Something that I actually learned from High School was in my AP Environmental Studies class called the Tragedy of the Commons. Since this was a while ago and I did terrible in that class I'm just going to copy/paste the Wikipedia definition for this which articulates it much better than I could: The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently, and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.
E.g. imagine there are 5 fishing companies which reside over a lake. For simplicity's sake, let's say their ability to catch fish is dependent on how big of a net they cast into the lake. It soon becomes evident that as each company competes against one another to develop bigger nets, fish are being mined out of the lake at a rate faster than they can reproduce. How does the entire fishing industry remedy this problem? It would involve all 5, not one less, fishing companies to mutually agree to stop developing such bigger nets and/or to limit how much fish they take out in a day. Acting out of financial self-interest (or the interests of their stock holders), either there would be no companies willing to do this, or there would never be a unanimous consent. Even if there were 4 companies consenting, the fifth company now sees the ample financial opportunity, keeps developing bigger nets, which directly results in greater returns, which motivates them to build even bigger nets to mine out the lake until it's depleted.
While the number of fish will never be completely depleted in online poker, it's evident that we're witnessing a similar situation - my point is that no one should be complaining about it. The reason for that is mostly because no one can do anything about it. You will never get a consent amongst every bumhunter in online poker to stop bumhunting. The argument against training sites have died down, the poker community at large has accepted them as part of the reality of the industry. So why isn't it the same with bumhunting?
I'm a believer that every reg, besides the absolute sickos, is a bumhunter himself, just to varying extents. The true bumhunters I refer to here are the ones who make an active effort to never play regs and only play fish as their sole source of income. In the fishing analogy above, the companies have obligations towards their employees and stockholders to pay them sufficiently, and to themselves so that they can improve the quality of life for themselves and their families. They have no ecological obligations that I know of (maybe some weird legalities here and there but we'll ignore that), no obligation to be compassionate towards the fish themselves or fish rights' advocacy groups. The richest company will simply be the one that can build the bigger net so that they can mine out the lake at a faster rate than the others, all whom wouldn't hesitate to do the same if they could.
The true bumhunter has no obligation to keep in the poker economy in check. The very practice of bumhunting is a shortterm practice in and of itself, so they have no obligations towards the future (i.e. longterm). The true bumhunter wants to cast his net and try to acquire the fish as effectively as possible, before his opportunity is taken by others. It's a sad thing for the poker economy and the game itself, but it was an inevitable consequence, especially as the games got tougher (previous article: Pivot to save your poker career).
I do think that the bumhunters who regularly do scummy things like grim your big blind HU, hit and run for a few bbs HU, sit out and seat-block, break games by mass sitting out when the fish is sitting out, use illegal software to identify/auto-sit etc. should be berated because it's just a disrespectful thing to do against any other human being. Besides that, since no one can do anything to particularly change this tragedy of the commons situation, one shouldn't expend any mental resources worrying about it. Accept it as part of the reality of the games, just like when everyone pretty much just HAD to accept shortstackers on their tables (until table buy-in changes came in of course) - you just adjust to their presence and play accordingly. If you truly view them as being unskilled, you should be able to exert some sort of edge over them for some positive winrate over the time they're still seated at the table.
Here are some quick tips/tricks to adjust to bumhunters. Like I mentioned, I believe we're all bumhunters inside, just some moreso than others, so this will apply to a lot of people but some not so much as others.
1. If acting after the mark and the bumhunter, re-iso their iso raises and 3bets. A re-iso 3bet size (or 4bet) ends up being very tricky to deal with and often threatens stacks to be put into play, tighter players trying to iso light but not comfortable tangling with regs should play straightforward here. Obviously it works better when IP rather than oop, as with pretty much anything in poker.
2. If acting before the mark and the bumhunter, open more which tends to make the bumhunter play more straightforward. He might peel more speculative hands hoping the fish comes along but that's something most people are probably comfortable with dealing with by now.
