Especially Mig's graph was super sick in terms of buy-ins.

fu fat

I'd be surprised, though, if he was that far above All-in EV for the year as a whole. Obviously he's running way over in the last 4 months where he's crushed, but up until August he could barely win a pot. That's all I've been trying to express, that people are only looking at his recent variance instead of thinking about the horrible streak before it which was much longer.

Yeah completely agree. Of course Ziigmund has ran hot since August, no-one could win $3m in 3 months on stars without having a lot of luck but he ran terribly for about 2 years before that. A lot of his PLO downswing was from playing 3k/9k, where he could easily have been $1m+ under EV and he also lost over a million flipping.

This.

And obviously All-In EV is just a part of variance.

some thoughts for you railbirds out there:

ilari can't help himself from gambling to win huge pots but besides that aspect of his game he is very strong and plays very well. as far as leaks go, gambling to win huge pots isn't such a bad one really.

his strong past results are primarily because he was similar to benyamine in that he was really good at the more advanced plo mechanics well before most the nl players really understood the game. people would think 'lol ilari is a donk!' because he would play 'too loose' but then make massive fundamental errors, not understand how hand ranges interacted, etc.

still he has improved since then and kept pace with the level of players who quickly caught up to him. he no longer just always pots in every spot, he is usually playing half the amount of tables as every other player that plays nosebleeds, and he bluffs in some spots that others don't but possibly should, which makes him tricky to deal with. he is also good at betting pot which is something that, as the differences between players relative skills decrease, becomes increasingly optimal (see how as the gap between players skill levels in nl have diminished, over betting has increased; this is game theoretically correct).

as such he is a very strong player and i respect his game even if i do think he can act like a little b1tch sometimes although he has gotten a lot better lately. probably because he is winning so much money.

gavz results normalized a bit, but that was to be expected. its not like he is the worlds best player and deserves to have career earnings of 4 mil. most the players of similar skill levels have similar earnings to where he is around now.

luckygumps also normalised somewhat, he was running v hot in my db up until recently but his winnings seem closer to where they should be at.

i am running really hot for sure also, i would guess i am at least 300k over EV on tableratings. still, i have played significantly less hands than the other players i am discussing, as i am focusing on music, but i have no illusions that i've probably got a couple of free BMWs out of variance in the last year.

toweliestar is at around 750k but i would say he is a little better than this. perhaps he is down a little variance wise.

jeans89 is at 1.3 mil tr earnings and this seems very reasonable relative to his skill level.

skyjorvey has made mammoth amounts but he has also played an absolutely insane amount of poker and i would also say he is a level above players like myself, gavz, towelie, jeans, etc, so they are probably mostly deserved.

the bottom line though, when people say 'why does anyone play plo' is that basically every player who i think is good that plays stars regularly has between 750k-1.3 mil earnings on table ratings.

there aren't really any exceptions for people who i consider very strong at the 25/50+ level that don't have large winnings. sure maybe rui cao should have slightly more although i wouldn't say a tonne more (keep in mind he made 1 million in a night off isildur which was at least 50% a case of being in the right place at the right time and then running like jesus) and maybe i should have a little less and zig maybe shouldn't have QUITE as much but still a lot but there really isn't anyone that good that has only 300k earnings and no one that is not a winner would ever really make it to 500k earnings playing 50/100 or below in games this difficult.

i would explain this by saying that variance is far more complicated than ev graphs when you start dealing with nosebleeds poker, but that a lot of these variance things even themselves out over multiple year frames; you pretty much always get a few shots to make a lot of money out of poker and if you're good you make the most of them; ilari might have missed out on playing a lot with zypherin but got a chance when he ran like jesus vs rui. rui might have had some bad ev against ilari but he was there for a huge isildur1 blow up, etc. the better players are, the more likely it is that the player makes a lot of money when one of these black swans occurs, and the less likely they are to find themselves on the opposite end of the spectrum (e.g. i am a little less likely to lose 20 buyins in a session than someone a step below me at poker, and i am a little more likely to win 20 buyins off someone who has flipped their **** than someone a little worse than me at poker).

i will also add that table ratings has been tracking quite a while so its not like people don't have massive losing streaks. i have had many 300k+ downswings over the past 3 years and so many + or - 100k days it is really quite ridiculous. you just have to keep making good decisions; when you do, you notice that other people don't always make good decisions, and that is why your graph goes up and theirs goes down.

Anyway, thats my rant, i hope you enjoyed it and gave you guys some perspective on variance in high stakes plo.

+1 gazilion, loved it.

edit:

interesting read martin. what about isildur though? do you think that his plo results are indicative of his skill level and what do you think of his game?

Nice post Mr

Great post thank you very much for your thoughts

awesome read MacijNinja
what are your thoughts on Rafi Amit?

Thanks for the insight Martin.

Ty

Wow great insight, best post ITT.

And this is for the non believers!

Ziigmund $121,200
Cole South $133,795

Preflop:
Ziigmund raises to $1,800
Cole South raises to $5,400
Ziigmund raises to $16,200
Cole South calls $10,800

Flop (Pot $32,400): 5 8 Q
Cole South checks
Ziigmund checks

Turn (Pot $32,400): 7
Cole South bets $32,400
Ziigmund calls $32,400

River (Pot $97,200): 3
Cole South bets $85,195 (all in)
Ziigmund calls $72,600 (all in)

Ziigmund has A 8 K J
Cole South has 9 J K T
Cole South shows King Queen high
Ziigmund shows a pair of Eights

Ziigmund wins pot $242,400

This hand is simply ridiculous.

not read it yet but ty, its great to hear proper insight about high stakes players.

ty magicninja

Thanks for the post, any thoughts on !P0krpartyi? Would also be interested to hear about rafi as someone previously mentioned.

v interesting post ty alexei

year-to-date millionaire ITT

lol had that 6 pack of haterade all to yourself eh champ

ben86 might be running kind of bad actually. isildur is obviously better than his winnings indicate because he learns to play games at the stakes he ends up playing and it takes him quite a while to work out how to play in the way that he plays (e.g. he just bluffs every spot and then starts to cross the ones off that never ever work... or something like that until he becomes extremely tough but is down a ****load of money; then no one except extremely strong players play him; not exactly a great money making strategy but you gotta love the heart). That said he is too sporadic to be truly great at 6 max plo. He is very strong a lot of the time, but some days he will just donate too much and no one else really does that to the same extent so how is he meant to even the playing field? You just can't be good enough to make up something like that. that said he can play the same 90% very solid game as everyone else if he feels like it so he is clearly world class, even at 6 max.

partypoker is very good but he doesn't have the bankroll for stakes he plays and i am skeptical of his profitably in some of the lineups he plays (he's profitable in others which is a testament to his skill but if you're only profitable 60% of the time you're playing 50/100 you're going to have crazy insane variance especially if you have no problem waxing your br in a night and going back to 25/50c).

refael is hard to get a read on really. nothing really stands out about his game to me which means he is probably just making good decisions the vast majority of the time and not doing anything too unusual, probably bluffs the good spots and makes some good folds sometimes. really thats enough to beat these games but there are so many pitfalls that its easy to say 'just play abc' when everyones abc game is so good now and people are so fast to exploit small issues with your game.

abc also might mean bluffing in a spot that is a clear bluff but where you are losing 45% of the time and you are going to lose like 20k when you lose or something so don't get any ideas that you have half a clue what i mean when i say ABC (it might mean REALLY loose in some spots and lock tight in others for example), all i am communicating is that i think most railbirds would be surprised at how similarly all high stakes players play 95% of spots.

you really have to have answers for all the non-standard things people might try on you though beyond this basic game, and you can't wait a long time to respond to these things, you have to just make the right decision the first time since they might change their play the second time. basically if you are making exploitable plays you have to know straight away when someone is exploiting them so you don't get exploited yourself. but when you can't make any of these plays because people always counter in the correct manner, you have to have a very solid abc game to fall back on in every spot that is relatively balanced. its not that hard but you have to have the fundamentals in place. most the people that do are considered extremely strong.

thats basically all there is to it

great great post.. sir ty

thanks for the great posts alexei! really enjoyed the read

fyi rui told me he ran way below ev lifetime vs isil