Some poker observations

[peterbirks]

I believe it was Mike Caro who first put into print the comment that, if you were winning 100% of showdowns, you were playing badly.

The reasoning is obvious. No-one plays perfectly (assumption 'a') and therefore, if you never saw a showdown when you were behind, you must be folding many times when you were ahead.

Caro, of course, never came up against super account on Absolute. And he doesn't say what the ideal "winning percentage" of showdowns might be. It's obviously less than 100%, and obviously more than 33%. In limit, my estimate was somewhere in the region of 58% to 60%. At No Limit, perhaps a few spots lower. 52% to 55% perhaps.

Anyhoo, I was thinking about this when I reflected on Bobby Baldwin's famous statement that bad players sucked out on good players because good players didn't get themselves into situations where they needed to suck out.

It struck me that I hadn't had many suck-outs recently, not because I had been running badly, but because I seemed to have avoided all-in situations where a suck-out was needed. Ah-hah, I said to myself. According to Baldwin, this is good (and, indeed, I'm winning, so there's a bit of empiricism on his side). But perhaps Caro might say "if you aren't ever getting in when you need a suck-out, you must be folding a lot of hands when you are ahead!"

Well, yes, I guess I must be, I said to myself in this imaginary conversation. So, question to myself. How often should I see as the ideal percentage of all-ins when I need a suck-out, in order to ensure that I am maximising my profit in all-in situations?

That's all thought-stuff. In practice, I just decided to get myself all-in a fraction more often than I have been, hopefully in situations where, if I need a suck-out, I'll have at least five outs.

+++++++++

Although Betfred doesn't offer any rakeback, it seems to offer reload bonuses every six weeks or so, plus the monthly loyalty bonuses that make the effective rakeback between three and four cents a hand. If I could be bothered to work my way up to level six it would probably be close to five cents a hand, which is remarkably good. The difference between this and standard rakeback is that it isn't unlimited. The amount offered is just about right for the amount that I play.

In a way, I quite like this system, even though I am subject to the whim of Betfred every month on whether it makes a reload offer. The "unlimited rakeback" deals tend to encourage 10-tabling short-stackers, whereas the Betfred system offers a slightly better rake, but at a level where it runs out at about 6,000 hands a month (coincidentally, about the number of hands that I play on the site).

Oh, and there's the weekly freeroll, which has a Sklansky dollar value of about $10, and a Birks value (after 10 entries) average $2.50. So it goes. I still think that rewarding cash players with a free tournament entry is a bit like giving a loyal opera fan free tickets to see Kiss.

___________



Hand:

$100 Buy In On IP Network. About 11pm Central European Time

Lucky Fish, few stats. Looks like 40% VPIP, no preflop raises

Seat 1: TANGjooce ($64.43 in chips)
Seat 2: assodelmontepian ($40.60 in chips)
Seat 4: DerKobold ($104.50 in chips)
Seat 5: Good Bet Sizer($51.95 in chips)
Seat 6: relaxtakeiteasy ($79.80 in chips)
Seat 7: Birks ($94.50 in chips)
Seat 9: monteluna ($100.00 in chips)
Seat 10: Lucky Fish ($96.05 in chips) DEALER

TANGjooce: Post SB $0.50
assodelmontepian: Post BB $1.00
monteluna: Post SB $0.50

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to Good Bet Sizer[6♡ 6◊]
Dealt to Lucky Fish [?; ?;]
Dealt to TANGjooce [A♡ T♣]
Dealt to Birks [9♣ 3♠]
DerKobold: Fold
Good Bet Sizer: Call $1.00
relaxtakeiteasy: Call $1.00
Birks: Fold
monteluna: Call $0.50
Lucky Fish: Call $1.00
TANGjooce: Allin $0.00
assodelmontepian: Check

*** FLOP *** [K♠ 6♠ 4♣]

assodelmontepian: Check
Good Bet Sizer: Bet $4.00
relaxtakeiteasy: Fold
monteluna: Call $4.00
Lucky Fish: Call $4.00
assodelmontepian: Fold

*** TURN *** [Q◊]

Good Bet Sizer: Bet $14.00
monteluna: Fold
Lucky Fish: Call $14.00

*** RIVER *** [2♠]

Good Bet Sizer: Bet $12.00
Lucky Fish: Allin $77.05
Good Bet Sizer: Allin $20.95


Range of Lucky Fish? (pls note, "Lucky Fish" is a generic term. It doesn't necessarily mean that he won this hand!)

Did Good Bet Sizer really good bet size it?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like Sizer's river bet and call allin. The whole point of betting on the turn is to deny flush chasers the right odds. If you're betting and calling allin without a flush then you're giving them the right odds to chase. I would check river and call moderate (1/2 pot) bets.

Of course a good player usually has As here, altho there's a case for Qs too. If Fish has somehow intuited that Sizer doesnt have a spade - as he usually wont - then logically ANY spade is a good shove, particularly as it gets called. As he's a fish he could even have 53 no spades and been calling for the straight all along which he now value raises.

matt

Suspense kills

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

OK. I (faintly, and it's my ignorance that causes it to be incompletely) understand Matt's points.

Now, to embarrass myself; critique at each point. Working backwards, Fish is only going to heave all-in (particularly with a bigger stack) if the river is either (a) exactly what he wants or (b) appears totally useless to opponent, and he already has what he wants.

(a) would imply two spades before the flop, which makes sense with the call on the flop, but not, I think, with the call on the turn, unless he had AJ or J10 -- or maybe even J9. (Not for a fish, anyhow -- I'm not privy to the statistics.) I don't see a mere call with a spade queen on the turn. 35 is a possibility, but would even a fish really do that?
(b) would imply a pair of kings or queens, or possibly a (suited?) king queen. Except that, no, neither QQ not KQ makes any sense. I suppose there's a case for AA, or 44 ... the latter would be stretching it a bit, but not too far. But you wouldn't push AA, and you'd be insane to bet with 44.

This seems to me to be between an obvious flush, or KK. (There are obviously combinations I'm missing, but those ones make sense to this fish here.) On those assumptions, the bet sizing looks about right until the river. $12 into $45.50 doesn't seem to me to be an unreasonable ask -- although this might be the crux of your argument -- but going all-in looks faintly peculiar to me. Given fish-dom, I would expect either KK or a flush. QQ and I doubt he'd have merely called on the turn. (Mind you, I don't even know the rules...)

In fact, the more I look at it, the more I think matt's first paragraph makes perfect sense here. What, exactly, is the point of the bet on the river?

I await your exposition, and matt's inevitable, learned counter-argument, with interest.

Jesus, and that gibberish took me thirty minutes. How you people do it in fifteen seconds, whilst multi-tabling, is beyond me. Care for a game of blindfold chess?

Re: Suspense kills

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

"The bet on the turn." Oops.

Re: Suspense kills

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Well, it was KJ. And, no, it makes no sense.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

On river GBS has only $33 left. He's not check-folding. He choses a line that extracts value ($12) from weak pairs, but leaves room for fishy allin bluff from missed draws. Game theory stuff out of the window. Don't try this at home.

Hard to put the fish to any particular range, but 666 beasts it.

Aksu