[Phil]

 mycroft, on 2012-January-10, 11:30, said:

In certain places ..... silver points are *absurdly* difficult to get (well, 50 of them, anyway; 5 I agree with). We have 4 sectionals a year - this time, the two-session 0-1000 pairs payed 4.something *to win*, and the two-session 0-1000 teams payed 5.02. The nearest next sectional (2 of them) is a two-hour drive, and likely pays 7 to win the two-session *open* pairs. The nearest next is three hours away, there are 4 of those, and they're smaller than ours here in Calgary.

TWO HOUR DRIVE!!! OMG! In Montana we used to regularly drive 4-6+++ hours. For sectionals too.

It can't be that easy to get gold either. Back in the day, Montana would frequently go a full calendar year without a regional, so you had to go to Spokane, or Boise.

[wyman]

I'd jump on the bandwagon for a summer NABC in Bozeman. I'd take a day or two off of play for Yellowstone, and I'd tack a few on at the end for Glacier, but whatever.

[mycroft]

 Phil, on 2012-January-10, 16:34, said:

TWO HOUR DRIVE!!! OMG! In Montana we used to regularly drive 4-6+++ hours. For sectionals too.

It can't be that easy to get gold either. Back in the day, Montana would frequently go a full calendar year without a regional, so you had to go to Spokane, or Boise.

Heh. Still just as bad. I'll tell you a secret: Calgary's closer than Spokane from a lot of Montana - but it only has one regional every three years. If you're in the Eastern part of Montana, Saskatoon or Regina are definitely closer than Spokane.

Having said that, you are correct - at least in Alberta, it's guaranteed to have a regional in the province (and 2 every fourth year). But people make the 7-hour drive to Regina/Saskatoon, or the 8-hour drive to Penticton, every year (or the 6ish hour drive to Cranbrook, or the 5ish to Shelby, MO, for the sectional) every year.

I was just pointing out the *closest* ones.

[blackshoe]

ROFL, Art!

I know squat about professional poker, on line or off, but I did read somewhere several years ago about an online player who'd done very well in that milieu, who then went to Vegas to play in a tournament there, and got his head handed to him. Of course, one swallow doesn't make a summer, but...

[Phil]

I have the best memories of Shelby. It was the 1st sectional I ever attended when I started in 1980.

(For the uninitiated), Shelby was frequently a stop for many players traveling coast to coast or back across the border immediately following the Spring NABC. It was a pretty strong tournament for a little podunk town of about 2,000.

[Zelandakh]

 blackshoe, on 2012-January-10, 18:38, said:

I know squat about professional poker, on line or off, but I did read somewhere several years ago about an online player who'd done very well in that milieu, who then went to Vegas to play in a tournament there, and got his head handed to him. Of course, one swallow doesn't make a summer, but...

Perhaps you also read about the Finnish online poker player who qualified for his first (major) F2F tournament via an online qualifier (Pro-Am) and won the amateur section outright. He then played heads-up against the winner of the pro section and outplayed him to win very quickly (around half a dozen hands). He has since had success in other F2F tournaments. I daresay the player you read about could become a good F2F player with some practise on controlling his tells. It seems pretty obvious to me that an online player should work extremely hard on this aspect of their game before playing against F2F pros.

[cherdano]

 cherdano, on 2012-January-01, 09:04, said:

See, things in the ACBL are so much easier. We just have platinum points, and gold points, and red points, and silver points, and black points. No online points anymore though. Oh and seeding points for the USBF. Oh, and Blue ribbon qualfiers. Oh, and NABC+ wins (needed for GLM).

 Siegmund, on 2012-January-02, 00:17, said:

But we do still have online points. They are still going to be colorless, not black, and still not count towards Ace of Clubs, as far as I can tell - the only thing that changed about online points is that all of them count towards one's rank.

Actually, I also forgot eligibility points...

[gnasher]

There are also "equivalency points", which are what they give to overseas visitors for seeding purposes.

[JLOGIC]

 blackshoe, on 2012-January-10, 18:38, said:

ROFL, Art!

I know squat about professional poker, on line or off, but I did read somewhere several years ago about an online player who'd done very well in that milieu, who then went to Vegas to play in a tournament there, and got his head handed to him. Of course, one swallow doesn't make a summer, but...

Lol. The highest stakes games were for several years online. The live pros who played in it, including the TV celebrities that the average pros knew got completely owned as per online tracking sites of the highest stakes games over sample sizes that would take a lifetime to play in real life (literally), with the exception of Ivey who is just the nuts and is the biggest winner online also. Conversely, the online players who were smart enough to get themselves into TV cash games consistently destroyed the former TV celebs at NLHE, some of them becoming very famous in their own rite (durrrr for example). It was funny to watch Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson and Chris Ferguson against guys like Tom Dwan and Scott Seiver. The top online tournament specialists became some of the biggest winners in live tournaments, guys like elky and jason mercier and annette. Not that that really matters, online results are far more relevant since they have such a massively larger sample of hands/tournaments.

The truth is, the best online players became far better than the best live players after the poker boom at no limit hold em, limit hold em, and PLO, both tournaments and cash games. Poker theory was really in its infancy, nobody knew anything, and those who knew something kept their secrets to themselves. Even if you spent a lifetime playing poker like Doyle Brunson, you could not see as many hands as top volume online players played in a few years, and you certainly would not play against competition as tough (in the absolute sense), or have anyone else to talk to. The game evolved tremendously because you now had a ton of smart people analyzing poker seriously and playing millions of hands. It would be like bridge before there was much theory, and all of the sudden you had a ridiculous amount of people play a million bridge hands. The game would evolve enormously.

As a result, the best online players had the strongest fundamentals, had faced the best competition, and had the most experience. They salivated at the thought of playing someone like Hellmuth or Brunson heads up, literally if one of those guys would show up online at a 200/400 NL game, there would be a waitlist of 20 online pros long just to take a shot even if they normally wouldn't play that high. Guys like Ivey who were just great poker talents played online and evolved with the games.

It is a huge joke that someone could win a lot of money online, and then go play in one tournament, and "get their ass handed to them." Do you realize how silly that is? In one tournament, the best player int he world is less than 50 % to make the money. They are very unlikely to win. Poker has a lot of variance, there is a lot of luck in the short term. That is why the online tournament grinders play 30 tournaments a day, every day. It would be like saying someone played one hand of blackjack while the count was good but lost so they got owned.

But it is not a coincidence that far more players have successfully transitioned from online to live than from live to online, despite there being much more money in it online at that point in time (for cash game players). As someone who played online a lot and now plays only live, I can tell you that live is really a joke compared to online. The general rule is that the skill level in stakes is about a 10:1 ratio for live to online, so 5/10 NL is like .5/.1 online.

Yes, the live players will be better with the live tell stuff, but this is not really as much of factor in poker as people think unless you are completely inept. Poker is a game of strategy, betting patterns, etc. If you "get a read" on someone, it is usually on an imbalance in their betting patterns in certain situations that you can exploit, not that they twitch when they're bluffing lol.