I like it. With this addition the analogy is perfect imo.

no that makes no sense at all...

pretty sure guy laliberte or whatever fish we are talking about doesnt care if its skier5 or leatherass he is playing against, he will keep donating anyway. so the free beer wont stop coming regardless of leatherass showing up or not. its just that aej/skier/whoever would get a bigger share of the beer had leatherass not shown up, which is what pisses them off. understandable but still not rational - this is what the "gross sense of entitlement" victor was talking about is about. aejones and skier doesnt DESERVE the free beer any more than LA does, they just think they do.

btw im not a LA fan, i dont even know who the guy is. im just defending rational thought.

I was about to say "Oooo me too!" but then I realized you only said 2008, but it made me think of another point.

I only averaged maybe an hour a day in 2008, if that, but I did the whole grinding 10 hours a day in 06 and 07 (that's 7 days a week). And it felt great to take a break, pursue other interests, with enough pocket change saved up due to the grind to be able to engage in such activities. And now in 2009 I feel totally refreshed and level-headed. No matter how much money you make, and i'd bet the effects are more severe the more money you make (as in, if your weren't making money you'd probably stop prematurely and take a break), doing the grind from sunup til sundown thing every day is gonna make you nuts. Everything else aside i'd really just advise LA to take a break, it doesn't have to be a year, but at least a month or something.

The point is that without a game at say 25/50 the fish would have no place to sit at. So some regs plays 2/3 handed with each other just to have a chance for playing fish.
LA is not participating in this activity yet he rips the fruits. This is why people dislike him. It makes perfect sense. It's similar in many situations in life where "predator" can take advantage of situation other people work for. They usually don't like him/her for that either.
I think LA strategy makes perfect sense for him. The problem with this is that if all people implement it it would stop working. People start disliking "predators" like LA as defence mechanism. This way behaving this way is less attractive. In some life activities people decided to take stronger steps than just "disliking" to make LA like behavior even less attractive (most laws are motivated by this very same mechanism)

It's hard to donate if there's no game running for him to donate to though.

I don't rail (and obv. don't play) the high stakes games so I don't know the dynamics of them, but is Guy usually the one who starts a table? I would think most rich people who log on to kill some time and have fun would rather leave and go do something else if they didn't find a game running at the stakes they wanted.

I think this is the crucial point. Not to denigrate luego though, he's really on point and is forcing the accuracy.

My name is corky

I lose money playing cards

My life ends as I run bad all the time

Short poem

luego and victor:

of course i bumhunt. i quit games i think are bad all the time and avoid games i don't think are good. i don't, however, sit out when the fish sits out, as this is terrible etiquette. it's not some illusory code - it's quite simple, half the time when guys start doing that the fish comes back to no game at all, and a decent amount of the time the fish will leave (now we can't know if he was going to leave anyway).

the point is that if every pro thought like LA, there'd be a lot less games and a lot less money. and I don't begrudge LA doing what he does since it's obvious that not every pro does think that way and that's why leatherass can function as he does (the only thing i do look down on is sitting out when the fish does, everything else is totally above board), but it's pretty funny that he thinks he is some tremendous high-level player.

There are two different arguments here. One is about bumhunting, and Victor / luego win that. Insta-sitting out when the fish sits out at your regular stakes is morally dubious since ultimately it hurts our collective self-interest if everyone did this and it causes the fish to leave (in practice i think this is rarely the case). I admit I do this sometimes; usually at the start of a session when i'm not in tune with the flow of the table, when I think the fish is quitting anyway, if i'm off my game and can feel myself potentially prone to tilt vs one of the remaining regs, or simply if i'm out of position against guys who are are genuinely better than me. I recognise this is not ideal practice for game preservation, but still don't feel the least bit bad about it.

For only choosing to sit in soft games in the first place, criticising LA is obviously ludicrous. Game selection and self-awareness is pretty important and I'm sure we could point to a number of regs who'd do better to emulate LA here.

Then there is the second argument that LA is whiney, arrogant and deluded about his own ability. Judging from his blog post this seems to be the case. But these points shouldn't be used as support for a general argument against "bumhunting".

If it takes effort to start games at a certain level in order to remain "open for business" when a fish logs on. It is completely reasonable for those who put in the effort to start games to be irritated by someone who simply joins when a fish shows up. Then, leaves as soon as the fish leaves, therefore not helping keep the game going for the next fish.

If no one was willing to sit and start games they simply wouldn't run the vast majority of the time for LA to play in. Therefore, it is completely reasonable for players to get irritated as they feel he is leaching off their efforts and not pitching in at all to help support the games.

You know youve made it in the poker world when youve got all this discussion about you

Its the golf ppl

Well put sir

It's very simple. These are the problems people have with LA:

• Whines in his blog.
• Cusses people out in chat, acts rude.
• Makes arrogant boasts at 2p2 about his skills.
• Sits out whenever the fish sits out, sits back in when the fish sits back in.
• Never helps start games/keep games alive when things are slow.

