🚀 go-pugleaf

Gregg Cattanach <gcattanach-SKIP-@prodigy.net> wrote:

> Michael Sullivan wrote:
> > In bg, it's hard to do much better than break-even money wise, unless
> > you are a world-class player.
> 
> I disagree.  You just have to be better than the group you normally play
> money games or chouette with.  By no means do you have to be 'world-class'
> to make money playing BG.  In 5 years of money games, I'm up over $8000 ($5
> or $10 games) and I'm nowhere near that list of top world players.

> If you want to make money playing in tournaments, however, your statement is
> pretty much correct.  The tournament rake really isn't the problem, it's the
> travel expenses.  However, I've had a good year this year and am up about
> $4000 in tournament play after all entry fees and expenses.

You may not have been anywhere near that list 5 years ago, but your
results the last couple years indicate that you are either fairly close
now, or extraordinarily lucky.

A lot of amateur poker players who are nowhere near as good at poker as
you are (or *I* am) at backgammon can make $8000+ in a year of casual
play.

Online play for money is available 24/7.  That's true of backgammon too,
but on GG and TMG everybody has a rating, and it needs to be
deliberately manipulated for people not to have at least a rough idea of
your strength.  On a poker server, the only way anyone knows how good I
am is to observe my play, which can take awhile given that they can't
see all my cards.  Also, I'm a much better judge of weaker player's play
than I am of a stronger player's, whether it's backgammon or poker.  I
can't easily tell by watching a few matches, the difference in strength
between, say, you and Francis Tardieu or Neil Kazaross, even though
there surely is a significant one -- all of you are enough stronger than
I am, that I will not understand all of your correct plays.  But I
probably *can* spot a 100+ point playing difference between players who
are all weaker than I am.

Online poker is like OTB backgammon in that you don't know how good your
opponent is until you've won/lost a fair bit of money to them.  But at a
club, people quickly figure out that you are good and stop playing you
for money they can't afford to lose.  Eventually you only get non-tiny
stakes games with newbies (for a while), people who are close to your
strength, or people with a lot of money to burn (I don't know too many).
Online, with no ratings, people may figure out that you are beating them
and leave, but there are millions of fish in the sea who haven't.

The variance of poker is also higher, so it's much harder for a weak
player to figure out they are losing.  I'm not entirely sure about the
ethics of profiting from this phenomenon, but it's real.


Michael