The entire concept of a “bull market in stocks” makes little sense. Sound crazy? These days, certainly, because we’re always hearing about a perpetual bull market in stocks. Valuations increasingly disconnected from economic reality, asset bubbles in one class or another, armies of speculators moving like zombie hoards descending on the next fad and blowing it up to infinity and beyond, Buzz Lightyear-like.Why is the whole concept of a bull market generally, nonsense? Because if the value of everything is going up simultaneously, then nothing is going up. If everyone is a superhero, nobody is. If, in an imaginary economy, absolutely everything costs, say, $5, (labor, land, capital whatever) and then the next day everything costs $10, then what’s changed? The answer is absolutely nothing.The only thing that matters is relative valuations between asset classes. Let’s divide them into three of the most basic ones. Equities (stocks), bonds (debt), and commodities (consumer goods). If all three are going up in tandem, then there is no “bull market” in anything. If commodities are going up faster than stocks and bonds, you have inflation, or even hyperinflation. Ask anyone in Venezuela whether they care that their stock market is doing great, nominally. They don’t. They’re looking for their next glop of gruel or morsel of moldy bread to survive the day.But if stocks and bonds are rising and consumer goods are static to falling, you have a bull market in financial assets. This is where we are now. And boy are we really hard and deep into it now. Below is the ratio of the S&P 500 to the CRB Commodities Index.And I’ve got news for everyone. This bull market in stocks relative to consumer goods in dollar terms is already over. It ended almost a year ago. On April 20, 2020 to be exact. Red circle blowoff top above. That was when oil crashed to negative $35 a barrel and we all lived in an alternative financial freakhouse universe. But I have more news than that. This entire “bull market” in stocks has been one gigantic illusion from the very beginning. Stocks aren’t going up. They haven’t gone up for 21 years. Money is going down. Here is the graph of stocks relative to the prime monetary commodity, gold, over the same timeframe above.We can see here that from 1990 to 2000, we had a real bull market in stocks. Equities rocketed in gold terms and in terms of consumer goods generally. Everyone felt richer. Portfolios up, expenses down. But since that time, money has been dying at an accelerated pace and the standard of living has fallen.The bull market in stocks over the last 21 years has been an illusion, a tiny echo of the bull that ended at the turn of the century. We have spent the last 21 years trying to reinflate it, but gold has exposed the lie. We are now at the point where the illusion is about to collapse completely. In my view, we have only a few months left until it all hits the fan. Until then, the bubbles will keep coming in staccato frenetic fashion, moving from one asset class to another faster and faster, until we all get so dizzy we can’t follow it anymore. Last week I speculated that maybe the next target for the zombie hoard will be in penny gaming stocks. I was close. It’s in Macau stocks. It may already have started two weeks ago. The frenzy has started over news about China opening up again. I mean, just look at this crazy chart of the Macau proxy ETF:That last surge higher is just since February 1. We could be at the beginning of a crazy but brief ride higher in Macau stocks right now. New all time highs again, and Macau isn’t even fully open yet. The latest full month statistics for December show a 78.6% drop in visitors year over year. And yet we’re at new all time highs in these stocks already. It’s just completely crazy. I can understand the Macau opening up again trade, but to argue that this factor is being priced in at these levels, at new all time highs? As if none of this full year shutdown hurt any of the casinos fundamentally at all? That’s just totally bonkers crazy. It’s a reflection of the value of the currency these stocks are priced in, not the stocks themselves.What’s happening is that the zombie hoard of bubble chasers is reading the headlines regarding China starting to open up again, and they’re slamming buy orders and call options like they’ve been doing with tech stocks and Gamestop and BTC and all the other fads. We just got news out of Bloomberg that China’s Imax had a face-ripping rally due to exploding ticket sales. China is, indeed opening up, and the zombie hoard of speculators is now going to spray their money hoses at anything Chinese. Macau might be at the center of it.How high can this Macau bubble go, if that’s what we just saw start two weeks ago? The truth is, it doesn’t matter. If you get into it, you’ll get hooked and keep levering yourself up, counting your paper gains, unable to separate from them until you get caught in a vortex. At some point, my view this year, it’s all going to come crashing down when all the damage from 2020 is finally revealed all over the world. You can’t paper it over forever. The damage to Macau casinos doesn’t just go away. It festers in the form of more and more debt, and a damaged consumer base that can no longer patronize casinos in the way it once could. Festering wounds need the paper bandage removed and they need to be operated on. That is painful. And it’s coming.When we think of the word “bubble”, what are we really talking about? A bubble is something that looks, from the outside, to be really big and stable. The shape of it, a sphere, is the most stable shape in the universe. It’s why planets, stars, moons, and possibly even the spacetime continuum itself, spontaneously shape themselves into spheres. The force of gravity equalizes at every point on the sphere, forming equilibrium. Nature always seeks equilibrium. And so bubbles take on the illusion of stability, but unlike a real sphere, there’s nothing inside them. When they pop, they are gone almost instantly. This one is about to pop. Macau appears to be the next victim sucked up by the bubble. Macau will survive and rebuild. The question is, in what form? I wouldn’t take a bet the depended on me getting the answer to that question right.
