I don’t think it’s really like that
Ex-
When Doug was insisting on pre flop charts a lot of his fans from the thread were giving him ****.

And I think most Doug fans give DN a lot of credit for playing the challenge as well as he is, yet still consider him an insufferable douche. IRL

total nonsense. open up a bunch of tables online, tank every hand and see how fast they take away your tanking privileges.

of course I'm not referring to everyone. but just for one example if the positions were reversed and DN was up money and started limping, do you think Matusow would condemn it? To me it seems like he wouldn't
(not trying to single Matusow out, just the first example that came to mind)

Going from the Solve For Why cast, Doug and Daniel played only 72 hands during the first 38 minutes of Session #33 leading up to the pause.

That would amount to just over 220 hands per two-hour round if Daniel tanks and sits out after 120 minutes each session going forward (compared to roughly 605 hands per session before today).

This would push the grudge match end date back from mid February to late March (if 3 sessions per week).

they played 40 hands in 40 minutes at the start...
Do you think this is an elaborate ruse in order to get Polk to play live rather than online?
If live play is now faster than 2 tables online then polk has an incentive to play live to finish the challenge faster?

I hadn't considered this because of the COVID restrictions, but this could become a very relevant question if Daniel is allowed to tank from Friday on. The most recent communication I've watched was Daniel saying neither player wants to play "live" for the time being.

I noticed Matt Berkey interacted with a viewer who said they had only played 40 hands when the match was paused.

However, the hand count number provided by Berkey on-stream (19,434) adds up to 72 hands when cross-referenced with Doug's tweet of 19,362 hands following Round #32 as well as the number displayed on Solve For Why when Wednesday's action began.

Manual count?

For those interested, I posted this recap about an hour ago. https://bestbetusa.com/poker/poker-t...h-stakes-feud/

Doug limping 1/4 left in challenge: a wuss move. Totally acceptable and v likely would do the same with massive sidebets. Still a wuss move especially after all the truck talk, gotta be able to eat the trolling for being a wimp.

Daniel... what can you say? Galfond was thinking "what the hell is this ****?". And Joey: "Doug implemented limping... so Daniel is countering by... playing slow!?!?" Lolllol been laughing for hours. Actually agree that stalling on his bb was okay to get time (and more study time), as Dougs limping already is a wuss move. But doing it like that is being a big baby, I guess everything u do on a poker table conveys information. If he was gonna stall then pick up the phone beforehand and talk it out lol.

I think Doug then pretty much quit limping so that was well done, didnt need to obv.

Glad i didnt watch s4y, I mostly like Berkey but that recap sounded very cringy.

Good thing Doug is used to stalling. When he played the bot created by the "loss is really a statistical win" science guy it was also 30 seconds wait on every river as they couldn't figure out how to recalc rivers in reasonable time.

How is choosing a different poker strategy a "wuss move"? What about Daniel's min-betting and all those wussy small continuation bets? Real men bet the pot after all.

Tweet by: Pokerfuse/F5Poker/Poker Industry PRO writer Anuj Arora.

Eh?

Youtube subscribers:
Daniel Negreanu - 498K
Doug Polk Poker - 307K

Twitter followers:
@RealKidPoker - 491.2k
@DougPolkVids - 135.7K

I don't really use other platforms, so maybe Polk has a massive Instagram or Facebook, which counteracts these two.

*edit* nope, looks like insta is Dnegs 303K, Polk 84.2K.
Although I will concede that Polk will probably have a much higher percentage of fanboys/girls

Wow so many long posts and so many bad takes

Only a non poker player or an inexperienced rec player would believe that the above points somehow lead to the conclusion that there is no such thing as unacceptable tanking in online poker

Tanking for the sake of delay or to annoy an opponent is not seen as an acceptable “strategy” in any form of poker. Obviously adjusting bet sizes in NL is completely fine and not remotely comparable to obnoxious tanking.

One is about etiquette and the norms accepted by those who play the game. The other is just part of game theory and strategy

Its like porn, you know when u see it. Maybe its subjective, If someone thinks limping from the start of the challenge is not paying like a girl then fine. I personally think if you change your normal playing style to a lot more variance reducing one then yes it is a wuss move. And again, perfectly understandable at the same time. For me it was a bit surprising at this point of challenge and a bit disappointing, but def understand the side-bet pressure for him and his team. Charachter gets a boost but fame gets a dent.

You seem to be talking about live poker and tournaments in particular. Online already has a system in place to combat excessive taking, the time bank.

Has anyone ever had a clock called on them, or called a clock on someone else, in a live cash game? I've never seen it. Tournaments are completely different due to the increasing blind structure and even then, I've never personally called a clock on someone.

