Chained to the keyboard
Aug. 7th, 2007 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksWith my American freelance on holiday, I'm kind of stuck to the keyboard for a fortnight. Even the trips to the gym are nigh-on impossible. All energy is sapped. I dread to think what the scales will say when I have the courage to stand on them.
I've ordered Professional No Limit Hold'em. Winning In Tough Hold'Em Games, Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book and the Snyder Tournament Formula Book, so that's a little light reading for me.
I'm not sure why I buy these tournament books. It's not as if I can keep up with the improvements taking place in the games that I do play, let alone in ones that I don't. I have the "Kill Phil" Book and the three Harrington Books, and I doubt that I've read more than 20 pages of all of them.
Most of the useful things that I learn only come to me from playing, anyway, although the occasional snippet in a text-book is worth the expenditure. Many of the things that I am doing in NL at the moment are horribly exploitable, and I continue to scratch my head at the fact that only about 1 player in a hundred has the wit to exploit it. When more players exploit me, I'll change my style of play.
The Sklansky-Miller line rightly criticises the "big bet with a bluff, smaller bet with a strong hand" tactic, but then faults it for the wrong reason (well, the wrong reason in most no limit games, which are full of flawed players) -- that such a play is exploitable. Ferguson, too, seems to come up with the line (when justifying certain strategies) that "this is right because it doesn't matter what your opponent does in repsonse".
One thing that I learnt when quoting spreads on sports games was, if you knew that your counterpart was a buyer, you didn't quote the "correct" spread -- you upped it by a point or two. Your counterpart could exploit this by going short, but you knew that he was already far too short for comfort, so that just wasn't going to happen.
The "unexploitable" play is rarely the profit-maximising play in the limits that I am sitting down in.
+++++++++++++++
Yesterday, I'd just sat down in a game on a site that I don't play that often, and I picked up Aces second hand in. My "standard" raise in the cut-off is, if it is passed round to me, 4.5 or 5 times the big blind, with around 35% to 45% of my hands. If I know that the Big Blind is weak-tight, my hand strength gets to the looser end of the range and the amount I raise gets to the lower end of the range (because the raise has more of a semi-bluff element to it). If the Big Blind is a calling machine, my hand strength tightens to the narrower end, and the amount I raise goes up (because the bet has more of a value-raise element). Other changes occur, depending on my image at the table.
Anyhoo, it's correctly stated that you shouldn't adjust the amount you raise dependent on the strength of your hand. Even though for many players it's tempting to raise less than you normally would when you pick up Aces, it gives too much away in terms of information. But then I thought to myself. "Hold on. These guys don't know me from Adam. They have no previous plays from me to work with".
So I chucked in a 3.5 x the Big Blind raise.
I guess that my general point here is that No Limit games play very differently from site to site and from time of day to time of night. You could guarantee a profit in all of these games by playing unexploitably, but you can win more by playing in a way that a good player could exploit, if you were playing against a good player in this particular hand, but you aren't. Bad players lean towards consistent errors (i.e., they make the same kind of mistake again and again). The trick is to see what kind of mistakes they make, and to adjust your play accordingly. Don't assume that your opponent will play perfectly and act from there. Assume that he will make the same kind of mistake that bad players usually make at this level/on this site/at this time of day, and act accordingly. Sometimes you will be wrong, and he will turn out to make a different kind of mistake, or, horror-of-horrors, to be a good player. But that doesn't make your initial standpoint wrong.
++++++++++
I've ordered Professional No Limit Hold'em. Winning In Tough Hold'Em Games, Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book and the Snyder Tournament Formula Book, so that's a little light reading for me.
I'm not sure why I buy these tournament books. It's not as if I can keep up with the improvements taking place in the games that I do play, let alone in ones that I don't. I have the "Kill Phil" Book and the three Harrington Books, and I doubt that I've read more than 20 pages of all of them.
Most of the useful things that I learn only come to me from playing, anyway, although the occasional snippet in a text-book is worth the expenditure. Many of the things that I am doing in NL at the moment are horribly exploitable, and I continue to scratch my head at the fact that only about 1 player in a hundred has the wit to exploit it. When more players exploit me, I'll change my style of play.
