Tragedy of the Commons and Bumhunting

Good examples
Also sanai is a lucky guy

On September 20 2010 22:13 PanoRaMa wrote: 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.

eh wat. I just worked out a coaching deal with this guy today.

gotta talk about this...

Well I got the application like several days ago if that means anything. But if you are already coaching him I have a lot of other deserving people to pick, I haven't sent him a pm yet or anything.

Do you coach microstakes aside from this offer?

great read

I don't get you're point at all. Fish lose their money because they play badly. It's not because people hunt them. The games aren't "depleting" or "getting tougher" because their aren't enough fish. Pokerstars has more tourney donks binking scores and dumping money right now than at any other point in their history.

The difference now and 5+ years ago is that they're more skilled players than ever before. More and more regulars establishing themselves and grinding their ways up the stakes. In other words the ratio in poker is changing. There are more regulars sharing the same number of fish.

If you want to complain about something in poker complain about the rake. Pokerstars is dealing 1 million cashgame hands about every 10-15 minutes. Lets say they're raking probably something like an average of 25 cents per hand and that's being conservative. That means every 15 minutes Pokerstars is making $250,000 USD. That's far in excess of what it costs to run Pokerstars. Most regs are paying over $3,000 per month just for the privilege of using online software to play cards. Pokerstars gets to charge this much for their service simply because no other poker company has bothered to charge less and no group of players has decided to actually lobby for improvement.

If you want to improve the games then start massive petitions amongst players to reduce the rake to a cap of 25 cents per hand at .25/.50 and above plus make the max rake 10 cents below those levels so that the micro fish don't get raked to death.

The reduction of the rake to something a hell of a lot more reasonable is by far more important than the "problem" of bumhunting. Frankly it's pretty difficult for someone starting at NL50 HU to beat the games if they don't bumhunt. They're paying around 5ptbb in rake just for the privilege of playing the games.

Additionally:

I've played 150k hands of PLO over the past 3 years. I'm a pretty lazy player in general and haven't done much to try and become good at the games. I'm what you'd call a soft regular I guess you could say?

I've paid 13.5k in rake, I'm -$1750 or so All-In Ev playing almost exclusively at PLO50, and I'm a very slight winner at 1bb/100 over that sample. I'm a casual player and I've paid Pokerstars around 13.5k for the privilege of doing so. I don't play enough to even be a Supernova so I'm getting a rakeback rate of Goldstar which is something like 17.5%.

If you want fish or softer regulars to be more present in the higher levels of the games you should petition to have the rake significantly reduced to make more people winning players. Pokerstars is just laughing all the way to bank because all the regulars and fish are too stupid to realize their being massively overcharged compared to what it costs to run the service. Pokerstars and FTP have a monopoly on the majority of online poker so there is almost no incentive for them to change anything. The only way to actually get rake reduced would be to convince all players in online poker to boycott, block tables, and do so continually until the rake is fairly reduced. Otherwise the people who own that company are just swimming in billions of our money while charging us up to $3.00 USD for a single hand of online poker dealt by software.

zulu: Not actively coaching until at least after this offer, and usually I don't coach micros because I can't find a good middleground between charging less enough while also still making it worth my while. In the past I have done group coaching, so I may consider that.

Bejamin: This article was mainly written to address the disdain of bumhunters at mid stakes 6max and 9max games as well as the lobby-filling HU bumhunting (creating tons of 1/2 seat tables), both of which I have no personal agenda towards (as my article discusses). The general argument towards bumhunters from the "non-bumhunting" regs are that the bumhunters are directly taking money out of the poker economy while not adding any value to it. The existence of bumhunters who specifically hunt fish results in fish losing their money at a similar if not quicker rate, while at the same time ruining the general overall quality of games in general. While there are a lot of valid points to the anti-bumhunting crusade, ultimately I feel that it's not worth complaining about because it's not something that will change.

The subject of site rake isn't something I actively think about and so I don't really have any position to discuss it, but I do think it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.

You have to be out of your mind if you think 25 cents per hand is a conservative estimate. Obviously there are far more micro tables that pay much less rake on avg, and you have to consider the fact that they don't rake pf pots.

The article was pretty interesting even though I don't feel like our source of income is nearly as limited as you might think.

