At Sugarhouse yesterday, asked a dealer about the tipping controversy. His response, "who's that?" (referring to Cate Hall & Mike Dentale).

I understand what you are saying but that's not how i think of it. Winning or losing 30k is not going to affect me at all. I doubt it would affect Dentale either. However, if it's my money then I'm gonna fight for it because that's MY money and I could have had invested in other areas rather than just burning it at the poker table. The amount may be negligible but I don't want to burn through my own money.

If you give me money to play with I could really give a **** less what happens to it. It's not like i'm gonna feel bad for throwing away money. Sure I threw away money but it wasn't even my money, it was yours...so no big deal. If it was my money then I would have the option of taking the money and not playing at all.

If I was highly competitive I certainly wouldn't have done something as easy as play poker for a living. Probably would have gone into IB and taken it from there. I certainly wouldn't have retired before the age 40.

I suppose my argument is that people who think like this (that some money is inherently more valuable than other money) in the context of a poker game are making irrational decisions. And a person who makes poker decisions on such an irrational basis is going to be an inferior player to someone who makes decisions rationally.

People were somehow claiming "Mike's a good player, he just didn't care because it was a freeroll". And my response is "Not caring because it is a freeroll makes you a bad player. A good player would rationally treat these situations the same."

I didn't watch any of the match, so I really have no idea how well or badly Mike played. But the excuses people were making for Mike's play were bizarre.

I think we saw clearly how living in the woods does vs GTO when Barry Woods wrecked Doug Polk heads up a few weeks ago. I doubt anyone will ever convince me that a big money rec player was able to fold the hands he folded or bluff raise in this spots that he did without live tells. That's just not real life. Doug is a huge tellbox. Fortunately, for those that play against him, he doesn't seem to want to fix these leaks.

When you have a live tell on someone, they might as well turn their cards face up. TBH, my mind is kind of blown that Doug wouldn't want to use all the information that is available to him.

If you don't care, then you probably aren't going to be very good at poker.

Rec player with tilt issues vs professional poker player. I don't think you need to see the match.

lol you cannot be serious

In live PLO cash games and in live PLO MTTs I play a different strategy, and adjust my decision making, against each and every opponent having first profiled each player and put them into 1 of about 8 different categories of PLO player that you encounter in live games.

Obviously I play a technical base line strategy, but in a live game knowing which types of players you can successfully c bet very low equity against and get a fold and which type of player you can't do it against is accentauted in importance, and this applies to decisions on all streets in live PLO in terms of whether you should check raise your equity, check call it, rep hands, play blockers and many other types of plays and what strats you should use in or out of position to realise your equity, steal someone else's, make a range v range play etc etc etc.

Clearly this also applies in reverse, with an obvious kind of example being that a German or a Finnish player under the age of 30 is way more likely than a 70 year old local casino player to be triple barreling 5679 on a high board which he 3 bet pre in position and way more likely to be triple barrelling a bear Ace on a flopped 3 to a flush board. This is an extreme obvious example of profiling opponents in a live game, but you can apply the identical principle in all spots and adjust your decision making accordingly, whether it be an adjustment in a given spot by 1%, 3%, 5%, 20%, 50% or whatever.

In live PLO if you played the identical strat against all players and only blended in exploitative strategy about 10% into your play, Doug style, you would lose a lot of value because different types of players play very differently to each other live, whereas on line typically there is more of a conformity of style of play among players, mainly because it is mostly 6 max on line, so more aggro and because there is a narrower spectrum of playing abilities which leans towards good or very good players who are mainly playing a similar GTO strat against each other.

Added to the above, live players do give off a lot of tells during hands, as well as many general behavioural traits when they are not in a hand (E.g, if they are on tilt, if they are conservative or wild by nature, if they are proud or modest, if they have a lot more pull ups available, if they are rich or poor etc etc) so these things also have a bearing on decision making in all hands in all spots.

So live, in PLO, I'd say that playing optimally is about 65% technical (GTO) and 35% exploitative to achieve the most profitable results.

Granted, NLHE is a game of less certain known math information so one does have to play a much more range v range based game to be playing optimally, so I get why Doug is so focused on sticking to a sound GTO strategy and he infers that he is maybe only blending in ~5 to 10% exploitative strat to this , but perhaps he has the the 5 to 10% too low and should adjust this to ~15 to 20%.

Yeah, I thought live tells were stupid too and then black friday happened.

Imagine yourself playing for matchsticks. If those are the stakes, it's much easier to just say the hell with it and call 20BB with Q5o.

I think the fundamental assumption that humans are rational actors is deeply and fatally flawed. I think some actors are marginally more rational than others (e.g. Cate is marginally more rational than Mike and dan Polk is marginally more rational than Shaun Deeb) but the overall level of actual rationality is very very low.

How much time did you take out of your day to find and transcribe that?

You're responding to a NVG try hard who was arguing in the yayo thread how 500k is not life changing money for anyone and that everyone is dumb if they even thought it was possible to have someones life changed by $500k.

In other words, I have no idea either if he is seriously ignorant or just a troll

Is that how you respond when someone has proven you absolutely and totally wrong?

The Art (Shaun Deeb) and Science (Doug Polk) of Winning Poker

I think Doug has realized his 'poker instincts' are not great, and that lead him to be mediocre for most of his early career. Once he realized he could win with a purely mathematical approach, and perfected it (relative to competition), he found his success. It seems because he doesn't trust his "artistic" abilities, probably due to his personal experience, he has written it off as completely ineffective and arbitrary.

