5% over 12k games is just sick. Even something like 2-3% would be pretty unreal in these overall with such high volume & SNE, kudos. Whenever people ask me what to do in 'x' spot in a hyper, I just tell them, "I dunno, just look at what Jorj is doing and try to copy him". Then they say, "What, get it in bad over and over and win huge? THANKS."

As far as colluders, I'm impressed you caught on to this even while massive multitabling, as it's very hard to spot collusion if people are being smart about it, and it really kills the games, especially at 25/50 where folding 99 or AQ to two EP allins doesn't look that sketchy, and at 200/400 where you can get away with more shenanigans like legitimately making some weirdo ICM folds. Hope it gets dealt with.

As far as PiPB, I dunno if he uses Table Ninja or something in combination with being slow, but yeah it's massively tilting. I don't think most of the regs stall much, it's overrated except in key spots where you'd just be an idiot not to stall when there's a big ICM/EV difference between stalling and not stalling. PiPB seems like a nice guy, but deep down I have this feeling that he's solved some complex algorithm of knowing the average frequency of seconds per hand and is using this to maximize his edge even while 20 tabling. Sounds completely ridiculous, but I love a good conspiracy theory and will look to get to the bottom of it.

I also think he has a personal vendetta for me in certain spots ever since I misclick called his EP shove on the btn at 25/50 with 98o and sucked out vs his AK, then after someone typed "nice call" I wrote, "figured he had nothing as usual." Then he made a rare appearance in the chat box to inform me of the error of my ways. Big mistake, harassing the regs!

And thanks, I will PM Bryan about the $428s, I always love to go out of way to set myself up for a massive downswing.

Regarding the stalling, it would be so nice if each level was a certain # of hands instead of a length of time. I really hate stalling but like you said there's some spots where it's just stupid to not stall...the obvious one being when you need another player to be all in before you are.

Regarding the colluders, they really couldn't have been more obvious about it except maybe by announcing "we're colluding" in the chat every time they play. I will out their screen names after they are taken care of and you guys will see what I mean.

Regarding poker_in_pb, I've said this before, but I think any edge he gets from playing so slow (if there is any) is easily offset by people spite calling him just because they're so annoyed with him. If I was a recreational player I'd definitely go out of my way to call him. Also I could be wrong but it seems like if you have an edge in the games you'd want to get in as many hands as possible at each blind level. It's not even like he's stalling to get the blinds to go up on his button; just as often he stalls utg and the blinds go up on his big blind.

thank GOD you don't manage a poker room, because things would actually make sense. I really like the idea of a 10-15 sec time bank and a controlled # of hands per level, this is a great idea! You still can use information to your advantage without tilting the recreational players.

I hope your not talking about me jorj = /

Haha you better quit cheating before I report you too!

Not sure if you ever played on Party but this was how they did it. Might be the only thing Party got right.

But Mike Sexton!

Hey George,

I really admire your poker achievements.

Just wondering what do you do with all those T money, Does stars take them in at a certain rate? Maybe you could sell me some?

Actually the hyperturbo players don't really accrue that much T$ because 3rd place gets paid in cash not T$.

How do u manage ur tbls in hypers, stack? tile?
What is ur comfort zone in # of games at once?

Stack, can't even imagine doing it any other way.

Comfort zone is about 22-24 tables although I get into the 30s sometimes, especially on Sundays. I'm still "comfortable" at around 32 tables or so, but only for a few minutes at a time. The biggest problem with playing that many consistently is that it's so easy to get behind if a few new games start and a few tables bust out and all those tables pop up to the front within a span of a few seconds. I'm pretty sure I could easily 30-35 table consistently if there was a way to make new games and busted games not pop up to the front.

Ha, was going to ask if you had some way of dealing with this. It slows me down a lot and I am playing less than half the number of tables that you do. Ah well

I came up with a few questions last night so here goes:

1) If you had to add a single level to the hypers which would it be? And would you prefer playing them now or with that extra level?
2) Say you had a new player at the table that plays 4-8 tables with you. How long would you say it takes you to get a rough idea of what he's doing, how long for a good grasp?
3) What kind of assumptions do you make about someone in a hyper that you've never seen before? Do you assume random people play kinda well until proven otherwise? Or do you feel they'll probably not play that great and adjust your play to that?
Or do you go by nickname/amount of stars shown/pic/location? ^^
4) You said you did a lot of database searches on people. How do you decide who you do a search on? Do you do them on anyone you play with regularly or just randomly sometimes?

oh forgot 5) Whenever there is a new buyin with a new structure (like wednesdays or during wcoop) do you enjoy the challenge of trying to figure it out or is it just an annoyance in your world

1) If I had to add a level I'd probably add 75/150, but I honestly like them the way they are now. The fpp hypers have the 75/150 level and it's actually a little confusing for me still because I haven't really thought much about strategy for that level.

2) It really depends on what kind of player they are. I mean if I see them shove 27o from the sb the first hand, then I pretty much instantly know they're aggressive. If I see them make just one ridiculously bad call then I know they're probably a bad player overall. On the other hand if they're a tight player it's really hard to know this quickly because you get to see all the loose shoves and the loose calls, but obviously you never see the tight laydowns.

