HUSNG help

[UAC]

Hey guys, not really looking for specific hand advice right now, although will likely put some up soon.

Just looking for anyone playing husng regularly. I used to play hypers on stars a few years back and done okay at after a few thousand games.

Kind of fell out of love with poker mainly due to changes in circumstances and all of stars changes.

Got the itch back again  which seems to constantly happen... played a few on stars again and people seem pretty terrible still at the lower levels at least. Also played a few on unibet where I would rather play but they're more like turbos rather than hyper with 1k start stack and 3 min levels.

Don't really know anybody in poker so trying to connect with others playing these games regularly who can talk few a few hands etc here and there.

[arbboy]

Camel posting under another username!  Oh the glory days of heads up STT's!

[UAC]

Can confirm this is not Camel . Does anyone play these now? Stars seems to be only Russians and Ukrainians playing. I played some on sky poker which was soft but not great volume to be had.

[The Camel]

Haven't played a HUSNG for over 5 years.

Stars allowing these syndicates to own the lobbies killed the game.

Casual players had zero shot of playing anyone who wasn't a pro.

[The Camel]

Just played 4.

Hated every second.

Heaven only knows how I used to played 8 hour sessions a decade ago.

[UAC]

Yeah the cartels are a joke. Low stakes right now people a still terrible, but I guess it seems pretty counter intuitive to spend a load of time getting better at them to just battle all the good guys...

[teddybloat]

Casuals have always had close to zero chance of playjng anyone but a pro / reg.

Cartels increase reg v reg battles and forced bumhunters to either move down or quit.

It's not perfect but way better than the bumhunting that preceded it.

People who used to sit waiting for fish at the 200s were forced down to the 15s within months of divisions making red battles mandatory for regs.

If HU cash had a similar system it wouldn't be a  dead format.

The only losers are mediocre regs, bumhunter and semipros who can't put in the hours to maintain their spot. Everyone else is either neutral or benefits

[Doobs]

Casuals have always had close to zero chance of playjng anyone but a pro / reg.

Cartels increase reg v reg battles and forced bumhunters to either move down or quit.

It's not perfect but way better than the bumhunting that preceded it.

People who used to sit waiting for fish at the 200s were forced down to the 15s within months of divisions making red battles mandatory for regs.

If HU cash had a similar system it wouldn't be a  dead format.

The only losers are mediocre regs, bumhunter and semipros who can't put in the hours to maintain their spot. Everyone else is either neutral or benefits

How does that work?  Surely if you get rid of mediocre regs and bumhunters and replace them with better regs then the casual player must have a lower EV?

So the only people who win are people in syndicates?  Suspect you get a handful of big winners who run the best stables who end up with most of the money. 




 

[teddybloat]

The best players end up with more money, yes. That's better than a system where mediocre bumhibters who couldn't beat 30 dollar regs where creaming money off at 200 dollar + levels


Simply put the best regs moved from a system where they wouldn't sit anyone who wasn't a fish to sitting everyone who couldnt make them pay rake.

At first only a few regs would clear the lobbies but others where riding in behind and not pulling their weight. The divisions formalised this. Everyone has to sit anyone who isn't in.

There are clear ev requirements to join a divisions except the 1ks where things are incredibly shady. I'll post on that when I'm home as it's really interesting.

I'm someone who loses in the cartel system. I can't put in the volume requirednto join a division even though I'd very likely have the ev v them to do so.

It really harms bumhubters though. Plenty of people who are destroyed by regs have no trouble wracking up huge winrates v recs. They play a hyper exploitative style which is, in turn, easily exploited. Turns out many where literally playing a level above their station when the better regs decided to start sitting them.

Two systems :

1 regs collude by never sitting each other

2 regs sit each other and only those good enough to beat a level stay there.

[UAC]

Hey Teddy, so seems you are a fan of the cartels then? Or Kinda? Seen as there is no real other option.

I know you said you can't play much, but are you playing these games somewhat often? How do you see them panning out over the next 12-24 months? I realise that is probably a tough question to answer.

Thing is I have been bobbing around a lot of different forms of poker and really want to stick with one and knuckle down. I have always liked mtts but can't really put in the hours, so these are good in that regard.

Also would be interested to hear more about the 1k games you were talking about.

[teddybloat]

yes, i think it was a very clever solution to a particular problem, and although it would have prevent me eg bumhunting higher levels i liked the competitiveness and transparency. it was the natural equilibrium of the enviroment. it had some fringe benefits also. when players tried to organise strikes to reverse the rake increases when amaya frist took over stars it was an almost complete failure. for every cash reg that refused to login there were more that exploited this by moving up or playing longer hours in softer games. except that didnt happen in husng's because the divisions where organised.

they had a 99% sit out rate. a few regs tried to exploit the situation but when they were spotted the were sat relentlessly by people who normally play much higher - some lost their spots because of it.  also the divisons took all their reg battles off stars to other sites - you have to play 1-2k games minimum v division members to get in and they simply shifted all that valuable low edge warring to another site. when the dust settled amaya changed very little. but they did reverse all the rake increases imposed on husng's.

as for taking up husngs i wouldnt recommend it. they are hella fun to play so there's that. and they are poker's best dojo so i'd always recommend them to new or improving players. but for a long term, stake climbing, professional investment? no.

upto $15s there are no divisions on stars. at $30s and above you will be sat by every reg unless you can battle your way in. at $60s the volume has dropped off a cliff. also most of the soft spots have already been attacked or moved to spins, and the players left there are well used to reg warring and are highly skilled players. the $100s+ are incredibly tough.

the format is also pretty much solved. so if you play on a site other than stars, at decent stakes you will likely be playing a bot or someone with access to the solutions using them real time.

so as a format to knuckle down into i'd use it as an intense learning tool, and then look to specialise in another format.

