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top cash players avoiding each other
conorshay1
Member Posts: 139
in Poker Chat
I have noticed that a lot of heads up cash at high stakes are always waiting for 1 player and looking in the lobbies I notice that its the same players , are they too scared to play each other ? are they like the boxing community , always avoiding the other good ones so they don't lose there title ? are they friends and don't want to play each other ? I know they are looking for a player they have an edge over but why not just go and play on another site where they could play at any level if they think they are good enough, within seconds they could play 10 heads up games surely , perhaps they are already? , cos sitting waiting for players they think they can beat all night surely cant be profitable ? personally I like the boxing theory lol
Comments
Regs generally are playing the game to make money. They're likely not going to play each other if they don't both feel they can beat the other over a large sample size. Therefore, the players need to be of similar enough ability for both players to feel they can beat the other.
Also, at lower stakes HU the rake is an absolute killer. Unless you have a pretty substantial edge over someone, the site is the only winner in the long term. If playing 100nl HU, there's zero point playing a competent reg when you have a marginal edge because you'll both still lose to the rake. If you do get 2 regs at 100nl that both think they are better than each other, there's a good chance that they're both competent enough that neither will overcome the rake, and they'll realise that soon enough if they do play when they're both still sat with their £100 after half an hour, and money has been dripping out of their accounts like a tap because they've got auto top up switched on.
There's also very little incentive for sites to fix that problem. HU is a good way for weaker players to go broke fast against stronger players and give up playing the game. If the rake is dropped then that's also going to end up with regs cannibalising each other, which doesn't do the site any good in the long term. Then again, loads of regs all sat waiting for their 'prey' isn't a good thing for any site to have when someone looks at the lobby, either.
It wouldn't surprise me if sites were to stop spreading HU cash in the future - I know Stars is entirely Zoom tables HU now.
You tend to see more reg battles higher up because of the rake issue. At 100nl, a lot of pots are going to be under £20, so you get the full 5% rake a lot of the time. However, because there is a £1 rake cap, if you move up to say 1000nl, the rake is much less of a factor when talking about the same £1 because the average pot is much bigger, so you need a smaller edge to be able to overcome money being taken out of the game every hand.
If you take that to the extreme - think about the old $400/$800 on FTP back in the day with Isildur, Jungleman, Durrrr etc, I believe they had a $1 rake cap, no flop no drop. When there's $1600 minimum in any pot post flop, and almost always a lot more, the $1 rake means next to nothing. They would only need the tiniest edge for playing to be worthwhile - And that's before you consider that they would've had other incentives to play these games, such as sponsorships.