.

Wow.

1. Who put you in charge of what an ethical profit-maximizing strategy should be? We all have different skills and make money differently: tournaments and cash, deepstacked MTTs and SNGs, playing one table or ten.

2. If you think that it's a badge of honor to risk a year of earnings on "a risky proposition" perhaps you should read something about bankroll strategy.

3. Some players make more money by adding tables. Others make more money playing fewer tables but concentrating more closely on each table.

It is not about whether someone has "the balls" to take big risks, it's about using your knowledge and skill set to make as much money as possible over a large sample size.

We can all agree that this site will not come out for a very long time, and when it does, it's gonna completely stink on ice.

We can all agree the best part of the thread by far is Mason Malmuth vs. Todd Whittles

Excellent debate!

They are good friends ya know...

http://www.flushdraw.net/news/two-pl...tent-squabble/

Do we really want to limit the imagination? Would American football be better if there was no two-point conversion? Maybe Galfond's ideas are more analogous to a targeting rule, concussion protocols, and other attempts to protect players.

What should be the goal? Simply stealing customers from Pokerstars and possibly driving them out of business seems like a silly goal. So does maximizing the win rate of 24-tabling, HUD-using online grinders. Ideally, the goal is to grow the poker economy and, right now, perhaps the strategy should be to focus on long-term sustainable growth rather than trying to create another poker boom.

Maybe the goal should be to be the online equivalent of the Orleans rather than the online equivalent of Aria, whatever that means.

In Post #2081 you wrote:

If that's respectful, I think you have a lot to learn.

As for your "good content," anyone who reads my posts will see that I think it has little value and lacks a clear understanding of what some of the important issues are. Also notice that I never used words like "idiot" to describe you even though I did say that one of your statements was incredibly stupid (which it was).

You see, if you're going to present yourself as an expert and get a number of things wrong, someone like myself is going to take it apart. This has nothing to do with you personally, but our philosophy at 2+2 has always been to steer our readers towards those things which we feel are worthwhile whether it comes from 2+2 or not, and away from those things which we feel are questionable.

Again, I strongly recommend you read and perhaps study the two books I recommended in one of the other posts. Once you master this material and get a handle on how things based on probability theory can be counter-intuitive to many people -- see my psychology book, your contributions in this thread might begin to have more value.

I also want to address this statement that you wrote in the same post as the statement above:

From my perspective, you have a long history of making statements that not only are completely inaccurate but seem to support some position that you're currently advocating. The Run It Once poker site, after it launches has the potential to dramatically affect 2+2. This not only includes our business, both Internet and Publishing, but many of our posters and other people who come here to read our site. But according to you, since it'll have no affect on me, I should care less about it.

MM

Hi PTLou:

This is definitely post of the year. PM me with your address and shirt size, and we'll send you a free 2+2 shirt.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Cliff:

Unfortunately, much of what you say is probably correct. On the other hand, my view is that poker is sick, especially when you look at the cash games. So I would be in favor of trying some adjustments knowing going in that many of them while sounding good on paper won't work or will create other issues. And when this happens, it may be time to back out of a particular adjustment(s).

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Cliff:

In my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics I talk about something called "Non-Self-Weighting Strategies." What this quickly means is that to maximize your expectation you'll need to take risks. But in many of the games today, players do things to reduce variance which is the same as reducing the risk. While this is great as long as the games are available, it can lead to problems down the road when the bad players virtually never win. That's why I talk about a proper balance of luck and skill which of course leads to the sweet spot.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason, let's be real here.

I have posted a lot of detailed criticisms and suggestions for Run It Once in this thread, related to their stated plans for operations, marketing, and rewards.

Your contribution to the discussion has been a claim that adding antes to the NL cash games would solve all of their problems.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide which of us is guilty of making stupid posts here.

It is further laughable that you are still sticking to the incredible claim that your rudeness/condescension is based upon the content of my posts, and not your decade-long animosity toward me. Even a young child could read these posts and detect the anger and resentment oozing through each of your diatribes.

It is even further laughable that you are instructing me to read your books in order to improve the quality of my posts here. If I'm going to read a psychology book, it's going to be one written by an actual psychologist.

You might want to take a look inward to figure out why just about every good poster over the past decade has abandoned this forum. I'll give you a hint -- it's not just because poker has declined in popularity in recent years.

In any case, you've made it loud and clear that my contributions are not appreciated here, so I'll return to inactivity mode.

