Tables for Bingo Players

[zmansuncle]

I didn’t know my motivation “argument” was bunked to begin with.

[Grateful_ed]

Do people really “play poker” here, or are many if not most including me, just passing time?
Is this an undebunker, neat or otherwise?

[Grateful_ed]

I for one thought it was a top bunk idea from the get go.

[ValueFish]

Go to Duck Pond and tables that look the same : you’ll have a strong feeling that these guys are just here to destroy your life and/or trying to make you smash your PC.

[SunPowerGuru]

@Grateful_ed

Is this an undebunker, neat or otherwise?

I’m pretty sure your underbunker is on the rocks, like your head!

[Grateful_ed]

The closest my head gets to the “rocks” is when the ice in my Jack Daniels bumps my upper lip! :)

[yiazmat]

@ValueFish

That’s the problem : I don’t get as much back haha!

oops haha, but one day u will

but seriously, there could be various reasons it happens:

• BRM: when you’re BRM is too loose you can’t catch up with the huge swings a bingo player will give you. don’t get me wrong, BRM isn’t my best side either but it will give these unforgiving swings to RoR if you’re unlucky
• sample size: a simple reason to this might be that your sample size is just too small. with too few all-ins you might stil be losing the best hands simply because it didn’t happen often enough
• ranges: of course, vs a bingo player you can greatly widen your ranges, even like just playing any Ax because they are ahead vs a random hand. however polarising your ranges would be a worse idea. for example that 56s might seem fitting but vs 1 opponent it’s still behind. the exception might be when several others already picked up on this and you can play multi way with it, but still i would be very careful since you have to play it with an all-in
• considering the other opponents: lets say yopu have a bingo player behind you but still players after you to react. you still need to play a tighter range here because one of them might wake up with a real hand and take the chips of both of you.
• your mind: maybe a simple option, but it can always be that you remember the suckouts more then the hands you “rightfully” won because they feel unfair and the wins feel like they should have been. so in your unconscious you might remember (much) more of teh suckouts then the actual wins
• a combination of some those things: no need to explain this one

hopefully this helps

@zmansuncle

A “good” player can’t be identified by any measure provided by RP, BECAUSE this is a free site. It doesn’t matter if you buy chips, they still have no inherent value and therefore the possession of such, in any quantity, does not provide an accurate assessment of someone’s play. In addition, a player’s rankings in no way provides a clear picture of who the better players are, again because you can influence your ranking by having more chips, even if you have bought them.

i agree the ranking of replay isn’t a 100% accurate system to measure skill (but what is?) but it does give some idea of it. i usually compare the ranking to a poker hand matchup. for example when you get dealt AA vs KK you have about 81% to win the hand. but that stil means you will lose the hand now and then. just like if you would compare 2 random players with each other usually the higher player will be the better one. but that doesn’t guarantee it, lets say nr 27 is most likely a better player the nr 741882. but nr 27 might have been bought chips once and got luky after or just plays way over it’s BRM and were really lucky with it. and nr 741882 might be a great player that just joined replay. on the other hand when you play that AA vs KK 1000 times youré next to certain that you will profit from those hands, just like if you are comparing nr 500-1500 to 484711-485711 you are also next to certain the first group would be the better players, sure some of them will be worse but the vast majority isn’t. just like the fact that you wouldn’t win all those 1000 AA hands.

@zmansuncle

So what is a “good” player? Ask me when we are playing for cash, either in a tourney or a ring game. I would like to add that there are NO great players here on RP that come from countries where you can play online for cash, which you can’t do in the U.S. (with one exception). If they were that “good” they wouldn’t be playing on RP, but rather on, say Pokerstars, and making REAL money. In fact, if you are “good” enough, you don’t even need a bankroll to get started. Last I checked there were still freerolls on pay sites and after the first five minutes you see almost NO bingo players, let alone at tables where you can rebuy every hand till the first break.

i can’t agree on this one, i for example also play for real money as well and still play it profitably. might be small amounts and small stakes but it’s still real money. and i’m not the best player here either.
the reason why i’m not just playing real money is just because poker isn’t only a reason to make money. in the basics it’s just a game like any other, so i’m playing poker for fun first and money is just a fun addition to it. and replay has one major advantage, real money sites don’t: which is that many of the players are like this as well, they play here just for fun, so they are much more fun to be with as well. i have literally almost no one ever seen use the chat on partypoker, yet here it’s a common thing to do just because of the fun factor.
so yes, playing for money is fun, but it doesn’t mean if you can you can better play there. i prefer to do both

