blonde poker forum

Hello everyone. I posted a remarkably similar post (good ole cut copy paste!) to the one below in the DTD ask a pro section. It is addressed to Henning Granstad. I've had a reply stating that he may not browse this board anymore. I would be interested to know of British players views of this (edited) post:

I, most probably like a lot of players, started my poker learning by reading the Harrington series of books. I have also started looking to add a few other things to my armoury; one of the most important things I am looking to adapt is my ability to change gear.

When I watched Henning I was very impressed with his gear changes. I have also been looking on (and playing at times) at Scandinavian players, who seem to be dominating the European (and increasingly the US) scene.

I remember a Yank telling me that he felt Harrington was too tight. As I have played more and more I have found this statement to hold some amount of truth - hence my desire to learn a looser style of play for when I need to change gears.

What has impressed me about the Scandinavians is their (apparent?) loose style of play. Is their current domination down to the fact that many players follow the Harrington text and that the Scandinavian style is its direct opposite. Has somebody somewhere in Scandinavia systematically analysed and taken apart Harringtons tactics??? Are there any Nordic texts on poker play??? Or is the style just plain random?

Is there a specific school of thought within Scandinavian poker at the moment? If so, where is the best place to tap into it to get some form of insight?

At the end of the day, the Scandies are doing something right - and it would be nice to learn something from their style (as at the moment the only texts out there are really from the american schools of play)

Do you have any advice on how to play certain holdings...or...how to play players u perceive to play under the Harrington Modus Operandi?

Or is the Scandies success down to the fat that so many of them enter these big tourneys???? I very much doubt it, but what are your views?

bump, interesting post I think

Some of it has to do with the enormous experience some of the Scandies have gained playing online, and the bankrolls generated.

Even tikay plays like a Scandie now.

I think it's to do with the widespread availability of big money poker now.

The young Scandies are simply used to being able to throw money around in big games - money which is nothing more that numbers on a screen to them. If they spend hours every day online playing poker, then their huge bankroll is only ever 'poker chips'. They have no mortgages, kids, responsibilities, things which traditionally played on the minds of the old school live players. Many of them never really get the chance to spend any big money - being quite clean-cut geeks. They don't have the reckless gambling streak which traditionally went hand-in-hand with big money poker.

As a result, there's no fear of losing. It's money they won't miss and money they can easily win back by firing up their laptops and hitting the tables.

*Warning - heavy-handed analogy alert*

Scandianvian poker players are the suicide plane hijackers of our age. In the 'good old days' of plane hijacks, hijackers would not perform acts which would put their own lives in danger. Killing all the passengers would be one such act. Therefore the passengers knew their best chance of survival was simply to sit there and be quiet - they didn't need to risk their own lives, as the hijackers wouldn't be risking theirs.

With suicide hijackers this is not the case - the hijackers place no value on their lives and so are willing to sacrifice them to achieve their goals. In order to save their own lives, the passengers know they will have to risk dying in order to overcome the hijackers (the United 93 scenario).

OK, so if poker players = hijackers and passengers,  and chips = the players' lives, then you can see where I'm going with this. Old school players put a high value on their chips and so are less likely to risk them to win pots. Scandies care less and so will happily risk them. If the Scandie is always risking his chips, then he's continually asking you to risk yours to stop him. If the money means more to you than him, you're going to fold as you don't want to risk going out.

On September 11th the hijackers went all-in. The passengers on the planes which hit the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon folded as they didn't realise the texture of the game had changed. The passengers on United 93 were able to identify the change in strategy and made the correct adjustment to their play. They called the all-in. Sadly for them their hands didn't stand up.

.....a bizarre reply!!

Love that analogy.  So Scandies are Fundamentalist poker players - genius!

;tightend;

personally I believe that 'Tight is right'. I think it's better to approach poker as a tight player and change UP gears when necessary, rather than the other way round. Aggressive players with a gambling nature rarely change down. they can make themselves.

I didn't start playing poker with Harrington, infact it came along 5 years into my playing. With the obvious exception of Super System, most good books I've read advocate Tight Aggresive. Patience and discipline are tools I've practiced hard.

