I was in LV last weekend and the beginning of the week, right around the tail end of the WSOP by coincidence, and played a few days worth of casino card room poker. Unfortunately, the number of good to excellent players relative to the number of clueless victims seemed much higher than normal except for the last day I was there, perhaps due to the crowd in town for the WSOP?
Anyway, as I have been for the past couple of years, I played a mixture of no-limit tournaments and limit money games...all Hold'em. I have been playing the latter (but often 7-card stud) for decades and have been sampling the former a bit since it became a big (TV inspired, apparently) fad. I have been trying to figure out which I like better and why, but keep coming up undecided.
Basically, the purist in me prefers the limit money games; imo they are more fundamental and better poker in the sense that they reward skill more dependably and thus, necessarily, are less dependent on luck. I suspect that the world's actual best poker players are not the tournament pros, who seem to be at least as much about being celebrities as about making money, but guys you never heard of who make a steady living out of money games. On the other hand, it is hard to deny that the tournaments are more entertaining and dramatic, both for players and spectators,...are basically more fun. After playing in a few tournaments, grinding out your profits in money games begins to feel like work in many ways.
An unfortunate aspect of mixing the two types of games is that they reward/encourage different styles of play. Thus, habits and instincts you pick up playing in tournaments serve you poorly in money games and vice versa, not universally but at least in many respects. So, if you really wanted to play as well as possible, you'd probably be better off sticking to one or the other.
Right now, of course, the tournaments are all the rage and most of the (deliciously vulnerable) poker newbies are to be found in them; however, luck is such a huge factor in a tournament that even a very good player cannot confidently expect to make money in any specific tournament even against fairly weak opposition. But if you can get such newbies, especially the ones who have grown overconfident watching TV poker, into a money game and both you and they have the patience to play for a while, a good player can nearly always walk away from the table ahead.
Anyway, fwiiw, I was ahead in my money games in LV and did OK but did not win any prizes in the tournaments; on balance I ended up just a bit in the black...but not even enough to cover my food and hotel bills.
-Ww
Anyway, as I have been for the past couple of years, I played a mixture of no-limit tournaments and limit money games...all Hold'em. I have been playing the latter (but often 7-card stud) for decades and have been sampling the former a bit since it became a big (TV inspired, apparently) fad. I have been trying to figure out which I like better and why, but keep coming up undecided.
Basically, the purist in me prefers the limit money games; imo they are more fundamental and better poker in the sense that they reward skill more dependably and thus, necessarily, are less dependent on luck. I suspect that the world's actual best poker players are not the tournament pros, who seem to be at least as much about being celebrities as about making money, but guys you never heard of who make a steady living out of money games. On the other hand, it is hard to deny that the tournaments are more entertaining and dramatic, both for players and spectators,...are basically more fun. After playing in a few tournaments, grinding out your profits in money games begins to feel like work in many ways.
An unfortunate aspect of mixing the two types of games is that they reward/encourage different styles of play. Thus, habits and instincts you pick up playing in tournaments serve you poorly in money games and vice versa, not universally but at least in many respects. So, if you really wanted to play as well as possible, you'd probably be better off sticking to one or the other.
Right now, of course, the tournaments are all the rage and most of the (deliciously vulnerable) poker newbies are to be found in them; however, luck is such a huge factor in a tournament that even a very good player cannot confidently expect to make money in any specific tournament even against fairly weak opposition. But if you can get such newbies, especially the ones who have grown overconfident watching TV poker, into a money game and both you and they have the patience to play for a while, a good player can nearly always walk away from the table ahead.
Anyway, fwiiw, I was ahead in my money games in LV and did OK but did not win any prizes in the tournaments; on balance I ended up just a bit in the black...but not even enough to cover my food and hotel bills.
-Ww
