Oh and I was not the mod.... I can type that out on my phone if you'd like??

Here is something to keep in mind: Two Plus Two is not a secret.

It's a high-traffic online forum by anyone's standards, let alone by those of poker enthusiasts. As Joe Tall says, "The TwoPlusTwo community has become so big that it is mapped on the internet."






(How do you avoid telling the fish about I Can Haz Cheezburger?)

^ haz map of the world and the secret treasure.

FWIW... if people know I am on 2+2... well w/e. I don't however openly say "hey yo, iz youz a 2+2 banger? I am."

Yeah, for the record, I was NOT upset, as this was all within the trash talking of the game. I just didn't want to take the next step there.

And yes, I did dare him to guess on the record, though I don't recall/didn't hear the fish asking if he knew the amount. All in good fun, keeping the table social and happy.

I wrote this down because I thought the story was funny, not because I was upset in any way. Was wondering if other have good stories about veering away from 2+2 talk, that's all.

So, now that we've discussed my OP to death, any other stories?

I think pfap should host a '2+2 containment game' at his casino during the series this summer,
anyone who wants to talk shop is quarantined, oh, i mean, invited to play with
their faves from the forums, and help each other impress themselves.
bubonic play, and myself can come by and heckle from the rail, lol.
I would find that highly entertaining.
if everyone at the table is doing it, no harm done,
and the rake still gets paid.

No offense. But, even the majority of people live, who know about 2+2 are idiots.

When people talk about +EV or some new pro or even mention 2+2 in some way, they still usually suck.

I guess I'm saying this because OP sounds really stupid IMO.

He's bragging about being so predictable that the size he's going to raise the pot is absolutely standard? wtf?

gtfo seriously. this is a worthless post.

To add: I'm not sure if this was just some attempt by OP to kiss the mod he was playing with's ass... But,

I still consider that stupid thought, so, my original analysis stands.

Except for the statement about intelligence, I agree with this. (I actually think most donks are reasonably smart. It's the other things that prevent them from improving their poker game.)

More generally, I think many players don't seem to realize how difficult it is to become a good poker player when they make these "don't educate the fish" comments.

It's not the fear that people will suddenly get better. I've never said that, nor have I seen that held up as a complaint. So don't argue against it.

It's the tonal shift that occurs once strategy is discussed, and once it's revealed that a few people at the table are part of a club that views the game entirely differently than the casual gambler.

If you don't recognize this shift, then either you're not paying enough attention, or you talk strategy far too often.

^ This

I don't mind when people help fish learn. I also love to talk strategy. But neither of those things should be done at a poker table IMO.

There are people that just want to gamble at the tables. They usually lose but sometimes win. (Like craps, BJ, roulette, etc...) They are fine with losing and blaming it on "bad cards." But when people make them feel inadequate by not understanding what is being discussed, or are made to feel dumb for playing a hand badly, they no longer are fine with losing their money. They tighten up or just rack up.

Keeping the fish comfortable is +EV

I guess you guys should stay out of California then. Out here we talk strategy incessantly at tables, and somehow, the fish are still fishy.

There's a difference between "oh, yeah, you had lots of outs," and "Well, normally I just float and lead the turn, but here I felt like 3-betting based on our history... Oh, and by the way, what are your thoughts on this hand of 20/40 I played the other day at..."

While I think we recognize that the Bay Area has far more regular grinders than most markets, I've still seen first-hand the latter kind of chatter consistently dry up tables in a Bay Area cardroom, night after night, week after week.

Just because everybody else is doing something, doesn't mean you need to join. Very often I see people say something they don't quite understand, then another player make a wrong assumption about the depth of poker knowledge, and start rambling on about stuff. And now suddenly everybody starts talking strat. Meanwhile, the recreational player was merely trying to sound like he knew something at a real live poker table.

Thanks for the props Alan.

But dont forget the original way to tell someone is a 2p2er is to say, "Does the Brown Trout sleep in the closet?"

And answer is "Aye she does."

Eventually this is how 2p2ers became to be known as "trout." And has been posted in poker dictionaries.

The archives are not working so well for me at the moment but you can see there is plenty of credit fo the Brown Trout nomenclature here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...6&postcount=14

and here:

http://archives2.twoplustwo.com/show...63&page=0&vc=1

I've found that even good live players believe some old wives tales because there is no math to prove them wrong.

This is one of them.

Again, many tables here feature DETAILED strat talk. It makes no difference.