It is interesting that in critical marginal spots live (esp. when bluffing because math says he has to, but in a non-standard situation) - he is more often than not on the losing end. Obviously sample size comes into play here so time will tell what's really going on here.

lol this is exactly what he said when I laughed at his posts in another thread

I doubt the IRS does any of that stuff, except (i) look at prior tax returns of such taxpayer and (ii) if they started suspecting someone, maybe they would start doing some research and maybe that research would, in part, end up involving them reading some posts on 2+2.

Also, if you are continually filing your taxes with gambling winnings/losses netting to 0 and the winning and losing amounts are high and you don't have any or much other income (and especially if you are filing as a professional gambler), then this is going to look pretty suspicious. What are you living on? Where is your money coming from? They'll look into your expenses. Do you own a house? A car? Been going out to eat? Taken any trips? Got a nice TV and a cable package? What does it look like you spend in a month or a year? How are you paying for all this stuff when you keep telling us (the IRS) that you didn't make any money?

Also, if you ever need it in the future, it may be basically impossible to ever (i) get a mortgage, or any other loan, (ii) be able to lease an apartment or car or (iii) whatever else (probably some other things) when you have no verifiable income with no job and just a bunch of tax records that say you at best break even at gambling every year.

Taxpayers are supposed to keep records.

Less time than it took you to dry your tears after she won.

Tweet just made by: Matt Glantz‏ @MattGlantz

OK, @Mikunbelievable is looking for his next opponent on @PokerNightTV.
And he wants to do $25k matches this time.

Who's in?

This is great, not only is he looking for another match but it appears to be a call out to potentially take on all comers. Cate Hall, as I mentioned previously, I think is not that great if measured by world level terms at HU and Mike could well beat her in a rematch with better prep and her not seeing all the hands previously played and receiving in game coaching and advice.

But names like Jack Salter and Dominic Nitsche have already declared their interest, so HU against them would be a seriously tough challenge for absolutely any player.

I do feel that against these types of players who unlike Cate Hall are known proven winners with high level skills that Mike should seriously consider putting together a dream team of people to make it much more likely that he triumphs.

What would a dream team consist of:

A HU coach

Someone to study video footage of his opponent to work out live tells.

A person to, if it's possible, study and research the playing style of his opponent.

A mental game coach.

A miscellaneous strat / poker skills coach. This could be somebody more old school with a lot of live game experience, someone who thinks more outside of the box and not so much in absolutes, to offer a different voice and opinion sometimes to the other coaches.

An overall game strategy adviser who oversees the team above to co-ordinate
the complete HU challenge winning strategy.

I know that Mike has a lot of confidence in his game, but anyone taking on a HU top gun should deploy a dream team IMO to maximise their chances, not to mention that there are decent chunks of money at stake and the possibility of further chunks in further HU matches.

The dream team would also of course indirectly benefit his live MTT game in which he is already doing very well.

Is this the sickest reverse bumhunt ever?

Screen name LiftGrind... it all makes sense!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54...guide-1352539/

Evidently so.

Oooo burn!

You might consider a somewhat more effective response next time, such as "I normally try to do some diligence on factual claims I make, and I really wish I'd done so here. Looks like I was wrong about Cate going back on her word. I don't have to like her, but kudos to her for taking this down."

That might earn you a bit of respect. As it stands, you're almost as much of a tool as The Toolbox.

Completely is an overstatement. He said he'll adjust his frequencies but he's not going to make dramatic "always" or "never" statements.

Though there was the spot (that you're probably referring to) where Shaun advocated leading Qx on Qxxx after flop went ch/ch and Doug completely disagreed. As Shaun astutely pointed out, "why check top pair there when Mike's probably calling 2x pot with Ace-high?". Doug's response multiple times of "that's just not how I play" is being thickheaded. Although I will say, it sounds like he's just trying to not get into bad habits even though in this instance it seems fine so w/e.

Maybe Mike would like to stab and you get value by x/c'ing Q3 when he would've folded to a bet. Maybe if you lead pretty much your worst queen Mike realises you have f*** all every time you check twice and starts attacking those lines aggressively. Maybe 5 minutes previously he realised he was being a station and decided to play differently. Maybe maybe maybe level level level.
You can solve all these problems and cover all bases by checking the ole 3 kicker and value betting better queens. I don't get why this is hard.

The sole reason this is even an argument is because of the ridiculous amount of cognitive bias in live poker. It's pretty much impossible to get a significant sample and big decisions are always imprinted in people's minds because live is so much more personal/emotional/dramatic than live.

It's like when Obst folded the boat vs straight flush and everyone thought he had such a sick read and was a great feel player and then soon afterwards he made the cringe worthy fold of a flush that should've been a fist pump snap call that would've won him a big pot.

Also when Vayo got owned by Qui and blown off second pair everyone was agreeing that Vayo was such a chicken and siding with Doug. I'd bet anything that if Qui happened to have a monster and Vayo's fold was good live players would be laughing at Doug for advocating calling down second pair when his opponent is just "never bluffing".

I also found it interesting when Doug called down the river all in bluff to double up in the tag team WSOP with TPMK. I know this is a very strong hand HU but he literally didn't even take one second to tank. Again I'd bet many gut feel live pros would likely convince themselves their opponent is just never bluffing and fold.

But people don't remember this or the time he got off Phua of JJ. They instead remember Patrik Antonius or Alec Yogarelli calling him down.

I know I come off as a massive Doug fanboy with these posts, but I just feel strongly about this.

Here's what my strategy would be.

1. Play extremely tight until I start hitting hands sending mike on tilt.
2. When Mike starts boasting how tilted he is I start playing really slow, aggravating him even more. Tanking river decisions like Tom Dwan.
3. Loosen up a bit and hit some weird hands to tilt him even more.

This would honestly work I think.