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Should be shopping
Sep. 8th, 2007 08:23 amI popped up to the Empire yesterday (twice!), once to become a member and the second time to go out to dinner with Pauly and Change100. We went to Gopals in Bateman Street, a reliable old Indian haunt. That gave me the opportunity to give Pauly and Change a quick tour of the sleazier side of Soho.
It was nice to get away from the madness that you get in Las Vegas these days, and to be able to stand within a couple of feet of a table consisting of (among others), Juanda, Ferguson and Harman, without an insane media scramble or masses of non-poker-aware TV-watchers just wanting to see someone that they had seen on TV.
Jen Mason was in attendance, reporting for Poker News. A very pleasant night and thanks to Pauly for picking up the tab!
++++++++
Ever since reading PNLHE, my game has gone to shit. I felt like posting my considered comment that "Commitment Thresholds are a pile of garbage", but that would be unfair. The problem is that the stuff they have written is swirling round my head (and it's a style of play, it isn't a holy grail) while my own style is also swirling around in my head. Net result, a fucking disaster. I have to stop saying to myself all the wrong things about "will I be committed?" A far better way (for me) to play is to think of each bet individually.
I'm still very glad I read the book, and there is some useful stuff in there. But an awful lot of it is along the lines of "if my aunt had bollocks she'd be my uncle". A couple of times yesterday I put in a third of my stack and then folded my hand. Rather than sitting there worrying about where I went wrong, I carried on, because I felt in my head that I was right to put the money in in the first place, and right to fold when I folded. I had a good day because, eventually, things came right.
This morning I went into "planning my hand around commitment" mode and, needless to say, it all went belly-up. I'm sure that the style, as recommended, is very good, if your natural style is suited to it. I've scrawled notes all over the place in the book, and I'll probably put something together in a comment on Andy's blog on the matter.
I'm not keen on saying that it's "more suited to tournament players", because I think that people differentiate too much between tournament games and cash games (and that's a whole new ball park to discuss, so we'll leave it). But the conclusion that I came to was that a stack-to-pot ratio of 13 going into the flop is good for me, no matter what I hold in my hand. This would appear to go flatly against what FMM write, although if you read it very very carefully you can see that they cover their arses on this one.
I remember when I started playing some NLHE, I instinctively bought in for a half buy-in. Matt wrote a comment that I "should" be buying in for the maximum. Like all advice, it was genuine (and, in my case, correct), but misplaced. Reading FMM I can see why my instinctive half-max buy-in might be a good idea for a person taking early steps in NLHE (they explicitly state this on page 41). You take away some of the harder decisions that way. You also cut down on your potential wins (hence Matt's comment, I would imagine), but the trade-off, for a newcomer, is worth it. My instinctive feeling was correct for most players (but not for me). Take away the tough decisions and you will make fewer mistakes.
However, it quickly became apparent to me that a half-stack didn't suit me. As DY observed (and I paraphrase), "this is your job, tough decisions are what it's about". The full stack can put you in trickier spots, but if you make the right decision a sufficiently large percentage of the time, you make a bigger profit than if you had had a half buy-in and if all the money had gone in on the turn. The great advantage of the full stack is that, although you put trickier decisions on yourself, you also put trickier decisions on other people.
To take FMM's early example (one which was meant to show why an SPR of 13 was bad).
You put in your 3B raise with KK (you and opponents have 100BBs) and are called on button and in the BB. 10.5BB in pot
Flop comes Q9x rainbow. You bet pot and button calls. 31 B in pot, 87BB behind. Turn comes another blank (but putting two hearts on the board) and you bet pot again. Opponent calls. 92BB in pot. River brings a Ten of Spades. You check. Opponent bets his last 56BB into a 92BB pot.
As FMM observe "you have been put to a tricky decision". Things, they say, would have been so much easier if you had only had 50BB at the start. Then you could get all-in on the turn without worries.
Well, yes. But if the game were about avoiding tricky decisions, there are lots of avoidance techniques. This is one of those classic "A implies B" assumptions when it ain't necessarily so. Opponent wouldn't have played the same way if I had had 50BB. Lots of things would have been different. The "isolation" of the stack size as the significant factor is flawed.
+++++++++
So, to summarize, thinking about the game this way is fucking up my brain. I have to sort it out. And I was winning so consistently. Of course, it could just be coincidence of suddenly stopping running well....
But I guess that my best riposte to the whole FMM line would be: "if an SPR of 13 is so bad for TPTK kind of hands, how come many winning players keep sitting down with 100BB, keep raising in a fashion that leads to an SPR of 13 post-flop, and keep winning?" FMM are right to combine pre-flop and post-flop (instead of seeing them as separate entities), but I think that they combine it too much. Flop, turn and river are not part of a cohesive whole. Call (on flop), call (on turn), fold (on river)is a fine strategy if opponent's tendency is bluff (on flop), bluff (on turn), give up (on river).