This is the sort of stuff you do. I haven't made this claim. What I've said is that adding antes to no-limit hold 'em cash games should improve the balance of luck and skill that is present in this game. But to solve all the problems, it also means that people will play the game after these adjustments are made, and this is something I haven't said.

You need to understand that you have a history of this. If you want to dispute that adding antes will not do much for helping to create the sweet spot I've been talking about, then feel free to give your reasons. But don't come on here and make statements about things that you contribute to me that were never said.

You're free to think whatever you want.

I've given you the advice to read these two books because it's clear to me that your understanding of the underlining statistical theory that's driving much of this discussion and is influencing the decisions that RIO is making is lacking, and lacking by a lot. Also, my psychology book is based on statistical theory (which includes probability theory) and mathematical modeling, and I'm highly qualified to write in this area. In addition, if you had a much better understanding of these topics your responses to my posts would probably be much different.

You seem to think that I'm motivated by all the attacks you have made on me and my business for many years. An example for those reading is that you once wrote that I'm not a very charitable person yet at the time you wrote that I had given away over $250,000 through my private charity (and that number is approaching $300,000 today).

But my motivation was to correct the errors someone was making who also presents himself as an expert. I have a long history of doing this and it goes all the way back to the 1980s when I became convinced that the advice in Mike Caro's Professional Hold 'em Report would simply cost players money (and I just happen to think highly of some of Caro's other work).

If you don't like the way I present things, that's too bad. But notice that my comments and responses are specific and include enough detail so that it should be clear what I'm talking about. In addition, by posting here in the manner I do, anyone is free to challenge my conclusions.

I also want to add a little more to what I've written above. One of the things I wrote was:

So why am I saying this? Well, from what I've concluded from this thread and other sources it seems to me that RIO management, and these are people, including Phil Galfond, who I don't personally know, has come to certain conclusions. They are:

1. No-limit hold 'em as a cash game is sick.

2. Professional players have too big an edge over recreational players.

3. Excellent poker players should win money from weaker poker players.

4. Excellent players shouldn't necessarily win almost every time they play.

5. Recreational players shouldn't necessarily lose almost every time they play.

6. Poker should be something that recreational players should enjoy playing even if they're long term losers.

7. There needs to be reasons for recreational players to come back and not only play more but to redeposit as well.

So how do you go about understanding this. Well it turns out that there are statistical concepts which are well explained in the two books I recommended to you, Gambling Theory and Other Topics and Real Poker Psychology. For most people who are not statistically trained it's a much different way of thinking. For example, the probabilistic world can only go from zero to one, not from a large (in absolute sense) negative number to a large positive number. And once you gain a strong understanding of these ideas, much of the debate that's driving the discussion in this thread becomes easy to understand.

And one other thing. It just turns out that this same approach also easily solves many of the issues the so called poker psychologists try to address. Thus since by background is mathematical statistics and I had an eleven year professional career working in this area in addition to the appropriate degrees, I'm well qualified to write a book on poker psychology given that the book is written in the manner that my book is.

MM

I don't know any of the history involved here, but based on you interpreting Mason's post as a "claim that adding antes to the NL cash games would solve all of their problems," I'm leaning towards you being guilty. I was playing a lot online back in the day, as well as live. I don't remember grinding fulltime as the dreams of me or my poker-playing friends. It was to win have fun and win more than we lost when we did play, and maybe satellite into a big tournament and pull a Moneymaker. I'd be surprised if a significant percentage of players had any endgame of turning pro.

The way to attract recreational players is to offer games where they can play a lot of starting hands and play them inexpertly and still have a reasonably good chance of having a winning session. There are countless ways to achieve this and some will work better than others. Experiments should thus be done trying out various alternatives (some of which I have previously mentioned.) Of course pros who have achieved only moderate success by playing one particular game and playing it fairly algorithmically get nervous when such thoughts are brought up because they are not sure they can adjust. But I think when the smoke clears they will have no choice.

Okay that's settled then.
All cash games on RIO Poker will be 6 card PLO and Superstud8 for the first 6 months.

100% agree

Your last message to me was so ludicrous, I suppose one more response is in order before I go dark.

So why even bring it up, then?

We were discussing actual ways RIO could improve their site in the real world.

You were suggesting a completely impractical solution which would be a complete failure on a new poker site, especially in this day and age.

And if the suggestion were purely theoretical, why bring it up at all in a discussion which centers around a real application?


Look at the rest of the thread. This isn't a discussion based upon statistics.

It's one based upon player desires (both pro and recreational), marketing, rewards, and HUD policy.

