Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em

Rooster said:

Hey guys

First let me say awesome book , i have some questions in relation to yer time spend at the table to write this book, hope im not asking to much here

thanks, glad you liked it.

..

How many hands at 200nl did ye play ?

probably around 200k

What site did ye play ?

i'll just say: one of the bigger ones

What bb/100 did ye end up at ?

let's just say that i was a significant winner. as we mention in the book, there is a still a TON of variance even in a sample of 200k hands, so i don't know that i'd be confident to even handicap my "true winrate". plus, i do some things that inherently hurt my wr, like not table selecting (part of that was on purpose to get a feel for how the regs were playing), playing 9 tables at a time (a.d.d. ftw!), playing at sub-optimal times during the middle of the day, and perhaps mainly, i did (and still do) a ton of experimenting – i.e., trying things, see how they work, trying other things, etc. – i actually think it's an important attitude for a poker player to take long term. the goal should be to maximize long term success in this game (if that's what you hope to achieve), and not to maximize a particular number expressed in units of BB per 100 hands.

Any chance of seeing an image of the stats ye ran at ? or a general rundown of yer stats

my stats changed a lot as a tried different things. there were periods when i played to a vpip of 24, and others when it was 34. there were periods when my c-bet% was 80, and others when it ws 50. there were periods when my W$WSF was 52, and others when it was 42.

I get the feeling while reading the book ye dont give much respect to 200nl players , what % of the player pool (at the site you played) would you consider to be a good 200nl player ?

not true at all – i have a ton of respect for 200nl players. i couldn't begin to put a percent on it because i don't have access to the entire population, but speaking subjectively, i think the good regulars at 1-2 are excellent poker players, and i'm generally amazed at how games have evolved over time.

Cheers

sunfun3527 said:

 If that's the case Sunny, then how do you mathematically define long term sucess?

hi sunfun,

I can definitely answer the above question, but for it to be most meaningful it won't be "mathematically".

IMO, I'd define long term success in poker as the ability to live a great life through poker. Thing is, that's gonna be contigent on how one defines "great life", and the definition is necessarily different for everyone. I can tell you that, for me, it involves having a lot of free time. That may not be true for others.

Another more objective defintion might be "lifetime dollars won." Couple things about that though…

First off, bb/100 still isn't nearly the most telling thing. A dude crushing $.25-$.50 may have a higher winrate than a dude at $10-$20, but who's making more money? And who's more likely a more advanced player?

Secondly, even if two people are making different annual (or lifetime) amounts in poker, the one making the smaller amount could be "more successful" in my mind if he's managed to live a better quality of life. (Again, quality of life is very subjective, but hopefully you see the importance of what I brought up.)

Thirdly, i'm not sure lifetime winnings would even have a inear correlation with who is the "best" player. Particularly if we include tournament winnings, there's way too much randomness (winning one big tourney can skew your lifetime results). But even if we include cash games only, there's randomness because it takes money to make money. For example, in a not-so-large amount of hands, Phil Galfond made like several million last year playing online. His bb/100 was pretty irrelevant, and I doubt his goal is to focus on that number or base decisions on it. He played in huge games when very particular players (read: fish) were in it, and he probably focused on beating them, as well as holding his own against the other regs. But also, he had the bankroll to play in those games. Does that mean others couldn't have beaten similar games had they been able to play in them? I don't know. No doubt Galfond is an awesome player, but HOW MUCH better is he than certain players who may have much less money than he? My inkling is that there's a ton of randomness and selection bias involved.

It's not that I don't like talking about winrate, I actually think it's a very interesting subject WHEN discussed in a very particular (and statistical) manner. The reason I generally don't like talking about winrate with the general public is because, frankly, most people are really clueless about the relevant statistical implications of winrates (I don't necessarily disclude myself from that group, though I've certainly been trying to soak up a lot of classical and Bayesian concepts, etc. lately).

For example, pick a poker site – doesn't matter which one. Now pick a particular game/limit. Can you tell me what the average winrate is? Can you tell me how the average is affected as the number of players in a hand changes? Can you tell me what the shape of the distribution looks like? Without knowing the answers to those questions, what do you hope to gain by knowing someone's winrate?

Now, realize that even if you are at the absolute most outlier right side of the winrate distribution, you might still be making more money per hour if you moved up to higher stakes or played more tables. See what I'm saying?

Hopefully I've helped shed some light about how I view some of these topics. Hopefully it influences how you view them in the future. If not, fyi there is a place on the interwebz where I posted a screenshot of a sample of hands I played at $1-$2. If you're creative you should have no problem finding it. But if you've been listening to me, you shouldn't just take it with a grain of salt, but a whole jar of salt.   :)

this is kind of weird Sunny.  i understand not stating your winrate but you sound like you didn't win when you supprted yourself off of $1-$2.  i'm not saying you need to fess up on winrate publicly (which is always dumb – NEVER announce poker winnings, it is begging for audits) but take your due my friend.

Sunny won a lot despite his 40 buyin downswing and nonexistant table selection.

jdk050507 said:

I have a Question for the authors. 

I actually just finished a thorough study of the entire book, which I started about 3 days after the book came out (after reading through it once). 

My question is, just out of curiosity, did certain authors write certain sections?  Obviously the one part is from a series Ed Miller did, as the book states.  I guess what I'm suspecting that the last part was written primarily by Matt Flynn?  Did Sunny and Ed play most of the 1-2 online hands for the bulk of the book?  Did Matt Flynn Play any 1-2 NL or stick to higher live games?

Just curious!

While we each individually were perhaps the "idea engine" for different sections, every word in the entire book was looked at or edited by every author.

hint: you need to decide what confidence interval you think is appropriate, and a Stats 101 textbook is where to go to answer Sunny's question as a first approximation.

i am very confident Sunny wins $1-$2 and will continue to win $1-$2 and would love to wager on it (giving odds) if anyone cares to.