponents had gotten really lazy in this area.
2. The Maxexploit theorem
My approach to this game is to not convert to GTO, but to maximally try to exploit my opponent, in every spot I find any reason to do so. My goal has never been to balance my bet sizes, bluff/value-ratios or freqs – of any sort.
Does this mean I don’t care about such things?
On the contrary, I am very aware of what my opponent sees in my FREQS and bet sizes. I analyze my own HUD more so than my opponents after every session – but I do not ask myself what is the GTO-way – only what I think is good against my opponent.
3. Dynamic exploits
This is a very sensitive subject, due to its nature of being very private and unattainable in todays climate, so I will keep this short, but add that I have collected a ton of experience when it comes to dynamics, and keep doing so everyday.
-Timeing tells (the effectiveness of this varies against each opponent, but the nature of it is real) This was something I think I managed to successfully use against VBV, however I suspect Jackstack managed to use it against me.. You win some you lose some.
-Board textures. People think they are reacting back to GTO, but there is a lot of boards where they deviate based on bad experiences (negative emotional connection), especially in spots where it is “close” between two actions.
-Selective memory. There is loads of spots, where what happened in prior hands, pushes the opponent to think in biased ways (especially about bet sizes, and bluffing/valuebetting boards). My favorite notetaking consists of “saw me valuebet/bluff big in this line”. Everytime I see such a note I just reverse my playing style..
What has to be realized is that people might try to play a GTO-playing style across the game-tree, but that doesn’t mean that people actually are GTO in invidual spots, especially when 1000$ is on the line in a river all in spot.
Results against individual players (from their perspective):
VBV1990
Jackstack99
Spacegracy
*These where the players I had the most volume against
**Playing against Jackstack is a game of patience as every game takes 2.5 the speed of playing a normal game, and highly affects the volume.
Politics? Collusion?
Poker-skill is only a small fraction of the world of HUSNG. Equally important is the skill of knowing how to politically navigate the landscape. Being connected with the right people, hence getting an “endorsement” can be of great value – for example some seats basically got given out for free, not so long ago, solely upon being staked by the right guy. It could also be a downfall, if connected by the wrong people, or if there is a Judas in your circle.
On the topic of collusion, I do not know much more than specific players have direct friendships with Pokerstars security employees – if this is actively being abused, or is just neutral friendships, I do not know. But a good rule of thumb would be to find out who those players are and not press those players, it might come back to bite you.
Cheating?
Some light cheating is probably going on here and there, NASH chart, a few preflop charts on the wall etc. (lets not forget pokerstars changes their policies every quarter) – but I would not be to worried about running into fully-loaded GTO-bots. In a 1v1 it is much easier to find these players, and it seems pokerstars is doing a good job wipeing them.
When it comes to the spins (250+) I suspect 2-3 players have some really advanced high tech cheating systems going for them – and id be more cautious with who I am playing against.
If something is too good to be true… it most probably is.
Lessons from my mistakes
I did a lot of mistakes in my shoot, and here is a freeroll to learn from:
1. Do not play multiple players simultaneously
2. Do not swap around multiple players to much (focus in on 1-2-3 targets – do not jump on a 4th guy without a deeply constructed game plan, only because 1-2-3 is not showing up in time)
3. Always ask yourself IF… and make sure you are not getting exploited in any way. If you are, can it be used to your advantage?
4. Do not give in to your opponent strengths (Example: If opponent is good at multi-tabling, you don’t load up more than you can handle)
5. Consistently work on improving and crush harder (When I was up 50.000$ in EV I got cooky, and started to work less outside the game, and fall victim to upper mistakes as well – it immediately hit me back).
6. Have a good player analyze your game/coach you (perspective is important)
This is just a brief introduction to the world of HUSNG and my journey. If something needs further elaboration, explanation or correction, I will do so in further posts within this thread.
Lawboyy
Last edited by Lawboyy; 06-24-2019 at 04:00 PM.
Reason: mage-upload instead of links