High Stakes Players

I dont think anyone can tell you how to become nanonoko or wobbly.

but they probably tilt less, study more, adjust faster and play more hands than their opponents... the list is endless.

clearly if the games run that you think shouldn't be running cause regs are exchanging money, it's usually because each reg in the game thinks he has an edge (maybe they think it's a small edge or maybe they consider themselves breaking even and playing to learn/improve/start a game for a fish to join, but almost never think they're -ev even when they often are). sometimes they're right sometimes they're being unrealistic. it's really hard to evaluate your edge in poker and it's really standard to overrate and think highly of your own abilities (a prevalent human trait), especially when feedback from results is clouded and not necessarily indicative of who truly has the overall edge.

players who are showing strong results and probably truly have an edge in the games they play simply did it by playing better than their opposition. poker is a ridiculously deep and complex game, and there are always improvements that can be made to your game even if you're phil galfond. nobody in the world plays close to perfectly close to 100% of the time.

I once heard aejones saying something like : High stakes games start when someone sits, someone sees this guy, and thinks he has an edge over him, so he sits, then a 3rd player sees one of the 2 and thinks he has an edge over that player, so he sits, rince and repeat. They dont necessarely think they have an edge over the whole table.

as i wrote many times before, if u wanna beat highstakes u need to beat the regs

and there are no shortcuts to that, play regs, the better reg the better practice, dont bumhunt, work on ur game

I believe a lot of their income trickles up from fish still. For instance, there may be someone who plays a lot of 5/10 but who probably shouldnt. He still wins money from fish at lower limits and even the occasional fish at 5/10. He loses a good 90% of this money to the better regs, but thinks he's still +EV in the game due to circumstance.

high stakes regs dont pay much rake at all, its like 1bb

yeah, the rake is less. Although ive often wondered this too, ive seen alot of tables where there are 3 people who crush the game @ 2BB+ sitting down with each other. High stakes players also crush fish for more money than low stakes players can.

Bum hunting is sick +ev.

but so is sitting down, really looking over your HEM/PT3 stats. Finding leaks, thinking about different ways to exploit/adjust. etc etc etc.

If you wanna be a winner you gotta put in real work instead of whining and bitching about how bad you run.

I myself like to bumhunt cuz fuck playing vs good players if i have the option to play bad ones. But if there is little fish then it's time to take out the big guns and really gear down for the long grind vs regs.

Trust me there are plenty of edges to be found vs regs. You just have to work hard enough on your game to find them.

ty everyone for the insights!

some of us perfer to play regs over fish

i'd quit a table full of 5 fish