3. If acting between the bumhunter and the mark, you can 3bet or flat a lot here, both of which is going to give you a weird relative position to the mark but will give you direct position against the bumhunter who likely can't or isn't willing to do much to play back against you.
4. If acting between the mark and the bumhunter, just iso a lot more than you normally would knowing that the bumhunter will just try to wait for hands and won't do anything like re-iso you light (like a tricky, aggro reg would).
I think online poker is shifting towards the direction of just accepting bumhunters like we've eventually accepted training sites (a tragedy of the commons scenario itself - the less training sites the less competent regs there would be, meaning less money taken out of the poker economy each year), shortstackers, mass multi tablers, etc. Inevitably you just have to find your own niche within the industry and base your adjustments and mentality towards the game from there.
Thanks for reading the article, in other news I've decided to pick Sanai for coaching. Thanks for all the applications, I got a lot more than I expected and read every single one of them.
I'd like to offer 2-10 hours (to my discretion based on how much I think you'd "need" ) of free coaching, no strings attached. This is only for people who are playing 25 or 50nl and can't beat either 25, 50, or 100nl for their life despite lots of trying. Anyone that I talk on a daily basis via skype/msn/aim is also exempt from this, I'd like it to be someone whose game I have 0 understanding of atm. 6max players only.
I play primarily 2/4 and 3/6 6max, and I place an emphasis on making poker easy on yourself, as well as emotional control.
If interested, please post your poker background, the more detailed the better (i.e. how many hands, results at the stakes you're trying to beat, etc.) in the comments (or pm me) and I'll choose someone (or even 2 and just split the hours between them). I'm busy for the rest of the month so it'll start in October.
This will be one of hopefully many business-inspired poker blog articles I'll want to write (especially if I get a good reaction ). This article specifically was written with an article in mind by entrepreneur turned VC Mark Suster, "What Makes an Entrepreneur (3/11) – Ability to Pivot" http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/20...an-entrepreneur-310-ability-to-pivot/
It's a long read, so the tl;dr version is that in (especially tech) startup, likely your business model will be entirely different just a few years after you've started. In order to keep up with a fast-paced, ever-changing business environment, varying market feedback, you must pivot/change your business plans and strategies to remain competitive. While I think business and poker do not have to correlate and overlap tremendously, there are a lot of concepts that are inherent to both fields, much in the same way that the strategic traits of games like StarCraft correlate to traits almost required for poker success.
As poker players I'm sure we're all used to this concept one way or another. If you even visit this forum you're conscious of your own poker game enough to make micro adjustments every day, month, etc. However I thought this would be a relevant topic as we're almost coming up on the fourth year anniversary of UIGEA, and the effect of time on the games post-leg is obvious. We've seen many big name players fall into retirement or obscurity, and so with each passing day it's important to critically think about your income generation from this game both in the present and future.
I'm not going to write a guide since I can't say I have enough knowledge of the psychology and decision making of other players, and so I can only present what I've observed and what my personal pivots have been. I've made significantly more each year after UIGEA passed and this year I've already made more than I did in 2009 with 4 more months remaining. Besides the basic adjustments of simply trying to get better at poker by watching videos, talking hands, etc. here are the pivots I've made:
- First Pivot (Successful), 2006 - UIGEA passed and I switched from playing small stakes Fixed Limit to micro stakes No Limit. Competitive edges amongst regs seemed too thin in that game (at least that's what I perceived as an 18 year old new to the poker world), and 100bb NL poker was far from being considered solved.
- Second Pivot (Successful), 2008 - Began studying tournaments as a side game to my usual 6-max game. Besides the obvious monetary benefit, there were a lot of implied benefits that included traveling around the world to play events, making the invaluable connections and friendships as a result of those events, and poker-wise, an increased understanding of shallow stacked poker.
