Hand from FTOPS 5k 6-max

[Isaac Haxton]

Originally Posted by Kevin Saul

Welcome to "Online Poker 2008". This hand pretty much represents everything I hate about poker in these times. Back when I really started doing well in online poker in late '03/ early '04, it would be really standard to raise/fold ATs OTB to a blind re-raising you. When people re-raised an opener they always had a hand. It was basically with the guidance of "BigSlick789" AKA Ozzy87 that I picked up how tight people played and started re-raising the **** out of em. As you can imagine this was my most successful period playing online.

But of course with the evolution of poker and training sites in the last few years most of the regulars in the higher buy-in tournaments have caught onto this, making the game a raise and re-raise war. You are no longer playing poker really but making a math problem out of every hand, constantly having to assign players' ranges to which they are opening or 3-betting based on their position. Instead of a game where the greater skill will prevail by a considerable margin in the long run, we now play an extremely volatile, high variance game of gambling. One that causes people to shove 20 BB's because it's simply unexploitable, or cause us to raise call A9o or QK every time we open these kinds of hands from late position. It's not so much about being the better player anymore but more so who will "run best" over a short period of time.

Kevin

This is kinda silly. You're basically just complaining about people playing better than they used to, but you're framing it as though when they played terribly it was real poker but now its all luck.

[Justin Bonomo]

Originally Posted by Kevin Saul

Welcome to "Online Poker 2008". This hand pretty much represents everything I hate about poker in these times. Back when I really started doing well in online poker in late '03/ early '04, it would be really standard to raise/fold ATs OTB to a blind re-raising you. When people re-raised an opener they always had a hand. It was basically with the guidance of "BigSlick789" AKA Ozzy87 that I picked up how tight people played and started re-raising the **** out of em. As you can imagine this was my most successful period playing online.

But of course with the evolution of poker and training sites in the last few years most of the regulars in the higher buy-in tournaments have caught onto this, making the game a raise and re-raise war. You are no longer playing poker really but making a math problem out of every hand, constantly having to assign players' ranges to which they are opening or 3-betting based on their position. Instead of a game where the greater skill will prevail by a considerable margin in the long run, we now play an extremely volatile, high variance game of gambling. One that causes people to shove 20 BB's because it's simply unexploitable, or cause us to raise call A9o or QK every time we open these kinds of hands from late position. It's not so much about being the better player anymore but more so who will "run best" over a short period of time.

Kevin

People are better now and edges are smaller. This is what I love about poker. You have to constantly keep improving. If you don't get better, everyone else will, and you'll stop winning money. Or you can just play live tournaments instead. That's what I do!