when giving free cards is better than betting vulnerable hands

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
personally, i think this post is better suited to MSNL than HSNL where hopefully everyone would already understand this concept, despite the high stakes nature of the game. MSNLers would probably benefit a lot from seeing the EV calcs done.

[/ QUOTE ]
while for many here this concept was straightforward, there clearly are people here who are not fully grasping it, despite having very clear EV calculations done out.

i believe there are a lot of successful high stakes players who live by the maxim quoted above by grim (after seeing all the calculations):
[ QUOTE ]
isnt it good to get alot of money in when your ~80% favorite? also, youve already invested about 1/3 of your stack, so i see no reason why you shouldnt shove the turn now.

[/ QUOTE ]
most of the time you don't lose much by approaching these situations that way. though it is pathetic if someone still has this view after looking through the calculations in this thread. i have to say that doing the calculations out myself i was surprised by how much you gain by checking the turn here.

if we assume that OP really was playing the stakes he claimed, it really is absurd to say this thread belongs in MSNL. This forum is not reserved only for universally enlightening theory posts that even the best will learn something from. if this forum had more threads discussing concepts similar in difficulty to this one, that would for sure be an improvement.

obviously one would hope players playing 25/50+ would know these concepts, but clearly there are many who do not, and i would be very surprised if most understood just how obvious a decision this is when you work out the EVs

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
How is it bad/wrong to get it in as a huge favourite when certain rivers can kill your action? (unless maybe somebody plays on a very limited BR).

[/ QUOTE ]
illuminati,

how is it you're asking this question? have you read the thread? even if you haven't read it yet, it should be obvious that even in the worst case, if #actionkillers < #boardpairing, getting it in now is worse than checking.

are you re-leveling?

[illuminati]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How is it bad/wrong to get it in as a huge favourite when certain rivers can kill your action? (unless maybe somebody plays on a very limited BR).

[/ QUOTE ]
illuminati,

how is it you're asking this question? have you read the thread? even if you haven't read it yet, it should be obvious that even in the worst case, if #actionkillers < #boardpairing, getting it in now is worse than checking.

are you re-leveling?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nah I just re-read the calcs. Thanks for the succint summary, that clarifies it a lot.

[TheWorstPlayer]

ceczar,

High stakes players can read the MSNL board, too. And maybe it's just my personal perspective, but I think the high stakes board SHOULD be reserved for posts which discuss play/concept particularly suited to high stakes games. This concept is more universal and more basic/fundamental and therefore I think the MSNL board readers would benefit more from it (even the HSNL players who read the MSNL board, too.) It was just a suggestion.

- TWP

[ceczar]

[ QUOTE ]
ceczar,

High stakes players can read the MSNL board, too. And maybe it's just my personal perspective, but I think the high stakes board SHOULD be reserved for posts which discuss play/concept particularly suited to high stakes games. This concept is more universal and more basic/fundamental and therefore I think the MSNL board readers would benefit more from it (even the HSNL players who read the MSNL board, too.) It was just a suggestion.

- TWP

[/ QUOTE ]

i understand where you're coming from. i wish i read MSNL more, because i know there are some good discussions there. but there are many times as many threads there as there are here, and i think a lot of people here just don't have time to do more than skim (at least those of us that have to make time during work to read the forums). i'm sure most MSNL players check here everyday, which is why i think general theory (even if it's not particularly difficult concepts) is better suited here.

i guess it's a bit of an empirical question. if we encouraged posts along the lines of this thread's discussion would we all of sudden be overloaded with them? if that were the case than i would have to agree with you that they are better suited elsewhere. my guess however is that they will still remain relatively rare, and occasional posts like this are not problematic for the health of the forum.

every once in a while when i'm playing or thinking about hands i have a little epiphany about strategy. i'm sure most here have moments from time to time when they realize they had a leak or figured out a good way to attack a common mistake (or at least used to have them before they figured everything out). i think the OP is a result of just that: he was thinking about that hand or a similar situation, and came to a realization about free cards. he thought it was useful and non-obvious enough to share, so he posted it here.