OP if you want to talk strat, talk strat. If you don't, don't. Either way, it won't make a difference.

Had a big fishy guy losing tons of money leave because some young moron had to display his 1337 poker skills at the table (to me obv).

Fish limps, kid raises, I 3bet his open really light and he folded.

After the hand he says something like "I know you were 3betting me light there cause you know I'm trying to isolate this guy (points towards fish 2 seats to his right)."

Fish has this WTF look on his fish, plays 1 more orbit and then leaves, probably embarrassed cause he was losing and the kid made him feel like a worthless degen who was outmatched.

Never has any bad beat or cooler made me angrier then the insensitivity of this kid, coupled with his know it all persona (he was not good, he open-limped q5dd type hands from mp).

I'm 21 myself but I wonder if these kids have like never been out of the house or something... Soooooo bad for the game.


Story-

One kid who I know is a 2p2er because he dresses in a certain way(people talk about his clothes/hairstyle in the casino thread) whom I think is a pretty good winner in my games was seated at my table. He also answered my questions about comps and stuff in the thread so I figured I'de say whats up.

He didn't know me, so I just said "XXXX right?"(his 2p2 name), he says "yeah, what's yours" "Robfarha, thanks for answering that stuff a while back" "No problem"

Then we played for 8 hours and didn't say a word. Standard.

1) You're in a unique market. You need to recognize this. So some stuff said here can be true without applying to the games you see.

2) I've seen it have a very noticeable impact on a regular basis, in your market. I'm thinking of a couple of players in particular who played a lot in a room I dealt. Every night, they'd go on and on about strategy, have discussions on the best way to play ATo UTG, etc etc. Every night. And every night, their table was the tightest, shortest-handed table in the room. Every night. (And this was true even when only one was playing, because he'd initiate conversations with anybody who even pretended to have interest, even if the conversation was WAY over that person's head.)

Now that i'm in Vegas, I also see it have an effect. The most boring nittiest slowest-action tables are those with some poker wizards talking shop. The loosest fasted gamblingest tables are those where people are vague and simple about their strat talk, if they're even on that subject at all.

...

Also a consideration is that I see more tables than you do, and I'm not emotionally invested in any of them. When you play a session, you likely see only one, maybe two or three tables, and you're the star of your movie at it. When I'm in a room for a session, I'm seeing a dozen tables. Every day. So my sample size is much larger. Surely that should count for something?

If you're defending strat talk because you like to talk strat, you don't know what a table looks like without you at it.

Word.

In case you guys missed my point...

The guys talking strategy are usually idiots too.

OP not excepted.

I think some of us might still be missing your point. Why don't you make it one more time?

Again, you have no math behind this. It's all anecdotal observation. And my point is poker players tend to see what they want to see.

I'd say that more than 1/2 of the tables I have played at over the past 5 years have featured some strat talk, some of the tables have had a lot of strat talk, and I am a significant net winner over that time period.

So I have a mathematical reason for my conclusion.

I suspect what really happens is:

1. 2+2 nit who doesn't like strat talk hears strat talk.
2. Fish leaves.
3. 2+2 nit blames the strat talk.

I don't care about strat talk. For the most part, I don't engage in it. But I have NO problem with those who do. Indeed, I think games are more enjoyable if players talk about whatever they want, INCLUDING poker.

If some players can't win at tables with strat talk, I suspect they can't win at tables without it either. Good players don't care.

Bottom line, if you care about this issue at all, you are probably a losing player.

You have no math behind your view. It's all anecdotal evidence. You're a poker player; I'm not... so what are you seeing here?

All you have to go on is your assessment of my intelligence, observational abilities, deductive reasoning skills, and experience having dealt at tables ranging from the absolute bottom to the absolute top.

If that's not enough, there's not much more I can offer. But it makes little sense to hold up "no math; merely anecdotes" as a criticism against me, as you have nothing more to offer yourself. If it's no good for me, then it's no good for you either.

The only reason I care about it is that non-strat tables are more fun and don't break as quickly. I recognize that many players want to talk strat. Hey, power to 'em, that's the game they want. I merely observe that those tables tend to be tighter and less chatty, overall, in my experience. I've directly observed the effect on the same stakes in the same room at the same time often enough to feel comfortable with this assessment.

"If you disagree with me you must be a losing player" is a powerful argument, one to which it is difficult to respond effectively.