3) I have ranges I use for "random" players when I have no info at all on them. But usually there is some info to go on that's useful, like you said...avatar, screen name, number of stars, things they've said in chat, location, etc. It's weird though because when I look at my database there will be people with whom I've played 1000 games or more and I have no idea who they are, and then other people I will think they are a regular and I look at my database and I'll have like 50 games with them. Some people are just way more memorable than others for whatever reason.

4) I do my queries on anyone with whom I've played at least 1000 games. This seems like a ridiculously high number, but when you think about it, even the most common situations don't come up all that often, and looking at numbers for people with less games played is pretty useless overall. Like say you want to know how often someone shoves into you from the sb when you're the bb on the first hand of the sng. If you play 1000 games with them, you will start in the bb 1/6 of the time, and of those times the player in question will be the sb 1/5 of the time, and the action probably gets folded to the sb maybe 1/5 of the time. So of those 1000 games you only have about 6-7 hands where the player in question had an opportunity to steal from you from the sb on the first hand.

Now sometimes there are players who play somewhat differently that what is "normal", and for players like that you might only need to see a few hands to know what their overall strategy is.

5) It's a little bit of an annoyance but I like to think that I can adjust to new structures quicker than most people, so I definitely enjoy that aspect of it. For whatever reason though I'm down overall in the Wednesday ones. I really don't like that structure and I don't think I play it all that well either. I doubt if I play it much in the future. Before the 87s ran all the time, the only days to get any hyper action above $55 buyin were Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I played the Wednesday ones a lot. Now that the 87s run all day I don't really care to play the Wednesday sats anymore, because they take too long (probably twice as long as the other hypers on average if I had to guess) and also they're really hard to mix with the other hypers because the structure is so different.

Thanks for the thought-provoking questions.

Thought of 3 new questions...

1. If the competetition were similar to the currecnt $420 hypers, how big of a buy-in would you still feel comfortable playing? I know you played the $2ks during WCOOP. Would you play $10k hypers? $50k? $25k? $5k? Just curious to know where your cutoff would be.

2. If you experienced a downswing in the current hypers, how many games would it have to span before you believed that the games were unbeatable?

3. Why no Super Tuesday hypers today?

Thanks as always!

1) I played a few $3500 hypers during the WCOOP 08. Biggest I'd play? Like if they went regularly the highest I'd probably play is around 3-5k, but as a one-time deal, yeah sign me up for a 50k hyper. LOL.

2) I don't know, I mean I had about a 10k game stretch where I ran at -2% already this year and I still never lost confidence. Yeah it was pretty frustrating obviously though. I don't think the length of the downswing is the biggest deal, it's more like, did most of the players stop making the mistakes that they make. It's a long way before I'd consider them unbeatable though...even if I was only breaking even in them this year I'd already be up about $60k in vpp value.

3) Yeah that was a mess. I think after the server reset someone forgot to put them in. So I email them around noon Arizona time and they reply a few minutes later saying they'd be up in 5 minutes or so. So that's fine. A half hour later and they're not there yet, I email them again and no response. An hour and a half after the first email I email them again with some possibly less-than-nice words and still nothing happens. So finally at like 2pm I just was getting too frustrated so I quit playing for a while and took a nap. I got back up at like 2:45 or so and the instant I sat in my chair the Tuesday sats popped up.

have you made over a million from online poker (probably a dumb question)?

Do you ever see yourself switching to cash games?

What ratio of your yearly profit is VPP value:Actual value? (actual value meaning money won from poker itself).

1) yes

2) Possibly, but I have this need in things I do to be really good at them to justify doing them, almost in an obsessive way, and I know the learning curve is probably a lot steeper in cash games. So I would be really frustrated in them until I got to where I was really good at them (if that would happen at all). I've still never played a single hand of nl cash.

3) Depends on the year. In 08 it was about 80% or more, in 09 it was about 20-30%.

Wow. Have you not been tempted to give nl cash a go, see how it feels? I'd have thought you'd make a great short stacker.

Interesting thread by the way.

what limit of NL cash do you think youd be able to beat ?

what limit of NL cash would you start at if you were going to learn cash games ?and would you buy in full ?

I personally think if something isnt broke dont fix it , ie your making money at hypers(alot of money at that) and earning lots of vpps at the same time then why switch to cash ? unless of course you considered it more profitable.

anyways this well is a good read and you always give answers good luck at the tables in the future

Hey Jorj, thought of a few more that may interest you...

1) Do you think a good poker player could be fooled into thinking they were successful at the hypers by say profiting over 10,000 games, whereas they may actually be a marginally losing player? Consequently, do you think a winning hyper player may be fooled into thinking he is a losing player by a similarly extensive negative run? In line with this, was there any point, starting out for example, where you had doubts?

2) In the middle of a normal session, if you call an allin at a crucial point, do you just carry on taking things as they come, or like the rest of us, can you not resist but click back?

