How difficult are the high stakes really?

IMO the difficult leval of high stakes isnt really all that different.
It is just the swings that are tough.
I have watched millions of high stakes games online,involving such people as zigmund,durrr,erilk lingren,and so on.
And have seen them call with middle pair on fourth street,granted these people are great players and have proved that,but I have seen them make alot of bad calls just like they were playing micro limit.
Again its just my opinion,but I think its just the money swings.

Stu_Ungar said:

Im thinking here that there comes a level where even someone like Doyal dosnt have that much of an edge over the rest of the table to make playing at higher levels as profitable as playing at a lower limit.

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http://www.pokertableratings.com/overview/durrrr

http://www.pokertableratings.com/overview/omgclayaiken

I guess 7BB/100 is a good enough edge... no need for them to drop down limits...

What you say makes sense for the simplest forms of poker, like heads up limit holdem or turbo STTs, where the optimal unexploitable strategies are simple enough to be solved by game theory with the help of computer simulations. At a high enough level everybody would play unexploitably and nobody would have an edge.

Fortunately, deep stacked NLHE and PLO are a so complex that nobody really has a clue what the optimal unexploitable strategies would really be like, so there's always the possibility to find a new edge.

left52side said:

And have seen them call with middle pair on fourth street,granted these people are great players and have proved that,but I have seen them make alot of bad calls just like they were playing micro limit.

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Just because you don't understand a call does not mean it's a bad call.

Just because you don't understand a call does not mean it's a bad call.

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I do understand making calls.
But I dont think so much of it is about understanding calls,its about understanding your other players at the table.
And I think anyone who watches high stakes online,can agree there are quite a few BAD calls that happen,just like in the lo limt games.

BelgoSuisse said:

What you say makes sense for the simplest forms of poker, like heads up limit holdem or turbo STTs, where the optimal unexploitable strategies are simple enough to be solved by game theory with the help of computer simulations. At a high enough level everybody would play unexploitably and nobody would have an edge.

Fortunately, deep stacked NLHE and PLO are a so complex that nobody really has a clue what the optimal unexploitable strategies would really be like, so there's always the possibility to find a new edge.

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I definately agree with you that the game is so complex that its unsolvable. Going off topic here.. there is a research group that has designed a computer simulator which now plays very good heads up poker. About 2 years ago it was considered tough but beatable, now its started to win quite a bit.

It dosnt yet do FR, just heads up. FR is a long way off.

I find this facinating, not because its a bot.. this research isnt being done to scam money from online poker. Rather, because poker is a game of imperfect infomation, this is seen as a modle for researching artificial intellegence as the machine has to make decisions based on imperfect infomation.

So one day when robots rule the world, we can actually say the game of poker was actually responsible for this!! LOL

Like I said FR is a long way off but its interesting that poker is being used in the developmen of AI

left52side said:

I do understand making calls.
But I dont think so much of it is about understanding calls,its about understanding your other players at the table.
And I think anyone who watches high stakes online,can agree there are quite a few BAD calls that happen,just like in the lo limt games.

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To be clear: a call is good when the pot odds you get are good enough given the equity of your hand versus the range of hands your opponent could have. You, as an observer, have no clue whatsoever about this range of hands as you don't ever play against these players. They, on the other hand, play each other continuously and can make very accurate guesstimates of these ranges.

Ergo, you judging the quality of a high stakes call is just ridiculous.

Stu_Ungar said:

I definately agree with you that the game is so complex that its unsolvable. Going off topic here.. there is a research group that has designed a computer simulator which now plays very good heads up poker. About 2 years ago it was considered tough but beatable, now its started to win quite a bit.

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Heads up limit HE. No limit HE is still much to tough for computers.

BelgoSuisse said:

Heads up limit HE. No limit HE is still much to tough for computers.

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I thought it was playing no-limit, but have just been looking at a couple of the hands played and it looks like limit. Most sources dont seem to say if its limit or NL but from the hands i think it is limit.

Yeah I guess NL will be the next hurdle. Though as you said its much harder than limit for a computer so I think we will all be safe for a decade or two!

EDIT: if anyone else is interested. Its called polaris

The Skill is higher. But a lot of it has to do with being able to withstand dry spells so you dont lose your ass.

At least for the small stakes I've heard that the biggest jumps are 25nl -> 50nl, 100 -> 200nl, 200 -> 400nl, and 600 -> 1knl.

Also I'm pretty sure the higher you go the bigger those jumps are. Like to go from 25 -> 50nl you just have to learn how to better exploit fish. When you go from 600 -> 1knl you have to be able to play very well against regs and really exploit the 1-2 fish at the table.

And lol at people saying because a HS player calls down with mid pair it's bad. People do these things called bluffs a bit more at those games and especially on drawy boards a lot of the time mid pair is ahead of the opponent's range. Who knows maybe it was a bad call, but first off it was probably very close, and second off, neither you, me, nor anyone else without all the history between the players is really qualified to judge on whether it was a good/bad call. Saying the call was bad because it was middle pair is pretty much level 0 thinking. The HS regs are thinking a bit higher than that .

true, the learning curve would probably be as u have described, steepest at the start and gradually easing off.

the key is in the details of your game that u refine as you play. just like a 100m runner who clocks 15 seconds when he starts out, getting to 14 then 13 then 12 then 11, and for some, 10, will come fast and his improvement in spurts. he'll then reach the point where improvement has to be measured in 0.* seconds interval to the point of 0.0* seconds.

everyone can be good. only a few can be great.