The way the poker economy works among the high stakes regulars is generally such that if you go 'busto', you'll inevitably be able to get staked from buddies if you are legitimately good. This results in players playing with extremely aggressive bankroll management.
In addition, there's no real visualization of the value of what you're playing for. It's just numbers on a computer screen. By far the most legendary story of a young player who's completely detached from the money is the Isildur1 phenomenon. [1]
I played high stakes online at a young age and felt the same sort of detachment- the appeal of "getting to the top" was too much to pass up to grind steadily at lower stakes. One of the problems is that over the past ten years, the dynamics of online games have changed considerably. Even an 18 month difference shows a dramatic development in the style of play you see- I'd contend that poker training sites like cardrunners play a large part in this. So a lot of players go on a tear for nine months, then have a big downswing as a result of moving up stakes too fast and failing to adjust their game.
One thing you see sometimes is tournament players like Zugwat trying to play high stakes cash games. It's well understood that in poker, the deeper the chip stacks are (defined by the number of big blinds players have) the more technically demanding the game will be. As tournament poker tends to be played with stacks of 10-50 big blinds, and cash games with 100-500 big blinds, the former requires less decision making. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that on average you'll have fewer decisions to make with a smaller chip stack since you will be all in earlier in the hand.
Tournament players who are admittedly great at what they do often try to dabble in cash games because they've made enough to bankroll themselves for it. I remember watching Zugwat play Tom Dwan (who goes by the alias 'durrrr', [2] and talking to a few of the other high stakes regulars who had played him previously. The consensus was that he was pretty solid (which is saying something- many cash game players have a somewhat condescending attitude towards tournament players because of the supposed simplicity of tournament poker) but he had bit off much more than he could chew and would inevitably lose a good chunk of his bankroll before realizing it. I think he played four or five tables of 200/400 ($40,000 buyin per table) and lost about a quarter million that session. To his credit he was surprisingly mature in the chat box, something that can be hit or miss after large losses.
In addition, there's no real visualization of the value of what you're playing for. It's just numbers on a computer screen. By far the most legendary story of a young player who's completely detached from the money is the Isildur1 phenomenon. [1]
I played high stakes online at a young age and felt the same sort of detachment- the appeal of "getting to the top" was too much to pass up to grind steadily at lower stakes. One of the problems is that over the past ten years, the dynamics of online games have changed considerably. Even an 18 month difference shows a dramatic development in the style of play you see- I'd contend that poker training sites like cardrunners play a large part in this. So a lot of players go on a tear for nine months, then have a big downswing as a result of moving up stakes too fast and failing to adjust their game.
One thing you see sometimes is tournament players like Zugwat trying to play high stakes cash games. It's well understood that in poker, the deeper the chip stacks are (defined by the number of big blinds players have) the more technically demanding the game will be. As tournament poker tends to be played with stacks of 10-50 big blinds, and cash games with 100-500 big blinds, the former requires less decision making. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that on average you'll have fewer decisions to make with a smaller chip stack since you will be all in earlier in the hand.
Tournament players who are admittedly great at what they do often try to dabble in cash games because they've made enough to bankroll themselves for it. I remember watching Zugwat play Tom Dwan (who goes by the alias 'durrrr', [2] and talking to a few of the other high stakes regulars who had played him previously. The consensus was that he was pretty solid (which is saying something- many cash game players have a somewhat condescending attitude towards tournament players because of the supposed simplicity of tournament poker) but he had bit off much more than he could chew and would inevitably lose a good chunk of his bankroll before realizing it. I think he played four or five tables of 200/400 ($40,000 buyin per table) and lost about a quarter million that session. To his credit he was surprisingly mature in the chat box, something that can be hit or miss after large losses.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isildur1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrrr