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
Last edited by alexeimartov; 11-24-2011 at 08:41 PM.