These are all things he actually does. I don't know why people feel the need to have any sort of debate about them or him. They're facts. Whether you want to label him a bumhunter or a leech, or analogize his behavior to other things is immaterial; the above things are what make people dislike him.

Clearly this whole hating business has to do with personality. I'm not buying the bumhunting argument.

It's weird though, LA doesn't come off as a something you would call a "douchebag" - I've only seen a couple of posts from him though, so maybe I don't know him well enough. I can understand why people would hate Jamie Gold (for example - I may be off but had to pick someone) but can't figure out why they hate LA.

I'm just curious, I'm not trying to defend or be a fanboy (I'm not anyone's fan ).

It really has nothing to do with game selection or even shortstacking. Leatherass is a free-rider on the economy. He doesn't help start games, he doesn't keep games going. If everyone practiced the same strategy as Leatherass, poker would cease to exist. Imagine a poker world filled with Leatherasses.

How enjoyable would it be to play for a fish? He sits down at an empty table because all the tables are empty. Then the table immediately is filled with pros who never bluff and will leave as soon as he is busted or even sits out.

He free rides his way to a nice living then bitches about how he thinks he's running bad. I can't think of a more dislikable person in poker.

the question is, in this world would leatherass slowroll himself?

I love how the top players all hate on LA and think he sucks and blah blah blah but everytime there's a thread about him none of them can avoid posting in it.

He complained about running bad IN HIS ****ING BLOG. You don't like it, don't ****ing read it. Even you top players who hate him are obsessed with him. Yea he's a bumhunter so what? Take his money everytime he sits 25/50 with a fish and go about your business. Other then that let the dude ****ing be and go do something more productive with your lives than hounding a grinder who posted in his blog that he runs bad.

Will someone speak intelligently on the topic of sitting out when fish sit out? Why is that poor etiquitte? I often feel obligated to stay at a table while a clown is there, but am almost thankful that I get to quit when he sits out, because Im tired of playing... why shouldn't I time my sessions around good games / bad players? Now perhaps sitting out and staying at the table is different, I dont know, but I cant imagine having a responsibility to play with the other regulars... this seems like a very macho "you have to play anyone who wants to play you or you suck and go diaf"

Also - skier5's post was incredibly disturbing because apparently he thinks he has the right to take money from fish because he is on the regular staff, they will see his face again, but some other joker who joins the waitlist, hell no, that guy's only a part-timer! He might beat a fish and not give the money to skier5 eventually (which presumably anyone who stayed long enough would do). That's how poker goes... there is nothing wrong with choosing to sit out of a game, or not coming back, it doesn't change equity while that person is at the table, and frankly it's an unbelievably immature attitude.

Troy Gamble is someone in the poker world!

LA is the first to say that he focuses on winning $, not being the best poker player, pleasing the regs, or whatever.

Seems like his results prove he's done a pretty good job at it.

BTW I could do without the whining. I just don't get the LA hate.

um, no there would be less wasted time and rake paid.

i know it might seem 'elitist' or false because poker logic doesn't always equal real life logic, but isn't aejones' argument pretty solid? almost every person in this thread who hates on him for his etiquette of sitting out when fish sit out etc etc are all players who play in the games he plays, or higher. these players are more experienced with how rare fish are at those levels or how they react to people sitting out or whatever, or they're the people who make the effort to start games and know that if everyone was like leatherass games wouldn't run.

aside from that, everyone should just read MTblue's post. people who come in and say 'lol @ bashing game selection and shortstacking' aren't really getting the point

Would a 3rd man walking rule help? If there's a waitlist the 3rd guy that wants to sitout has to stand up instead.

I find it hard to believe that all the regs who are playing each other have the sole motivation of 'trying to keep games going until a fish shows up.' Some are too lazy to go fish-hunting and just feel like gambling even if the line-up isn't that worthwhile. Wouldn't surprise me if most were using the logic, "well, I'm probably break-even against this line-up anyway and I feel like playing so I'll just stay" while maybe the 1 or 2 slightly better ones know they are at a slight advantage because they are playing un-scary or un-creative regs.

LA plays 10-12 tables at a time or something, right? So getting up when it's 3 or 4 handed isn't exactly terrible since such a table requires more focus and he perhaps realizes he might be closer to -ev on such a shorter table because he's on so many others.

And I really don't think his game selection is THAT incredible if he's playing that many tables at a time. Surely all of his tables aren't super-incredible with some mega-fish. But I really don't know how frequently he does that sit-out/sit-in with the really bad players there. Just pointing out that if there are 20-30 total tables of his preferred stakes available or something and he's playing on 10 of them then even the 10 games he's on aren't likely to ALL be very good games featuring some mega-drooler whom he has the jesus seat on.