People such as myself are offering our opinions regarding what would make a new online poker site successful in 2018.

You, on the other hand, are trying to show off how smart you are with statistics, and how wonderful your books are.

It appears you don't even understand the point of this entire discussion over the last 30 pages or so.


Then write books on probability theory and mathematical modeling. It is absurd to believe one can write a book about "psychology" without any education or training in that field.

I realize you are very sensitive about the topic regarding your psychology book, which is why you seemingly brought it up out of nowhere, including oddly quoting a line I wrote about it on my site years ago.


The questions about your charity sprung from errors on your charity's own tax returns, which listed $0 of charitable disbursements over a period of 10 years.

Please do not accuse me of making false accusations when I was taking the information from your charity's own (publicly available) returns.

Also, as you well know, I later clarified on my site that I believed your returns were indeed in error, and that you had actually donated to charity. But this was only after you finally addressed the tax return issue after avoiding it for quite some time.


Amazing that, even in our back-and-forth bickering, you still find a way to slip in brags about your sick analytical skills.

I'm sure everyone is very impressed that you corrected Mike Caro 30 years ago. Great job.


Oh, and I forgot to respond to this gem earlier:

Never mind.

I'm speechless.

Speaking of games where fish will bleed slower and have decent chances of winning sessions... When I was playing fairly low stakes 8 game on stars, nothing huge 1/2 2/4 mostly there were droves of terrible players showing up day in day out to battle. These players were obvious long term losers but because of the nature of razz, stud hi lo, LHE etc and the 40bb cap on NLHE and PLO their money drained very slowly in comparison to the standard games for obvious reasons. The quick rotation of games adds to the enjoyment. The fact is fish are dead vs a winning 5nl player these days nevermind higher stakes.

Yep the most popular live game I ever played in that had the worst players in it was a 50p/50p Dealer's Choice feeder/beginners game that fed into the much bigger £1/£2/£5 game and was the one you'd sit in while waiting for a seat into the bigger game.

I actually lost in that game overall (the 50p/50p) because the fishy players were playing so loose that it eradicated most of the skill post flop/on the streets/draws so you could easily run bad and lose lots of buy ins quickly against players who barely knew what they were doing in half of the games.

What you don't understand is that the years of the poker boom is what statisticians would call a statistical outlier. What this means is that conclusions from that time should have little bearing on what may or may not be good advice today.

Isn't it interesting how statistical theory is able to explain so many things?

Also, and I can see where this is poorly written on my part, my statement that Two Plus Two was the leading publisher in the world only refers to the one statistic of having books in the Amazon Top 100.

MM

Did Phil G. write somewhere explicitly that there will be no heads-up tables?

Those are valid ways an individual might maximise their medium term profitability when they see games available, but they are not the vision that causes those games to run.

You have no entitlement to a low variance work-from-home income stream, you are basically either arb-ing a short-term opportunity which has no mechanism to continue, or you need to earn it by selling a product to happy customers.

You are selling me the personality of an audit-intern. That's great work for some people, but it has no place in the Vegas/Monte Carlo style product vision that brings in the revenue.

Sorry if discussed
But Deep Ante tables will be available I hope?
And straddling allowed?

Hi SageDonkey:

Just to follow up on this, the following comes from a paper, "Cardroom Theory
— A Two-Way Street —" that was written by Donna Harris and myself and which we gave at a gambling conference in Las Vegas in 1995. It also appears in my book Poker Essays: Volume II which was first published in 1996.

So as you can see, this idea has been around for a long time.

Best wishes,
Mason

And what internet games added to the analysis are playing remotely and playing multiple games.

Because even a game that is theoretically out of balance in which highly skilled players would win too much, can remain in balance as long as high skilled players on one table in that geography do not consider it worth playing.

That is why £1/£2 NLHE in the West End of London runs just fine. But when an online game can be part of a portfolio of many revenue streams facilitated by tools like HUDs and scripts, even very low stakes games become vulnerable to being exploited out of balance.

Except the error made by my accountant had nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Here is my "Publisher's Note" from our January 2016 Two Plus Two Online Poker Strategy Magazine. Even though I didn't mention you by name, you should recognize the quote.

The error by our accountant turned up on your site about a month later, and here's the complete quote from you which you wrote on 12/18/15.

Notice that your "Mason is not known for his charity donations" had nothing to do with any error that our account made.

MM

Too late axe in car ???

Very kind of you and thanks for the gift.

Much has been said in this thread, many posts from many posters, but only one person won a t-shirt. So basically I win the thread.