It's surely about changing gears at the right times and for the right reasons. ie not getting too short, recognising when the table is slowing down and most importantly, not changing up gears because some mainiac is taking the piss for you being a rock.

As I say, for me personally, Tight Is Right.

Psychology of Poker by Alan N. Schoonmaker is a cracking read, not for poker thgeory but to help get to grips with playing styles and understanding why people play the weay you do and it certainly helped me learn to beat different types of players

Im not sure that's particularly necessary Andrew. we're all capable of understanding your point (a perfectly good one)without the analogy in questionable taste

OK


Yeah Baby. Excellent post that man!!

I think you have your answer in a nutshell right there jjandellis

If you take a look at the post...."Question for the PROS", I talk about Moneymaker Vs Farha 2003 and how the difference in mentality can be the difference between winning and loosing.

Scandies tend to be young and play super aggressively. This is true.

Like a game of 3 card brag they will just ship chips around and see if you have the balls to call regardless of their holding. If things don't work out then hey they're just 14 and so don't have a care in the world. Don't forget the role-models in this part of the world are the likes of Gus Hansen so no surprise their mentality is not too tight.

More and more players are adopting this attitude.

I love Dan Harrington and his strategy of play.

The foundation of good poker is to play the opposite of your opponents.

So persisting with Dan Harrington's tight aggressive formula as more and more scandies invade the tables with their reckless attitude is actually a rather smart move I think.

Sick analogy

 you have a warped mind andrew.

I think it's in bad taste to draw comparison between the loss of hundreds of lives in a specific terrorist attack with something as trivial as Scandinavian poker. You told me in your PM you spent an hour writing and re-writing this to get your point across. Perhaps that hour could have been better spend clearly explaining your point rather than crafting an unnecessary and, frankly silly analogy.

chill out .... jeeeeesssss.

not a sensitive or serious issue Kev?

It has been discussed on the mods board and a decision has been made to let it stay, it was borderline but the concensus was to allow it.

I don't think that we should take ourselves too seriously here

I think we are all aware that hijacking a plane is a bad thing

We are here to improve our poker.

The message is that "suicidal maniacs" at the poker table do not give tuppence about their "poker lives" and we should therefore proceed with caution.

Hijacking a plane is not funny.

I feel sorry for people involved in such a terrifying experience. However, I am not scared to talk about it. It does happen.

I don't like taboo subjects and censorship. There is so much wrong with the world that offence can be caused so readily these days.

It is not funny that I have just ordered a set meal for four from The Golden Dragon and will probably throw half of it away when there are thousands dying of starvation in the world.

I am a pacifist. In my ideal world violence would not exist. But it does exist. How sad. I can't stop it. I don't condone it.

But if this analogy improves my poker I'm o.k. with that.

I got a text this morning and it read:

15 sailors captured for straying into Iranian waters. 14 men and 1 woman. Doesn't take a genius to work out who was reading the bloody map does it!!!

Now this is both inherently sexist and thoroughly disrespectful to our brave servicemen and women who are currently risking their lives policing international waters....


...Bloody funny though.

AdamM for mod  ::)

I didnt ask for it to be removed and I didnt say I was offended, just that it's in poor taste.




Lol, can't see that mate

I think the super laggy style that many scandinavian players seem to have, when played well is the best style of poker there is. Gus Hansen, Dan Negreanu, Patrik Antonius are jsut some of the LAGs who've had great success with this approach.

It needs the most amount of skill to apply well though as you are constantly in situations where you need to value bet, bluff, call and fold correctly, making lots of decisions and having to get most of them right. TAG style tends to mean you have fewer, less difficult decisions

I like being on a table of bad lags as they don't have the skill to manipulate the difficult positions they put themselves in.  Good lags are a nightmare to play though and force you to risk all, or play passively which just tends to make you fall into their hands imo.

I don't think you can label all Scandies. We have built a stereo type around them, (i blame Gus Hansen),
most are just bad players, just if a Yank plays 56os to a 3x raise then he's a donk, a scandie does it and he's a loose agressive young gun.

