Maybe I just don’t understand the fascination or excitement of having hundreds of millions of chips. Also on the total hands played, is that weekly, monthly, or the total that’s been played since joining? Are players that have played over a million hands using a program to play 24/7? If so, doesn’t seem to be much fun involved. If you have a billion chips in the bank, you have no incentive to really accomplish anything by winning a tournament or ring game. Maybe they need the large bank to counteract all the ‘showdown’ type tournament players that go all-in with a 3-4 os and draw out a straight on the river. Frustrating…
Play improves at higher stakes. The vast majority of players on this site play poorly. You need to have a pretty massive bankroll (100M chips and up) in order to regularly play against people who know what they’re doing. The “appeal” of having a large bankroll is that you’ll be able to play poker with highly skilled opponents.
As for total hands played, yes, those are the total hands that person has seem since joining the site. Play in 2-4 tables at a time for 25 hours a week, and you’ll hit 1 million hands in about four years.
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And stay away from tables of nine. Then You will cut down on time. If Your a sage go to the lobby page, Then give Your play an extra jolt,play the tables with the lightening bolt! GL e1…
The old adage of you play to the level of your competition is very appropriate as I find my play is terrible at times. I am trying to improve, but I have a difficult time winning enough chips to play in larger stakes games/tournaments. Guess I need to be more aware of odds and timing of calling all-in hands. Thanks for the answers and advice…
Use your first-time chip buying bonus, spend at least $20, and get out of the lowest level chaos.
If you are willing to pay $50, $60. or more on a game you will beat in 2 weeks, you should be willing to spend a few bucks on a game that you will enjoy for years.
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The problem with playing at higher levels to avoid all the atrocious players is that now you’re playing with the good players, and they’re good for a reason. If you’re not ready for it, you’re their next meal. Atrocious players beat you with sick outs on poorly considered calls, good players find all your holes and don’t have the courtesy to tell you about them.
I’m not clear yet about where the dividing line is between good play and atrocious play. What stakes level do you have to climb to?
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Speak for yourself! As evidenced by these forums, I’m always willing to call out weak players on their bad plays. 
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Maybe this is true if you’re looking at the results of a single hand or a few hands. If this is true long term, your betting strategies need work.
They tell you about your leaks by taking your chips over and over. Own your losses and learn from them instead of externalizing them and blaming the pRNG, the other players, or the universe in general.
NOTE" I’m using “you” in a general sense, this post isn’t directed at anyone in particular even though I used quotes from a specific poster. I imagine that the frustrations he expressed are fairly common.
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From the nh thread:
…in my experience, anyway. As you approach that (500/1K 6-max and 1K/2K), you will start to see the change as well. I’d expect similar on the tourney side, 100K or 250K entries on up?
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Don’t worry, I’m not offended. It’s true. I’m not in this thread to gripe about bad beats, but if the thinking is to escape atrocious play by going to the high stakes so you can beat players who are playing better strategies, then there’s something goofy about that logic. If you can’t beat bad play, facing better play isn’t likely to help. If you can beat the better play at higher stakes, then by all means do it, since you make more chips at higher stakes.
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Playing well at mid stakes earns less chips than playing slightly better than average at a little higher stakes. More chips doesn’t always mean more skill. When your goal is to play well, the chips don’t matter much.
I don’t try to accumulate chips, but if I’m playing well, they accumulate anyway.
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Just wow! Great responses to this op. @puggywug you nailed it.
I agree with @Fozman minor changes begin at about the 500/1K 1K/2K levels. 10/20 doesn’t seem to go much, there is a mild to considerable difference playing on 20/40. 50/100 is at the beginning stages of blending into 20/40 as far as skill level due to chip inflation. 100/200 plus you’re playing with some really wonderful players of whom I would suggest at least 50-60% could be slight winners/break even at 1/2 1/3 live cash games
@BigMoney100 the top 10 players according to bankroll are very good players that typically play 250/500 or 500/1M exclusively. They are very good players and have top 10 ranking for a reason. Until you or I take Id out of her #1 rank then we have something to play for.
P.S. @BigMoney100 these forums are a good place to come and discuss strategy ask questions and post hand histories. There are several players in here that are more than willing to have these discussions.
Cheers and good luck!
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When you’re a member of the Replay Poker Staff and Team it’s easier to win big and fill up your bankroll IMO. Just look at the Rounders League e.g , there’s a tourney with a buy in of 1K, a prize pool of 1 million and a minimum of only 2 players. Ka-ching!
Well, I personally prefer to blame the other guy for sucking out and if that will not work then I blame the RNG…
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Well ZZ, am sure this was tongue in the cheek, as you must know the Rounders League tournament you are referring to is only held once a month and there has never been only 2 participants! It is a fun tourney which brings together all the staff and volunteers and is hotly contested. I can assure you that no one player has got rich here, we all play to win and chat in good spirit.
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is the play here all about real poker skill, or knowing the programming mechanics of computer poker ?
Your right Grapevine. I watched some of the Rounder League Tournament today and it was most interesting and cordial. Good competition and friendly banter as it should be. A++
I have 130 million chips plus change. I won all of them over the last 18 month in tournaments. As others have said, as you improve you get more chips, so you can buy into higher stakes games where you will find better players to play against. The highest buy-in tournament is 5 million. I have only entered this 3 times so far, and had 1 win and 1 second place for total prize money of 70 million, so that is where a lot of my chips come from. Even with 130 million I cannot afford to play in too many 5 million chip games, and usually stick to the 1 million, 1/2 million, and 1/4 million. The standard of play in these games is better than in the lower entry games, but not by very much.
I won a 1-million chip buy-in tournament this evening and picked up 8 million chips, but the player who finished second was ranked in the 50,000s and playing with all his chip stack. He was actually a much better than average player and he won a few million chips for his trouble. (He was sitting on my right hand the whole tourney, so I was able to watch him and learn his game.) He could easily have 100 million in a few months.
So one way to get into the 100 millions, if you wanted to, would be to buy a million chips and play a few 1/4 million tourneys and build yourself a bankroll. (Assuming that you can play well enough to win.) Personally I just started with 2500 free chips and bootstrapped, but that is me.
Knowing the programming mechanics of computer poker will not really help you to win chips on RP. It is more a question of studying the play of your opponents.
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I’m not sure sometimes, I have gotten, and others, pipped at the post so to speak, 9 player table, winners were 2 king hi straight, and a ace hi straight. That’s 3 straights in one game, one player seemed to know it was going to happen by the way the player played.
And yes, I have won with 3 of a kind, ( 3’s) when all observation this might happen eluded the others, nice pot though . Point is, my instinct was not the player as much as expecting the RNG was gonna give a win.
In real, this does not happen, yet in real I only play manila, 32 card deck, 7 to ace.