Past 2 weeks I'm down over 100 bbs. From what I can see in other limit posts, many of us are running cold. The last time this happened was early to mid december and again many of us were down.

My question is can the Meta-Game (yes, a term from magic) of online limit poker be -ev at times? If so, why?

I havent any answers or even a clue.

Interesting way of putting it--Meta-Game. I had some downs with my ups in Dec., although I cannot say if it was cold cards as much as bad play stemming from a lack of knowledge and inexperience. I could say the same right now. Some days I know it's the cards, some days it's the cards and my play, or attitude or moon-phase. But, I do know I'm a better player today than I was in December, and plan to be in September.

It's just one long game.

I don't think the Meta-Game thought applies to Online-Poker an a degree it does to M:TG.

The M:TG nerds (yes I admit I was one of them) was a very closed community. everybody read what was posted on The Magic Dojo, one or two Magazines (which mostly copied from there) and a couple of other Forums, Newsgroups and Mailing Lists.

There was really something like a real Metagame.

In Online Poker, it might be, that there are a growing number of educated or semi-educated players but there is also a lot of people who just get to Party and the other major sites through TV-Ads, Advertisment or Spam who has no connection to any "community".

Simon

UWPg,

Yes I mostly agree with you. But, I do definitely think there is Meta-Game to online poker.
As an example the post on this forum of "How to beat online limit hold em". I think that post specifically addresses the Meta-Game.

Nerd? How dare you! Oh wait, I was a magic nerd. lol

I don't say there is no meta game I just think it has much smaller influences as it had in M:TG because the community is much more heterogen and mor non-community-attached players are around.

I don't think it leads phases like you described in which you "can't win" in a specific couple of weeks, maybe it makes it a litte more difficult or forces you to better table selection.

Simon

I agree that it does not lead to "cant win" situations. But lets say maybe 4 weeks ago the overall advertising for poker sites was down. This might lead to not as many new fish coming online to play. Thus making it a little harder for borderline players to win.

Im not saying this is the reason. Just wondering what kind of forces can make "hiccups" in this game of ours. Just some "what if" thinking. Which I oughta stop cause it hurts my head.

Fellow formet MTG'ers--

Metagame, as i understand it (As a former MTG Ner..uh, i mean player-ya, thats what i mean) is like, something that is an innovative or new and imaginative way to deal with a common deck / card combination that is often out there. For example, if like 50% of decks out there are stasis decks, playing a janky ass card like presence of the master standard in your white weenie deck would be a metagame innovation, or if 50% of decks are burn decks, playing a couple COP reds standard would be a monster. (Pardon the antiquated examples -they are just the first that came to mind)

However, in poker there is a totally closed and comparatively very small range of cards to work with. All you have is the 13 cards and the 4 suits. There is nothing new or interesting you can pull out of your ass, to get you out of a given situation. You have two tries to catch whatever outs you have on the turn and the river, if your beat on the flop, and thats that.

I guess there are certain PLAYS that you could make that if they became commonplace, could make the game more difficult. For example, lets say that there is a player that check/raised a preflop raiser on the turn, EVERY TIME he had any sort of hand at all, i.e. top pair, open ended, flush draw, etc. Imagine how tough this could make the game, if people started doing it all the time. Or if there was a player that three bet any two cards to defend his blind, and led on any flop.

In this resepect, there can be a sort of 'metagame', consisting of plays that make players tougher, that might become more commonplace, thereby toughening up the game in general - this may result in having to work harder to find softer games. However, i dunno how many players, especially at the lower limits, really go to the trouble to study the more advanced or tricky plays.

This, combined with the fact that (a) You can have bad runs of cards for awhile, and (b) even big hands like AK or even QQ, when push comes to shove, are not that heavy of favorites against a field of beaten hands-- (i.e. if you keep on losing with good cards, its not THAT much of a statistical anomoly - of course it is more likely to win with them, but losing a lot with them is entirely possible) makes HE a game that has a whole goddam lot of variance. Take it from me, ive dumped 10k like it was pocket change over the past 2 wks, and though a couple grand most certainly couldve been saved by playing better, i was playing pretty well, all around.

I guess what i mean to say ultimately, and someone correct me if im wrong, is that alot of times, we fail to remember that the edges in HE are often small even when we get quality cards... - so its really not that hard to take a whole lot of beatings in a row...

I guess thats why they say min. 300bb in a broll is required--some say 500!