Scandies play off this image,(they are all a bit mad anyway, you seen em drive or cross a road)

I know plenty of players who play poker who use loose 'run and gun tatics', like FATTAMARRA.

I hate the whoop and holla hi fiving after outdrawing people.

Yep sorry for getting side-tracked jjandellis

I think your mentality is important when facing aggressive opponents.

By throwing chips around they will feel like they are the "table captain", and in every respect this is true. But there is nothing stopping you still feeling like the boss .

I really enjoy running into LAGs at the table. I think about the different ways I am going to trap them soon. So I still feel like I'm in charge of them so to speak.

I see lots of players get really wound up by this constant pressure and ship their stack to the LAG player by loosing their patience.

Don't forget whilst these players are involved in every hand you can be looking for all sorts of tells and information. They won't have so much info on you. So you could say that this is an advantage.

Playing loose is good at a tight table when you have established a tight image yourself. There are a lot of good tight players looking to trap out there though.

You could try playing some short-handed tournaments or some 6-handed STTs. This should improve your aggression and enable you to change gears when you return to full 10-handed affairs.

What a load of bollocks.

I thought it was quite an imaginative analogy myself. Born of a warped, twisted mind, definitely.

But I enjoyed reading it. Andrew's posts are always imaginative and intelligent, even though he does come out with some appalling puns sometimes.

Look past the emotional outrage and there is a parallel there.

Well, i think its safe to say that AndrewT put more thought into his analogy than you did in your reply LOL

Peter Jepsen, winner of the Warsaw EPT was a comparatively tight player for a Scandie. He admitted it himself I think, in an interview.

I put down as much thought as it deserved!

...to be fair, the Scandies, on the whole, display excellent manners at the poker table, & both win & lose with dignity.

Very pleasant people the Scandies I've played with live.  Not stand-offish or arrogant at all, pleasant conversation and a very congenial atmosphere at the table as they pillaged my stack with their raises and re-raises from any position. 

When I started playing a couple of years back I had the image of poker as a game of constant bluffing and move making all new idiots do. At the same time however as I was so new to it even the 10 dollar tournament buy in had me tensed right up on the bubble which gave me the double difficulty of wasting away what I had left the few times my idiotic moves actually worked or got lucky! OVer time the moves disappeared and I came to understand the game a bit more and I think Harrington was very important with this, it is not a style I strictly adhere to and yes I do agree he advocates a very tight approach. I think however that Harrington realized this himself and was simply trying to get across the basics for his readers to build on. Alot of poker I picked up myself but it was very handy to have a book that laid out the specific thought processes that should be going through your mind *every* hand. I think Harrington is an excellent start and this was all it was intended to be. It amazes me some of the players I play with on crypto, and I won't mention any names, seem to be complete robots who will literally sit there for the first two hours of any serious MTT making no effort to accumulate chips until they pick up a massive hand. Many of them however seem to be the most successful, so maybe for online poker Harrington is largely enough.

As for the fundamentalists of poker, it really annoys me how people get so easily offended by jovial references to sensitive issues, I loved Mantis01's joke btw, the whole reason it's funny to me is that some people tend to get words mixed up with serious beliefs. Neither Andrew nor Mantis find the actual situations funny and as long as that holds there is no reason they cannot make light of the situation in a tasteful way. I'm a student an managed to blow half a terms loan in the middle of last year convinced I was pokers new best player with the worst luck in the world. Since then I've had a serious rethink about the way I played and it has helped alot. However only this year have my results become seriously "good" in comparison. The main reason I see for this? In December and January I had a couple of really big wins considering the stakes I usually play at. I would probably say the single most important factor in this rapid improvement has been that my £20 and £30 buy ins aren't a massive consideration anymore, I can change the gear from TAG to LAG at the right time, when we are on the bubble or when each position makes a huge difference in cash payout. Watching the people who are blatantly conscious of the money leak away their chips makes me realize the huge flaws in my game when I had the same problem. Last night I made the final table of the 4k on crypto and for the first time actually had the confidence to really dominate the table, I took a piece of advice from Antonio Esfandiari, I only knew what first prize was, if I went out before then so be it, but that was my goal. The scandies have it right to treat the money as numbers on a screen, as long as you don't have responsibilities it's fair enough, right?

