I look at these leaderboards pretty realistically — for me, it’s not about a “fair competition of the best players,” but rather a system that rewards volume and rake generation.
When I see people on NL2 reaching 2400–4000 points, I’m not surprised at all. At micro stakes, there is a huge number of
hands played, and if someone multi-tables and puts in a lot of hours, they can simply “outgrind” the system in terms of volume. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are stronger players — often it’s just about the number of hands played.
I understand that these structures are designed on purpose to encourage activity. The poker room benefits when people play more, bet more, and generate more rake, so it ends up being a system where micro stakes can become the main engine of point races.
For me, this is an important distinction: I don’t confuse “leaderboard races” with real poker winrate. In cash games, I always come back to a simple question — am I winning on the long run or not, not how many points I’ve collected in a session.
That’s why I try to separate these things: leaderboards can be an interesting extra motivation, but the foundation is always the same — the quality of decisions and long-term profit, not the numbers in a table.
