I regret how aggressive I was with this - but truth is I've been shared a lot of soundbites from Saulo recently saying things to this effect, that with his course you'll be able to battle the best, he could sit with the best and do fine etc.
For whatever reason, it triggers me a bit to see multimillionaires misrepresent the truth for extra $$, and it's also disrespectful to those out there battling these games to say that it's as simple as sitting down and doing fine, 500nl students could hold their own etc - especially when they likely have a genuinely good product and it's just needless to be misleading.
Since this discussion it seems more likely Saulo genuinely believes what he's saying, and I do think his content is good, his products are likely good too, for pretty much everyone except exactly the people that want to battle in HS games.
RE the general discussion - I've played some of these games (and done not particularly well, especially at the top end), but lived with some people absolutely destroying them, discussed hands with them daily for years etc.
On the flipside, I've also discussed plenty of hands with people playing 500nl, through bitB or the wider Vienna community. The difference can't be exaggerated enough - when a 500nl reg joins a hand discussion with the others, it'll generally be very hard for them to even follow what is being talked about a lot of the time, and I'm sure many regs I know will be happy to testify to this.
The difference between elite regs and MS regs in terms of how equilibrium is formed, the mistakes people can make trying to replicate it, the functions of different parts of the range, is just night and day. Saulo despite his extremely successful business has likely never really interacted with a top 5-10 reg, so I can understand wouldn't have experienced it, but equally I'd expect the self awareness to understand there could be some unknown unknowns.
A lot of his evidence seems to be based on the idea that 6 handed bots don't crush regs, but the best humans will always have a bigger edge than bots vs average regs, and less players, higher vpip, bigger potential edge in bb/100.
This disregards too that measuring strategic EV errors vs the best humans is way way different to measuring strategic EV errors vs a static equillibrium strategy.
OFC - the main debate is whether these differences in understanding manifest into edge.
I certainly have struggled to express an edge at the tables in none HU games through it, my WR has never been high in 3-4 handed samples. However, others have results that kind of emphatically prove otherwise.
Most people aren't willing to share samples, and even generating a big sample battling top regs is hard for obvious reasons, but I got two particularly compelling ones below, one from bitB at HS, one from outside at 20knl:
Obviously there is still a chance these are the results of variance.
But the population grinding out these samples is not big, the chance of a 1 in 200 run appearing randomly is low.
Add in extra symptoms and false diagnosis becomes even less likely - the ability to predict future results of other players has been very high historically, the difference in verbal understanding is obvious.
Finally - these samples are vs much stronger opponents than a random 500nl reg.
Last edited by PlasticElephant; 01-05-2024 at 07:20 AM.