well yes, a world top class player 3handed vs a 500nl reg and 500 rec will destroy it and make 12bb/100+
they know how to beat regs a couple of limits below them and obv they crush recs

Yes this would be interesting to see and if both sides believe what they are saying they should be happy about arranging this

Weird statement from saulo, I respect his content but this is just blatend delusional.

I have to say YMB is a bit of an enigma. 50% of the time he's a nice, smart, hardworking, both feet firmly to the ground type of guy. Then all of a sudden he flips a switch and becomes throwing punches for no reason at all, to the limits of the ethics (not here, but in the Berkey twitter post some time ago).

Maybe he and Saulo have an unresolved problem, I remember the argument on the Seta-Beni thread and how it went. I know Saulo was part of BitB years ago and it didn´t work that well for him, I wouldn´t dismiss this as the reason for both of them fighting so much.

I don´t really know what Saulo is teaching, but if it is all that pseudo-GTO bs he keeps talking about, 1000000x more value for way less price (especially if you know where the discount stores are located) to just buy the Uri Peleg Exploit course and master everything he teaches to the deepness of your soul, if you want to have a chance in the toughest games of the world. That is the way to think about poker. Uri is the best poker coach I've ever seen, and despite the way he talks and behave, he's an alpha.

Four more questions:

Assuming no rake and that every hand is a 200 BB stack for everyone

1. What is the result for each position if it is three excellent, equal bots playing each other?

2. What is your guess for each position if the mid stakes pro is playing the two super experts?

3. Same question except the mid stakes pro will never be dealt a deuce, three, or four, except if paired, and amnesia keeps that from ever being deduced.

4. Same question except the 2 3 4 restriction is known to the champs.

Besides being interesting questions in and of themselves and that it would be fun to see how you experts would differ (except for Question #1 which I assume is known) I think knowing the answers would help answer the OP's question.

I'll attempt to answer these questions, but I'll state the constraints as there will be rake involved.

Running a HRC sim 3-handed with 200bb stacks and 5% rake with 0.2bb cap, but not running it to a fully converged strategy... I just ran it for about 30 minutes (this gets the overall positional EV's relatively close). The EVbb/100 are shown under "Diff[BB]". This is roughly a -3evbb wr per 100 with rake included.



In my opinion a mid stakes pro will lose EV in every position, but most EV in BB followed by SB and then lose the least in BTN. If the data from HRC is approx -20bb in SB/BB and
+30bb in BTN I'd have the approximate guess:

BTN: +25bb/100 or worse
SB: -27bb/100 or worse
BB: -30bb/100 or worse

These are just random numbers pulled out of my ass. Approx wr would be ~-10bb/100 with rake.

To try to guestimate the effect this would have I went and looked at my BTN EV wr when facing unopened action and I have a BTN evbb wr of ~37 with standard deviation of 117. When filtering our 2, 3, 4 except for 22 33 and 44, the winrate jumps to 59... more than a 50% increase and 22bb/100 overall. This is also with significant rake, so the jump would likely be larger at higher stakes in theory.

Wr would increase by 20bb/100 or more from +25bb/100 to 45bb/100+

There are actually really significant changes they can make if they knew opponent never had 2, 3, or 4... The most basic of which is simply being tighter with RFI from BT/SB and tighter with 3-bets. It's really hard to guess what the value would be only that it would decrease by a decent amount.

I ran sim for a while longer and here are the updated EV's for the HRC 200bb 3-handed sim with 5% rake 0.2bb cap:

I think your summary is unfortunately very accurate, but hopefully more than 50% of the time for the good part. I have been prone to random anger on the internet, but getting better as I get older.

My two main triggers are to see people with big platforms talking about something they are completely wrong about, with certainty, and then wealthy people compromising on integrity and morals for more cash. The former because poker is such a complex game that certainty is generally an incorrect position, the latter for more idealistic and flawed reasons I guess.

Obviously both of these are a problem on my side and it would probably serve me better to deactivate twitter.com and twoplustwo but I also feel sometimes positive interactions come from there.

