Guest Post – Julius Goat – Blogger Donkeys

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

While a big chunk of poker bloggers prepare for their weekend of carnage in Las Vegas, I bring you another guest post by Julius_Goat. He asks the eternal question about bloggers and their poker playing ability. Everyone has their own opinions but the Goat brings us his unique perspective.

Enjoy and we’ll see you on the other side of debauchery.

Are Bloggers Donkeys?
by Julius_Goat

“Go, and never darken my towels again.”
-Groucho.

I’m going to give everybody out there in Bloggyland a tip.

Play me in coinflip situations. You will win. That is all.

And now, the nub of my gist. The crux of my rubric. The friggin’ point of this post. The question before us is:

Are bloggers donkeys? Wait! Don’t hollar ‘YES’ so quickly! The question, by the way, is not: “Am I, Julius_Goat a donkey?” That’s been made pretty clear. Like, with abundance and stuff.

See, there seems to be an occasional sniff of a rumor, floating among the tubes or the nets or whatever they make this I-N-ternet out of, that bloggers are the donkingest donks to ever give the hee a haw. Diggity donkiddy doo, yeah? Dang.

I don’t know. That’s not my impression. Here’s what I mean.

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don·key [dong-kee, dawng-, duhng-] 1. the domestic ass, Equus asinus. 2. a woodworking apparatus consisting of a clamping frame and saw, used for cutting marquetry veneers. 3. an individual who can’t fold Aces in a multi-way pot on a four to the straight flush board, doesn’t know how many outs he has at any time, eats boogers with glee, and wouldn’t recognize the concept of ‘M’ if it were pointed out to them on an Etch-a-Sketch.

____________

The donkey is the glue of the poker world. By which I mean, they suck, they are destroyed, and then they are made into glue. Then we buy the glue with the money we won from them.

This metaphor has broken down. I will try again.

Here’s my premise. Bloggers are not necessarily top players. But they aren’t donkeys.

Now . . .I think there is no question that there are some players that are highly skilled, much more so than the rest of the pack. And no doubt there are some real honkey blonkey donk donk donkeys among our ranks. However, I really think that by and large bloggers tend to be more thoughtful players, and a step above your average online nutbag.

Again, there are a few of us who are on a different level than the rest of us. They’re really really really good. Now, we might all disagree about who those individuals are. But there it is, and it’s true, largely because I said it. Some of the bloggers are top-level players. They are in the top 10% of any given MTT. No names (and certainly not me), but that’s the premise.

Some are top flight players, or at least upper percentile. Most aren’t. Some might get there. Many never will. Or never can.

But . . .donkeys? Really? The hayseed of horses? The animal not even fit to be made into hamburger? Say it ain’t so.

Bloggers, on the whole, tend to be a generally intelligent, literary, and introspective group. They tend to be readers of books. They tend to be a little (a little?) obsessive. Hence, blogs dedicated to poker, which is at least as weird as a sweater on a Corgi.

These traits tend to allow for more intelligent and thought-out play, and for the kinds of disciplined thought patterns that lead to improvement. I’d say your average blogger is in the top 50% of most MTT fields, though perhaps that shifts a bit down the scale as the buy-in increases. But top 50% sounds about right, especially when you consider the total buffoons you tend to run across on any given table. Let’s put the average blogger skill range in the 45th to 75th percentile of a typical MTT or ring game.*

Some may dip further. But precious few drop into the sub-30th percentile, I think. And that, my friends, is where the donkeys dwell. Hee-Haw is not just a mercifully cancelled TV variety hour in that land. It is a dark and horrible place, full of rebuys and blind stabs at huge pots with min raises and broken draws. It’s where chips go to die. It’s the reason Hevad Khan is like that. He multi-tabled 70 SNG at once and took a unblinking look right into the Lovecraftian maw of madness. Now look at him.

Here’s how I see it: I played the Daily Double last Friday while playing Katitude’s Donkament. The play was less Donkey-ish at the Donkament. The freakin’ Donkament! $1 rebuy with bloggers playing bad on PURPOSE had better play than the Friday daily double.

I mean . . . have you been playing lately? Good grief. Getting your chips in with the best of it isn’t hard (winning with the best of it is sometimes another matter). It’s not even easy. It’s whatever is easier than easy. Most bloggers I at least give credit for some thought process and basic Hold ‘Em theory. A pulse. The ability to add. Thumbs. Stuff like that.

Not that I mind those mullet-heads at my table.

You know why?

Because I can dodge mullets, baby.

* A fellow blogger who can remain nameless until they decide to claim credit talked me out of making these numbers far higher. This is probably closer to the truth. I just made up those numbers, it’s true. Pulled them right out of the air. But 87% of all people make up 72% of the time. Ninety percent of all Americans know that.

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