there are a lot of players who have already made that discovery, maybe a long time ago, so they don't get much use from the discussion. there are a lot of players who hadn't yet figured it out, and now they get to learn it the easy way. even for the players who already had thought deeply about it, having the forum discuss it and attack assumptions and create indifference equations is likely to provide at least a little value added. i would guess that most people had not come up with the easy to calculate little formula described above, even if they had a good feel for the concept:

#LosingCards/#ScareCards > 1 - ExpectedWonOnScare/StackRemaining

but when those little theory posts get insulted as being too trivial for HSNL, posters will be discouraged from making new threads. and i think most people here would benefit from more threads like that, even if the concepts discussed in most of them are already obvious to you, because every once in a while there will be something discussed that everyone else already knew but that you had just never thought of.

[TheWorstPlayer]

I agree with you 100% about the fact that these threads cause no real harm and also cause some good. As long as there aren't too many that are too basic. Which I agree with you, there probably won't be. After all, why let someone learn the easy way what you had to learn the hard way?

[TheWorstPlayer]

By the way, here's a somewhat similar thread. People who enjoyed this one will probably like that one, too.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...Number=4466962

[innerpeace]

i think someone asked for results. first, personally, results in a hand like this are immaterial and it's more important to focus on the correctness of the decisions. for those who still wish to know, the river blanked. villain checked and i bet 100k which was enough to put him all in. he said he expected me to do that and ultimately called. to villain's credit, i believe he felt in his gut that he was behind. but the way the hand was played in combination with what i believe was his albeit incorrect perception that i would make this play with many hands, he ultimately felt that he had to call.

for those who never considered the possibility that checking the turn in these situations is more profitable than betting, i hope you gained some additional insight that will prove useful. i am not the best person to judge what concepts are appropriate for hsnl versus msnl since i've been playing this game for a very long time. with the poker explosion, there is considerably more poker literature available now then when i first started. as a result, people at lower limits have a much firmer theoretical grasp of the game than they used to.

thanks to all who contributed, either positively or negatively, to this thread. healthy discussions about all aspects of a post ultimately lead to an improved understanding of the game, which is the main reason many of us participate on these boards. while i enjoy reading these boards and occasionally contributing, it's often difficult for me to do because of other commitments. i hope to continue to share more hands and thoughts in the future.

[teddyFBI]

I'm a winning HSNL player, and I had not seen this concept discussed before, so who cares how much of the OP's story is true -- made for interesting and thought-provoking discussion.
(p.s. given your description of the circ's and your read, I would have pushed the turn 100% of the time, but this discussion was nonetheless interesting reading for why this "may" not always be EV-optimal)

[MTBlue]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
personally, i think this post is better suited to MSNL than HSNL where hopefully everyone would already understand this concept, despite the high stakes nature of the game. MSNLers would probably benefit a lot from seeing the EV calcs done.

[/ QUOTE ]
while for many here this concept was straightforward, there clearly are people here who are not fully grasping it, despite having very clear EV calculations done out.

i believe there are a lot of successful high stakes players who live by the maxim quoted above by grim (after seeing all the calculations):
[ QUOTE ]
isnt it good to get alot of money in when your ~80% favorite? also, youve already invested about 1/3 of your stack, so i see no reason why you shouldnt shove the turn now.

[/ QUOTE ]
most of the time you don't lose much by approaching these situations that way. though it is pathetic if someone still has this view after looking through the calculations in this thread. i have to say that doing the calculations out myself i was surprised by how much you gain by checking the turn here.

if we assume that OP really was playing the stakes he claimed, it really is absurd to say this thread belongs in MSNL. This forum is not reserved only for universally enlightening theory posts that even the best will learn something from. if this forum had more threads discussing concepts similar in difficulty to this one, that would for sure be an improvement.

obviously one would hope players playing 25/50+ would know these concepts, but clearly there are many who do not, and i would be very surprised if most understood just how obvious a decision this is when you work out the EVs

[/ QUOTE ]

Ceczar its not that your EV calc's are wrong. You just need to include the % of time the read is off and you incorrectly fold the best hand, i.e., when Villain has AT. You're a good player. The EV calcs aren't sophisticated enough.