Originally Posted by Sywolf
This thread basically critiques Andy a lot, through four key points...
1) Live tourneys are rigged, loldonkaments, etc. Not a big enough sample size to prove skill...
--Ok, if so, then no US based player should be playing poker, correct? i.e. without a big enough sample size to ascertain skill, what's the point? Is every live pro that doesn't/can't play online and has success then just the beneficiary of variance? That's fine, but why is everyone wasting their time at the WSOP then? Just trying to buy lottery tickets with 52/48 edge I guess.
2) In order to better determine skill, one needs to look at thousands upon thousands of hands, and a detailed analysis of such hand histories...
--Again, sounds reasonable. Without online, you can't exactly do this; so ppl are left to look at live poker (i.e. televised) hand histories. In Andy's case, ppl have picked two hands that he played questionably, in a format that probably no one has played (i.e. Premier League pts system) and based on those two hands, have decided that he sucks at poker. Again, doesn't seem entirely consistent with the "let's look at his body of work" theme...
3) Andy acts like a "douchetard" at the table, shows emotion, fistpumps, has been defensive, etc.
--Not everyone's table manner is identical. i.e. he doesn't just sit there with a hoody and silently rake in chips. That said, even if he displays emotion, he has never berated people on tv, trash talked, or done anything other than get excited if he wins, and defend his play when he's being critiqued at the table or in the forums. Doesn't seem like that big a deal honestly, and to be fair, Andy walked away from a more plum gig than 99.9% of guys grinding poker, so the thought that he might take it more seriously, or be a bit defensive to justify his decision, makes a lot of sense imo...
4) He didn't have to "build his bankroll" like most guys, and just started taking shots at 10k's, b/c he was properly rolled from his Wall St. days
--Again, not true. He actually started grinding like AC/regional events, had a few min-cashes/semi-deep runs, and then won a Venetian Deep Stack for like 160k. It was at that point, and not before that, when he started playing 5k's and 10k's. I'm not saying that he couldn't have afforded to play them otherwise, and that he doesn't have a bankroll to have played them if he hadn't binked the Deep Stack; however, he did "work his way up" in buy-ins, and arguably, could be playing poker from that bankroll alone, with maybe a slight cushion from "real life earnings" behind...
And if no one cares what I have to say, b/c I'll be labeled a "fanboy" just like everyone else is a "troll", listen to Olivier Busquet's interview on the latest 2p2Pokercast, who does a much better job of explaining why this Andy hatred is excessive and ridiculous...