blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

A friend and I once had an argument about blitzing on third and long. As an avid reader of TMQ, he was convinced that this is usually a bad idea, and instead you should play cover. He cited all kinds of statistics about average gains, frequency of sacks and interceptions, etc: If you put all of this together, blitzing is -E.V. relative to covering. I agreed with all that. And of course my friend is not stupid, so he understood that you have to blitz sometimes to keep your opponent from exploiting your overall strategy. Fine. So where was our disagreement? He insisted that covering is the "better" play.

This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in poker forums: Someone posts a hand, and after a certain amount of discussion there is frequently some kind of consensus as to what the "best" play is, as a matter of e.v. The majority of posters will just regard this as the "answer," but a significant minority understand the idea that sometimes you may have to play differently in order to keep your play varied and to keep your opponents from being able to exploit your predictability. But most of these people still think that the consensus play is the "best" play, and that other plays should just be thrown in to mix things up, usually at some small interval.

My friend and all of these forum posters are wrong. For every difficult situation against even slightly observant opponents, the "best" play is the optimal mixed strategy, not any one of the plays that it contains, no matter how much more +e.v. they may be than others.

While this may seem like a mere semantic distinction, it has very specific consequences. E.g., in the optimal mixed strategy, the most +e.v. play may not be the play you should make most often, or even often at all. A very simple example of this is trick plays in football. Many of them have enormously high e.v. compared to run-of-the-mill passing and rushing plays, but only when they are used very very sparingly. Undoubtedly, if various football situations were posted as hands on 2+2, the responses would always say that you should run a half-back pass (or the statue of liberty). An example in Omaha might be the lone-ace bluff. The times that you run it, it should be a very profitable play. But if you do it every opportunity (or even a majority of opportunities), it will lose its value and create some very profitable situations for observant opponents.

While posters make this kind of mistake in all of the forums around here, I think it is a bigger problem in PLO since very game-theoretically complicated situations come up more often. Finding the proper solutions to these situations can be very difficult, and is not as clear-cut as analyzing hand-ranges and finding the "best" move.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I think I may be one of the regular posters here whose posts may fit your above description. However, I always assume when we say "the best play is _____" we're talking about the standard play around which we build a mixed strategy.

That said, there is a near complete lack of explicit mixed strategy discussion here. It usually only pops up (indirectly) when different posters suggest different, but individually reasonable, lines.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

nice post.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]

That said, there is a near complete lack of explicit mixed strategy discussion here. It usually only pops up (indirectly) when different posters suggest different, but individually reasonable, lines.

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It's mostly because people are lazy. It takes a lot of time to consider the range of hands that your opponent has in that exact situation and then calculate the proper EV based on that.

Also, most people here, their eyes glaze over when you start taking game theory, deception, etc....

With that said, this is a very useful forum to learn basic poker/PLO strategy.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
However, I always assume when we say "the best play is _____" we're talking about the standard play around which we build a mixed strategy.

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"standard" seems to have several different meanings around here. e.g.: 1) the play you use most often in a mixed strategy; 2) the play you use without any special "reads"; or 3) the dead-obvious play that some idiot made and posted either b/c he lost or b/c he thinks he's bril.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
Also, most people here, their eyes glaze over when you start taking game theory, deception, etc....

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I agree with this. Many people here play stakes at which these things are hardly important because most of their opponents will never ever adapt to anything they do. But even the best high stakes players/posters are surprisingly clueless.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

good post. Among all the really bad posts at twoplustwo this is the stuff im here for

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

standard

-g

edit: woo, i crack myself up

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

Funny you should post this. Second time I've been thinking alot about something just as you post on it.

So we if agree that the best approach is a mixed strategy, how do we decide on the weightings your choices?

as example, let's take dry ace bluffing in plo. how often should you do it? which factors and in what ratios are most important? You've got the following to consider:

how often you're:
dealt dry ace
dealt "wet" ace
have other strong hand on the board like set
how they'll play weaker flushes/sets
how you've been playing recently
how they play recently
how light they'll call
etc.

-g

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

Pete,

This is an excellent post. Much of the reason for the uselessness of the HSNL forum is that there's little discussion of balance and adaptation, which are essentially the entire game at high stakes and especially in short-handed games. I understand why this is true: a long time ago I stopped wanting to tell my opponents how I was adapting to their play.