[teddybloat]

the 1ks are law unto themselves and there's interesting history there. i'll delve into it a bit with a tl;dr warning.

a bit of background:

in husng's recs like to join games, but dont like to start games. stars has two available lobbies at each stake. so being able to sit first is worth a lot. also husng hypers are incredibly profitable and very low variance. all the big winners hide the sharkscope as their graphs were showing huge profits with no variance - dan coleman spoke about having a $2m year with zero variance that 1k/2/k plo players would have had wet dreams about. the high stakes lobbies were always protected in the sense that a small group of players would be very protective of the two lobbies and any new players would be sat relentlessly as the spots were worth hundred of thousands of dollars per year. [one of the first players to do this was skaiwalkurr. there is an old training video where a $300 reg / coach says on video that skaiwalkurr was no longer allowing regs to grab the spare seat @ the highest stake and was sitting all but maybe 3-4 players who tried to share the lobby with him.]

at lower stakes with bigger player pools it was hard to grab a lobby manually with lots of simul-sits occuring where regs would accidently sit each other in the rush to grab a valuable open-sit. so stars husng lobbies below $1ks became effectively controlled by a program called sharkystrator. this program places all users in a list and regs you one-by-one into one of the two lobbies available at each stake. you can colour code players so if a rec tag or unkown player manages to snag a lobby you can jump the queue by being willing to play that tag. this meant that regs could all sit in the sharky list safely avoiding each other and only playing people outside of the program. since any reg with any clue about poker would have the program it meant near 100% rec action.

but this meant queues got huge as people moved up and hid from the regs. 60-100 players all waiting to play recs.

the better regs had enough of wating. and a few started to clear the queue by sitting all the bad and mediocre regs. this allowed some better regs to freeroll off the hard work by profitting from smaller queues without having to battle the weaker regs.

so the process was formalised: all member have to set sharky to sit non-members.

to become a member you have to battle the division and achieve a certian ev roi

here is the 30's division list with rules expected of members and people trying to get in:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FCxkfTYpWQguIoDSyugjEwQBncq_5b9_8ewdvbV2y9s/edit#gid=0

a player can get in touch with a division member and ask for games, the division member cannot decline the action.

its terrible for bad regs. and a lot of people got found out. being amongst the worst players in a division is awful. all people moving up stakes want to battle you and you cannot decline action. when someone gets in the division kicks someone out. that someone is likely going to be the poor sap who was being targeted by all these motivated skilled triers.

but the divisions do have clear entry and exit points and everything is open.

ish

until you get to the 1ks where things get a bit more murky...

[RED-DOG]

Fascinating.

[teddybloat]

the 1k hyper lobbies were and still are a money printing operation. mtt regs, cash regs, sunday million winners, rich whales all liked to enter the sharks den and blow off steam. being able to hold a 1k lobby was such a sick spot.

here is dan colmans infamous 2013 graph:

Click to see full-size image.

notice this doesnt include a few 100k in crossbooks v an mtt grinder nor does it include SNE rakeback which was 45-55%?

one of skaiwalkurrr's graphs:

Click to see full-size image.

again no rakeback included - and this includes his pre husng days.

most winners simply hid their graphs so as not to attract HU cash regs in particular. and they became increasingly protective of their lobbies.

established regs left other established regs alone, but anyone wanting to move up from the 500s ran into some serious barriers to entry. dan coleman was probably the biggest of those barriers at the time. he actively sought out reg wars, preferring to 6 table regs and have some fish action on the side. he seemed to revel in being the end boss of the games. here's a quote of his:

colman: "I have good news and bad news. The good: Before becoming a 1k reg, you will have won 200k off me. The bad: Most likely not going to happen."

but the spot was worth so much people where willing to battle. when it went wrong it often went very wrong, here is a british $500 reg sifting through the aftermath of a failed $1k shot where he cam eup against colman and left $150k worse off:

https://www.husng.com/content/interview-richard-chadders0-chadwick-i-stopped-my-1k-shots

also remember skaiwalkurrr whose graph i posted earlier, he quit in 2015 here is his lifetime husng graph:



2.3m in profit. lovely stuff. but see that tail-off at the end? its the characteristic tail-off of rake. he ended with 8 months of break even play, losing to rake for 8 solid months. what caused it? a hostile take over bid by a rival group. the bali-cartel.

lats part to follow

[Rexas]

This is excellent stuff, tended to avoid here for a while but thoroughly enjoying this thread!