@zmansuncle

Personally I know who some of the “good” players are by looking at my notes, the few I keep, since this is free site and there is little motivation to do so. And of course I haven’t played against everyone here on RP. Chances are if you have a mental list of players you don’t like to play against they are better than you are, and if you have a list of players you want at your table, you are probably “better” than they are. So someone tell me, what is a “Good” player here on RP.

i agree the average player on here is far worse then on money poker sites so i can also agree the defenition of a good player is also very different. but like said earlier, good players are here as well. as for how to define a “good” player, i guess that’s up to you. you can compare to replay standards, your own standards, real money standards, pro standards. it really depends on how you define a good player

[BluffaloKing]

I have been on RP just one week short of a year, and have only encountered one, or perhaps two, “bingo” players and none recently, if bingo player is defined as someone who just shoves on every hand.

If someone is doing it and it spoils your enjoyment, then perhaps you should just step away from the table and join another.

[BluffaloKing]

@yiazmat

2 random players with each other usually the higher player will be the better one. but that doesn’t guarantee it, lets say nr 27 is most likely a better player the nr 741882. but nr 27 might have been bought chips once and got luky after or just plays way over it’s BRM and were really lucky with it. and nr 741882 might be a great player that just joined replay.

That’s right. Another factor is that once you get into the top 1000 players on RP, they will have over 25 million chips, and since it costs about $400 to buy your way into the top 1000, you are less likely to encounter bought-in players at that ranking.

[Whittaker]

Who is better? Is it the player that bought 1 million chips and turned it into 25 million, or the player that never bought and grew a bankroll of 10 million over the same time frame?
Unanswerable questions are unanswerable.
Chips that can be bought and/or acquired by other non-poker activities cannot be a measure of poker skill,
As much as the large bankroll players like to think their bankroll proves their skill, it is just not true by logic or example.

[BluffaloKing]

@Whittaker

Who is better? Is it the player that bought 1 million chips and turned it into 25 million, or the player that never bought and grew a bankroll of 10 million over the same time frame?

Don’t ask me. I never bought and have gone from 2500 chips to over 50 million in a week short of I year.

But in answer to your question, I think that it would be more of an achievement to go from 0 to 10 million than to go from 1 million to 25 million in the same time frame, because it is much harder to win consistently when you are playing the most erratic players who are new to the game, and because you have to keep parlaying your winnings into higher entry tournaments, and thus may lose a large proportion of your bankroll if things go wrong.

I can also say that in the last month I have actually gone from 10 million chips at one point to just over 50 million chips. Now admittedly I won 25 million by finishing 2nd in one tournament, but since then I have added another 17 million chips profit with only one tournament won, due to the fact that at the higher buy-ins the prize money for the lower places is much greater even if you don’t win.

So the longer you play, and the higher levels you play at, your chip stack will tend to progress geometrically.

If you like, compare someone starting out their working life with no money, and student loans to repay. They may become a millionaire, or even a multi-millionaire as their career progresses, but it is a much tougher proposition than for someone who has their education paid for by papa up to the level of their MBA, who gives them a house, a car, and a million dollars as a graduation gift, so they can immediately buy for cash a stake in a profitable business started by someone else and never worry about going bankrupt if they can’t pay back the bank loan to set up their first business or having to use credit card debt to buy stuff.

[zmansuncle]

IF, I have obtained all 43 achievement medallions does that make me “better” than those with less? The only medals I think are worth noting are those that indicate having won multiple MTTs and/or have won 500K chips in a ring game. To do so either demonstrates either incredible luck (and a willingness to buy a LOT of chips) or at least a modicum of mastery over basic poker skills. All the rest… Well if you play enough hands eventually you will obtain the other 41 medals and no skill is needed to do so.

Personally I’d like to see some medals that could possibly be construed as a measure of something worth measuring, like playing in a tourney, in first place after the first break, remaining there winning the tourney. Or maybe the number of calls of all-in bluffs (in a single tourney) and busting the player out. I’d take notice of a player who had multiple medals for playing in re-buy bingo tourneys, and won said tourneys having only bought in once.