The Sklansky-Miller line rightly criticises the "big bet with a bluff, smaller bet with a strong hand" tactic, but then faults it for the wrong reason (well, the wrong reason in most no limit games, which are full of flawed players) -- that such a play is exploitable. Ferguson, too, seems to come up with the line (when justifying certain strategies) that "this is right because it doesn't matter what your opponent does in repsonse".
One thing that I learnt when quoting spreads on sports games was, if you knew that your counterpart was a buyer, you didn't quote the "correct" spread -- you upped it by a point or two. Your counterpart could exploit this by going short, but you knew that he was already far too short for comfort, so that just wasn't going to happen.
The "unexploitable" play is rarely the profit-maximising play in the limits that I am sitting down in.
+++++++++++++++
Yesterday, I'd just sat down in a game on a site that I don't play that often, and I picked up Aces second hand in. My "standard" raise in the cut-off is, if it is passed round to me, 4.5 or 5 times the big blind, with around 35% to 45% of my hands. If I know that the Big Blind is weak-tight, my hand strength gets to the looser end of the range and the amount I raise gets to the lower end of the range (because the raise has more of a semi-bluff element to it). If the Big Blind is a calling machine, my hand strength tightens to the narrower end, and the amount I raise goes up (because the bet has more of a value-raise element). Other changes occur, depending on my image at the table.
Anyhoo, it's correctly stated that you shouldn't adjust the amount you raise dependent on the strength of your hand. Even though for many players it's tempting to raise less than you normally would when you pick up Aces, it gives too much away in terms of information. But then I thought to myself. "Hold on. These guys don't know me from Adam. They have no previous plays from me to work with".
So I chucked in a 3.5 x the Big Blind raise.
I guess that my general point here is that No Limit games play very differently from site to site and from time of day to time of night. You could guarantee a profit in all of these games by playing unexploitably, but you can win more by playing in a way that a good player could exploit, if you were playing against a good player in this particular hand, but you aren't. Bad players lean towards consistent errors (i.e., they make the same kind of mistake again and again). The trick is to see what kind of mistakes they make, and to adjust your play accordingly. Don't assume that your opponent will play perfectly and act from there. Assume that he will make the same kind of mistake that bad players usually make at this level/on this site/at this time of day, and act accordingly. Sometimes you will be wrong, and he will turn out to make a different kind of mistake, or, horror-of-horrors, to be a good player. But that doesn't make your initial standpoint wrong.
++++++++++
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 02:01 pm (UTC)By who? One of the good things about the Sklansk/Miller book is that they kick that to touch.
gl
bdd
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 03:39 pm (UTC)I'm a hard-working guy, so I'll actually make the effort and look up their quote, dspite the fact that I'm knackered.
"Different hands in different situations call for differently-sized raises".
With which I agree. But they do not say "strong hands call for big raises, less strong hands call for smaller raises".
Now, read from page 112 onwards (through to page 121) which refers to deep-stack raise sizing and short-stack raise-sizing. I don't think you will find a single line which says "raise more with a stronger hand". Correctly (in my view) they refer to all the other factors that matter (well, not all of them).
Notwithstanding all that, Dave, if you reread pages 111 to 121, I hope that you will agree with me that it's not very logically written. The opening page refers to books that say "whether you have KK or 87, raise the same amount every time" (did you e-mail them and say "By who?)
But in the next sentence they say "they (the other books) may tell you to alter your raise size...."
Well, if they (the other books) do that, then the first two sentences in the chapter are negated.
But if you read it through, you see what they are getting at.
But (and I think this is the important point) all of the next nine pages make no reference whatsover to bet-sizing according to the strength of your hand. Perhaps this is the well-known BDD-think; it's seen as simple, and is therefore skimmed over in favour of the interesting stuff. But, in logical terms, it doesn't hold. Look at page 111 and the quotes:
"Sure, you don't want to give away extra information through your raise sizes. And, sure, some players do manage to do just that".
