Rizen just wrote a great article on P5's...

[stevepa]

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it's the theory of optimal play, a sklansky thing, but it's readable obv

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I'm not really sure what you're saying here...?

[aejones]

steve, i'm confused on what you're trying to say

[Ansky]

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I dunno, if you're playing truly unexploitably at all times, I'm pretty sure your results would be phenomenal

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nah not in tournaments, i think this is incorrect.

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I guess you have way more experience in cash games than me so I could be off, but...don't situations like my two nits to your left example come up all the time in cash games? Aren't there people who you 3bet way too light because they just don't play back enough? etc. I think it applies close to as much at cash as tournaments.

Steve

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well yeah, ppl often reraise too much, or not enough. In tournaments its typically the case that they dont reraise enough. At higher stakes shorthanded cash they reraise what some might consider too much (but in reality often it is not too much because ppl take too long to adjust).

[stevepa]

aejones, I'm saying playing a "sick, unexploitable style" is nowhere near optimal in all but the toughest of games.

ansky, I'd assume you pretty much break even (or win fairly small) against the better regulars in your games. Most of the money you win comes from the worse regulars and occasional huge fish. You don't win the most money from those people by playing unexploitably. edit: Those little adjustments in your pfr%/3bet%/cbet%/bluff%/etc. against the worse opponents are where the majority of your edge comes from

This whole argument is fairly stupid as we can't define unexploitable play, but I just don't understand why so many people seem to associate it with optimal play. The two are completely separate and very rarely the same.

Steve

[aejones]

Steve,

I would say that I agree obviously about optimization vs unexploitability. But what if I were to tell you that playing unexploitably includes playing optimally in certain ways against bad players, but in a more standard fashion against the more difficult, educated players? Really, this all has to do with nth level thinking and it's something I've written and talked quite a bit about but have not really shared with the community. FWIW, everyone knows this is obviously the key to poker, and 'staying one level ahead' will pretty much always be the elusive and nearly unattainable goal, achieved by only the best, and by some by accident.

[THAY3R]

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the only thing i disagree with is that harrington's books are fantastic. they're marginal at best, teach you how to play terrible postflop, and they were archiac right after they came out. the author of this article writes a decent post though in the basic idea of staying ahead of the evolution of the game.

of course, you could just play a sick, unexploitable style, if you don't want to evolve your own game.

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[stevepa]

Ok, I guess we just have different definitions of unexploitable and we actually agree with each other. FWIW, I'm 99% sure your's is wrong [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[0evg0]

I heard open-limping in MP2 is +EV now, is this true?

Can others elaborate?

[aejones]

lol I'm almost proud that I can afford to lose that much.

[stevepa]

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I heard open-limping in MP2 is +EV now, is this true?

Can others elaborate?

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Unexploitable.