Playing vs implied flushes

So just for the hell of it and not that it matters (hell, I’m sure we’re all aware that NONE of this matters - we’re just shootin’ the breeze here):

I’m going to agree with both The Analyst and Jabr regarding “Replay is real poker” as follows:

I agree with The Analyst in that the mechanics of the game as provided here by Reply as much “real poker” as any “real poker” out there.

I agree with Jabr, however, concerning the practical application. With the money not being real and most people playing accordingly, Replay overall does not resemble “real poker.” It’s “fun poker,” for lack of a better term (and to quote Seinfeld “not that there’s anything wrong with that”). The only caveat being is that if you manage to get everyone sitting at a table that genuinely treats their fake money like real money (and I believe there are plenty of players here who do just that), it can absolutely be like real poker.

Jabr - one point of disagreement on assessing anyone’s game: chip total here doesn’t mean a whole lot. For example, I play pretty exclusively very low stake tournaments because that’s what I enjoy most - as I get higher in chips, I’ll move up to higher stakes. Not too many ring game’s on my resume, and even then the last of those was quite some time ago, adn NONE of them were significant in terms of stakes or wins/losses.

Given that I’m playing games where the entry fee/prize money differential is pretty small, I don’t build up chips that fast at all - but I once kept track of 100 straight S&G tourneys, 6 seat tables all, and found that I finished first at around a 30 percent clip, and in the money (first/second combined) at about a 50 percent clip. Or at least I used to - haven’t really played much in a while. My chip total - and perhaps (The Analysts) - is more a representation of WHAT I play - not my success rate. I’m pretty sure anyone would be happy with a tournament rate of around 50% in the money, 30% win at any level. Chip total is simply not a great metric. I’ve played people with far more chips than me that… well, for lack of a better description, played no better than a drunk monkey (and I should know - I INVENTED drunk monkey poker playing - it’s kind of like the drunk monkey Kung-Fu technique, except if you use it in a bar fight you’re gonna get flat out killed). How they got all those chips is beyond me.

I tend to feel it is real poker. That it plays somewhat differently because the money is not real is insufficient to say it is not real poker. Poker also plays differently at a home game, or at a casino, or at a tournament versus a cash game… that doesn’t make any of them somehow not real poker. It is the same game, played for different stakes. The money is not real: the poker is.

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You know what… when you put it that way, that’s a pretty damn good point. Truth is even at real money games, there are people that play recklessly (or badly) as if the money might as well not be real. So yeah - good point.

Here, with the money not being real, I think (for example) you get an abnormal amount of players hanging around and going ahead and calling that 500 chip bet when if that 500 chip bet were instead $500 of their own money, they’d have folded yesterday. Or going all-in when there’s no WAY they’d do that if that was real money of theirs that they could lose.

But hell - in one of my earliest posts on this site, I can recall mentioning that if you come here expecting to play like you do at a real money game and see it play out that same way, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Winning here means playing a bit differently because it’s a different game - or maybe better put, a variant of the same game. But as you say, perhaps it is best stated as no less “real” poker, but just a “different brand” of poker.

So yeah - good point, well put.

If I had $65 million real dollars, I’d make the same bets for $500 real dollars as I make 500 play chip bets here. At least most of the time.

It’d be nice if my opponents folded like they didn’t have the money to be wrong, though.

I was in a hand last night and flopped bottom pair, 7s. There’s an Ace on the board, and a King, too, if I remember rightly, but everyone limped preflop, and checked to my button, so I figured that meant no one had any aces, and probably no kings. So I bet it, and again on the Turn. A player shoved a small stack at me, and I called, confident that I’m being bluffed, and not I’m not having it. He had an Ace. Whoops. But I rivered trips and took the hand. He says “wtf” in chat and leaves the table. Lol. If he’d raised appropriately pre, I wouldn’t have been in the hand. But then he wouldn’t have almost stacked me, either. It was one of my biggest pots for the night. Not my best played hand, though.

Yep. And like I said, there are players here that do that. I try to - it’s MUCH more fun to play if I treat my chips just as I would real money with real consequences! This would explain why I’m not playing high stakes yet - I’m a tightwad at heart. Most expensive tourney buy-ins I’ve done was when I did a month in the Astral Ursa Minor League. $7,500 buy in each tourney. Did well, top tenned the monthly leaderboards, raked in some chips. But that’s as deep into the pool as I’ve jumped.

But an awful lot of players I see at tables don’t seem to have the “real money” mentality - and it is a different game (or at least I think it is) when that’s the situation.

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This video explains the math…

This is me waiting for the volume to correct variance:

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