Sh Poker League

[pokerplayer24 0]

In the past I know strat tables were relatively common but as of late it seems they happen a lot less often and when they do occur they aren't really taken seriously. I was talking to poppinfresh the other day about an idea to have a poker league of sorts for those of us that post in SH. Figured i'd just throw the idea out there. So here it is.The general idea would be that those interested would buy into the league for a nominal, but still meaningful amount of money such as 200$. Over the course of 3 months it would then be necessary for these players to log at least 8k hands (just a number i'm throwing out there). We could run multiple private tables at certain times of the week allowing league players to potentially 2 table or more in order to make it easier to reach the hand requirement. At the end of the 3 month period Prize money would then be doled out to those players with the top winrates over this span of time.But yea I just think it would be an interesting thing to do. Running seriously played strat tables on a regular basis would be fun, good for our games and also I personally would like to know where I stand when playing vs a bunch of tough players.So yea feel free to reply, flame, put down or offer your own ideas.

[TheCinciKid 0]

I like the idea, but I don't know that I'd have time for it. Plus, $200 is still a pretty solid amount of money for me. I work nearly full time and I'm trying to get in enough hands of poker over the next few months to prove move up high enough and prove big enough winrates to turn pro hopefully by year's end. Like I said, good idea, just not sure I'd have the time for it.

[Verdimme 0]

Running seriously played strat tables on a regular basis would be fun, good for our games and also I personally would like to know where I stand when playing vs a bunch of tough players.So yea feel free to reply, flame, put down or offer your own ideas.

I like the idea alot. Still, 200 bucks is alot of money to me.

[Abbaddabba 0]

Any amount that i'd be able to play seriously for over the course of 8k hands... i wouldnt be willing to put up. Also - $200 over 8k hands is basically nothing in and of itself. The opportunity cost of the time it takes to do that is just WAY too much for any of us who are half decent. Over 8k hands, we (hopefully) make WAY too much playing our regular games to justify doing it. That's nearly $2,000 if you're a 2BB/100 winner getting rakeback + full benefits at absolute playing 3/6 (). I expect to roughly break even against the kind of person who would sign up for what you're proposing. If you want to join me at one of my regular tables and discuss the hands over msn as we play, i'd be up for that. But i dont want a hoarde of the better players from this forum joining me all at once.

[Verdimme 0]

Any amount that i'd be able to play seriously for over the course of 8k hands... i wouldnt be willing to put up. Also - $200 over 8k hands is basically nothing in and of itself. The opportunity cost of the time it takes to do that is just WAY too much for any of us who are half decent. Over 8k hands, we (hopefully) make WAY too much playing our regular games to justify doing it. That's nearly $2,000 if you're a 2BB/100 winner getting rakeback + full benefits at absolute playing 3/6 (). I expect to roughly break even against the kind of person who would sign up for what you're proposing. If you want to join me at one of my regular tables and discuss the hands over msn as we play, i'd be up for that. But i dont want a hoarde of the better players from this forum joining me all at once.

I agree that we would make more money for sure playing our regular game. Though, we don't learn as much in those games as we would in this game. Maybe you have to sacrifice some equity now to gain it in the future.

[Abbaddabba 0]

It'd be just as useful to have one or two people from the site at your table, and critique each others play as you go.

[AlphaOmega 0]

I think an 8k hand win rate contest playing SH is going to be a crap shoot. Nonetheless, it is an interesting idea, and I think strat tables are critical experiences that really help to maximize our edge not just in bad games (i.e. ones with strong players) but good games as well.The problem for me, as I would assume with others, is the time thing. I'm logging about 3000 hands per day as it is, so I don't know if I will be able to get the energy for a consistent strat table.I think if our perogative is to have more serious strat tables, we should be able to achieve this simply with a "pep-talk," or whatever. I haven't been to one in a while, but the last one I was at was a really good game, and everyone was discussing the hands and playing pretty competitively. Of the few that I have been in, there were only a few sequences where people were nutbarring (or I was). As long as we have to show our hands at all junctures, the games tend to be serious, IMO, and nutbarring can simply be discouraged. These are just my ideas. Preferrably, I'd like to just have a serious strat table maybe once or twice a week or two weeks or whatever. The league sounds like a great idea (for experience and game improvement, not EV) but the time aspect would keep me out of it in all likelihood, as well as some others I'd imagine.

[Abbaddabba 0]

I'm logging about 3000 hands per day as it is, so I don't know if I will be able to get the energy for a consistent strat table.

You're a beast.How do you manage that?How much are you up this year?

[AlphaOmega 0]

You're a beast.How do you manage that?How much are you up this year?

Haha, that number may be a bit misleading, as I've only been doing it for the past week or so. School's out, so I have the extra time to put in. I think it equates to like 6 hours of 4 tabling per day, and I break my sessions up into like 3 per day or so. It's also just 2/4 so it isn't that cognitively demanding. Right now it hasn't been so bad but burnout may become an issue later on.I've kinda gone semi-pro/pro the last month or so since I got my own apartment, so depending on getting the hands in actually helps. It would be hard for me to put that kind of time and energy into poker if I didn't need to because of my ADD.Most of my winnings this year have been from tournaments and NL cash games, though I don't really play them anymore. I just started playing SH in like February or so, and throughout that time I've averaged only about 100-200 hands per day, though my win rate has been pretty high, mostly positive variance though.

