As some of you guys know, I've been playing a lot of cash games recently, mostly 20-60BB deep.  I've pretty much come to the conclusion that none of the 10/20 or 25/50 regs (except for Himan33 and maybe those who have never played me) are skilled at maneuvering with less than 75BB effective stacks.  Whatever.  More interestingly though, is that some of the toughest players I've been facing were at lower stakes.  It seems like the people "beating" 25/50 are really just people who made a fortune a few years ago and now only play once in a blue moon when a game fills.

Ugh.  Okay.  So here's a mini-rant because it applies:

Short-stackers provide a service to high-stakes poker.  Yes.  I said it.  The deep-stack players all refuse to play each other, so if there weren't short-stackers, when a fish signs on, there would be no games running at 10/20 or higher.  People don't like to form their own games, especially those who don't want to play heads-up, so I'd imagine most of the time, they just sit down at lower stakes.  On the other hand, when short-stackers sit down, they start to play each other, then a fish signs on, jumps in a game, and BOOM game forms.  On any given night, look at all of the action at 10/20+.  Watch how games start.  Virtually all action is started by short-stackers.  That's why there's barely ever any 50BB-minimum games running.  Obviously, the easiest anti-short-stacker solution is to just have the deep-stack players play eachother, but nooooo they don't do that.  With rake being approximately 1 small blind for every 100 hands, I don't understand this.  In HUSNGs, not only do I have to have an edge on a reg, but I have to beat a really nasty rake as well.  In cash games, you don't (at high stakes).  Yeah, whatever.

So anyway, I was gonna say... I think the best NLHE cash game players are probably made up of mostly 5/10 regs.  We already saw this stuff happen in HUSNGs (players like stevesbets absolutely crushing in 2005-2006 but getting hammered in the past year), with a small handful of exceptional, newer, more developed players rounding out the rest of the top echelon.  I'm sure it's happened in cash-games too, except now it's extremely hard for a new player to climb to the top because of how thin action is.  If you're a 5/10 reg, hell, even the best NLHE player in the word, you're only going to be making a few ptbbs at best while sitting at tables of 5 regs and one mark (who's usually a lower-stakes reg), so it becomes extremely hard to generate a bankroll to play higher.  On the other hand, if you have 500k laying around and sit one table of 25/50 waiting from HU action from only the worst-of-the-worst, you might occasionally pick up some great spots.  And you can be damn sure that the best PLO regs are not the NLHE converts from high stakes in 2005.

Okay so, the usual counterpoint to this is "lol you play low stakes, you don't know what you're talking about".  Well, I've "put my money where my mouth is" or whatever other dumb cliche you want to bring up, and guess who came out on top?

I'm losing more and more respect for all of the "established big-names" of a year or two ago.  Prove to me that you are still a winning player now.  kthxbai

EDIT:  Also regarding coaching.  Something has come up and I'm not going to be able to take on students until after the weekend of the 7th.  Sorry to those I talked to already.  I'll try to get in touch when my time is free again.