คาสิโน โบนัส 100คาสิโน โบนัส 100%คาสิโน โบนัส100%เฮงๆ 666 คาสิโนหวยออนไลน์…
We recap some stories you may have missed including a huge PKO event and how much of himself is Landon Tice playing for?
KidPoker vs the Poker Brat?
We hinted at it last week and now it seems confirmed that Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth will play heads-up.
Given both men are traditionally live players it seems inevitable that it will be face to face and streamed on PokerGO.
The early betting markets have suggested Hellmuth is the favourite, which seems ludicrous given how much Negreanu improved in his heads-up challenge against Doug Polk.
Happy to play anyone on @PokerGo App’s “High Stakes Duel.” Looks like they are bringing me the GREAT Daniel Negreanu @RealKidPoker, the guy that studied heads up for months w coaches I respect, so be it. It will be a great challenge for me! Hoping I don’t look like THIS photo!! pic.twitter.com/EpE1BqRMWP
— phil_hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth) February 13, 2021
Tice has skin in the game
The other big heads-up match in the works is Landon Tice vs Bill Perkins, and it has been the subject of a lot of debate this last week.
Namely, how much does the poker wunderkind Landon Tice have invested in himself? Rumours circulated that he is playing for just 10% of himself in this challenge where he is already paying Bill Perkins $720,000 to play.
Tice confirmed that he has sold a lot of action for this event but while his percentage is low, it still means he has a lot of his net worth on the line:
Let me make something clear that I'm sure everyone cares about regarding my challenge with @bp22 I'm selling a lot of action for it. A lot.I'm not rolled to battle at nosebleeds. However, I am putting a very large amount of my relative net worth on myself winning it.
— Landon (@LandonTice) February 11, 2021
MicroMillions the biggest PKO ever?
The MicroMillions Main Event was a PKO for the first time in its history and it (probably) automatically became the biggest field ever for a progressive knockout tournament.
49,487 entries for the $22 Main Event, which was not quite enough to hit the $1 million guarantee.
It did lead to one player bagging almost $60,000 for their troubles including $18,651.13 in bounties alone:
The final table
Table stakes only
OK, so this week's meme classic from Reddit beats all those 'toilet roll poker home game' jokes from last year:
When Polaks Play Poker from r/poker
Will we see Hellmuth vs Negreanu heads-up? Let us know in the comments:
Barry Carter
Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Poker Satellite Strategy and PKO Poker Strategy
คาสิโน ออนไลน์888ทางเข้า คาสิโนคาสิโน 1688คาสิโน 1988คาสิโน ทรูวอลเล็ต…
pros of becoming a professional poker player
Being a professional poker player is a daring as well as exciting decision. If you’re successful at the game and want to quit your day job to become a poker pro, it’s an enticing opportunity. However, be warned: Poker rules are difficult to work, that isn’t for everyone. If you consider taking a risk to become a professional poker player, you should please ensure that it is an educated choice.
