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This observation as so many great ones seems really trivial and "doh that makes sense" once you read it but is probably something I wouldn't have thought of on my own (at least not explicitly, maybe blink style implicitly).
Very nice article.

love it, really well written

Do you then never play that person again? If you do play them again, what makes it so that they lose this informational advantage or what makes it no longer important?

Cool article.

I don't play HU but this is really interesting and I agree completely with what you wrote. Nice job.

Nicely put, I agree.

Excellent piece.

nice article!

Nice article, but I don't believe in your final conclusion that some players can't win at a certain site because the regs lucksacked their way into exploitive information. If those regs would be capable of collection and using that information - assuming that the value of it is indeed so high to make a winning player a loser - they also should be able to gather this information during normal play, so that would mean that those players should slowly turn in losers, even when they start at a certain site while running hot.

I don't think that that's what he's concluding. He's not saying that some people will never, in the medium/long run, be able to win on a given site because some people lucksacked him early. No, he's saying that some people, who play a few thousand hands (or less), get lucksacked on, and have this information effect against them in the short term, often are the ones claiming that a site is rigged and that they can't win on it.

Do you then never play that person again? If you do play them again, what makes it so that they lose this informational advantage or what makes it no longer important?

this question raises a reasonable counter-point that deserves a rebuttal

Do you then never play that person again? If you do play them again, what makes it so that they lose this informational advantage or what makes it no longer important?

In practice, I doubt anyone is going to remember much specific information about a player they played a week ago. A month later, I doubt anyone will remember much of anything.

During a particular heads-up match, you can gain information as subtle as a general impression of the rate at which you can expect to adjust, for example. In the long run, a bunch of these types of impressions form a greater concept which creates an overall/default strategy.

In a particular match, quitting when down a few buyins is a good idea. Longer-term, switching sites or moving down in limits after a prolonged period of running bad is a good idea.

Nice article, but I don't believe in your final conclusion that some players can't win at a certain site because the regs lucksacked their way into exploitive information. If those regs would be capable of collection and using that information - assuming that the value of it is indeed so high to make a winning player a loser - they also should be able to gather this information during normal play, so that would mean that those players should slowly turn in losers, even when they start at a certain site while running hot.

I didn't mean this quite as literally as you seem to have interpreted it. I meant more that this informational dynamic can be used to explain dynamics that occur on a wider scale. Suppose, for example, that you are BldSwtTrs, and are one of the pioneers of the preflop 3-bet at party 10/20 games. People don't realize how wide your range is, and consequently play with a grossly skewed concept of your hand range in bloated pots, giving you massive amount of +EV bluffing opportunities.

But a particular regular runs super hot against you, and notices that you're folding when he shoves the turn against you way too often. Or calls your shoves and sees you showing up with hands he didn't think were in your range. Etc. This player begins to adjust his strategy against you, and maybe considers trying out this 3-betting thing himself. Before long, he's discussed it with friends, who've discussed it with their friends and the whole game dynamics at Party 10/20 have changed, and not in your favor.

Obviously that's a very extreme example, but my point is that regulars don't have to be specifically and consciously adjusting to your tendencies for running bad to hurt your winrate. Just the compilation of several subtle changes in peoples' general approaches could be enough to do significant damage, in theory.

If a novice player first plays at a particular pokersite and loses like 5 BI's in a row, he might start to suspect the pokersite to be rigged. As soon as this has happened, this logic will be burned inside his head and he will only look for information that supports this idea. He wouldn't notice if he hits a flushdraw a little bit more often than he should be. He only looks at the bad beats, which are obviously caused by the doomswitch.

The same will happen if you start to belief things like above. Sure there can be a slight informational edge for the winning player, but this edge is so small and is nothing compared to the variance caused by the cards you are getting. It's realy not like you're going to notice it right away! However, as soon as this idea is inside your head, you might start to belief you are realy a big underdog because your opponent is on some winning streak. This could eventualy lead to a decrease in self confidence, causing you to get off your A-game which DOES decrease your overal result. It's just not +EV to worry about these things.

awesome article, this is actually going to help my HU game a lot imo