My only quibble with your post is that in a game as complicated as PLO no one knows what the optimal mixed strategy is, and that in practice what you're playing is your best guess at the optimal mixed strategy against your specific opponents. This is often a strategy that you know is exploitable but that you guess your opponents don't have the information, knowledge or courage to exploit. In a big bet game where showdowns are rare, everyone is groping in the dark.

Taking your example a little further, imagine you bluff too often with the dry ace and people start noticing. This drives up your profit when you actually have the nut flush and allows you to start value betting big non-nut flushes harder since now you're getting called by small flushes or even two pair. Maybe you make more money even though in isolation your dry ace bluffs are unprofitable. Like a loss leader in a supermarket.

I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know, but talking about these things keeps the game interesting to me.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

Great post. So so true. I've been noticing this more and more recently, which is why I long since stopped coming here to learn the right play and started coming to learn how to think about the possible plays.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I occasionally write something like "I check about 2/3 of the time here against most players". but I don't do that very much because a) I can't really justify arriving at those numbers, other than it seems like an appropriate way to mix up my play and b) these forums are great and all, but that is a lot of information to give away for free.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

also I don't use a die or the suits of my cards or anything to randomise those decisions. I just guess, and that's not really random.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

pete,

I suspect your post might have been inspired by Chen & Ankemann's new book, either from reading it or just contemplating the topic. But maybe you shouldn't read such stories before bedtime or you'll have nightmares about the exploiter man coming to get you [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img].

However, both you and GoG imply that there is or can be theoretically derived, a complete theory of n-player (where n>2) poker games, which really isn't true, despite the book mentioned above, and not just for plo, but for almost any common variant of limit or big bet poker. That book, and other game theory books and studies can indeed give significant insights that can lead to better strategies in the play of hands. But there are just too many variables to come up with a a complete strategy.

But of course you can get close in many cases. However you only need to do so with other players capable of using same. In reality though you aren't often dealing with tables full of mathematical all-stars, and if you are, then you are most likely excercising very poor game selection without the addition of at least one significant fish.


All,

There is something really more important that has been clear to me about this forum for a very long time, and that is that many regular posters, even ones who play modestly high stakes (compared to the minimum ones), haven't even mastered the first 2 levels of expert play (see Sklansky's essay in Sklansky on Poker). Everyone here *should* be able to do elementary probability calculations, even though using the combin function on excel is fine for same. And everyone here *should have* read and reread fundamental texts like TOP and C/R, the latter of which has many very concise points where an essay needs to be studied paragraph by paragraph to be sure to get all the derivative implications.

Many such posters are really just lazy, and seek (like posters in other strat forums), reliable "standard" plays to use when in a zombie-like trance 8-tabling online. But the fact is, and what separates the best and most knowledgeable players in any form or stakes from those who are merely good, is those players know that many if not most of the so-called "standard" plays actually have sub-cases. These sub-cases can be by position, by opponent tendencies (2nd level counter-strategies), by stack size, the number of players in the pot, etc.

Mason said in one of his posts or essays somewhere, that each 2+2 book starts out as pages of notes, which is expanded into a more explanative and functional written form. And that the difference between experts and those who are not, is that they have more pages of notes. This is where those sub-cases come in.

Also in regard to PLO specifically, many here are lacking in fundamentals about common situations, and for example think that they are destined to go broke in more situations than is actually the case for max 100xbb stacks. Two such situations I see here repeatedly are board sets in small or unraised pots out of postion, and situations where you make a straight on the turn with someone else and no redraws, and think that although you would certainly fold same on the flop, you just have to let yourself get free-rolled on when you make it on the turn for half your stack just because you play it passively then (exceptions are when you can bluff a board pair assuming you have FE versus a certain opponent).



A poster above said:

"which is why I long since stopped coming here to learn the right play and started coming to learn how to think about the possible plays".

How many here or in other strat forums really seek to drain all that can be learned from each hand/situation posted? I mean by thinking about all the possible alternatives, determining what the most often used should be ("standard"), but also which might be used if some of the variables were changed, like with the type of opponent, the position and the stack sizes (and one of the most useful types of analysis is to analyze how villain's hand should be played and not just hero's). The answer is only a handful. And when someone does post such a type of analysis, it often is either not appreciated/discussed, or made fun of because it is more complicated than "standard".