Here are some pros of becoming a professional poker player that might encourage you to take the next step!
Professionally Pursuing What You Love
One of the most prevalent desires in the world is to do something that you love professionally. For anyone in the poker community saying that there’s profit in this, they’re certainly not doing it only for the money. They love the game and have passion for it. For those who don’t have that, must understand that it is a skill game and requires practice to get better. This is what encourages them to put in the research time required to excel and achieve success through the downtrends.
Self Determination And Versatility
Poker players set their own schedules which is a great thing for any professional in any field of work or sport. To stave off poker exhaustion and keep you going, getting this independence will go a long time away. Also, you’ll only be accessible to yourself. Versatility is something that is quite limited in a number of professions nowadays and there’s nothing quite like poker tournaments when it comes to versatility. That’s not to suggest, of course, that it’ll be straightforward. The assumption is that when you do so, no-one will be blowing down your neck.
Earning Big Money
There is still a lot of profit to be gained by playing online poker if you can achieve a high level of experience. In terms of rake and playing rewards, there have been a few improvements in the market in recent years that have limited online poker’s profitability, but it is still possible to obtain a decent income playing the game. Getting in and getting out of micro stakes is one of the greatest obstacles facing emerging online pros these days. In present-day games, the high rake and low rakeback eat away at the winnings of a micro stakes player, making it difficult for them to achieve a good score overall.
On the other hand, live poker has been and is likely still a highly lucrative enterprise for professional players. The live player average is much lower than the online player estimate. This may be because, in casinos, live poker is practiced and thus encourages individuals who play poker to bargain instead of because they are successful at it. Or it could be because of live poker’s social aspect. It’s a mix of both, perhaps.
For more interesting articles about poker or poker news, keep reading PokerShots!
Post Views:
6
แทงบอล คาสิโนsa คาสิโนคาสิโน ออนไลน์ มือถือคาสิโนtrue wallet ไม่มีขั้นต่ำคาสิโนbet…
09:1116 FebOnline sportsbook Bovada likely won’t be paying out the largest supposedly winning wager on whether a streaker would disrupt the Super Bowl LV game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers after the site discovered the streaker was part of a group having placed a large bet on such an event occurring during the game.Yuri Andrade, the 31-year-old Florida man who briefly disrupted the game with his run in a pink leotard and black shorts, announced in an apperance on a Florida radio station Wild 94.1 talk show that he was part of a group that had bet $50,000 that a streaker would appear. Andrade told the show’s audience that his group had locked in the bet at +750, resulting in the high would-be payout.However, Bovada, a grey-market betting site offering services to many US states, quickly learned of Andrade’s admission. The site had already been aware of “suspicious activity” on the prop line, likely the overly large $50,000 wager. As a result, Bovada has already announced it will refund the wagers of all “no” bettors, while also screening for legitimacy all “yes” wagers made before officially grading them.The episode will likely do no publicity favors for Bovada, however, despite the site’s willingness to take a moderate financial hit. Bovada’s lines appear prominently throughout the US’s sports-betting world, on broadcasts and in live and online publications, and as a consequence the site remains under considerable pressure from the US’s growing licensed and regulated markets. At the very least, the event is likely to make Bovada reconsider offering prop bets of this nature, ones that have the potential to disrupt larger sporting events.“Our players have always trusted us to ensure the integrity of all props offered in our sportsbook,”Bovada stated. “We will continue to make sure that any publicity stunts or ill-intended behavior cannot adversely affect the outcome of a player’s wager.”It’s not the first time that streaking has figured into an online gambling story. Nearly 20 years ago, online casino site GoldenPalace.com garnered publicity by investing in all sorts of bizarre activities, including sponsoring serial streaker Mark Roberts’ dashes at events including Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. Roberts sported a temporary GoldenPalace.com tattoo during his runs, which were just a small part of the site’s bizarre guerilla marketing campaigns.Did you like this article?Tweet
+0
คาสิโน9988 คาสิโน88คาสิโนสมัครเอเย่น คาสิโนคาสิโน โบนัส 100…