As for this challenge in particular, it has a fixed amount of hands and tanking doesn't affect that in the slightest. My personal opinion on the tanking is that it's fair and doesn't break any rules. I don't enjoy seeing it because it makes the viewing experience more shitty but it's not my money on the line, so who am I to complain?

Some site has or had SNGs with no blind increases and the nut strategy is to use the max time every hand. That would drive me nuts.

^ There was an excellent BBV thread about that a few years back.

Daniel has been vocal in the past about people taking too much time to play a hand.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dani...hrome&ie=UTF-8

Yeah, the same way chess players used to think anything different than 1.e4 is wussy and boring. The same thing happened in go where some moves were considered "proper" and other disrespectful.
History of games is full of this. Proper uncomfortable to face strategies being ridiculed so people stop employing them. Limping in poker is like that. Attaching emotional descriptions to it just doesn't make much sense. I for one don't see limping as a wussy play at all. I don't like playing vs it because I find it hard to deal with. I avoided players who employ it because I thought it's hard to win against them. I wouldn't think of calling them wussies just because they did something that is hard to deal with.

Agree. This situation along with others that occasionally arise in poker remind me of "cheesing" in 9-ball games. It's been decades and I'm sure everything is different now, but I recall a few heated arguments over "wussy" stuff like that back when I grinded the 9-foot tables.

Like if someone failed to pocket on the break and left a somewhat open-combo shot to chase the nine, you'd damn-near need to have a super obvious shot or the nine barely hanging on somewhere in order to put the game out of its misery.

Or the nonstop negotiations about how much "weight" to give/receive when handicapping a Race To Five or whatever. The relentless fussing over edges before and during gameplay seems similar.

i would assume not much

I'm 100% on Team Negreanu in the match, but in this case, I think he's completely wrong. Doug (or whoever was leading at this point) changing betting strategy was a completely expected and justified thing to happen.

Taken to a slightly bigger extreme, let's say they are on the last hand of the challenge and Doug is ahead by $1000. Doug posts the SB of $200 and is dealt AA. Would anyone expect him to do anything but fold here? I wouldn't, and wouldn't consider it unethical or bad to do so. Doug choosing to play a lower variance strategy is just an extension of this.

Stalling I suppose is in the letter of the law, but it's trying to win by means other than your poker judgment and skill. That's where the line draws for me.

Phil Galfond said in one of the final hands against Veni when Veni started limping instead of raising all his buttons to officially fold out challenge, he folded the nuts (a flush IIRC) on the turn because he didn't want to risk losing the sidebet because of his turn call if the board paired (he wasn't sure how much he was ahead).

It was DEFINITELY a wuss move though. If I were in his situation, I would have potted every street blind for the last 25 hands to show everyone that I don't give a fk about money.

The people arguing that tanking and limping are the same thing really havent played much poker

Daniel is doing it to annoy Doug into playing aggressively so theres more chance of bigger pots I suppose. He's achieved the annoy bit ok.
Its just a little of tit for tat, because Doug is limping hands.
Its probably the right move financially for Doug, but a bit different from the idea that he was going to run over Dnegs.

Anyone arguing that max tanking every decision is acceptable is being intellectually dishonest and knows that it is not within the rules of online poker.

Think about it in the context of a six max game and every player used a full 20 seconds per decision. Poker wouldn’t exist. Sites have rules against intentional slow playing. There are situations where you have to think about what you’re doing and that’s why you have a clock. It’s not meant to be used on a button open. You’re given the time bank with the expectation that you’re going to use it appropriately. If you’re going to be a child about it, GTFO.

I thought Doug going off on the tanking was a big mistake, not poker-wise but PR-wise. Seemed like if he’d just sat back and said stuff like “I didnt expect this, especially after the Monday post-session brags” he would’ve come off so much better.

Poker-wise, the tanking seemed to result in less limping and Doug ended up +136k.

This is multi-level chess presented by Punch & Judy.

A minor clarification here, coming from a dan-level go player: the game of go has 8-fold symmetry. Playing your first stone in the northwest corner (4,4) spot is exactly equivalent to playing in the southeast corner (4,4) spot. The proper etiquette you are referring to is to play your first move in the northeast corner; this has not changed. The root of this etiquette is explained here.

An analogy that might be understandable to poker players is if you imagine a hold’em variant that involves the button looking through the 52 card deck and picking one card to remove face-up at the start of each hand. There might be a convention to always remove a heart, and this might have been engrained as proper etiquette. But deviating from this etiquette would have no strategic significance, since the suits are symmetric.