You really need to understand all styles of play, have the ability to play all styles, and I think most important u have to adjust to the players around u at that particular time.

There is no "one" way to play or win. If someone played w/ me a year ago and sat at a table w/ me today they would not recognize my play. A poker player should always be learning, adjusting, experimenting, to try and win that one comp they are in.

The players that get "hot" are really just very confident and feel relaxed w/ the decisions they are making, they feel they will win and many times they do. When I am running good I always go w/ my gut feeling, the first thought that enters my mind.

So I think we all need a little Harrington, a little scandie, a little Ivey, a little Sklansky, (just a tiny bit of  ;tk;) a little aggressive, a little passive in your game. One style will never work over the long run and I think you should look at poker as "one very long game"

During my win at the WSOP I had great balance between aggression, starting hand selection, and the ability to understand the situations going on around me. That is how u win a big comp in my opinion.

At the 888.com where I came 2nd I just played over the top, had some good luck, but never felt that comfortable of relaxed. Just 2 examples I can think of off the top of my head.

The Rookie

An interesting link on the subject:


posted on a thread from a while back:

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=4599.0

FYP

Yeah they always seem friendly and a good laugh. I remember playing with a scandinavian player in barcelona. He seemed very cool and collected and wasn't super aggressive but played quite tag and seemed to have a good tournament approach.

After we both got knocked out near the bubble i went to speak to him and he mentioned he played cash on the prima network. At the time I remember Dared caning the 100 200 NL and always drawing big crowds of railtards like me to watch him. I said "have you heard of dared, he's a pretty class cash player on the site"

He calmly said "hehe I am dared!"

I felt like a lemon and was mocked relentlessly by flushy later for this, but over several san miguels we had a good chat and he took a long time talking to me about tourney strategy and how to use my image at the tables a bit better whilst saying he thought i played well, which i took as a massive compliment from such a good player.

LOL this thread has it ALL!

-Interestig questions
-Incredibly poor taste analogy
-Tikay making hilarious generalizations about Scandi demeanor
-good advice
-Flushy making political statements against his own country with minimal knowledge

LOL

Yes, I admit, it's a generalisation, just as "Americans are ill-mannered & uncouth at the table" is equally so. In both cases, there are exceptions......

Ah. Isn't fun to JUST sheeet on Yanks? WHilst cheering on known dbag Brits and making all Scandis squeaky clean. You've been to tons of tournaments (More than me prob in the last 3 years) and have, I'm sure, seen a cubic arse ton of "improper" activities from Scandis so to say "they're all good lads," while saying the reverse about Yanks at almost every opportunity just smells pretty poor IMO.

Well, most importantly, I won my bet that I could get you to bite. It was in jest, M F Sir......

But seeing as you responded, I'll say this. I've played in Scandie-Land several times - Stockholm 3 times, Bergen (Norway), Copenhagen (is that Scandie-Land), ditto Helsinki (semi-scandie land?), Europe generally, ROI, UK, & America.

The behaviour & dignity in victory AND defeat of the Scandies is the best I have seen. Way better than the Brits, so I am not being jingoistic. And, and I am sorry if this offends, but my only experience of playing in USA land is in Vegas, & I was appalled by what I observed there at the tables. And as anyone who was in Vienna for last year's E-WSOP will readily confirm, the travelling American contingent, on their way to Monte Carlo I seem to recall, were, let's say "noticeable". Even many of the Ameicans present felt compelled to come on to blonde & apologise for them. To be fair, they were just kids, & kids of all origins - including Brits - take time to pick up social skills.

And remember the story I posted in which, being serious for once, I praised the Americans to the sky for the way they spoke to me after the July 2005 atrocities in London, and how they behaved as a people.. (I was in Vegas at the time).

It's just different cultures, what is acceptable in A is offensive in B. I am sure the Americans find some Brit-isms offensive, & righty so.

I shall continue to be more attracted to the way the Scandies behave at the table, they are the better  - generally - than any others. Including Americans, & Brits.

And, I fancy, you & I shall agree to differ on that.

Just my view. I've been wrong before, mind......