GoG said above:

"Much of the reason for the uselessness of the HSNL forum is that there's little discussion of balance and adaptation, which are essentially the entire game at high stakes and especially in short-handed games. I understand why this is true: a long time ago I stopped wanting to tell my opponents how I was adapting to their play."


I agree with that 100%, and it goes to what I said above. There are a couple reasons for this case of affairs in HSNL and in this forum:

1) Many posters don't have the mathematical aptitude or willingness if they do to use it, to do these types of analyses.

Thus there really isn't much incentive for those who do to do so, when the worker to leach ratio is so high (and further proven by all the serious lurkers who never or rarely post). And when occasionally a serious such topic does get started, like the one posted by Johnny#5 as a result of the infamous plo debates between myself and others in NVG and HSNL threads as to what portion of one's stack one should be willing to call with pre versus presumed AA hands, only one player, SilentA, was willing to do any such analysis. I could have, but I said from the beginning there I wasn't going to spoon-feed lazy posters. I have spreadsheets full of such simulations and probalistic analyses, but why should I or other similar posters share that when they won't get much if anything in return? I pointed out the variables that needed to be considered, but only SilentA was willing to do any math work.

2) Many if not most of the handful of posters capable of such analysis, don't see it any EV in such discussions, as the games get tougher at higher stakes, and especially now post-legislation, where the merely good players are the new fish. Especially when as listed in reason #1, they won't get much in return, and will just be feeding free strategy to lazy datamining stat-whores who use hyper multi-tabling trawling to maximize their earn.



The bottom line to me is that you don't have to be a game theory expert, or even worry about true optimal play. But you do have to have a solid mathematical foundation and ability to do some basic analysis past plugging hands in a sim. And you have to also be adept at the 2nd level of expert play, counter-strategies, or your own play becomes too predictable and either allows you to be exploited, or prevents you from fully exploiting the weaknesses of others who are incapable of adapting to same. If you haven't mastered levels 1 and 2 of expert play, it's foolish and unproductive to try to just to #3 (though as David pointed out in his essay they wrap around and come full circle).



Returning to what GoG said, a lot of expert play revolves around range analysis ("shania" to long time readers of the HSNL forum), both for yourself and your opponent, and adjusting for stack sizes. But again, most posters aren't willing to put the time in with same, and then share it. I've done it a few times in HSNL, as have some others, but it doesn't seem to encourage others to follow suit and really analyze some situations thorougly past simple "standard" plays and basic pot control & stack size adjustments. If you can read someone's range well enough, you can react appropriately with your own in response and come out a big winner. But if you can't, and your own range is very easily defined or played in such a way that all an opponent's decisions are pot-odds driven, then you will get screwed by better players and never realize why.

I will close by giving an illustrative example of same from NL, which is simpler to make points than PLO. There are some very tight players in FR games especially, and even in 6-max, whom I know can NEVER have 22/33 in early position for either a limp or a raise. So when the board is J 8 3r, and I have 88 and such a player is willing to push in deep stack situations, then I know for certain that since he wouldn't overplay a an overpair like that but would exercise pot control, and can't have bottom set, that I am in a set over set situation, and can make a rare online fold of a set.

Now just take that kind of analysis, figure out the equities for all possible sub-components of your and your opponent's range, weight them properly, and you will be able to make the best plays (and come close to optimal play). But if you are too damn lazy to do that, you won't cut it for long with better players who do.


(Yeah I know, another long BluffTHIS! post has mercifully come to an end.)

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
pete,

I suspect your post might have been inspired by Chen & Ankemann's new book, either from reading it or just contemplating the topic.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't read it. My post was only inspired by the tidal wave of vapid analysis I found while catching up on the last couple week's postings on this forum.

As for the rest of your post, I think "tl; dr" applies.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

That is one long post

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
My only quibble with your post is that in a game as complicated as PLO no one knows what the optimal mixed strategy is, and that in practice what you're playing is your best guess at the optimal mixed strategy against your specific opponents. This is often a strategy that you know is exploitable but that you guess your opponents don't have the information, knowledge or courage to exploit. In a big bet game where showdowns are rare, everyone is groping in the dark.