- Third Pivot (Unsuccessful), 2009 - Began 12 tabling 2/4 iPoker with rakeback as primary form of income generation. I reasoned that with how volatile poker variance is, the only guaranteed income is rakeback. My 12 table set up netted me $70+/hr in rakeback, but increased my stress and destroyed my winrate. That didn't last long.
- Fourth Pivot (Successful), 2009 - Began playing Heads Up on the side of 6max, made me an overall stronger player in literally every aspect and had huge monetary benefits.
By 2010 I've made other smaller pivots, another important one worth mentioning was studying/discussing Zen with friends and understanding how to minimize subtle tilt as much as possible (which probably saves me tens of thousands of dollars per year). I've began playing even more HU which increases my overall profit, etc.
Your pivots can be for any reason, though I intended this article to primarily have monetary incentive in mind. I know a fairly common pivot some ex-mid/high stakes winners have made is the switch to Supernova Elite chasing, which nets you about 130k/year with a breakeven winrate. Perhaps you're a winner at your current stakes, but maybe playing a different game could acquire you the same winrate but with less stress and/or volatility. A good example of that would be playing PLO, a pivot I'm considering for 2011, where achieving a 2ptbb winrate at mid stakes PLO is (as I'm told) a lot easier than maintaining a 2ptbb winrate at NL.
I talk to a lot of players who are relatively new to the game, and they envision themselves on the same trail that was created by the people that have been playing for much longer - get really good, grind out mid or high stakes, make money. The fact of the matter is that formula has rarely worked out for anyone who has taken up this game seriously within the past 1 or 2 years. As mentioned earlier, the primary focus of this article was making more money. Phil Galfond was famous for his NL dominance a few years ago, but has since became a PLO player primarily and has made more millions (to my/public knowledge) and a bracelet. There are some who play for the pride of being a great or well-known player, and that's great too - but if money is your priority then you must have the ability to be critical of your game and your financial endeavors, and be able to pivot when the time is right.
Hopefully this is something you guys like. I'm an aspiring entrepreneur and really enjoy talking poker especially with small stakes concepts.
I don't know if I'll be playing much this month, but here's a 1-week September update:
I'll be getting my wisdom teeth out in a week, and then heading up to San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt (business conference) at the end of the month. If anyone happens to be going, PM me :D
I'm kind of cheating and counting Rakeback + Tourney + Staking $ and all considered, I had a breakthrough record month of $30k.
After only putting in just over 10k hands last month (I was traveling though), I made huge strides in my personal motivation and production. I played about 100 hours this month, and probably spent 40-50 hours just reading books and blogs and articles about entrepreneurial startup. This is for sure the field I'm going into after poker and I'm really passionate about being able to just start something from the bottom up and test myself in a field like that. If anyone is similar, feel free to pm me your contact info I'd love to talk to as many people as I can about the subject.
Poker-wise, I made some breakthroughs as well. First of all, multi-siting is the nuts and is the easiest way to psychologically diversify in poker. I ran terrible at Stars the entire month (which explains the -5k over 16k hands in the graph) and was convinced it was Stars punishing me for releasing that 4k bonus lol. I ran well at iPoker and FTP, and do okay on ongame. I ensure that I always have good 6max tables running and lots of heads up action regardless.
I might keep playing but I think this is a good time to take a break on the month. It's my birthday today and although I don't really care for my bday, I've been really stressed out lately from overworking myself. It's funny because I just read Tim Ferriss's 4-hour Workweek which teaches you how to mitigate stress while increasing productivity, but that led me to increase productivity SO much that it led to me being even more stressed out.
I've also started a heads up staking/semi-coaching farm to try to and automate some portion of my income. I think it's a very lucrative deal on both ends.
I'm close to about 100k in earnings this year but I don't want to graph it until I actually have 100k in pure cash profit without counting rakeback and tourneys. Hopefully I can make it because I've always wanted to have a $100k graph within the same calendar year (I always make a new database after each year).
