I would love to side with the "top regs are overrated" crowd and honestly I think from outside looking in it is the most sensible opinion, but having talked a little with some people mentioned in the thread....
They are crazy crazy good. To the point it's scary.

Won't make any guesses about winrates, all I'm saying that the jump is much larger than seems reasonable for an uninformed observer.
--

Edit: now the "500nl regs are overrated" take is in my opinion much more interesting. But at this point I'm neither so idk

If the gap between toppest of regs and 500NL regs is so big, does that mean the potential winrate at 500NL is much higher than most people assume?

No. Because if the smaller games have, for example players, who bluff half as much as they should on the river, both pros will play against them the same way. In fact the lower stakes pro might find it less difficult to make the anti GTO fold.

Another point that should be made when talking about poker and almost everything else, is that there is a difference between a big error and a clear error. The super blackjack counter might look impressive that he knows the undeniable fact that two sevens is a stand in single deck against a ten while the journeyman counter doesn't. But if that journeyman can get the dealer to deal five cards deeper, he gains more than the first guy with esoteric knowledge.

you have a link to the 77 variation?

This is ridiculous on multiple levels. An elite player is way way better at exploiting just about anything than a midstakes reg. Them being better at GTO doesn't mean they're worse at anything else. And you can definitely find more intricate ways to exploit players who for instance underbluff river than just not calling bluff catchers.

NL 6max

utg fold
mp raise 2.2 bb
co fold
btn call 2.2 bb
sb fold
bb call1.2 bb

8.6bb pot

2d5dJh

bb x
mp x
btn bet 2bb
bb fold
mp raise to 9bb
btn raise to 17.2bb
mp call

43bb pot
Ad

mp x
btn x

43bb pot
Qc

mp x
btn shoves 67.5 bb effective
mp calls

btn shows 5s3s for pair of 5s
mp has Kd6d for the nuts

My main point is that if elites beats goods by x and goods beat bads by y, elites won't beat bads by x+y. And in some cases the elites might even beat bads by a little less than y until they adjust.. Otherwise how do you explain Phil Hellmuth?

As a reference, Otb_RedBaron beat NL500 for 6bb/100 (5evbb/100) over ~400K hands in 2013.

Not correct. The Top 500nl regs would understand the weaker pros tendencies based off studying the population and would adjust accordingly. The weaker 500nl reg would not adjust.

The elites are already adjusting as a baseline, elite players aren't playing GTO as a baseline they are exploiting the population as a baseline. They would also be much faster to hard exploit vs specific individuals.

GTO<Population MDA<Individual MDA

The second bolded point has already been covered by Uri Peleg in his course and it's fundamental mistake vs frequency mistake. It's a much cleaner and more precise way to understand mistakes rather than big error vs clear error.

this is exactly what i was talking about

i feel like this doesn't make much sense as a response to what was quoted, but allow for the possibility DS is on another echelon that my puny mind cannot comprehend.

linuslove is btn, addamo is mp

this wasn't a battle of two poker geniuses exploiting their max edges, it was addamo attempting to iso because the table whale, a chinese crypto millionaire, was in the big blind, linus, with his 53 on the button called not because he had position on addamo but rather because he too wanted action from the chinese whale who was likely to see a flop given that he was in the big blind, which is also why he flats instead of 3!

once the whale folds, then i guess they got into some 9th level poker war that i'm too stupid to understand - but the point of mentioning that hand history is that the entire preflop dynamics of ranges and so on, were not dictated by "optimal poker" but rather "i want to see a flop with this fish who will then stack off to me"

the point being that as good as linus and addamo are, their games are still about trying to see flops with k6s and 53s against whales, they are not magnus carlsen, poker has no magnus carlsen, a magnus carlsen of poker wins nothing and slowly goes busto due to variance and rake being the bigger difference than his skill gap over those other elite players going for his title

linuslove and addamo are these guys who play a few hands with each other and catch a few strays but are mostly waiting for the crypto whale to take a seat

can you share, in generalities, what from your talks scared you? i feel like everyone is projecting superhuman capabilities on these people, as if by using jedi mind tricks they can induce massive mistakes from otherwise competent/good 500nl regs.

pertinent to this discussion: absent rake, what would a good 500nl reg's winrate be against 2 gto bots 3handed? in before "but the top players will find their weakness and exploit it"... still a relevant question ducy

RR, tbh no offence but you aren’t really making any relevant points by posting that hand.
K6s would be a +EV open UTG w/ a whale in bb and 53s would be a +EV call OTB in Linus’ spot.
53s would also never 3b pre w/o the whale.

Whales play high stakes, yes. Whales play every stake. This has nothing to do with whether or not the best high stakes players would beat up on the best midstakes players.