Hey guys I’m kinda new to poker so I’m still learning a lot every day. The wsop app made it easy to practice so I had fun. The first couple days I had the app, every night I was on a tear, I was getting power hand after powerhand. Straights to flushes and even once a straight flush. I still haven’t gotten a four of a kind or higher yet. My thing is after a few days I started to have a much harder time, I would have a straight after flop and get beaten by a flush from off the river. I understand with time and experience I can better read and predict that flush but after the last two days I’ve started to enjoy the app less and less. It was fun when everyone at the table had similar money, now even when I’m on lower tables it’s just filthy rich players who reraise almost anything starting from the flop all the way to the river. Sure poker is about bullying your opponents at times but it gets ridiculous when people have to fold pre flop even with solid high hards in fear I won’t even make a pair, just to find out I would’ve had a monster had I waited. Maybe I need to practice more or watch more videos to get the fundamentals (any recommendations would be appreciated). But the last two days have been the biggest beats I’ve ever had and it’s discouraging me from continuing to use the app. Sure the game is about skill and luck but it starts to piss me off when over the past two days I’ve gotten beaten on every power hand. I have a bicycle? Someone has high end straight or flush draw. Have 3 of a kind? Someone has four. Even when I had a fullhouse I would get beat. Maybe I need to watch a video on being able to better decipher the board to know when I have the nuts but I can’t find any handy videos. I know it sounds like a whole lotta complaining but it isn’t like it was multiple people beating me, it’s always the filthy rich player who just happens to get lucky off a river or flip card. And said person will continue to get hand after hand bullying the whole table. Sure it’s a online app it can’t be perfect randomization but at what point does this app become ludicrous? Like really what are the chances the same player will have the best high card or a straight flush or higher 6/10 hands or greater? Hell even when I’ve played my best I thought it was suspect, I was getting hand after hand of amazing sets but now it’s almost like I never win unless someone bluffed and I saw it or I use strategy to get others to think I have the better card. That being said I have made bad calls so not all of my loses can’t be deflected but someone of them feel almost rigged as if the game is favoring certain players on the table. I typically play smart and only make small calls and fold on high bets if I don’t have a solid set or at least a potential flush or straight going for me. Hell I’ve even noticed I play better in tournaments where people play a little bit more realistic And I’m more cautious of the sets I bet on but when it comes to outside of the tournament it seems like this game is just a troll, like it wants to piss me off on purpose. Maybe other users of the app have experienced more fair game play but for the past two days I’ve gotten bullied and it only makes me more mad when the rich guy bluffed and I would’ve had a 3 of a kind or four of a kind but I decided to not go all in on some random cards with no flush or straight potential, such as a 2 and a 9 off suite or pocket 3s. Feel free to roast me if I’m sounding stupid, but from my perspective this app is ridiculous at times.
คาสิโน ออนไลน์888ทางเข้า คาสิโนคาสิโน 1688คาสิโน 1988คาสิโน ทรูวอลเล็ต…
In the nearly two decades since poker experienced a boom thanks to Chris Moneymaker’s historic World Series of Poker main event victory in 2003, the strategy surrounding the game has evolved at a pace never before seen. With online poker, the game’s best players were able to see more hands quickly and develop more complex strategies to win. Bet sizing, aggression levels, and even something as basic as preflop hand selection has changed drastically since the game went mainstream.
Chicago native and Southern California resident Ping Liu has been playing long enough to see most of these changes. With his first significant cash as a pro coming back in 2011 and experience playing online before that, Liu emerged as a true force in 2018 as a contender for the World Poker Tour Player of the Year title. Not only did he finish fourth in the Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $599,147, but he also took fourth in the Rolling Thunder main event for another $97,510, and fifth in the bestbet Bounty Scramble for another $73,734.
Last year, Liu picked up a win at the LA Poker Classic, while also final tabling the $10,000 super turbo bounty event at the WSOP and finishing third in the WSOP Circuit Planet Hollywood main event. He now has $2.1 million in career tournament earnings, and is currently accepting students for poker coaching and can found on Twitter @PingDotCom.
