no offense here to any one but a little confused if this other players adonk as you people label for following all in with Q10. AQ is an allin. you haven’t seen your cards till the river if reversed who would have been the donk the other player for following allin with a AQ.what I see is a normal every day hand and outcome.in the real world would u play allin before flop with AQ.itwas a gamble whoa wait aminute 52 cards play poker I think it might be called gambling .I would not raise all in with pkt aces I call but wont raise why heres some rcent pkt A HANDS .myAA he goes allin with j8 next 5 cards areJJ888 what % do u give that.2 days a go got pkt AA 3x player all in with his 2\7 of spades river gave him his 5th spade then my AA went down to 3/5 in next game when replay gave player his low end strt on riverbut of course I should have known because both had just won all most every hand before this.so by what I’m reading you are a not a DONK if you go all in before you se your hand[witch is a after river in my brain] withany combination of A/K/Q ill have to give it a try see how far it gets me.im learning a donk might be any one with a rank above 1000 that calls anyone with a rank below 1000.credit card included in that ranking.so could ya give me the odds on allin with that j8 then the next 5 cards are jj888.im sure it was not a manipulated hand I have no PROOF of course.
site gets worse an worse believe its time to change. whats your excuse for site continually getting worse ?
I heard Zynga or Pokerstars have great play money games, good luck there, Daniel.
Cheers
Patience is all but gone here… Bad beats can’t be described. Pre flop raise with KK and Im reraised all in by a 9 2 off. Hits two 9s and a 2 for an full house beating my 3 of a kind. Ranked 900,000. Literally hadn’t a clue. Why does it seem like this site is intent on rewarding these clueless morons? Happens too often. Honestly, I swear the strongest hand barely holds a third of the time on here. It’s not normal. It b ares zero resemblance to real poker.
I came back from my “retirement” and promptly lost 34,000,000 in a couple of days. Couldn’t get any piece of anything and ended up bluffing too much.
So, I went to play 2k/4k to work my way up slowly, and promptly lost with AA twice, KK twice, QQ, and AK twice in about an hour (80 hands). Getting hands that good in 80 hands is extremely improbable (much less than 1% of the time) and losing with all of them is also extremely improbable (<1%). The last two are exceptionally brutal. That’s poker I guess.
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/260701118
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/260708565
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/260718767
Brutal. Hang in there Joe.
I played a 250k mtt after that. Here’s the hand I went out on. Pretty weird the way the other players couldn’t wait to get their stacks in with marginal hands. I would ordinarily fold top pair here pretty easily, but I was so tilted I didn’t even care. Turns out I was in good shape until the river…
V A R I A N C E. You and another were destined to chop, and then the grim reaper chopped both of you. Sad… … … … …
Variance is the name of the game. I think the lesson to take from this is that I always think of downswings as being card dead for a thousand hands, but the real biggest downswings are when you get lots of good hands and just lose with them. I would probably lose less with 1000 hands like ten three offsuit than the 80 hands losing twice with AA and twice with KK.
This is a rant:
Apparently, poker isn’t fun enough. In order to provide adequate entertainment, the game must be embellished to raise the frequency of dramatic upsets. I find it hard to believe that a person with the intelligence to calculate probabilities would wast their time applying any math to these tables. It’s rather obvious that there’s nothing random about the deal. It certainly appears to me that the deal “reacts” in response to specific types of activity. This hasn’t always been the case-at least not to the extent it is now. I can’t say exactly when it happened, but it’s been several weeks now since someone cranked up the intensity on the frampus modulator. Gone are the days when a player could improve his or her ranking by employing a sound strategy and patiently sticking to it. It’s absolutely rediculous to get blown out of game after game by players with no finesse and no patience who lack the skills to recognize that they are making an ill advised and overly-aggresive bet. If a player makes a big pre-flop raise, it suggests that they are holding cards that have a reasonable chance of holding up. (Pocket pair of 9s or better, 2 face cards, or at least one ace.) The flop comes out 3, 5, 8 offsuit. The same player makes another big raise. This generally indicates that the player is just betting loose. If they had the cards to justify the preflop raise they couldn’t have got any help from the flop, yet they bet away expecting everyone to fold. So you called their first raise because you held pocket 8s. You call the second raise because you now hold three 8s and it’s obvious they are full of it. Turn drops a 2, they raise again. You go all-in knowing they are bluffing and have no prayer. River drops a seven they flip over 4-6. Their 7 high straight beats your 3-of-a-kind and you are done. Knocked out by a donk who pulled a straight out of thin air and never even realized how obvious it was that they had a weak hand.