[hotbacon 0]

I think a contest for winrate over 8k hands wouldn't be that great. We all know how much luck would be involved.Also, an 8k hand league deal doesn't seem appealing to me at all because it's so many hands vs tough players... When I could be crushing the retards at 3/6.Instead, I think we should start weekly strat tables where only people who are serious will play. I think just a strat table a week or so would be enough to really get some good discussion going in here and get us all to play better vs tough palyers.

[pokerplayer24 0]

I think a contest for winrate over 8k hands wouldn't be that great. We all know how much luck would be involved.Also, an 8k hand league deal doesn't seem appealing to me at all because it's so many hands vs tough players... When I could be crushing the retards at 3/6.Instead, I think we should start weekly strat tables where only people who are serious will play. I think just a strat table a week or so would be enough to really get some good discussion going in here and get us all to play better vs tough palyers.

Its tough to convince players to drop to 1/40th their normal limit and play seriously.

[AlphaOmega 0]

Its tough to convince players to drop to 1/40th their normal limit and play seriously.

How about for pride? Nobody wants to get owned, for $200 or $5.

[pokerplayer24 0]

How about for pride? Nobody wants to get owned, for $200 or $5.

I've never really been a part of the strat tables, i'm just saying what i've heard from others who have.

[AlphaOmega 0]

I've never really been a part of the strat tables, i'm just saying what i've heard from others who have.

I'm not saying you don't have a valid concern, as I can certainly sympathize with your assertion. However, we are all competant players, and it's that way because we have been able to do many things necessary to further our progressions as players. I think manning up and playing competetively in a strong game - though it may be much smaller than we are accustomed - is one of the more trivial things we could overcome to further our progression as SH players.

[Axiom27 0]

i'd like to play. i'm a noob on this forum, but enjoyed doing it with guys from ITH forum once before. i would be up for any sort of educational game. i'm a mediocre 10/20 player, but i can still kick dough boy's butt

[jayboogie 0]

Yeah this would be pretty difficult to do, at least for myself personally I probably wouldn't get involved with it. It'd be hard for me to play stakes which mean nothing to me and take it seriously and it wouldn't be a great spot to play for stakes that matter against good players either.When I'm nutbarring, I'm having fun and doing whatever, but if I'm going to be concentrating and playing my A game, I might as well play my normal limits and keep making my hourly rate.

[Willenation 0]

I'd be really interested in this... for the sake of improving my play and getting EV in the long run, I think I could put my best at .50/1 or whatever other low limit.

[PoppinFresh 0]

In my ideal world, this would be run at stakes higher than .5/1 that would give everyone some motivation. We could have groups playing 2/4, 3/6, 5/10, 10/20, etc. to match up people who are playing the same levels. Groups would meet once a week and fire up 2 or 3 tables and just play not showing cards. At the end of the sessions HH's could be sent from everyone to everyone so that if anyone wanted to review a particular hand and see what someone had they could. After these sessions hands could be posted here for further discussion.I think that doing something like this could really help us improve our games for a few reasons.1) The tables will be significantly tougher than what you're used to, and you'll have to work on beating good players. At a normal 6 handed table where you have say 3 bad players and 2 strong players it's easy to fall into playing very ABC poker against the strong players and just staying out of their way as much as possible while taking money from the fish. This of course works, but I think these strat sessions give you an opportunity to be creative and really work on outhinking and outplaying other TAGs. This is invaluable at higher stakes.2) By playing these tables seriously over time we'll get to know each other's games well. We'll get to know each other's strong and weak points and really be able to help each other out a lot more than we can just advising on specific posted hands.3) If we're doing this regularly inevitably interesting/tough spots will come up that can be discussed at the forums. I think that having several players who were at the table discussing hands can lead to much more meaningful and deeper discussion than the regular hands that are posted. I can't describe it well but I'm sure you know what I mean--when you're at a table there's a certain flow to the game and history between players that can lead to spots where a 3-bet bluff or a calldown with after lots of action with middle pair makes perfect sense but looks bad to anyone who wasn't there. Of course, we don't have nearly enough players to start seperating groups out by level, so there's no way to play tables for stakes that are meaningful to everyone without them being too high for others. The buy-in idea helps with this but of course is flawed as well, I think me and pokerplayer were just trying to think of a way to add some motivation to ahve people playing their A games, something that rarely ends up happening for long at the regular strat tables. There's also the issue of the time commitment which I think is probably the biggest obstacle in getting this going.This will probably sound preachy, but I find it a bit disheartening that people are shooting this down because they don't want to play at these tables when they could be making money at their regular tables or they don't want to play against good players for meaningful money. This is how you get better though, I remember the first time I sat at a .5/1 fcp strat table(a couple of you might even remember) when these stakes were meaningful to me. I had no idea what I was doing and was clearly -EV in those games, but I learned more in my first hour of shorthanded play at one of these tables than I had learned in the week before that. I recently played at my first 2+2 table at stakes that were meaningful to me, and I was clearly a loser in this game. But getting run over by players much better than myself had me thinking about and re-evaluating my play, especially in blind battles, more than I had in months. Even if you're just playing poker for the money, sacrificing some short-term EV to potentially make much more in the future can be a very smart thing to do.I'm not sure how well this would work out, it may be a bad idea and a waste of time compared to regular strat tables, I would be interested in trying it out though

[econ_tim 0]

i'll play real money strat tables up to 3/6i think having an up front fee might be more trouble than it's worthwpex would be a great place to do this if they allow private tables

[CobaltBlue 662]

wpex would be a great place to do this if they allow private tables

Yeah, seriously...I'm not signed up for the site, but when tough players all sit at the same table, the rake comes out the winner.