14 replies to this topic

[navybuttons]

so i haven't really had a t.v. in over 2 years (save brief periods), and i'm staying at my parents currently and just now beginning to watch poker on the tele again. right now they're showing the horse final table and i caught the earlier rounds the other night.

has anyone else felt that there is some serious fundamental leaks in the play of some of these guys? i assume they have some clue but i'd be inclined to believe most just play hold em.

most of the mistakes i think i notice are minor. like i've seen raises and while they were technically ahead i think they are probably behind their opponents range. i thought there was a few times people could have used free card plays. in stud and stud8 people seemed to misplay 4th and 5th really bad. people seemed to make really light calls in the O8 and HE games. i realize that some of the plays made need to be seen in context of the table flow.

it seemed like freddie deeb's O8 game and Hanson's all games game stuck out as FUNDAMENTALLY poor to me.

thoughts?

also, i thought kenny tran's J high call against bruno was pretty genius.

[Veener Schnitz]

so i haven't really had a t.v. in over 2 years (save brief periods), and i'm staying at my parents right now just now beginning to watch poker on the tele again. right now they're showing the horse final table and i caught the earlier rounds the other night.

has anyone else felt that there is some serious fundamental leaks in the play of some of these guys? i assume they have some clue but i'd be inclined to believe most just play hold em.

most of the mistakes i think i notice are minor. like i've seen raises and while they were technically ahead i think they are probably behind their opponents range. i thought there was a few times people could have used free card plays. in stud and stud8 people seemed to misplay 4th and 5th really bad. people seemed to make really light calls in the O8 and HE games. i realize that some of the plays made need to be seen in context of the table flow.

it seemed like freddie deeb's O8 game and Hanson's all games game stuck out as FUNDAMENTALLY poor to me.

thoughts?

also, i thought kenny tran's J high call against bruno was pretty genius.

It may seem like leaks to us because majority of the people here don't play at such a high level against the same people like they do. Sometimes the pros have to make what appear to be leaks or bad plays to us in order to mix things up.

[silkyjonson]

There was some really bad play. It was most apparent in Stud 8 from what I had seen.

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-foru...howtopic=111241

[Buckeye Hughes]

The fact most of the entrants in this tourney are fairly familiar would probably have something to do with this. The buy in alone reduced the number of entrants. Therefore most of these guys probably play against each other on a fairly regular basis.

[nutzbuster]

Just goes to show how correct some folks are (Steve7, Daniel, etc.) when they say that if you learn to play ALL the games well you will be a huge favorite, cash games and tourneys. Most folks suck at HORSE, in general...

[navybuttons]

Therefore most of these guys probably play against each other on a fairly regular basis.

i sincerely doubt it. i feel like i have a pretty good idea of what the tournament was like, and i'm confident saying that this statement is incorrect.

[Omaha Hi/Lo]

What I hated more than some of the odd plays was Norman Chad's God AWEFUL mixed game analysis. 99% of everything he said about every game was fundamentally wrong (not much different from his NL commentary)... I feel like if ESPN HAS to have him as a part of the broadcast they need to bring in a REAL, QUALIFIED commentator. I'm not the biggest Mike Sexton fan, but atleast he is qualified to talk about poker tournaments.

But yes, I agree that a lot of the players in the field were suprisingly bad.

[checkymcfold]

i haven't watched too many episodes, but it was pretty obvious to me that even the big names tilt fairly often--matusow made some pretty glaringly bad plays in stud8 that i couldn't even read-based-rationalize.

i also just got thru a phase where i played horse cash games almost exclusively, so i obv agree that being well rounded is gonna make you lots of mobneys.

when i play live, i like mixed games the best for precisely that reason. i also LOVE including high variance games like 2-7 in mixed games because it's so easy for people to go on monkey tilt after missing just a few draws, and that tilt is gonna spill over into other games as well.

[nutzbuster]

i haven't watched too many episodes, but it was pretty obvious to me that even the big names tilt fairly often--matusow made some pretty glaringly bad plays in stud8 that i couldn't even read-based-rationalize.

i also just got thru a phase where i played horse cash games almost exclusively, so i obv agree that being well rounded is gonna make you lots of mobneys.

when i play live, i like mixed games the best for precisely that reason. i also LOVE including high variance games like 2-7 in mixed games because it's so easy for people to go on monkey tilt after missing just a few draws, and that tilt is gonna spill over into other games as well.

Ha, so funny about that. At Commerce a few weeks ago Steve was getting ready to play and was attempting to convince a few victims to agree to add '7' to a proposed mixed game. They looked very wary at the prospect, and passed at that time...not sure if they ever did play. Apparently they know him pretty well.

[albasuna]

well if you guys are talking about fundamental play then probably they were some poor plays.
these plays look -EV to us but you have to realize they are playing some of the best players in the world.
they in my mind probably believe that the most "fundamental" play might be a bit to obvious to these guys with tons of experience.
if everyone would be playing the 'right' way then wouldn't it'd be no different then robots playing robots and the cards just playing themselves out?
it's our creative which seperates us from the robots.

[Variancelawl]

My guess is these guys are playing tons of hours a day, As well as hands as far as live is concerned. So obviously there are going to be a few mistakes some hands. They show about 20 hands in an episode on ESPN cause of all the other crap that comes in the broadcast. The hands that they do show are ussally the hands with lots of action or people misplaying certain things drastically.

I think it comes in with the marketing of it all. So mr. Joe can go wow some of these "pros" make some really bad plays, I bet i could go pretty deep in this thing. Maybe i read to much into this thing but i dunno. Also you dont see things like they do, Maybe they picked up a read the hand before and are making a play at it. Maybe the guy just lost a big hand and is tilting so they are going to call him down light. A lot of these factors come in to play that the viewers dont see.

All in all i dont see why a lot of people ridicule the "pros" on internet forums, Most of these guys built up from nothing to where they are now. Which is very inspiring at least for me. The story of kenny tran is even amazing he start at Mcdonadls and worked his way up to some of the biggest cash games in the world. There are many others but this is just an example.

Maybe this is my backwards view of it all, But i figured i would throw in my 2 cents on this forum for once.

[YBravo]

I'm sure there were some good plays that looked really bad to us, but there were definitely some plays that were just flat out bad. For example, Bruno Fitoussi called a completion on third in Stud8 with [K4]Q. There is just no defense of this play at all. Just because they could find the 50k entry fee does not mean they are good at all 5 games.

[DCJ001]

also, i thought kenny tran's J high call against bruno was pretty genius.

He knows. Just ask him.

[fighter]

Barry Greenstein made a great comment about the standard of play during the program. The first final table of the horse event was almost entirely "big game players" because most of the players are not well rounded.

[CobaltBlue]

also, i thought kenny tran's J high call against bruno was pretty genius.

Yeah...that call was kind of sick. Was a little surprised that it didn't get more discussion around here. I thought it was interesting that he went for the value-call as opposed to just betting the river.

Kaplan seemed to make the most mistakes of anyone that I saw.

I mentioned that here:
http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-foru...howtopic=110840