Taking your example a little further, imagine you bluff too often with the dry ace and people start noticing. This drives up your profit when you actually have the nut flush and allows you to start value betting big non-nut flushes harder since now you're getting called by small flushes or even two pair. Maybe you make more money even though in isolation your dry ace bluffs are unprofitable. Like a loss leader in a supermarket.

I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know, but talking about these things keeps the game interesting to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks Gab. I agree with you completely that the necessity of considering mixed strategies isn't really negated by the extreme difficulty of figuring out the game-theoretically perfect solution. Sometimes it can be quite simple -- e.g., people ask over and over again whether they should call a particular river bet. If their opponents are complete automatons, then this is simply a matter of analyzing the opps hand ranges and figuring out which move is right. But if their opponents are smart and adapt well, then my standard answer is "call enough so they can't run over you, and fold enough so they can't value-bet you to death."

Also, I think another reason that people's eyes glaze over when they think of "mixed strategy" is that they think of really boring defensive poker -- i.e., the perfect strategy that can't be exploited but which won't necessarily win you the most money. But mixed strategies obviously don't have to be defensive -- part of the reason you mix up your play is to get your opponents to make "adjustments" that put them in a worse position than they were to begin with. To take the lone-ace bluff example again, the optimal % of the time that you should run it depends a lot on how much your opponent will react. Against some opponents you only have to run it every once in a while in order to get paid off more often with your high and/or nut flushes, while against others you would have to run it so often that you lose money on the bluffs themselves. But figuring out the optimal % isn't just some dry game-theory question about when your opponent should be indifferent between calling and folding, it's still a question of which strategy you should employ to make the most money.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
also I don't use a die or the suits of my cards or anything to randomise those decisions. I just guess, and that's not really random.

[/ QUOTE ]

I personally use Mickey's big hand for such purposes.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

this is the best plo thread ive seen in a looooooong time.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

This reminds me of Matt Matros, a math-y guy for sure, writing about how some "game theory" players are just not as good as they could be because they can't accurately put their opponents on a range. I'm also reminded a bit of Daniel Negreanu's pro-smallball arguments that have the NVG folder up in arms.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I have a slight disagreement here. I really think that in a given situation there is one best play. It is the complexity of the factors a good player takes into account while making his decision that creates the illusion of mixing it up. Of course, it ends up the same way : the good player plays differently hands that would look the same to unexperienced players.

But I do not think it is a good idea to make people think that there is some intrinsec value of randomization. There is not, unless it takes place in a very specific plan, but then again it is not randomization. Beginners (including me) should never voluntary make random decisions; they should on the contrary try to refine and work on their game to the point where they "naturally" mix up their play in apparent similar situations.

So I agree there is a problem with the way we handle posts here. But it my opinion, it is the lack of two things in the hands posted, and in the way they are answered : psychological aspects, of course (reads, recent hands etc.) ; but also integration into a game plan. Maybe this is more important in live play, but I am quite sure it is underrated by online players. The same hand should not be played the same way if you are playing a "target", if you are intending to double up quickly in order to cover up a bad player to your left, if you want to play a long session and then want to convey a specific image, if you know that a player on your table is very likely to tilt if he takes a beat etc.

That is IMO the way one should mix his game. Not by randomization, but by increasing the number of factors taken into account when making a decision.

++

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
I have a slight disagreement here. I really think that in a given situation there is one best play. It is the complexity of the factors a good player takes into account while making his decision that creates the illusion of mixing it up. Of course, it ends up the same way : the good player plays differently hands that would look the same to unexperienced players.

But I do not think it is a good idea to make people think that there is some intrinsec value of randomization. There is not, unless it takes place in a very specific plan, but then again it is not randomization. Beginners (including me) should never voluntary make random decisions; they should on the contrary try to refine and work on their game to the point where they "naturally" mix up their play in apparent similar situations.

So I agree there is a problem with the way we handle posts here. But it my opinion, it is the lack of two things in the hands posted, and in the way they are answered : psychological aspects, of course (reads, recent hands etc.) ; but also integration into a game plan. Maybe this is more important in live play, but I am quite sure it is underrated by online players. The same hand should not be played the same way if you are playing a "target", if you are intending to double up quickly in order to cover up a bad player to your left, if you want to play a long session and then want to convey a specific image, if you know that a player on your table is very likely to tilt if he takes a beat etc.

