What everybody really wants to know about the recent grudge match between @RealKidPoker and @DougPolkVids is: Why did Dan agree to it? Since there isn't much good commentary, I'm now going to engage in rank speculation (thread)
(For those not in the loop Doug entered as the favorite and won by what's probably about the amount expected)
First there's the explanation Dan himself gave: That he has some financial interest in GGPoker and this served to promote it, although not as if it had been able to host directly
There's undoubtedly at least some truth to this, although the amount he lost seems big enough that it's unlikely to be the whole story. Of course it wasn't clear beforehand that GGPoker couldn't host, so that may have thrown a wrench in things
It's important to point out that there's nothing unethical about this. There are financial ties which could produce conflicts, but this isn't one of them
It's also theoretically possible that Dan could have put in side bets against himself and thrown it. I find that highly unlikely. He's maintained a mostly good reputation fro a long time and is accustomed to taking big financial risks but not \
big risks as far as his reputation/potential legal prosecution goes. Also he just doesn't seem like one to ever do that. That said Dan may have gotten +EV placing side bets on himself, which is totally ethical
It seems likely that the line in this one was a bit too far towards Doug. People underestimate volatility in these sorts of things and this was a very noisy match upswingpoker.com/hu4grudge/
Dan studied for this one quite a lot, and it's an important bit of context that if the Dan of today played against the Doug of the era when he was the best heads up player in the world Doug would be crushed. Poker strategy has come a long way
Dan of course got a lot of improvement to his brand value, in both amount and tone of coverage. That could go a long way to justifying the -EV of the actual play. But likely more important, Dan got the value of his studying
It seems Dan was looong overdue for getting taught proper GTO-based poker strategy and his play is massively improved as a result. This was heads up, which is an unusual format, but the same foundations apply to 6-max as well.
Even for players with a highly exploitative approach it's always better to know GTO strategies so that you can accurately understand your opponent's deviations from those and exploit them. If you don't know GTO, you don't know what's a deviation
Of course it wouldn't take many super-rich people wanting to play against Dan HU for him to make back a big chunk of the money he just lost, which could easily happen after all the recent press
It's also very likely that Dan just plain enjoys playing and promoting poker and is willing to take a hit for it. Or maybe he's degen and can't help himself. It's hard to say what, if anything, is the difference between those two.
Or maybe Dan wanted the opportunity to bury the hatchet with Doug. I don't think that was particularly planned for, he's just a nice guy and being a good sport is a good way to make friends with people (as is losing a million bucks to them)
On that subject I should probably give my opinion about 'more rake is better'. Obviously under many (probably most) circumstances more rake just plain pays out more money, but there are narrow scenarios where it's better for someone because it gets players to drop out
It's relatively easy to see how this can help the fish. If the pros drop out, the fish are now losing rake but not both losing rake and directly losing money to pros. This isn't always the case, but it certainly can happen
The same phenomenon can result in taxes on financial transactions being better for bona fide traders, because it puts hedge funds out of business and distributes the spread directly between traders.
Even more straightforwardly financial transaction taxes can stop people from front running because a front-run transaction is two exchanges which doubles the taxes paid. Amounts and situations are of course very important here but this should be taken seriously
Anyway, back to poker. In terms of pros there are very narrow situations in which the better pros can be better off with more rake because it knocks out the worse pros and now the better pros aren't losing money on rake on pots they're trading with the worse pros
This of course is coming at the expense of someone. The only way all pros can do better here is if the people who drop out were 'semi-pros', basically good recreational players who were at break-even.
Being a professional poker player will inevitably be very cutthroat. There's a limited supply of dumb money to claim, and not much barrier to entry for people to pursue it, and an ever growing set of resources for people to improve their game
In any case, thanks again to @RealKidPoker for being such a good sport and providing so much entertainment. I hope your improved game serves you well in the future
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