Liu sat down with Card Player to break down a couple hands from the 2007 WPT Borgata Poker Open main event final table, which featured Mike Matusow, Eugene Todd, Mark Weitzman, Haralabos Voulgaris, and eventual winner Roy Winston.
The Action: Roy Winston raised to 230,000 on the button and Mark Weitzman called out of the big blind. On the flop, Weitzman led out for 400,000 and Winston raised to 1,400,000. Weitzman folded.
Steve Schult: Before we even get into the hand itself, the first thing I noticed is the ante size. The blinds are 40,000-80,000, but the ante is just 5,000, meaning there is 30,000 in the middle in antes at the six-handed final table. Nearly all poker tournaments now use the big blind ante, which would put 80,000 in antes in the middle. So how should the ante size dictate your preflop hand selection?
Ping Liu: It’s pretty simple, intuitively, that if there is less dead money in the pot preflop, then you have less to win by raising and trying to steal the blinds. Therefore, you are less incentivized to voluntarily put money in the pot, and because of that, you will be opening slightly tighter ranges.
SS: Should it affect how large or small you raise? In this hand, Winston raises on the button to 230,000 and nowadays you would see something between 160,000 and 200,000 in this spot.
PL: If there is less money in the middle, your raise size should go down as well. If there is less in the middle, and you’re still raising three times the blind, you’re risking more to win less. So, it’s kind of similar preflop where you can just think of what you’re raising by a percentage of the pot.
Let’s say you were in a cash game and the blinds were $1-$2 and you’re raising 2.5 big blinds to $5. That is 62.5% of the pot. And obviously with more dead money in the middle, 60% of the pot gets bigger and bigger effectively. The bigger the antes, the more you should be raising preflop, because you stand to win more if you take the blinds down right away.
That being said, back in the day, people really did raise close to 3x as the standard and I’m not really sure why that was. And I think over the years, preflop raise sizes just started getting smaller and smaller all the way down to just a min-raise, which I think started happening around 2014.
SS: Winston raises to 230,000 and Mark Weitzman calls out of the big blind. Weitzman started the hand with 1.75 million, or about 23 big blinds. I remember a mantra from this time period with regard to stack sizes which generally said that with around 10 big blinds you should be open-shoving and with about 20, you should find spots to just three-bet shove your stack. Should Weitzman have much of a flatting range?
PL: The first thing is that you’re right that 13 years ago, people usually played 20-big blind stacks a lot more like you described. They would just shove over an open. But over the years, [we have realized] there is still a lot more play anywhere between 10- and 20-big blind stacks. You can flat and take your hand post-flop.
But that is also a function of what we were talking about before. If someone is min-raising, and you have 20 big blinds in the big blind, you can still defend and have a decent amount of playability. But when people are opening to 3x, and now you have to call two additional big blinds instead of one, it does make a big difference.
Once they start tripling the blind, your risk/reward for just shoving becomes a lot better. If they fold pre to your jam, you’re going to win another big blind plus what’s in the middle. I think there has been more play post-flop recently at the shorter stack sizes, but that’s also a function of the raise sizes preflop going down.
SS: Weitzman calls and the flop comes jack-high with two clubs. He then donk-bets (betting from out of position into the aggressor) for 400,000. Can you explain the rationale of why you would want to donk-bet?
PL: The rationale behind donk-betting is that you connected with that particular flop stronger than your opponent did. You’re saying that you have the range advantage on that board. Usually, if someone is the preflop raiser, you are going to have the strongest hands in your range. You’ll have A-A, K-K, Q-Q, A-K. And if you just flat the raise preflop, then those hands aren’t going to be present in your range because you most likely would’ve put in a three-bet.
So very often, the player who defends from the big blind, won’t have a big hand. Because the top of their range isn’t going to be present. There are certain, pretty specific board textures, where the big blind theoretically could have a range advantage, but those are going to be on the lower board textures.