Saulo was in bitB, but it was a very long time ago when I think everyone involved would happily admit it was a truly garbage product, and he didn't do anything wrong, just realizes it was bad and paid a v small fee to get out of contract early iirc.

almost no twitter for me the past month, honestly if you don’t use twitter to sell a brand or make money in some way it’s the most soul sucking “hobby” you can have, it is so addictive and such a mega waste of time, holy **** social medias

so much this

we keep on using 2 of the top players in the world as specific examples rather than two random players from the pool, which is what we should be doing

there are losing players at all levels, otherwise nobody would play there, and while it's likely a few nosebleed players are winning nl500 people who haven't yet accepted they need to drop down, many of them wouldn't be winning at nl500 either - they are playing those stakes because that's what interests them

frankly, if we pulled out two of the best player in the world and sat them down at a 3 handed table and left a seat open, you'd be hard pressed to get others from the same pool to want to sit down and play becuase even if they beat the pool in general, there's no edge in sitting down with the 2 best in the world, even if you're the 3rd best in the world youself

i hate the word simp, but i think it's apt to be used for a lot of the mindsets of people in this thread fetisizing all nosebleed players as absolute crushers - yes, the cream rises to the crop, but those nosebleed games run around bad players just like any other level - this is not like tennis or golf where spectators and sponsors pay to watch the best in the world compete, it's the same exact dynamics that you'll find at an nl2 table where paisting is seated

can see it both ways.. i think there's a desire to view the elite nosebleed players as godlike and worthy of a 10-20bb/100 edge because they are the cream of the crop, while failing to acknowledge that edges have collapsed rapidly as gto trees become well known and studied

but also think it's true that an elite 500z reg probably isn't well-versed in short-handed game trees and could be out of their element if linus/limitless are deft at taking them there

i guess i'm saying i bet shorthanded 500nl experts would lose at <10bb/100 against top nosebleed players 3 handed at high stakes where rake is a smaller factor, assuming they don't face bankroll / scared money constraints

What is an 'elite 500z reg' though?
Again this whole conversation is just for **** and giggles if the question isn't defined properly
Anyone who wins/beats 500z on stars has moved up to 1k/2k/5k, like, years ago because the EV is so much higher, I don't think any elite player is playing 500z all day

You seen zoom on stars the past year? It barely runs 6 handed.

this whole conversation is absolutely for shits and giggles. what else would this be?

what do you think might be meant by the phrase 'elite 500z reg'? do you think it refers to 500z reg who breaks even and can never play 1k/2k?

half this thread is goal post shifting: "500nl reg is poorly defined! they don't exist! some are better than others! we cannot discuss plausible winrates because no one exists!"

seems like a sad attempt to maintain the mystique of some legendary level of poker player who will indefinitely print money because they're so genius they can induce gto human bots into making fatal 20bb/100 mistakes because theyre shaking in their booties at the sheer legends theyre facing.

truth is the game is largely solved. just like 12 year olds memorize hundreds of thousands of words to win spelling bees, profit seeking adults memorize hundreds of thousands of game trees to be maximally profitable (or minimally exploitable) in poker games. i grant linus, limitless, <insert modern legend here> may be ahead of the curve, but it's not by >10bb/100.

near everyone's overrating their skill and underrating variance and game selection

For some reason the quote feature isn't working for me. To your point that the thread is for shits and giggles I say -- fair enough.
The reason I push the issue about stake/ability is there probably is some MSNL reg who is strong theory wise who would fare much better than other MSNL regs in this challenge , even if those other regs had higher winrates at midstakes.

It’s really funny that basically everyone in this thread that says there is not a lot of skill gap is playing like 50NL themselves. Like wtf? How can you have a strong opinion on these games if you have never played them?

Maybe Saulo tweeted this just to get attention to sell his courses. Berri and Stefan are prime examples that it's not just about memorizing solver ranges.