That is IMO the way one should mix his game. Not by randomization, but by increasing the number of factors taken into account when making a decision.

++

[/ QUOTE ]

This post is chock-full of junk. But it contains at least one very common type of faulty thinking that pops up over and over: someone posts a tough spot that practically BEGS for a game-theoretic solution, but everyone instead suggests there's some magic "read" that the player should have that would bail him out. E.g.: "It's read dependant." No, it's not. If you have a "read," fine. If not, sometimes you have to play defensively, or a good opponent will tear you apart.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

oh well ok

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
But it contains at least one very common type of faulty thinking that pops up over and over: someone posts a tough spot that practically BEGS for a game-theoretic solution, but everyone instead suggests there's some magic "read" that the player should have that would bail him out. E.g.: "It's read dependant." No, it's not. If you have a "read," fine. If not, sometimes you have to play defensively, or a good opponent will tear you apart.

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree: almost all of these hands are read dependent, the best play depends massively on how your opponent plays and it's lazy not to have a good idea what that is. Yes, there is probably a "standard" line, which might be a mixed strategy or a pure strategy, but it's probably not very profitable.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I'll add my :02. First I disagree that halfback pass or statue of liberty play is the best +ev option. I'd think far from it, due to the interceptions that come. Coaches choose it because a run up the middle rarely results in a 50+yd touchdown. Sometimes in a football game, as in a 10 person tournament, you have to gamble to win, as safe +ev plays wont achieve a desired results.

At the ring game level, long term profitability is the only long term desired result and gambling on a -EV decision is obviously not optimum. As many posters have said there are other things that can take a probably -ev play in terms of what the final hands were and turn it positive. Reads, mixing up play, a host of metagame features, range of hands you put the opponent on, and inducing donkey tilt.

Now I primarily play 2/4 and less, with occasional shots at highter. I make very few 'mix it up plays' and I do just fine. I adjust to my opponents passive or donkish tendencies, but i'm of the belief that 95% of my opponents won't put in the time to recognize that I typically check the nut st8 on the river and look to donk it on the turn basicaly every time, or that about the only hand i'll RR preflop doesnt involve AA.

As proof of this I submit the fact that I win consistantly at every level, and have for over 18 months. Any competent opponent should see that I'm betting preflop 10% of the time and come up with pretty much what those hands are. They should DEFINETELY see that I'm not continuing past flop on a float - that is i've got odds every damn time. Now sure I'm semi bluffing and cold bluffing sometimes, but not too bloody much. A freind asked me the other day how I'd play myself and I said I'd play full stacked, be betting 3/4 pot on all flops and folding to raises when applicable, and I'd POT every turn that didnt' complete a draw. The fact that no one plays this way against me is proof that very little 'mixing it up' is nescessary to beat idiots.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I just wanted to add that this thread contains many of the ideas that pretty much caused me to give up on contributing meaningfully to internet strategy forums a long time ago. I enjoy being apart of the community on two plus two mostly because I've met a lot of cool people here in Seattle and down in LA and Las Vegas that have helped make my experience as a professional gambler more enjoyable. It took me about 6 months of trying to have meaningful strategy discussions on this board to come to the conclusion that discussing poker situations on the internet in an effective, purposeful and intellectual honest/accurate way is very very difficult such that I often feel like I could make one of these responses to just about any hand posted, or I would write a dissertation based on how I would react to different players:

(1) it depends

(2) Often I will do X, but Y percentage of the time I will do Z because of [over-broad easy to misinterprete over-generalization that I then feel too lazy to defend or expand on]

(3) lol

I think whatever value does come from these boards in terms of player development is pretty minimal compared what can be learned by playing tons of hands, discussing poker strategy in person or in real-time with players who are better then you and engaging in intensive self-review.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

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very little 'mixing it up' is nescessary to beat idiots.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think anyone is disputing this.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But it contains at least one very common type of faulty thinking that pops up over and over: someone posts a tough spot that practically BEGS for a game-theoretic solution, but everyone instead suggests there's some magic "read" that the player should have that would bail him out. E.g.: "It's read dependant." No, it's not. If you have a "read," fine. If not, sometimes you have to play defensively, or a good opponent will tear you apart.