Hah. Well I play at Commerce, O11 and sometimes bike/hg. IME, while strategy talk won't influence the degens it does influence the social gambler. To me, fish have multiple sub categories, each one with their own motivation to play. The degens love to gamble. The social player wants to gamble as well but have fun more than that. If you are at a more social fish type table, talking strategy and especially embarrassing a fish for gambling is HUGE -EV

Law:
It's possible that 1-2 has more degen style fish who just want the gamble. However if you ever move up in stakes you will find that the players start to split between good and recreational players with fewer and fewer degen/more and more social style fish. Move up and you will see.

Also, ever stop to think that you COULD have won more? -EV doesn't necessarily make you a loser in a soft game but it could be a metagame leak ( even if it's not you spewing the strat there are still probably better spots)....

I play mostly 20/40 limit these days. Over the years I've regularly played in 8/16 and 15/30 limit, and I dabble in 1/2, 2/5, 3/5, and 5/5 no limit.

Whether I "could" have won more is an unanswerable counterfactual. But that's the point. Live poker is a series of unanswerable counterfactuals. And in the absence of math, people make a bunch of assumptions. One of my favorite law professor scholars, Duncan Kennedy of Harvard, lampooned judges who made assumptions about economics in their rulings, saying "it all seems to depend on empirical data which nobody seems to have at hand". That's basically the premise upon which I analyze the various old wives' tales of live poker.

I don't care about this issue, particularly. It isn't like I go to the poker tables to talk strategy. I'd say that the vast, vast majority of the time, I'm not really a participant in these discussions.

But I also know that basically every winning poker player I know here in California doesn't give a crap about this issue. Some of them don't participate in the discussions at all, some participate. But none of them are bothered about it or go and post threads about it on 2+2. It's taken as part of the game. If anything, the strat talk keeps the fish happy.

Good poker players question received wisdom. If there's math to back it up-- as there is with a lot of questions about gameplay thanks to online poker, tracking software, and tools like PokerStove-- then fine, but it happens that there are many things that lots of players seem to believe that don't have any mathematical backing at all. They just believe them.

Now some of those things are obviously stupid things like having better luck after asking for a set-up. But others are not so obvious. For instance, there are plenty of live limit players who leak like a sieve in kill pots because they have convinced themselves of their amazing Superman-like ability to "outplay" their opponents who will wither in the face of their aggression when there is more money on the line. And I have seen that bad advice repeated more than once in online poker fora. I suspect if an online site offered kill pots and we had tracking software to analyze millions of hands, these players would be in for a shock. But we don't and the wives' tale persists.

The point is, if you want to say "don't talk strategy at the poker table", you need to analyze exactly the claim you are making. Are you really saying that the fish will turn into Phil Iveys if they hear a bit of poker strategy? I doubt that-- although I will tell you that some players I know (who are not winning players) actually seem to believe this. Are you claiming instead that the fish will change their play if there is strat talk? OK, if that is your claim, how would you go about proving this? How many hands would you need to record? 10,000? 20,000, for a significant sample. You probably need 10,000 with the strat talk and 10,000 without, right? And you'd need to carefully record statistics such as VPIP and agression factor. And you'd have to analyze if players react differently to different sorts of strat talk. Do the players react differently to a discussion of pot odds than they do to a discussion of starting hands? And what about whether it is presented in an insulting manner ("you play that garbage?") or a more neutral manner. For each of these questions, you need another 10,000 hands with good recordkeeping.

Nobody's done this. It's all assumption. It's all "well I saw some player do X when there was strat talk". Yeah, and you don't know if that player would have done not X without the strat talk. You know, sometimes bad players tighten up when they realize that they just lost 1/2 their disposable income for the week, or when they don't want to lose the winnings they already attained, or when they get tired, or when their mind drifts, or whatever. Attributing all these things to the strat talk, in the absence of hard data collected over tens of thousands of hands, is nothing but the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

What I'm asking of you is to engage in some actual critical thinking. The same critical thinking that produces winning poker players, who not only understand what to do but why they have to do it, and what conditions would make it appropriate to do something different. All those things originate from the ability to question received wisdom, to not assume that just because somebody says something, it is true.

On this issue, nobody has anything but anecdotes and stories. They aren't enough.

If you don't want to talk strat, don't talk it. If you don't want to play at a table where they talk strat, ask for a table change. If you can't avoid getting bothered by this issue, you need to think more critically about poker and what we actually do and don't know.