Why is three-handed so different from regular 6max that a 500NL reg is put to a disadvantage? Is your opening range on the button 3-handed going to be so different from 6-handed? (Yeah, card removal, but the effect is relatively small.)

It is my impression that the edge that truly great players have over good ones is small, unless a great player can identify a specific leak in the good player's game and knows the specific exploit for it. Even then the gain won't be anywhere near what either the good player or the great player could win off of a fish or whale.

The bunching effect does not greatly effect the BTN opening range 6-max vs 3-max.



I guess one thing the better players could do is use different sizes to force the NL500 reg into more non-memorized nodes.

For example, using 2x BTN opening size forces BB to defend an extremely wide range that the NL500 reg probably will struggle to play correctly postflop.

More experience, better intuition and faster recall in game of: how a nodelocked solver would adjust, not only on this street, but earlier in order to exploit a certain leak; what are the predictable leaks any non-endboss would be making while trying to be unexploitable; how to spot leaks faster and more accurately in game; better mental game. My 2 cents

this is a strawman argument that nobody is making


what is key here is that all levels of poker are populated with recreational players which the games run around

unlike things like tennis or golf where physical ability is the primary barrier to competing at the top level, poker welcomes terrible players with open arms

thus the only barrier to getting a seat at these games is the bankroll to support it and thus there are a population of very bad players

people are imagining a 6max nosebleed game as having 6 of the 10 best in the world seated and playing and this just isn't the case

these games all require the incentive to sit down, it is not 6 elite crushers who all trick themselves into thinking they have an edge

admittedly, that does happen frequently, but never indefinitely, at some point various professionals realize they are losing in those lineups (even if they are losing to the rake) and thus the natural equilibrium of these games are recreational players and the pros trying to make a living off of them - if the recs disappeared completely then the games would cease to exist


nobody is saying that the very top players at nosebleeds are not better than the top players at lower stakes - but it's quite clear looking at the graphs available of the people who made their way up to the nosebleeds that gaps in skill levels are incrementally small and getting narrower by the year - there are without a doubt loads of nl500 players who would suceeed in the nosebleeds but don't have the tolerance for risk and/or bankroll to take that shot

if we put in a law tomorrow that the biggest game any site could spread was 500nl and - importantly, all the whales who currently play above that were still interested in playing and put in similar volume at 500nl instead of 5k/10knl then i think the ecosystem impact would really surprise a lot of people and within a year we'd start re-evaluating just who we think are the best players

Disagree with this last part. If 500 NL was the ceiling, Llinus, Stefan, Berry sweet, would still be the best.

those guys most likely, the rest, i'm not so sure

i have zero doubts that a lot of the guys we believe to be crushers due to the stakes they play may not hold up so well if put in a larger pool that doesn't come with such gravitas

It's a very interesting proposition both ways.

On one hand you can't bet against the top pros who have all the knowledge, all the experience and know all the deviations (more or less)

On the other hand it has never been easier to learn all that one needs to succeed at poker

I get what Saulo is saying because honestly in poker a large portion of the game tree has been solved, the standard spots that make up 80%+ of the game have been solved and any 500nl reg knows them like the back of his hand. A similar thing happened in chess where the young players today are so strong that many of the top pros refuse to play open tournaments because of the risk:reward, you have players who are rated 22-2400 who really play like 24-2600, they know some opening even top GMs may not entirely know to 18-25 moves precisely and it's very easy to get punished, below is the world's greatest player of all time losing to someone 300 points below him, basically the equivalent of a 30 year old MJ losing to a good D1 player.



It's the same thing in poker, you can learn so much so quickly that it really comes down to;

Where does the money come from? Where are the mistakes going to come to really crush the 500NL reg and how can we differentiate that from variance? That's what makes it so hard, the variance aspect of the question. I have no doubt there are 500NL regs who can hang with the best and I have no doubt some of them would get crushed.

Saulo should test it out himself, he can find the backers and it could make for a massive series kind of like the Doug Polk vs Daniel Negreanu series.