[Micturition Man]

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hrm, i'd say the biggest leaks are related to hand range strength evaluations given preflop ranges, the community cards, and the preceding actions in the hand. not bluffs or snapping off bluffs specifically.

ideally you'd assign an integer to your hand expressing relative strength that's a function of your opponent's preflop range, the community cards (which would incorporate the likelihood of future community cards), and the actions preceding the current decision node. if it exceeds some value you act aggressively; if it exceeds some value but falls beneath another you call, etc.

i don't think many players: a) assign relative value correctly; b) determine the minimum and maximum values needed to call/raise vs. a specific opponent; c) adjust properly over time to variable strategies, i.e. they will change the minimum and maximum values needed to bet/raise/call far more than is rational.

in the not too distant future someone is finally going to do the obvious and create a pokerstove-like program that evaluates preflop ranges with different community cards. you'd plug in a preflop range, select community cards, and see a breakdown of each different hand type given the board. once something like that shows up i think the games may start changing a lot again.

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I think the most frequent mistakes would be related to value betting/raising (or not value betting/raising), which I think is what you are saying here.

However I think the strongest current players, though they are no doubt far from optimal in this regard, would not actually be losing much value to an optimal bot here.

The reason I say that is it's only the marginal value situations that are hard to intuit, and these by definition have a low EV attached to them.

OTOH you may be right... those marginal value situations are extremely common, so that could add up to a big chunk of EV.

The reason I mentioned bluffing and bluff-catching is that I am certain that even the best players have certain spots where they are hugely exploitable, because they assume "Nobody ever bluffs here"... which may well be true. But an optimal bot *would* bluff there.

(The significance of human bluffing being off is just that people's opinions of how frequently other people bluff in certain spots is largely conditioned by how frequently they bluff themselves in those spots.)

Also to whoever said the bot would have approximately 0 EV against the best human players... this is nuts. I don't think the #1 and the #2 players, whoever they are, are really literally close to 0 EV against each other. How can the #1 opponent be even closer to a perfect bot?

(Especially when you factor in the fact that the unfamiliarity of the bot's play would wind up inducing bad adaptations (i.e. tilt)).