That's about it for now. I started a twitter to update poker and business related stuff, if you're interested check out www.twitter.com/kevinyko I promise I won't tweet about lame stuff throughout my daily life.
Hey guys, I think I'll be going to APPT Sydney but unlike my other tournament stops in the past I'm looking to spend some more time there. Normally I'd just get a hotel or something but that might cost a bit if I stay longer than the tournament. The tourney is from the 5th to the 12th of December, and I'm looking to spend an extra week or so at least after that. So I know this is a long shot, but if there are any LPers from Sydney that live alone/is in a generally good living arrangement to allow for me to sleep over that would be fantastic.
I'm a stars reg at 2/4 and 3/6 and we could definitely talk poker and stuff. Likely I won't be at the place 24/7 since I'd like to go out and do stuff and meet people, but having a place to come back to would be great . In case it matters, I'm 22 years old, asian, and am generally clean and chill and stuff, can drink etc.
Besides that, if there are any LPers that are just going to APPT Sydney let me know!
edit: The casino is Star City in Pyrmont fwiw, so if anything I'd prefer someone close to that and not like 1-2 hours away
Next, and probably what I've looked forward to the MOST, the continuation of the Luv (sic.) series. Presenting, part four performed live at the Nujabes tribute show, Eternal Soul.
#t=6m13s
If anyone has any other news or tracks related to Nujabes please feel free to share in here. It would be a good thing for the world to be exposed to his music , and sit back and enjoy his legacy.
Looking for someone who would like to trade longterm with me, I give Stars, you give FTP. I cash out on FTP but my main site is Stars so I'm naturally looking for FTP money a lot. This doesn't have to be like a daily thing, but it'd be nice to have people I can just randomly message and be like hey! wanna swap a few g's? kinda thing. Looking for people who would like to do at least 1k at a time.
If not longterm, then I'm looking to get up to 10k off Stars right now, let me know if you would like to help
Also it's been decided for me by the way of degenerate flipping that I MUST attend APPT Sydney (long story). If any LPers are going, or if there are any Sydney LPers that would like to hang out/show me around this December let me know!
Honestly one of the funniest things I've read in a while, so many incoherent donks giving their testament as to why ftp is rigged (but still prob play regardless). The knowledge of the general public, especially wrt poker honestly baffles me at times. Like I've already known this but it's still so mind-boggling that it surprises me even to this day.
Here's today's graph: (latter portion hu)
Not many hands this month because I've been traveling but I'm up a lot so I'm still semi-content.
Lost in the WSOP ME which makes me really sad but I've been rewarded with some online run good. Pretty shitty that this is how many hands I've put in this month so far but I ain't trippin. Here's a garph to counter balance with all the negative blogs people have been posting as of late - your heater is soon!
A pretty successful month I just wish I could put in more hands... honestly it's my biggest fault right now by far and I fucking hate myself for it. What's the use of studying poker and playing well when I can't maximize that edge by putting in volume?
Also I think I'm going to stop blogging monthly results. I mean it's nice to post a brag month or whatever, but I think overall it'd better suit me if I kept exactly how much I've been winning confidential. It's nice to get support from people/my friends on here whether it be a good or a bad month, but those people will support me regardless of me actually posting a blog so it's whatever. I used to keep a month blog to kind of recap the month for my future self to look back on (since I rarely ever make a "what I am going through/thinking now" type blog anymore), but I can just do that offline on MS Word or something.
Regardless, it IS mid-year, so as a mid-year update I'm well on pace for 6 figures this year which makes me happy... it would easily be a lot more if I were a normal human being capable of putting in work though.
I have 2 WSOP events coming up, the 2500 event tomorrow and the Main Event. GL to me and everyone else playing unless you're on my table (no mercy imo!)
). This article specifically was written with an article in mind by entrepreneur turned VC Mark Suster, "What Makes an Entrepreneur (3/11) – Ability to Pivot" 
