Bets for Doyle

Ok Doyle, I’ve been busy playing the tournament so I didn’t have a chance to look at who I wanted to bet on, but I have my list of 11 Team PokerStars Pros that I’ll bet on. They are: Jason Mercier
Daniel Negreanu
Joe Hachem
Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier
Ivan Demidov
William Thorson
JP Kelly
Jose Ignacio Barbero
Lex Velduis
Jude Ainsworth
Arnaud Mattern I’d be willing to bet on my team in a simple bet “most money won” in the main event. I actually don’t feel strongly about this bet because the Brunson 10 you are forming seems really strong. The bet I really want to make with you though is this one: Bill Reynolds
Will Molson
Tom Marchese vs Johnny Chan
Phil Hellmuth
Barry Greenstien You can bet whatever you want on that match up because several people have already been begging me for a piece of my bet. What I find most interesting Doyle, is that you are willing to make a completely blind bet? You have absolutely no idea how good or bad those three kids play, but you just assume you have the best of it because you have three guys you know? Do you really not think there are tons of great young unknown players out there that could possibly play better than the three you mentioned? Would you do the same thing in golf? If I brought a “buddy of mine” from North Carolina that you’d never heard of, would you just bet on Dewey Tomko with no strokes for even money? I can come up with plenty of three man combos against Chan, Hellmuth, and Barry. Also, I promise to make sure they are all guys you’ve never heard of: Vivek Rajkumar
Jason Somerville
Richard “nutsinho” don’t know his last name I have the utmost respect for the old school players and all they have done to promote the game. Without them poker would not be where it is today. In terms of either no limit hold’em tournaments or cash, though, the best players in the world today, with a few exceptions, are young.
Many of them are very deep thinkers and think about lines of play at a very high level factoring in more variables than whether or not a player looks like he’s bluffing. They can be effective live without being really good at reading tells. They are better at understanding lines, are hard to exploit, and their bet sizing is very precise. They don’t guess at the right sizing, they base it on math and logic.
When playing 100 or less big blinds deep, there are just hard and fast rules that apply that I don’t think old school players are aware of. I sure wasn’t, until I put some hard work in earlier this year playing online and looking to plug leaks. I found a lot of it fascinating. A lot of what I did could clearly be proven to be wrong. Not just an opinion, but you could actually prove that a certain play I tended to make would cost me money in the long run.
When I was working on my NLH game with some of the young guys I was thoroughly impressed with the amount of thought that went into every play. It made me feel a little bit stupid at first, but the more I listened and spoke with them the better I got.
Aside from chatting with Lex about hands, I had spent one night with with guys that I’d been butting heads with on PokerStars the whole month in Monte Carlo. They railed me all night while I played online. I ended up winning about $90,000 on PokerStars that night, but the lessons I learned were worth a lot more than that. I came 15th in the $2500 NLH 6 max event and 11th in the $25,000 6 max event, and that would not have happened without all the practice I put in online. And of course, a special thanks to Bill Reynolds, Tom Marchese and Richard “Nutsinho” don’t know your last name 🙂 Doyle thinks I “used to” be a good player until I started with all this stuff, and while he’s entitled to his opinion, I couldn’t disagree more. I don’t see how working harder and spending more time working on, and analyzing your weaknesses could make you a worse player. I’ve said it a million times and have been saying it ever since I started playing poker in Las Vegas. If you don’t get better, you get WORSE by definition. If you don’t question your methods and evolve, others will, and they’ll eventually surpass you. It’s the day you think you have it all figured out that you are doomed. **************************************************************** I’m still in the TOC with a chance, 17 players left, and I just bought into the main event, playing Day 1C. I’m looking forward to both events and feel like I’m playing no limit hold’em better now than I ever have. I think in 2004 my edge over the field was much bigger than it is today, but as a player, I know now how to exploit the player I was in 2004.
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