Peace, Prosperity, and Pot-Limit Omaha

Thanks, I really appreciate it!

I'm currently not working on any specific projects. Was working on a project in ~October, however I ended up postponing the project, and releasing everything as singles instead. The tones, flows, content etc everything needed refining.

Recently I've been considering exactly what gambling addiction in poker is caused by. Very different from drug addiction, it seems to me. I think there's a pretty solid argument that anybody who has had issues with BRM in the past has shown signs of gambling addiction to varying degrees. In that case, it is widespread in the poker community - virtually every pro I know who might generally have a "healthy" relationship with poker has taken ill-advised shots at various points in their career.

For me personally, I'd say it (BRM issues, tilt etc) comes from an avoidance of hard work, and shitty emotional regulation - which gambling has a way of exploiting. The more I learn about poker, it seems like it has a way of taking people's flaws and magnifying them, in a way that either you deal with them, or get screwed, or become a bit of a psychopath.

BRM / tilt issues can be avoided by cheating, scamming people etc. Essentially, just make so much that your mental leaks don't screw you over enough to sabotage your finances.

They can also be not dealt with, and will severely cap your winnings, hourly, etc. The game is just too competitive these days, the edges are too small. You can't afford to miss out on 5bb/100 because of your "out of game" leaks.

The third option, and what I am striving for, is committing to personal improvement, solving your most major flaws, and basically getting out of your own way.

So I guess in a way, gambling addiction for many in poker comes from a place of realizing "hey, I can make great money at this game if I can get out of my own way". That is, despite variance cheating etc. It's totally within your own control. So people assume they can go the third option. The problem being, I think a lot of people don't have the requisite knowledge or ability to actually change who they are. And I am unsure to be completely honest, how to even do this for certain. Therapy seems like a good option, that I am exploring. As well, I believe I have an ability for introspection. Which allows me to get the root of why I am the way I am. However, this process of introspection takes a LONG time I'd say. And requires you to really be honest with yourself. Which is kind of a whole different topic.

Limit testing myself in regards to table count and hands per hour rn. I think I can handle 16 tables, maybe 8 of which could be zoom tables. The stuff I'm figuring out rn is tiling and if I want all my tables on one monitor or not. The goal is to get around 1k hands per hour, which should give me a serious bump to my hourly, assuming of course I am able to maintain a positive winrate at all tables. Maybe without zoom I can do 24 tables, I'm not really sure to be honest. The key is to play stakes low enough to relative bankroll that you don't hesitate - you don't have time to second guess a decision because you have 4 other tables waiting on your action. I think you should probably play 200bi+ BRM for this strategy.

A little too draining to play 8 zoom, 6 zoom + 6 reg tables seems like the upper limit. The issue is actually field of vision and table size. lol. Need the tables to be big enough to focus on, so 6 tables per monitor. And field of view means for me 2 playing monitors is probably the max. Only thing I’d like to experiment with is overlaying an additional 6 reg tables over the initial 6. Would give me 18 tables which is doable in theory I think but difficult to set up in practice.

When I was 4-tabling zoom I used to be able to get close to 1khands/hr quite consistently.

Are you easily getting 1khands/hr at 8 zoom?

Which sites are you playing?

Hm, I think there might be something off with my hm3 hands per hour stat. Because at 6 tables zoom im gettin ~600 hands per hour. Will manually calculate it next. If 4 tables gets me to 1k/hour I’ll probably aim for 2k/hour then.

Playing everywhere I think I have edge hehe

FWIW, I was playing NL, so I think a much higher Hands/hr is achievable, even if only by the 2-3seconds less it takes to see your hand and decide an action.

Ah, seems like it would add up quite significantly actually. Opponents time to make a decision must be higher in PLO as well.

how to spot cheating versus downswing

If you've seen my previous blog, you are well aware how sensitive and occasionally paranoid I am surrounding cheating. FWIW this pool is partypoker 25 zoom. I had already noticed some bots playing the pool on the third, paired with an abnormal spike in game traffic, but games seemed good so I continued to play, after reporting the suspected usernames to support. I had previously suspected the bots were abusing the cashout feature while card sharing, but not colluding. I believe now, the bots have been "told" to play with card sharing on - ie collude. Hence the abrupt downswing.

From hands 8000-11000: This is a normal 20BI downswing.

From hands 14625-15365: This is clearly an abormal 14BI downswing. As I was not spewing / tilting off, this leaves either a "bad run", or collusion!

And given the fact that I had already identified some warning signs of foul play, this is strong enough evidence to withdraw money and remove the site from game selection for the next little while, IMO.

Of course it is still possible to win a ton, even getting burned by this stuff fairly frequently. But it still really bothers me, especially since I'm not willing to do anything sketchy for edge.

Anyways, going to find a new site to add into the mix, also going to avoid zoom. While still aiming for ~700-1k hands per hour.

The reason to avoid zoom, is not the common (and flawed) logic of lower winrate / more regs or whatever. The reason is, people botting are highly incentivized to put bots into zoom pools, as the bots will be able to play more hands in a short period of time - increasing their usefulness before the account is detected, and banned. I will say though, the stars zoom has always seemed pretty solid to me at every stake. Probably just a much better security team.

