Bumhunting - new blog by Neil Channing

[MM]

There's a new blog entry by Neil Channing:

Bumhunting

[sleepingtom]

Cool read. Makes me sick some of the things I see every day online with massive bumhunters. Can't imagine it in a live scenario never really seen it before but I would personally be completely embarrassed if i acted that way ie. going to the casino and not playing cus there isn't a massive fish. Pathetic imo.

[StGilmore]

Great article Neil.

I was quite relieved to find out the definition of bumhunters didn't mean creepy men lurking in the shadows and waiting to... hold on! I see...: Live poker is the vulnerable creature in bumhunting. It's pretty sick that 'Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg' is still an unlearned lesson after all these years. (Now FREE on Google)
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[X]

Nice read Mr Channing
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[The Dean]

Good read Neil........difficult to combine sports betting and poker but all the best in 2012
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[Pizzicato]

Some very good points well made...

Shame its such a difficult thing to solve

[evelyn]

It's part of the wind of change in poker. People just want to make money, not to spend hours in a room for nothing. Prior to the internet boom the barrier to entry was the difficulty of the game. With all the books, tools, vids, coaching etc that's no longer a barrier.

[Alex B]

Widespread education has also caused a narrowing of margins that makes sitting in any game more expensive than it was 10 years ago.

If the rake from 4pm to 10pm is more than the expected profit after rake from 10pm till 4am, then the market has broken down and there needs to be an entirely new solution.
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[knifeboy62]

[evelyn]

If the demand for 24 hour poker is no longer there then I suppose they will reduce it to 12 hours, 8 hours or whatever. Imo the biggest danger to live poker will be mobile poker. If players can play quicker online poker anywhere then they might not bother going to the poker rooms at all.

[The Dean]

I think once again this circles back to what we discussed a few weeks ago regarding tracking software. The weaker players need the maximum possible protection because the online poker economy is every bit as fragile as any other economy. You can only go to the well so many times.

Good players simply don't need tracking software even if many think they do. I am not harping on about PT/HM here but just citing them as an offshoot avenue. For winning players to maintain their status then liquidity needs to be constant or within set ranges and also there has to be value in enough quantity.

Also net plus players have to be prepared to either give something back into the economy or not take as much. If the percentage of fish money reaches a critical level then winning players will no longer be able to sustain themselves even at moderately low levels unless they come at the problem from a completely different angle.

It is very difficult these days to survive in middle limits and I would probably go as far as to say impossible for many given the restraints on time that most people have. The difference between say NL100 and NL600 is many times more difficult than the x3 level increase and the x6 increase in stakes as an example. A couple of years ago I made the decision not to bother even trying to beat anything higher than NL200 full ring. This wasn't down to a lack of intelligence, ability or anything else but simply a lack of available time, inclination and awareness of just how difficult the problem was.

So I simply came at the problem a different way and decided to play far more tables at far lower levels and swallowed the old pride and now it is NL50-NL100 full ring where I play as I think there is more value at these levels in full ring than six max and $50 to $100 is low enough to catch fish floating to the top. However my style is different (Not saying any more) to probably nearly all who play at my levels. By the way this is not a solution but simply my views and approach to the growing problem and I am certainly aware of the shelf life of all strategies.

Thank god for variance because if it wasnt for that then we would all be dead
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Poker columnist at www.poker.co.uk

[sleepingtom]

nice post mr dean, completely agree with what you say.

[The Dean]

What would be very interesting would be to look at the figures or estimated figures for online poker to find out what

A. The average global online poker population is in millions
B. The number of players who are long term winners as a percentage that is beyond several standard deviations and so pretty nailed on in terms of accuracy
C. What the average yearly profits are overall for a winning player
D. What the average yearly profits are per level for a winning player

Using the bell curve model then we can build the "average" online player and what they do and what their game is and how much they win and then do the same for each level.

I think the mean average online yearly profit would be relatively low and these players would form the bulk of the bell curve but what may be surprising is in how much the average reg makes per level.......obviously this is AVERAGE REG and not a leading or top reg as average regs would form a far greater number and we could then formulate further data on a per level basis.

I did some research on this last year to basically find out what the typical player was doing at given levels that had mainly evolved and if a basic model of a "typical" player could be useful to mass multi-tabling in order to increase potential profitability. Just wondered if anyone had any data as mine may be innacurate and out of date.
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[darrensprengers]

I would think what has not helped is poker becoming a very exclusive game. I have only played at the vic a few times and every time loads of "great" players spend their whole time berating and condescending the recreational player. To the point they leave. I have seen this everywhere i have played. At another casino a player was berated for having casino chips, still valid, and told that clearly he would be the fish. Then the self proclaimed pro spent the next hour making the guy leave. he had thousands in the funny shaped chips but said he would have more fun playing blackjack, and who could argue. A recreational player or recreational gambler does not play to be educated or even to win consistently. All they want is to have fun. An easy comparison would be the casinos in vegas laughing and insulting players for being stupid enough to play such bad edge games then moaning they dont come and stay there again. Recreational players are your customers. If you treat them as such they will always come back.
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[The Dean]