They then say "mix it up a bit".
I can see what they are getting at, but it's all rather ramshackle.
Then read the pages that follow. It seems to me that Sklansky and Miller have confused the "strength" of a hand (AA is better than 87) and the "potential" of a hand. (Big Raises make Big Pots). And hands with big potential have become "strong". But there are two ways of looking at the word "strong". One is a hand's strength against another hand if the board is dealt out with no further betting, heads up. The other is the amount of money that a hand is likely to win (or lose). In the first case, AK against a random hand is "strong", but in the second case, it can be either "strong" or "weak" depending on a number of extraneous factors in the game. You would vary your raise size based on these second factors, not on the brute strength of AK in a performance against a random hand compared with the performance of, say, 65s.
In other words, the whole of the chapter seems to argue for varying your raises based on a whole bunch of factors, but with no mention of whether you have T9s or AQs and whether you should raise bigger with one than the other because hand (b) is favoured against hand (a) heads up.
Yep, I should have put in a "solely" between the words "raise" and "dependent".
Oh, and can I point out (since you used selective quotation) that the situation I am referring to was one where I did vary my raise based on the strength of my hand!
But, Dave, c'mon, when you look at a playable hand, what thought processes go through your head when you are deciding on the size of your raise? The pre-flop theoretical strength your hand? Or the stack sizes? The position? The tendencies of opponents?
Sry, this is all a bitr jumbled because it would take me about three hours to but exactly what I'm thinking into a neat essay, and I've already been writing for nine hours' straight. I hope you see what I'm getting at, but I won't be surprised if no-one does.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 03:43 pm (UTC)Responses welcomed from anyone, provided you promise not to include any question marks that require further response from me!
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-08-07 11:12 pm (UTC)Gl
bdd
no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 05:14 am (UTC)First, Sklansky and Miller don't kick it into touch, in that the argument still resurfaces.
Second, they contradict themselves, in that in several cases they recommend raising bigger with worse hands (see page 105, for example). I can also recall another example, but I can't actually find it at the moment.
I remember when I was young I came up with a phrase only a couple of years into my playing poker. It was "there is no such thing as a good hand, only a good situation".
Finally, I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but I think that there are ways to correct statements of fact (rather than statements with which you disagree). Perhaps this comes from the fanzine generation, when responses were naturally longer, rather than the blogging online generation, where terse one-liners are more common. When Terrence Chan posted something on the YouTube posting and the response of an English policeman on the matter, he made a couple of errors of fact. I didn't just post two lines saying "you are wrong, blah blah". I constructed a letter, responding to his entire post, and included the corrections as part of that letter. I guess I get irritated when responses don't take the general post, but just select particular sentences. I know that this is the way of the modern world, so I suppose I should get used to it.
To work!
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 11:31 am (UTC)I am sorry, I am unbelievably terse in comment and as mentioned email too. Its not a blog thing or a forum thing just a me thing. I was even the same on my own blog, with the notable exception of the strange Wintermute blowup. The reason I thought they were so explicit is that my own notes are VERY explicit. Maybe I read too much into it. But the reason I just quoted that line was (a) you made a very strong statement about it and (b) I was convinced that a source we have both used said the opposite. But as I said, I may have got the wrong handle on it. What I would add, and its far too big and valuable a topic to get into here, is that I do very much believe you should raise more with your stronger hands preflop. In fact my raise sizes vary from 3 to 5 BB for a whole range of reasons.
gl
bdd
no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 12:04 pm (UTC)If I'm playing 8-handed and there has been no raise beforehand (I don't play 6-handed yet -- I'm working towards it) my pre-flop raise will vary from 3xbb to 6xbb. If it's full ring, the range is 2xbb to 6xbb.
The question here, then, is to what extent does the "brute strength" (power versus a random hand, to the river, no further betting) of the hand influence the size of this raise (as opposed to the "situational strength")? For me, its influence is probably about 1bb, i.e., from 16% to 33% of the size of the raise. Other factors, therefore, have an influence ranging from 67% to 83% of the raise.
PJ