In the future, I just gotta be way more careful surrounding this stuff, and get out BEFORE I get burned. Not after. Especially when I can identify the bots when I'm winning, just no reason to get screwed like this really.

Mate. Not again.

Yeah, again. Nothing wrong with getting cheated, happens to all of us. At least I know how to pick up on it - and I can show people how to develop the sensitivity for it as well.

Yeah looking forward to consequences is key I guess.

Post the hands?

8 zoom is straight pointless brotha. No way youre making optimal decisions playing more than 4 zoom and even that is a bit unnecessary. I dont even think you get good rakeback anywhere that offers zoom plo in the states to justify the volume approach.

Have you considered attempting to antagonize one of these haters into playing you hu? My personal opinion is hu is the best way to approach online nowadays as long as you player select well and get fish to commit to some match. Novel idea I know but I am being serious if there is some player you think is a fish that is chirping steer things in that direction. I had two diff matches btwn '23 and '24 and was my most profitable years. Plus you avoid all the potential shenanigans w online nowadays.Youd prolly have to post bc of the whole backer thing but nbd

I like this idea! Will have to get a bit more stable first - have been overspending drastically the past 6 months or so - really after my 50k month with ninjas. Has finally caught up with me heh.

Agree on the zoom as well. I’m just doing 12 reg tables rn, can experiment a bit more at Ls when I’m more stable.

Party is anon HHs, so it’s not possible to pick up any evidence unfortunately. That’s why all I thought I could do is report + hope that they didn’t start card sharing. But a big part of it is I need to just leave that environment. With ninjas as well I played vs some PPP bots, and similar story. Was aware that they were bots, didn’t think they were card sharing, so continued to play there. Then they started card sharing and obliterated me.

The key is I hate admitting defeat in a pool, so I basically allow myself to get cheated. Only when I’m pretty sure I’m getting cheated I give up. Which is just a competitive streak / stubborn side of me. But leads to getting screwed in poker. So gonna change how I see things there.

Seems kind of disingenuous to say "when I run at 12.5bb/100 I'm not getting cheated, but when I run at 6.66bb/100 I'm getting cheated for sure". Also, if you were getting colluded against via card sharing, wouldn't your evbb line not match your results? Because you would be ahead of your opponents based on information you have (ev line) but not based on information that they have (results)?

Also, how can you have a results graph, with evbb line, but not the hands themselves to post for swerbs?

Keep in mind I suspected bots were in the pool and had reported them days prior to getting smacked for 14bi. I had already planned to leave the pool if I suddenly started to downswing. I thought this was the best way to proceed, however now I believe the best way is to just get out at the first suspicion of foul play.

Because anon HH doesn’t mean I don’t have tracking, it means I have no names for my opponents.

What you're describing seems like the first logic steps that any poker player should follow...play in games where you are +ev, don't play in games where you are -ev. Obviously there's a lot of nuance involved, but that's the general philosophy.

Your claims of hole card sharing bot rings aren't logically consistent with the graph that you provided. Especially the -800bb ev line over the sample you felt you were getting cheated. It also isn't logical to assume that people the are sharing hole cards now weren't a few days ago, they likely either always were or never were. If you provided some hands were people were making plays that would be bad/losing/-ev under normal conditions, but are good/winning/+ev if we assume they had information you didn't, that would go a long way to proving your claims, especially if they are inconsistent with how the pool plays. For example, if the pool never bluffs a flush board without the ace but all of a sudden people were doing it frequently, that would infer that they had information that the ace was already folded and it would be safe to assume that they were getting this information nefariously.

I mean, some of the stuff you're saying is based on misconceptions surrounding bots cheating etc. But it's really not important. I'm acknowledging that I get cheated the same as everybody else. Just when I can see it happen it bugs me in a way that isn't ideal for performance at the tables.

Can we see the hands tho?

Please enlighten me. I love learning!

Sure I’ll bite.

So when a bot ring operates, the program actually has a literal switch that tells the bots to play with card sharing on, or off. This is why you might be slaughtering bots (they generally don’t play very well), and then all of a sudden get crushed. It isn’t unusual for bots to vary playing with card sharing on or off. This was the exact same story with a PPP club I was playing with Pokerninjas (before they approached me to cheat with them). A bit of digging around botting software would show you that these features are advertised, this isn’t just my speculation.

But wouldn’t they always run with card sharing on if they could?

Well I see two reasons they wouldn’t. Because they would kill traffic, especially in a small pool, and they would be easier to detect.

Any slightly -ev play could be +ev with additional information. And everybody makes slightly -ev plays. So therefore that’s not a valid place to look for evidence.

This nut blocker flush board is like, the lowest level of understanding collusion. Two things aren’t super relevant these days.

1. Running below EV
There’s evidence that there are collusion rings running at EV as a way to stay hidden.

2. Going nuts without nut blocker
This is more of a thing on ignition, where the security team just doesn’t care. On other sites with more aggressive security, these nut blockerless bluffs will have the accounts detected much faster. So, more subtle methods regarding blockers are used.