_____________________
It was nice to get away from the madness that you get in Las Vegas these days, and to be able to stand within a couple of feet of a table consisting of (among others), Juanda, Ferguson and Harman, without an insane media scramble or masses of non-poker-aware TV-watchers just wanting to see someone that they had seen on TV.
Jen Mason was in attendance, reporting for Poker News. A very pleasant night and thanks to Pauly for picking up the tab!
++++++++
Ever since reading PNLHE, my game has gone to shit. I felt like posting my considered comment that "Commitment Thresholds are a pile of garbage", but that would be unfair. The problem is that the stuff they have written is swirling round my head (and it's a style of play, it isn't a holy grail) while my own style is also swirling around in my head. Net result, a fucking disaster. I have to stop saying to myself all the wrong things about "will I be committed?" A far better way (for me) to play is to think of each bet individually.
I'm still very glad I read the book, and there is some useful stuff in there. But an awful lot of it is along the lines of "if my aunt had bollocks she'd be my uncle". A couple of times yesterday I put in a third of my stack and then folded my hand. Rather than sitting there worrying about where I went wrong, I carried on, because I felt in my head that I was right to put the money in in the first place, and right to fold when I folded. I had a good day because, eventually, things came right.
This morning I went into "planning my hand around commitment" mode and, needless to say, it all went belly-up. I'm sure that the style, as recommended, is very good, if your natural style is suited to it. I've scrawled notes all over the place in the book, and I'll probably put something together in a comment on Andy's blog on the matter.
I'm not keen on saying that it's "more suited to tournament players", because I think that people differentiate too much between tournament games and cash games (and that's a whole new ball park to discuss, so we'll leave it). But the conclusion that I came to was that a stack-to-pot ratio of 13 going into the flop is good for me, no matter what I hold in my hand. This would appear to go flatly against what FMM write, although if you read it very very carefully you can see that they cover their arses on this one.
I remember when I started playing some NLHE, I instinctively bought in for a half buy-in. Matt wrote a comment that I "should" be buying in for the maximum. Like all advice, it was genuine (and, in my case, correct), but misplaced. Reading FMM I can see why my instinctive half-max buy-in might be a good idea for a person taking early steps in NLHE (they explicitly state this on page 41). You take away some of the harder decisions that way. You also cut down on your potential wins (hence Matt's comment, I would imagine), but the trade-off, for a newcomer, is worth it. My instinctive feeling was correct for most players (but not for me). Take away the tough decisions and you will make fewer mistakes.
However, it quickly became apparent to me that a half-stack didn't suit me. As DY observed (and I paraphrase), "this is your job, tough decisions are what it's about". The full stack can put you in trickier spots, but if you make the right decision a sufficiently large percentage of the time, you make a bigger profit than if you had had a half buy-in and if all the money had gone in on the turn. The great advantage of the full stack is that, although you put trickier decisions on yourself, you also put trickier decisions on other people.
To take FMM's early example (one which was meant to show why an SPR of 13 was bad).
You put in your 3B raise with KK (you and opponents have 100BBs) and are called on button and in the BB. 10.5BB in pot
Flop comes Q9x rainbow. You bet pot and button calls. 31 B in pot, 87BB behind. Turn comes another blank (but putting two hearts on the board) and you bet pot again. Opponent calls. 92BB in pot. River brings a Ten of Spades. You check. Opponent bets his last 56BB into a 92BB pot.
As FMM observe "you have been put to a tricky decision". Things, they say, would have been so much easier if you had only had 50BB at the start. Then you could get all-in on the turn without worries.
Well, yes. But if the game were about avoiding tricky decisions, there are lots of avoidance techniques. This is one of those classic "A implies B" assumptions when it ain't necessarily so. Opponent wouldn't have played the same way if I had had 50BB. Lots of things would have been different. The "isolation" of the stack size as the significant factor is flawed.
+++++++++
So, to summarize, thinking about the game this way is fucking up my brain. I have to sort it out. And I was winning so consistently. Of course, it could just be coincidence of suddenly stopping running well....
But I guess that my best riposte to the whole FMM line would be: "if an SPR of 13 is so bad for TPTK kind of hands, how come many winning players keep sitting down with 100BB, keep raising in a fashion that leads to an SPR of 13 post-flop, and keep winning?" FMM are right to combine pre-flop and post-flop (instead of seeing them as separate entities), but I think that they combine it too much. Flop, turn and river are not part of a cohesive whole. Call (on flop), call (on turn), fold (on river)is a fine strategy if opponent's tendency is bluff (on flop), bluff (on turn), give up (on river).
_____________________