Something like 4-5-6 with a flush draw. That’s a board where it is more theoretically optimal to construct a donk-leading range out of the big blind, because you’ll have a lot more of the 4-5’s, the 4-6’s, the 5-6’s, and also more straight combos than the button. The button probably isn’t raising 4-6 offsuit, but from the big blind, you could defend it.
In terms of what I actually think he’s doing here, I would guess that he just has a hand that he is looking to go with at this point. He’s just trying to protect it and take the pot down right away.
SS: How have you seen the donk-bet strategy change throughout the years? Is there more or less of it now than when you started posting results a decade ago?
PL: I do think the amount of donk-betting has gone down over the years quite substantially. Most moderately studied players know that when you defend out of the big blind, the most common play is to check to the preflop raiser and then react accordingly.
That’s something that all the solvers have proven. Checking your range is going to be the best play. Back then in the pre-solver era, people didn’t understand how ranges interacted and they just started donking on boards where they shouldn’t have a leading range on it.
The main problem with doing that is it turns your hand face up. Let’s say you’re playing with a relatively weak player and they donk on this board and you have nothing, so you just fold. Then the next time you play a hand with them and you get a similar board texture, and now they check. Because you know they have a donking range and they put their strong hands in it, their checking range becomes unprotected. Every time they check, you can just c-bet (continuation bet) everything and expect to get a lot of folds because their range will be significantly weaker.
SS: Weitzman had 14 big blinds behind, and there was another player with about 18 big blinds. Is this a good spot for Winston to apply ICM (Independent Chip Model) pressure or does he usually have a hand here?
PL: I think he has to have some equity. He can’t just do it with air because I think the big blind is showing a significant amount of strength by donking so big on this board without much behind. He shouldn’t expect him to lead this big and fold. More likely than not, he’s got a strong top pair.
The Action: The action folded to Haralbos Voulgaris, who completed the small blind. Weitzman checked his option from the big blind. Both players checked the flop and Voulgaris bet 155,000 on the turn. Weitzman called. Both players checked the river and Weitzman won the pot at showdown.
SS: Action folds to Haralabos in the small blind, who completes. Open limping is still somewhat prevalent in today’s game, but what were the types of hands you would generally see people limp with?
PL: Open limping is definitely part of a pretty viable preflop strategy, even in 2020. And you’re going to see it a lot more once you get to a sub-20 big blind stack depth. You can have some open limps from the cutoff with like 15 big blinds or so. And the same thing for the button.
But specifically, in this spot, blind vs. blind, the optimal strategy does include a lot of limps from the small blind. Especially with an ante in the pot, the small blind is getting such a good immediate price to complete, they really are going to be incentivized to play a lot of their hands. And because their ranges are going to be so wide, often times, the small blind will often play a limp-only strategy and then respond accordingly if the big blind does choose to raise.
SS: Weitzman checks his option and the flop is A-K-J with two hearts. Both players check and the 9 comes on the turn. Voulgaris decides to take a pot-sized stab with his deuces. I remember a limp-stab strategy being implemented in these spots. Is this just a delayed limp-stab?
PL: With deuces, nowadays, the standard play preflop would be just to shove when the big blind has 20 big blinds and you cover him. The low pocket pairs don’t play particularly well post-flop, especially against the big blind.
As played, most players would take a stab right away with deuces on the flop. On an A-K-J board texture, when the big blind checks back, he is going to be really capped and not have any of the strong hands in his range. Those are the hands he would’ve raised or shoved preflop.
It’s unlikely that the big blind has an ace in his hand, whereas the small blind can still have some of the stronger hands in his range that was going for a limp-raise. It’s a better board texture for the small blind, so I think the better play would be to stab the flop. Even just for one big blind would be fine. If the big blind has two unders, they aren’t going to continue regardless of what size he chooses.
When we get to the turn, he’s probably thinking the same thing. The big blind probably doesn’t have that much, and he’s just going to bet his hand and deny some equity. I think the pot-sizing is not super effective. What he’s trying to…