League of Gentlemen

It would be a bit of an understatement to say that there are mixed views about the British Empire. The British, well, the "English," tend to look back on this time as a halcyon age when the "Great" was truly in Great Britain. Most of the colonies, and old foes, see it as an Imperial age in which Britain exploited the resources and derailed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. An interesting perspective is that if the British Empire did nothing but halt the Nazis, it served an epoch-changing purpose, regardless of anything else.

One of the romantic inventions of that age was the "amateur sportsman." The concept of the fair-minded, "good show, old man" dilettante, taking his hand to a range of sporting activities, and proving "Blighty" was best, for the honour of king and country, was quintessentially English. The idea of doing it for a living was abhorrent - an English gentleman did not need to "earn" - and yet the dilettante was still expected to compete with the best in the world.

Poker in the last decade was somewhat the same, and no more so than during the Internet boom. It was entirely plausible for solid, nonprofessional players to make considerable second incomes, simply by sticking to the basics and having good game selection. I know this, because I was one of them. Similarly, live games were arenas in which the pro and amateur could compete, carving up the spoils of the inept and the careless. Before the boom, when people asked how good I was at poker, I would say I was comparable to a local golf club pro; or in other words, unless they knew someone who played for a living, I played better. This was not arrogant, just statement of fact.

The death of the U.S. online poker market changed everything. Instantly, games became much, much harder. On the network I played on in 2006, there was always a great selection of games with three or four bad players on any six-handed table. Overnight, you often found tables completely consisting of, at the very least, competent players - fish-free zones.

Some games then deteriorated into vicious cycles of predator feeding off predator, causing good players either to squeeze out of existence altogether, the victims of hubris and frustration, or move down in stakes to once again play in games they could beat. This means that in some types of poker, the difference between player quality through the different stakes has narrowed, with the insane donation that used to exist at some middle stakes, typically $10-$20 no-limit hold'em or its equivalent, having completely evaporated. I used to be a comfortable winner at $5-$10 no-limit hold'em and often took shots as high as $20-$40. Now, I doubt I could beat the $2-$4 game on PokerStars, and if I could, it would be akin to cracking rocks on the chain gang - with my head.

If this is all negative from a moneymaking perspective, it is interesting from a theoretical perspective. Better and better players have had to think both more creatively and with greater clarity about "how to beat the game." Nowhere is this more true than in high-stakes pot-limit Omaha, where heavy bankrolls, gambling instincts, and the desire to craft finer and finer edges have transformed the game. A familiar name on one of the UK forums once remarked that the only level of intellectual and game-playing competence you needed to be a profitable pot-limit Omaha player was the ability to count past 13 - the minimum number of outs to make a straight wrap. He was right. Now you need a degree in maths, the nerve of a blindfolded high-wire act, and pockets deeper than a Russian oligarch.
So where does this leave our dilettante, our amateur, our "doing our best for Blighty"? What is the last refuge of the scoundrel? As much as it galls me to say it, the answer is tournament play. Although the standard has even risen dramatically in "donkaments," the huge amount of skewed luck built into these events still gives anyone the opportunity to, as I have put it in the past, go out in the storm and hope to get hit by lightning.

Pip, Pip, Old Bean! ♠

David has played poker all over the UK for the better part of a decade. Originally a tournament player, now focused on cash play and almost entirely on the Internet for the last three years, he makes a healthy second income playing a wide range of games. David is also an Omaha instructor for CardRunners.com, a leading source of online poker instructional videos.