Meat And Potatoes Real Life Good Question

[mikechops]

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Basically what i'm trying to say is that there is no "perfect" way to play poker. You could program a computer to play "perfectly" however you determined that was, and i guarantee almost every player here could beat it at NLHE cash fairly quickly because they can adjust and a computer cant. This is why there are no good books for high stakes no limit cash, and why no1 is ever worried about high stakes NL cash bots.


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In theory this is wrong. Game theory can prove there is an unexploitable strategy for poker. Because poker is a complex game, we don't know what it is. Just how complex, we can tell by looking at some of the other posts! But in theory you could program a computer to play this strategy and it would at least break even against anybody without adapting to their play.

In practice, whether anybody will ever come close to that is a different matter and you may well be right.

[gol4pro]

You could solve this one mathematically, but I'm WAY too lazy for that.

I think I min-raise his ass.

[italianstang]

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I actually think this answer is pretty easy. Since you have equal decent size stacks you have to fold. If he has AA you will lose your stack, and If he has a smaller pair and flops unders hes going to play it hard like he has AA. I also think if you consider the player to be tight he probably has you tied at worst. Remember KK is a great hand, but it's just one pair. In Limit I pop it to the river unless u hit a bad flop of course, but in NL your better off finding a better spot since the Donks try their hardest to give you their money.

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give me a break.
by that reasoning you should fold AA preflop too because its only one pair.
i can't believe how many people are talking about mucking KK like its 55 just because someone raises.
i don't know what type of games you play in, but if your so quick to muck KK preflop to a raise maybe you should take your skirt and training bra and find another game.

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I only know you from reading 2+2 and watching L@TB but you are my hero.

[NYWalker]

Reraise another $500. If he calls, see the flop, A-flop fold, otherwise bet $1500 on a non-A flop.

[David Sklansky]

"hello david
i think i'll be the first one to post a complete mathematical solution.
I hope it's your solution too but, even if it's not, please take the time to read my entire post."

Sorry, but I didn't try to calculate the solution. I just hastily put together a scenario that I knew was tough to play against, where all the options were fairly close, even folding, and where the opponents play was similar to how some high stakes player play. I didn't mean for everyone to focus on the exact percentages. But I was hoping there would be more discussion of post flop strategy.

[durrrr]

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Basically what i'm trying to say is that there is no "perfect" way to play poker. You could program a computer to play "perfectly" however you determined that was, and i guarantee almost every player here could beat it at NLHE cash fairly quickly because they can adjust and a computer cant. This is why there are no good books for high stakes no limit cash, and why no1 is ever worried about high stakes NL cash bots.


[/ QUOTE ]

In theory this is wrong. Game theory can prove there is an unexploitable strategy for poker. Because poker is a complex game, we don't know what it is. Just how complex, we can tell by looking at some of the other posts! But in theory you could program a computer to play this strategy and it would at least break even against anybody without adapting to their play.

In practice, whether anybody will ever come close to that is a different matter and you may well be right.

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this is poker, not chess. There is no theoretical perfect way to play, because if i know you play theoretically perfect i can play similar to that and exploit it @ some spots (if u never change), then you arent playing theoretically perfect anymore unless you adapt. W/e i dont wanna argue about this, all im trying to say is that this decision which sklanksy presents us with actually involves too much information, and we hardly ever have this much information on an actual basis.

[curious123]

David tell them Mike's right, they won't listen to me.

[Leviathan]

i think i'm gonna cry! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
lol
at least, i have the confirmation that most decisions are close, which my calculations show too

[Leviathan]

not really
game theory cold give you an UNEXPLOITABLE way of playing
wouldn't be the best play but it would be unexploitable
this is developped in theory of poker
play your best game vs players you overplay, play according to game theory vs better players so that you diminish (and maybe annihilate) their advantage.
But game theory solution has, so far, just be exploited in a few spots (bluffing frequency)

[shawny boy]

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Sorry, but I didn't try to calculate the solution. I just hastily put together a scenario that I knew was tough to play against, where all the options were fairly close, even folding, and where the opponents play was similar to how some high stakes player play. I didn't mean for everyone to focus on the exact percentages. But I was hoping there would be more discussion of post flop strategy.

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Well, we can't really talk about post flop strategy without seeing the flop now can we? My math showed that just pushing all in under the circumstances you presented was about break-even (-$50 EV)

6 AA
2 AKs
1 KK
6 QQ
3 JJ
3 random hands so 3:2 the guy folds to a push and when he does call you are a 2:1 dog. There is $635 in the pot when you jam in $3400 more. I'm not too smart so I ran it 500 times to make it easy on my little brain. So you jam this pot 500 times with $3400 for an investment of 1.7 million dollars. 300 times he folds and we collect $4035 for a total of $1,210,500. 200 times he calls and the pot is $7035 and you win that pot 1/3 of the time for a take of $464,310 ($7035*0.33*200) so your total return on your $1.7MM investment over 500 hands is $1,674,810 so you lose $50 by pushing all in.

I don't know but I would guess this is better than folding since we have $100 in the pot already (but I could be wrong about that).

So let's say we raise it up big... we can say we are defining our hand but really we are just pot committing ourselves because when we raise it up to $1500 straight and he moves in the pot has $5000 and it costs us only $2000 to call so the pot is now laying 2.5:1 and we are only 2:1 dogs against his range.

I'm not sure how his smooth calling our big raise would make much difference either as there would now be $3000 in the pot but let's say he smooth called. You could argue that only KK is going to smooth call for almost half his stack as AK is going to want to see all 5 cards and AA can't think he's going to lose us for another $2k so our play is automatic, we push no matter what, in fact if an ace falls we are more likely to push as he has shown weakness by failing to go all in preflop. This option may give us etra equity in the 1 case out of 20 that he has KK but it is not going to save us any money in the cases where we are up against AA and will cost us money if the villian is stupid enough to just call a big reraise with AKs and then give up on the flop when we push when he will be getting 3.5:1 from the pot on his 3:1 shot on a dry board.

If he calls a small raise then we are back in a situation where we are maybe a 3:2 favorite against his range but then everything comes down to the texture of the flop. Again it is interesting to think about what a scary flop is for us against this range. If an ace falls then villians 6 AA combos drop to 3 while AKs stays the same unless the ace that falls does not match on of our kings (if we have K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] and villian will only be in with AKs and the ace that falls is a [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] then the only AKs hand left is A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]) so there are now 4 or 5 hands that beat us and 12 that we beat and one that we chop against. This looks like an auto push to me. And of course if no ace falls we're gonna push too, so.... I guess a smallish reraise knowing that we are going to call if he goes all in preflop and that we are going all the way with the hand regardless of the flop if he calls makes sense. We may get him to lay down his AK on a bad flop and may get a call from QQ on a rag flop too.