Ed’s Spring Poker Thoughts

What if some less scrupulous person or organization decides to place a big bet on the short-stacked, unknown, underdog to win and then calls up the well-known, large-stacked, pro instructing him to lose or something bad will happen to his mother?
Bad people can demonstrate some clever thinking to get their hands on much less money than what might potentially be at stake here.

…snip…
What if some less scrupulous person or organization decides to place a big bet on the short-stacked, unknown, underdog to win and then calls up the well-known, large-stacked, pro instructing him to lose or something bad will happen to his mother?
…snip…

Barry Greenstein had a nice discussion about that in the twoplustwo podcast.

While this sort of thing can happen, the likelyhood of this sort of thing happening in, say, the superbowl is much greater than the WSOP. Much more money on the line. Much more wagered.

Collusion isn’t out of the question, but they get to see all of the hole cards. Every move they make will be on camera. The fears of the game being compromised is probably overblown somewhat.

Barry also thought that the notion that the amateurs would benefit from 3 months of coaching was also up for debate. He was of the thinking that it is really hard to know what the impact will be because the pros also get to see a lot of how the other final table participants play in the coverage leading up to the event. His point was that it would be impossible to know who would benefit more.

“For example, it’s common to see tables with 55% VPIPs. I don’t know much about PLO, but I know that can’t be right.”

PLO can be played with wide variety of preflop strategies and high VP$IP is not a similar sign of opponent’s weak skills as it is in Texas Hold’em. A style of say 50% VP$IP can be played profitably. Not that everyone playing so many hands are going to be a winning player, but there’s a huge difference in PLO and Texas Hold’em in this regard.

It probably doesn’t help when the PLO coach for Stoxpoker had stats of 58% VPIP and 29% PFR over 1500 hands whilst making 4 videos. He also was +$980 for those sessions at 1/2. What a lucky fish.

If Ed wants to record a session, i’ll be happy to rip him apart via commentary to be posted on Stox. I’ll even split the video fee because i’m a nice guy.

Ed, Where will you be playing the cash games? I’d like to sit at your table.

Jim

You probably saw this one coming…

“So you can get a pretty good edge on them by value betting well and choosing your spots where they have a weak range to shove.” - could you give some examples?

Oh, and don’t go too crazy with stone bluffs in those $0.50-$1 PLO games. It turns out that it’s actually pretty easy to make one pair when you start with four cards. And one pair is coincidentally some players’ requirements for stacking off.

Haha, that’s so true! But all that means is that you should bluff your bottom two pair plus busted redraws a lot more on the river. It’s roughly the PLO equivalent of bluffing your busted NFD and getting looked up by queen-high.

Makes me sad I’ve been focusing on live $1-2 instead of online PLO micros lately.

Also, I really have been living under a rock, so WSOP news is news to me.

Here’s a thought…. Why not retract your decision to charge for older articles, or at least give access to them to your loyal supporters who have helped to make this site the success it is. Its all about money money money and it always will be. When will you all realise that everyday people are dying in the world. Everyday, an old man falls over and hurts his head, somewhere in W Virginia, or Florida, or ANYWHERE for that matter. What we need is a PLAN, a real plan, not just a couple of throw away comments about how to play an inside straight draw! Surely we can all agree on that. Long after poker as died a death, the candles will still burn bright. You can start today by boycotting any nachos or similar products. And tomorrow, rub your legs. Yes, its as simple as that! Remember me. Martfongwhip, the last of the dreamers.