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree: almost all of these hands are read dependent, the best play depends massively on how your opponent plays and it's lazy not to have a good idea what that is. Yes, there is probably a "standard" line, which might be a mixed strategy or a pure strategy, but it's probably not very profitable.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's the fact that all hands are read dependent that makes this such a boring and lazy answer. Whether to call a big overbet all-in PF with 72o is read-dependent.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
very little 'mixing it up' is nescessary to beat idiots.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think anyone is disputing this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I had a very long discussion with a friend about this in No Limit hold'em a couple years ago. I am a very game theory oriented player (degrees: comp sci, finance, economics, and yes, polic sci, I spent 7 years in college... hey, it was free) and he relied heavily on instinct.

What is comes down to is this... against idiots who aren't paying attention to what you're doing or are not changing his play whatsoever... then in turn you don't have to mix up your play since the mixing up would not yield you additional EV. In these cases, and this is true more often in low stakes than high, you are in fact better off sticking with the standard line. (This is actually mentioned in Super System)

However, the higher stakes you go, the more you NEED to randomize your game decisions. In fact, even in 100plo, there are players you need to mix up against or you're find yourself losing money to these players over the long run... even though you might be making money on these tables.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

Ultimately, a read to me means I have a feeling my opponent is "more" likely to have certain hands... and I adjust my probabilities accordingly. And like Dan Harrington said... even the tightest players will probably go on stone cold bluff like 10% of the time.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

[ QUOTE ]
For every difficult situation against even slightly observant opponents, the "best" play is the optimal mixed strategy, not any one of the plays that it contains, no matter how much more +e.v. they may be than others.

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All the plays in the optimal mixed strategy have exactly the same EV, if the opponent is playing optimally. If the trick play has higher EV than the "normal" play, you're not using it enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

the fu has [censored], who is wearing it?
 

[ QUOTE ]

.....and especially now post-legislation, where the merely good players are the new fish. Especially when as listed in reason #1, they won't get much in return, and will just be feeding free strategy to lazy datamining stat-whores who use hyper multi-tabling trawling to maximize their earn.



[/ QUOTE ]

Re: the fu has [censored], who is wearing it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

.....and especially now post-legislation, where the merely good players are the new fish. Especially when as listed in reason #1, they won't get much in return, and will just be feeding free strategy to lazy datamining stat-whores who use hyper multi-tabling trawling to maximize their earn.



[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

And it comes back from the dead.

great post, but ...
 

Consider that online lots of folks are looking for the "right" answer because they are either thinking only on the 1st level, or they want to know the play to maximize EV+. There is almost always an answer (a consensus) on this level.

There is of course an "optimum" strategy, and then the need to vary your play against observant opponents -- to acheive balance and truly maximize winnings. This seems to be the meat of this thread, and I agree with its broader point.

But what if you opponents aren't observant? What if they don't really look past their own hand, or even their own PT stats on you? It is folks that focus more on numbers and less on feel and reads that play on the 1st level and most "need" to "know" the "optimal play."

This is linear, AI-inspired thinking ... it is the kind of thinking that is all too common in poker and the world, and I think that you correctly point out that exploiting it is the key.

But -- and here's the key -- I think that against online lineups you almost HAVE to play the "optimal" play (nearly) every time, and vary only when it dead-on obvious that the "changeup" play is warranted. There are two reasons for this: first, PLO & PLO8 are so complicated (unlike holdem) that most players don't make the right decision often enough to justify playing on the 2nd level (or higher), and because most players are satisfied with the "optimal" play, and anything more sophisticated will be lost on them.

Or, better put, even though you're right to blitz from time to time on third down, I think that you can get in trouble at more tables than not by trying to get too clever. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: great post, but ...
 

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Consider that online lots of folks are looking for the "right" answer because they are either thinking only on the 1st level, or they want to know the play to maximize EV+. There is almost always an answer (a consensus) on this level.

There is of course an "optimum" strategy, and then the need to vary your play against observant opponents -- to acheive balance and truly maximize winnings. This seems to be the meat of this thread, and I agree with its broader point.

But what if you opponents aren't observant? What if they don't really look past their own hand, or even their own PT stats on you? It is folks that focus more on numbers and less on feel and reads that play on the 1st level and most "need" to "know" the "optimal play."