On September 20 2010 23:36 YoMeR wrote: Show nested quote + On September 20 2010 22:13 PanoRaMa wrote: 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. eh wat. I just worked out a coaching deal with this guy today. gotta talk about this...

Yeah, I just pm'd Pano. Sorry about the mixup guys. I applied for the free offer because well... it's free, Pano's monstrous, and I had nothing to lose. But I didn't really think I had a chance to win the lottery, had received no word from Pano, and was feeling a bit pessimistic, so I decided to be proactive. I just msged Yomer like very late last night and talked it over today... just in time to see this blog like 5 min. ago. The timing of this whole thing was very... bleh haha.

Wasn't trying to be shady or be coach-hog in any way. I was just trying out all my available options. Again, really sorry about the mixup guys. You're both heroes.

Cool read, I have been thinking of some of that stuff on my own lately. Last night I was "protecting" my fish every chance possible, when a regular would Iso, I would 3b relentlessly with almost any2, to stop him. Not sure if I was doing it right, but created a really interessting dynamic on the table.

Sanai is smart!! Im so gonna do that, apply to loads of coaches, wuhu, still great blog, gl hf!

nice read

This every regular is a bumhunter thing is just something bumhunters say to rationalise their own bumhunting. That said I do agree there's no way things will change but I also dont think all whining needs to be constructive so Im going to continue complaining about bumhunters.

Personally I find most criticism towards bumhunting to be ludicrous. Let's be serious - the people who speak it out against are not noble utilitarians. They don't reflect about their winrates "I could be making 2x as much, but I feel I should not as a favor to my fellow regulars". Mostly they just have ego issues.

They don't have the patience to constantly search out the weakest players, they feel they will improve faster if they face tougher opponents. They have this disdain (jealousy, I think) towards players like Leatherass, because they consider him to be not all that impressive and he's still making a lot more than they do (to be fair though, he's doing a terrible job at PR management). So they build up this misplaced sense of self-righteousness, when in reality their whole crusade is just flawed. It's like someone at the table vehemently complaining that you just stacked the fish when you could have just called on the river with nuts so everybody could get a piece of the pie.

The fishing companies example is not analogous to the poker world. Whether or not you bust a bad player does not affect the influx of new recreational players. Bad players don't reproduce to create other bad players. Regrettably.

I do realise however that some things may seem in bad taste, for instance a whole table sitting out when the fish takes a break. But even in that situation, if you think deep, deep down inside you'll realise that it's not the fact that he might feel hurt bothers you. It's what his feeling hurt might do to your income.

What should you do if you find that you yourself are the bum being hunted?

I just pout with my lower lip when that happens! It's np!!

tomson seems like a smart person to me.

On September 21 2010 12:20 tomson wrote: Personally I find most criticism towards bumhunting to be ludicrous. Let's be serious - the people who speak it out against are not noble utilitarians. They don't reflect about their winrates "I could be making 2x as much, but I feel I should not as a favor to my fellow regulars". Mostly they just have ego issues. They don't have the patience to constantly search out the weakest players, they feel they will improve faster if they face tougher opponents. They have this disdain (jealousy, I think) towards players like Leatherass, because they consider him to be not all that impressive and he's still making a lot more than they do (to be fair though, he's doing a terrible job at PR management). So they build up this misplaced sense of self-righteousness, when in reality their whole crusade is just flawed. It's like someone at the table vehemently complaining that you just stacked the fish when you could have just called on the river with nuts so everybody could get a piece of the pie. The fishing companies example is not analogous to the poker world. Whether or not you bust a bad player does not affect the influx of new recreational players. Bad players don't reproduce to create other bad players. Regrettably. I do realise however that some things may seem in bad taste, for instance a whole table sitting out when the fish takes a break. But even in that situation, if you think deep, deep down inside you'll realise that it's not the fact that he might feel hurt bothers you. It's what his feeling hurt might do to your income.

This.

My point about the rake didn't need to be relevant. I simply suggest that over charging with rake is by far the more significant problem. If you want games at .5/1+ to be softer and to have weaker players in them. The rake needs to be reduced to allow mediocre winning players to advance. A bigger selection of the pool are winning players when rake is reduced. Its not something that would happen without a full on strike by all Pokerstars player. Seat blocking and all. It is however something I think the players should consider.

wow. nice article!

ok... time to go bumhunt now...