3) Don't think it's been asked specifically yet.. your longest ever breakeven stretch in games in the hypers and over how many days? What were you thinking through it.

4) Having played every level through 22,31,44,87,etc all the way up, where would you say the biggest jumps in difficulty are in the hypers?

5) Do you still notice leaks in your game to this day/are still undecided which play is best in certain situations?

6) and lastly do you ever finish a session, hit cashier and find out you're way down when you thought youd be up, or the opposite?

The big song and dance new tables make when they popup I find frustrating as well, not sure if its only on my computer but for me each one kind of pops up, sinks to the background then pops to the front a second time every time, I reckon it would make everyones life easier if they just crept in quietly. Enjoying the thread

Shortstacking sounds really boring to me honestly but if I could make a lot of $ doing it I probably would. I just couldn't see myself getting motivated to do that every day.

Sng's are kind of fun still because there's always interesting spots where you really have to think hard to figure out what to do because of the payout structure. It seems like shortstacking would become really mechanical very quickly. Plus I'd have to deal with a lot of hatred as it seems shortstackers aren't the most beloved group ever.

I don't know what level I'd be able to beat in cash games. Probably not very high, at least online. I'd have to figure out all the nuances of it first.

Most likely I'd buy in full, yeah, but I don't really have any reason to say that. There's definitely merits to shortstacking too but as I said previously it sounds really boring and also I don't think it will be around much longer except in CAP games like on FullTilt. In my opinion it's pretty dumb that shortstacking is even allowed in games where you can buy in for 100bb's, but that's another topic. Please don't turn my well into a shortstacking discussion.

I'd probably start off really low like maybe 1/2 nl or even lower until I figured it out. I certainly wouldn't want to spew $ while knowing I'm not that good at the game yet.

I would probably never switch to cash unless I just couldn't beat sngs (hypers) anymore, and even if that happened I'd say it's more likely that I'd choose to do something non-poker-related instead of trying to learn cash.

1) Yes, the short term means pretty much nothing in the hypers. I just LOL at people who think a 1000 game sample means anything in them. I play 1000 games a day all the time and I've definitely had days where I ran at 10% and other days where I ran at -10%.

Also it's possible to get a higher ROI at first because people won't know your ranges all that well. There are tons of examples of ppl who played 1 or 2 thousand hypers and ran at 5% or whatever, and some of them would tell me how easy they are, then predictably they would run at -5% for the next 1000 games after all the regs figured out their ridiculous ranges, and then they'd never be heard from again.

2) The vast majority of the time that I look back, it's for the purpose of figuring out what my opponent shoved or called with, and not really to see the result. If I'm 30 tabling obviously it's detrimental for me to look at the results ever. But if I'm 10-15 tabling or whatever like I do late at night sometimes (like right now ), then yeah I'll look to see what happened in the hands more often.

3) Just last week I ran at -2% for about 10,000 games and had 7 losing days in a row. That's probably my longest stretch. Obviously it's really annoying and yeah I did doubt myself a little, especially stuff like deciding to make my graph public on sharkscope and did I draw too many good players to the games. But then the streak ended and I came to my senses.

4) The game definitely changes at each level. I don't know that it's necessarily harder once you get to the 87s and higher (the 44s are definitely a lot easier than the 87s), but people's ranges are different. The higher games generally play more aggressively.

5) Yeah I doubt a week goes by where I don't notice a situation and say to myself, "I wonder if my ranges are good in that spot." And then I do all my usual number crunching and database queries to try to figure out a reasonable range for when that spot comes up again.

You'll never hear me saying that I don't have any leaks, because that's just arrogant and plain dishonest. The day I think I don't have anything more to learn in poker is the day I become a losing player.

6) I usually have absolutely no idea whether I'm up or down at the end of a session. It's pretty much impossible to know when you play 1000 games in a day. There are many days where I don't even check to see whether I won that day, because really it doesn't matter. Although ever since I unblocked my sharkscope, I find myself checking my daily results a little too often during my sessions. I definitely liked it better when I didn't know my results during the session. I may have to somehow ban myself from accessing sharkscope while I'm playing.

Thanks again for the fact filled response. The variance thing in hypers definitely is interesting, I have no idea how anyone would go about figuring it out, but compared back to when it was said that about 10k regular single table sngs would usually have you within a single % of your "true" ROI, this is just blown out of the water for hyperturbos when you consider youve just hit a 10k game breakeven patch. It would be interesting to know how many hypers are required to make the same ROI assumption.

One thing discussed earlier in the thread that I completely forgot to ask you was about delaying in spots where it would greatly be advantageous to do so. I totally agree about the hands/level idea because I think it is somewhat unsportsmanly and sly - if you like - to be utilising time on each hand in order to manipulate the blinds to your advantage. That said, those who do not do this are quite simply losing masses of EV in certain spots. How do you manage this when 20 tabling, particularly as the table requiring next action continually jumps to the front but also you surely cant have time to be opening each tournament lobby to check how long until the next level with everything else thats going on?