To say that they’d go busto without the whales is honestly just lol.

Just had to post this because it’s kinda laughable to say other people are making strawman arguments and this is the logic you throw down for your side.

Also, Addamo is known as not a great cash game player even though he crushes MTT’s. This just further shows why it’s lol.

i like you man, but this point of view does not gel with reality

who are they are making money off of if there are no whales?

at nosebleeds you're either a pro or a whale, there's no such in between

yes, you have guys who didn't use to be whales who stayed around too long once others find eploits on them and themselves became the whales like matusow, dwan, isildur, hansen but that's really nitpicking

and pointing out addamo is not a great cash game player more validates my point than your own, it shows that people who aren't even crushers but have the bankroll and lobby presence are all finding seats in these nosebleed games simply because they all want a piece of that whale - those games aren't a who's who of the best of the best it's a "who has the roll and is willing to do what it takes to get a seat when the whale decides he's ready to play

None of this actually proves the point that you are saying that it does.
There is a reason why someone like PlasticElephant has a POV on something like this that is relevant, and why ppl like you and I do not.
He played midstakes a long time and struggled to make the leap to high stakes for a reason, and it has nothing to do with whales dusting it off.

(I like you too.)

Edges that big don’t exist because of rake elite reg v good reg is your point, and it’s all cope and theoretical mumbo jumbo that never will be proven either way is mine.
But reg battles happen, and there’s reasons why the good regs don’t partake vs the elite regs on a regular basis.

and like usual, as a long retired player who has not played in the solver era

so it's possible i ran this wrong on gto wiz free version but...

k6s mp is 23% open and rest fold

53s it 83% fold, 9% call, 8% raise

it doesn't have a 3 way solution postflop and if i force the bb to fold pre it then tells me out i'm of free usage for today (some trial can't even get to the flop)

to say these are standard plays is not genuine, they are 100% adapting due to the whale on the bb

and to be clear i wasn't ridiculing the play by any means - simply illustrating that all those game run around whales

This is a good question, the answer is that: If you are winning for 2 digits at nl500 you are very likely to move up in stakes so you will not get a big sample and/or be considered a 500 regular. Second the rake is generally a bit higher at nl500 which kills winrate.

A lot of it just comes down to table selection. If you are playing nl500 as your main game it's just unlikely you can table select that well and get in a meaningful sample. I personally had 30evbb/100 over 200k hands on a swedish segregated site where I would opensit always without anyone trying to take my table. If I didnt get Jesus seat or two fishes at the table i would just quit it. However my avg stake back then was probably nl1.5k on non segregated sites and I was playing up to nl10k on stars regularly. Given how low raked the games were, it was really common that people did this and i know some that had 20evbb over way bigger samples. I guess it's some type of evidence that if a proper endboss like Linus really wanted to go down and smash nl500 he could, especially with table selection.

can we get some data points? who is winning for 2 digits (assume this means >10bb/100?) at nl500 on a decent sample size on a known site that is not pokerbros? or they just don't exist because they always move up to nosebleeds before they can get a decent sample? feels like we need a 500nl reg vs. nosebleed pro HU for 1mil hands to settle this debate

I never said they’re standard plays, I meant they’re standard +EV plays with the whale involved.

My point is that the whale being involved is irrelevant to the discussion at large as the discussion is about elite high stakes regs vs good 500nl regs.

I also don’t get the chess to poker comparisons in this discussion and any other really. The two games are extremely different even outside of the fact that one game is played 1 v 1 and we’re talking 6 max poker.

SigmFreud played small volume at 1k, and no volume at 2+. Luismi plays nl1k as his main game I'm pretty sure, might have moved up more than that.

neomorf sticking around forever is good to see

They can't induce massive mistakes, but they can manipulate strategies to maximize gain against small errors in ways that the 500nl players won't understand or be capable of. They also can (and probably will) use some unorthodox lines and sizes which the 500nl player won't have studied and won't understand and then will leverage their skill and knowledge edge in these lines to generate more edge.

For example, go look at some of Stefan's hands. The guy is cooking up some insane stuff but it's clearly based on an extreme understanding of range matchups, response strategies, and giving up some theoretical ev to induce errors from villains. It must be a true nightmare to play against and everything he's doing will go far over the head of even strong msnl regs.

These are things bots will never do, and the 500nl player won't really have the ability to fight back against top players' active exploit game.

I'd guess top 500nl regs are probably losing around 3-5bb/100 playing 3max vs bots. I know strong players are having 2bb/100 evloss in wiz over large samples, but 3max is definitely harder. It's not that relevant. Strategies can lose minimally vs gto but still be very exploitable. It's also very clear that top human players outperform bots against field, though obviously no individual human opponent can be +ev against a gto bot.