I used to complain about the bingo players until I learned how to exploit them. Then I loved them. They’d knock out half the field and I would simply wait for an opportune hand or 2 and take them out. But now that strategy doesn’t fly. Apparently, the game is more exciting when the over-aggressive players are rewarded for making bad bets. The scenarios are endless but the outcome is the same. The conservative player gets nosed out by longshot b.s. that no rational player would chase under normal circumstances. (Normal circumstances meaning a random deal.)
I can play aggressive cards. If I’m sitting on a stack 3X as big as everyone else at the table I’m well aware that I can play bully bingo and wipe everyone out without even bothering to look at my cards. I’m on a friendly basis with a lot of these players though. I’m not going to employ that weak strategy and ruin the game for everyone so I can win the most free chips! If there’s only a handful of players left, sure, it’s dog-eat-dog. But these clowns that go all-in hand after hand and use up every possible second every single turn as if they are injecting added drama into the game. Then other players start doing it out of spite and before you know it the blinds force you to change your strategy of patience. I’ve played in too many MTTs to know that I’m not simply whining due to a bad streak. I’m a far better player than I was a year ago and the same strategy I could rely upon to at least get me close to the final table is now a losing race against time.
So, do I alter my strategy to become more competitive by exploiting the software? Does this make me a better player? It will improve my ranking which means I’m better, right? WRONG! It degrades the quality of the game and instantly makes me a worse player-with a better ranking and more chips in the bank. Not only do I need to ignore many of the finer points I’ve picked up that would normally make me a better player, I also limit my ability to learn advanced strategies employed by more advanced players. To win, I must take a shortcut which turns the game into something less sophisticated and creates an environment where I can no longer win the respect of the more advanced players. Metaphorically speaking, I turn the chess board into a checkers game, play a winning game of checkers, and carry a ranking that says I’m one of the better chess players in all the land. On top of that, I’ll have a mountain of free poker chips as added proof to my peers that I am indeed the superior human. Now, explain to me where I’m supposed to find the entertainment from all of this.
When I went on my original rant in this thread, it was about my opponents making bad decisions and then getting lucky, not about the “software”. I have suffered plenty of bad beats in my over 150,000 hands on this site (you can see about 4 of them in this thread), but I have never believed that the deal was rigged. There are plenty of hands where nothing exciting happens; the bad beats are just the most memorable. Don’t worry about the software. There is variance in poker, so winning goes in streaks, but if you play good, solid poker, you will easily win at most levels on this site.
I recently tried the 100k/200k ring tables (which is downright stupid bankroll management), and I lost about 15,000,000. When you compare that result to the ~50,000,000 I originally won playing mostly 2k/4k ring, you can see the skill difference that exists between high stakes and elite stakes players. Now imagine the differences in skill between high/elite players and low/medium stakes players. It comes down to the players, not the software. Trust me, Replay has plenty of opportunities to win.
You brought up the most important, most overlooked part of the game… bank management.
I could play higher stakes, but I don’t. Why? Several reasons actually.
1… I can’t afford to absorb a major losing streak at higher stakes, and I know one will come sooner or later.
2… I don’t care about being a top ranked player. I play for entertainment, and my goal was to accumulate enough chips to play without worrying about going broke.
3… It’s a matter of perspective. I’m process oriented rather than results oriented. There are parts of the game I can control, and parts I can’t. If I get in good, give my opponent incorrect odds to call, and he does anyway, the rest is up to fate. Yeah, bad beats are frustrating, but as long as I played correctly, it is what it is.
On the other hand, if I get in bad and suck out, I am disgusted. With myself, not at the software. I read the situation wrong, was careless, or something else went wrong… with MY game, not with the site.
The point of all this is this… if one plays at stakes where they are able to absorb any variance, concentrates on playing well rather than concentrating on winning, and simply plays for the love of the game, the whole thing becomes way less frustrating.
I agree all of that. It’s about having fun and learning poker. I would rather make the right decision and lose than make a mistake and get lucky.
In terms of being a top ranked player, the one thing I would say is that the skill really does increase continually through the stakes, and it takes a ton of chips to be able to play against the elite players. I had thought that skill on Replay kind of plateaued in the top 300 or so players. But then I played about 300 hands at 100k/200k ring, which was too high for my 64m bankroll (at the time). At a table with the number 3, 6, 8 ranked players and everyone else ranked under 50, it was a new experience for me to be the fish. It is rare and a ton of fun to find players good enough to learn from, so there is value to increasing one’s bankroll.
