blonde poker forum

The Lawrence Gosney interview on 425 raised an interesting point. for those that missed it Tikay asked him on his opinion on the skill gap between US and European players. he said 80% of Americans can't play but the top 20% are a longway ahead of the Europeans and he put this largely down to deals. The fact that, too often Europeans chop the pot 4 way and lack he hunger for the win so our short handed / HU game is weak.

I've always been generally against deals but had never thought of this as a suppotring argument of that. If others follow William Hills lead and start adding money will the "it's our money" argument have to give up and will we get flatter prize structures to prevent the deals taking place away from the table.

Opinions?

I can't speak for the 20% of Americans are way better than the Europeans, but his point about the short handed/HU weaknesses sounds instinctively right...even at my lower level I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times i've had to play the latter stage of a tournament three handed or less

Even during my better runs I simply have not gained the HU/Short handed experience live (online yes, live no). Which is coincidentally why I always try and play shootouts when they crop up, which is more regularly now

As we have discussed elsewhere, many of us would rather not do deals but prize structures dictate otherwise. There are though signs of progress. At Luton this week 1st prize has been getting mid 30%s of the pool down from the standard 40%+. In time I would expect this trend to intensify and gradually the regular 4 and 5 way chops we see to lessen and more comps played to a finish

As an aside I wondered if part of the problem here is the lack of importance players on a final table attach to ranking points (at the point of the deal ranking points are awarded equally according to how many left...ie four way chop, all awarded fourth place points~)

Certainly I never hear anyone say "I refused a deal because I wanted the ranking points for winning". On a relative basis I think the US scene the idea of "player of the year" etc has a greater cachet than over here (perhaps the difference it can make for sponsorship is greater?). Certainly Negreaneau attached a great deal of importance to it during his great run in 2004