I do take notice of any player who is ranked about 5000 and has less than 5 million chips. Said player is likely never to have bought chips and built a stack the old-fashioned way (said in a John Houseman voice over). Lots of patience and a willingness to accept the numerous suck-outs that occur on all free sites are skills that you can learn here and transfer very well to cash play.

[SunPowerGuru]

@zmansuncle

IF, I have obtained all 43 achievement medallions does that make me “better” than those with less?

I don’t think so. The achievements are mostly earned by playing hands. The more hands you play, the more likely you are to earn them. For example, the best player in the world probably won’t get the one for quad 2’s by playing a few thousand hands, and the worst player will probably have it if they have played a million hands.

I bought $20 worth of chips early on because I was sick of the level of play in the lowest stakes games. I was winning there, but wanted to move up to the medium MTTs faster, so I got some chips to make that happen. Since then, I have won well over 100 MTTs and countless SnGs. I’m far from the best player here, but the fact that I once bought some chips has nothing to do with my skill or lack of skill.

[BluffaloKing]

@zmansuncle

IF, I have obtained all 43 achievement medallions does that make me “better” than those with less?

In a word, no, because most of them are meaningless. I did not even know that there were 43 of them. I have 37, but it looks like some of them can only be won in ring games, which I do not play. The only one that is possibly worth anything is Poker Ace, which means having won 10 or more MTT’s, which I guess is a kind of landmark.

[zmansuncle]

I would like to state unequivocally, the buying, or not, of chips in NO way is an indicator of a player’s poker skills, real money or otherwise. Here on RP, buying chip is simply a choice. You can if you want, or not. Personally I am still looking for a way to dump most of my chips and do it in a way acceptable to RP. I want to see what happens to my ranking AND, I have more chips than I will ever need thanks to RP’s generosity and the ignorance (lacking knowledge) of lesser players. How about a medallion for giving X number of chips back to RP? Of course the only people who would likely have any interest in obtaining such an award will not have purchased chips to begin with.

[SunPowerGuru]

@zmansuncle

Personally I am still looking for a way to dump most of my chips and do it in a way acceptable to RP.

Enter a million dollar MTT, then don’t play at all. You should be removed after 3 blind levels and I doubt Replay would have a problem with it.

Rankings are directly connected to the number of chips you have. as far as I know, that’s the total basis for rankings.

[BluffaloKing]

Or enter a 2 1/2 million chip tournament on a Saturday afternoon, and just play your normal game.

[Sassy_Sarah]

@SunPowerGuru

Enter a million dollar MTT, then don’t play at all. You should be removed after 3 blind levels and I doubt Replay would have a problem with it.

Plus since noone specifically is benefit’n from it other than the general prizefund, I doubt you could even call it dumping, as per ToS/CoC… lololol

[zmansuncle]

Unless I am mistaken, using your methodology, another player will wind up with a majority the chips required to register (true in any tourney regardless of buy-in). My intent is to take the chips out of play completely (countering chip inflation), not give the vast majority to somebody else (which does not counter chip inflation), and certainly not to anybody who can afford to play a million chip buy-in tourney. If the only way I can dump chips is to give them away I’d prefer to give them to a new player, but I suspect RP would prefer to reclaim, and then resell the chips, not pass them along to someone else.

[Fozman]

@SunPowerGuru

Poker is something. You seem to be saying that there is a universal motivation for pokering… profit. I guess it depends how one defines “profit.” Since there is no real profit on a free poker site, there is no motivation to play, so nobody would play. Since people do play here, there must be another motivation.

I know when I showed up here about 3 years ago, I was a terrible player. I had been through a couple of the other sites and I just never got what I wanted out of it. (BTW, if you think "Bingo!"™ is bad here, go play the 2K & 100K buy-ins at Partypoker… lawl.)

Things were somehow different here at Replay. There was more of a sense of community. I got to the point where I wanted to improve. I came to the forums for tips, and wow. My game hasn’t been the same since. (Thank you, guys, you know who you are.)

What I’m saying is, my motivation was never “profit” per se. Even though “winning” at poker means increasing your chip stack i.e. “profiting”, it was never hard currency in my wallet. What kept me coming back was BS-ing with my friends at the tables and learning from people here on the forum.

If you’re looking for extremely skilled hardcore players, one obviously needs to look elsewhere. And while a large portion of the user base needs to somehow acquire a bit of respect for themselves and the game of poker, there are places here where you can find a great game with great people and enjoy your time while learning something.