I wouldn’t consider you a fish at any table anywhere. From what I see, you were stuck, moved to higher stakes to try to get it back, and hit a bad streak right at the wrong time. It’s happened to me, it’s happened to the best pro players in the world, it can happen to anyone. (I don’t consider myself to be one of the best players in the world, nor am I one of the best players on this site)
Actually, my last post wasn’t directed at you specifically. When you mentioned bank management, I wanted to add a few thoughts on perspective in the hopes that it make the game more enjoyable for the less experienced players.
Your comment about the top players is a great point. Maybe I’ll get there one day, maybe not, but either way, I won’t rush it.
Keep the faith Joe, I know you’ll get it back.
I appreciate that. After I didn’t play for a while I watched a lot of pro tournaments and thought it didn’t look so hard, so when I came back I was probably a little rusty, which is a bad time to go up against the best players on Replay. With play chips, it can be hard to care about your bankroll, which makes your point about bankroll management even more important. Today, I finally won the 1m chip MTT that I was complaining about losing when I started this thread lol, so that put me about 8m back towards where I was.
You’re right that all of these threads complaining about the site come from people not practicing bankroll management and not understanding variance. The chip inflation at the highest end of the rankings makes it hard to go up against the elite players because you need a huge bankroll, but if you take a shot without a large enough roll, you are playing right into the sharks’ hands, and they don’t need any extra help.
I actually lost 15m on a hand where my opponent had a weak top pair and I had shown a lot of strength with a missed flush draw, and if I had jammed the river I would have definitely gotten a fold (which I would ordinarily in a smaller game), but the pot was so huge I couldn’t pull the trigger, and my bluff size was way too small. I tried to rep a set or straight against top pair of 8s with ace kicker, but I only bet 5m into almost 20m on the river and got called, which ordinarily I know is too small to get a fold, but if I jammed and he called I would lose almost my whole bankroll.
Thus the old saying, “Scared money can’t win” is worth noting.
This isn’t specifically directed at you Joe.
I have over 7 million chips and mostly play 10k or 15k tournaments. I could fail to cash in 700 10Ks in a row and not be broke. I’m not bragging here, the point is that I’m in a comfort zone where I can play with no fear… none. I don’t care if I bust out early because it won’t affect me one way or the other in terms of bank.
Playing above one’s bankroll should put you outside your comfort zone and introduce an element of fear, at least if you take the game seriously. And if you are playing in fear, you will lose. Maybe not the first time, maybe not the second, but eventually. Worse, maybe a few wins will give you false confidence and you will get destroyed.
Playing a new, higher level isn’t so much about skill levels. It’s more about comfort zones. We all get dealt from the same decks. I expect all good players to understand the math behind the game, EV, GTO, and other theoretical concepts.
The real difference, at least as I see it, is that you will be playing with people who are comfortable playing the new, higher stakes. They will have the bank to weather the varience and be willing to make the calls because they don’t care if they lose. Skilled + fearless = trouble.
PS: congrats on winning that 1mill tourney!
Your approach of playing tournaments that fit your bankroll is certainly a sensible one (and one that I generally follow). The rule that I have always heard is 20-25 max buy-ins for ring and ~40 for mtts (although except for recently I never experienced enough variance on Replay to need that because I had only lost a whole buy-in 3-4 times and had about 3x more +800k days than -800k days on my variance chart).
At the same time, I think the element of fear makes the game interesting, especially when playing for free chips. I started to lose motivation in medium stakes tournaments at some point.
The other thing is that I do believe the quality of players increases as the stakes go up. I was apoplectic when I created this thread because a player I believed to be good, in a tournament full of players I believed were good made one pretty bad call. In most Replay tournaments that call would not have surprised me at all. The players in the million chip MTTs are noticeably better than in the 20k. You say that most players know the basic math and strategy, but at mediums stakes I often wonder if that’s true. Playing at 100k/200k ring, it seemed like an even bigger step forward. Players were making really strong bluffs and reads that required disguising hand strength the way the pros do rather than playing ABC poker like I usually do on Replay. I am not disagreeing with you in general, but there is always more complexity to be explored in poker, especially against good opponents as the meta-game escalates.