This is linear, AI-inspired thinking ... it is the kind of thinking that is all too common in poker and the world, and I think that you correctly point out that exploiting it is the key.

But -- and here's the key -- I think that against online lineups you almost HAVE to play the "optimal" play (nearly) every time, and vary only when it dead-on obvious that the "changeup" play is warranted. There are two reasons for this: first, PLO & PLO8 are so complicated (unlike holdem) that most players don't make the right decision often enough to justify playing on the 2nd level (or higher), and because most players are satisfied with the "optimal" play, and anything more sophisticated will be lost on them.

Or, better put, even though you're right to blitz from time to time on third down, I think that you can get in trouble at more tables than not by trying to get too clever. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I am an idiot... what are alll these levels people are talking about? are they like my troll mage? I can do 10k dmg fireballs~~~

Re: great post, but ...
 

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.....and especially now post-legislation, where the merely good players are the new fish. Especially when as listed in reason #1, they won't get much in return, and will just be feeding free strategy to lazy datamining stat-whores who use hyper multi-tabling trawling to maximize their earn.

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So should I just give up on online poker and leave it to you wonks? It's true that play has become a bit tougher since the US government screwed up poker.

And I do have a much better ROI in live action. (Maybe I know why now.)

Re: great post, but ...
 

1st level: what are my cards, and what should I do with them?
2d level: what does my opponent have, and what should I do in light of that?
3d level: what do I need to get my opponent to think that I have so that I can win the most money?
4th level: roll higher than 17 with 4d6 to hit with the blue fireball and scoop the pot.
And so on.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I'm sorry to see this post on a forum that I visit once a month instead of somewhere like Poker Theory. The scope is certainly a lot broader than PLO, and many non-PLO players would benefit from the ensuing discussion. The discussion might also benefit.

I tend to think the distinction between "general 'correct' play from which you vary only for deception" and "most frequent component of an overall strategy" is probably less important than you seem to feel it is. Then again, I'm a low-stakes player -- in fact, the kind of low-stakes player who probably puts in way too much effort thinking about this kind of stuff against unobservant opponents -- so take it fwiw.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

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For every difficult situation against even slightly observant opponents, the "best" play is the optimal mixed strategy, not any one of the plays that it contains, no matter how much more +e.v. they may be than others.

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All the plays in the optimal mixed strategy have exactly the same EV, if the opponent is playing optimally. If the trick play has higher EV than the "normal" play, you're not using it enough.

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Of all the replies in this thread, I think this may be the most theoretically (though perhaps not practically) interesting. In most of the simple mixed-strategy situations you set up in a game theory class, this is true. E.g., your opponent has made you indifferent between options, so among your "equal e.v." options you mix in such a way that it makes your opponent indifferent.

Now I haven't thought it through all the way, but this doesn't seem to be the case in many poker situations where a mixed strat is called for. A simple example would be the dry side-pot bluff on the river in limit hold'em. It's always unprofitable, but if you never ever did it, your opponent would be able to make many good folds against you and you'd lose the ability to value-bet your good hands. Since you're offering very good pot odds, you only need to dry-sidepot bet a small amount of the time in order to force your opponent to call several future value-bets, so your correct mixed strategy is going to be majority check, small minority bet, even though they have different expected values.

However, there's a lot more to be said about this, and playing against an "optimal" opponent certainly makes things more fun, if not more profitable.

Re: blitzing on third and long and the problem with poker forum advice
 

I think that the dry sidepot example is an isolated instance of a situation where even unobservant players will remember your actions and adjust. It is in this sort of spot when your analogy about blitzing on third down is most illustrative. But in more common circumstances (eg what do I do with this hand in this pot), where the "villain" isn't really going to remember the hand -- usually because the villain won -- I think that getting too clever too often costs more than it helps in the long run.

I've never read a book on game theory. Can you refer me to a book or a site that would be accessible to a newbie?

I agree that it is more fun to play against good or "optimal" opponents. I wouldn't have it any other way. But it is painful in the wallet, esp when they are more observant than you. (See my "tracking software" thread from last night.)

Btw, you call the reverse or the SOL to keep the defense "honest." It doesn't matter if it works -- the point is to open up the defense for your conventional game. The reverse is like an advertising bet where you show down junk for your opponents to note.