Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Please allow me to explain.

[/ QUOTE ]

NO.

NO ONE HERE WANTS TO LISTEN TO YOU.

[/ QUOTE ]
whats your problem?

i would call the reraise, you DO have set odds, and you might already be good

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

also i should add, i disagree with balto but hes not like some huge donkey posting really stupid stuff; he is trying more than most so he doesnt deserve all the hate

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Please allow me to explain.

[/ QUOTE ]

NO.

NO ONE HERE WANTS TO LISTEN TO YOU.

[/ QUOTE ]
whats your problem?

i would call the reraise, you DO have set odds, and you might already be good

[/ QUOTE ]

Because baltostar trolls good players and is a smarmy [censored] and I hate smarmy [censored].

Also, saying you're playing for set value but also saying we might have the best hand makes no sense. Do you think he stacks off you if you flop a set 100% of the time but at the same time checks it down if you have the best hand? That makes no sense.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
In the 2nd scenario, the correct implied odds calculation is 1105/120 = 9.2:1 and so you fold (albeit the re-raiser probably brought the necessary odds down to around 13:1).

[/ QUOTE ]

You should have accounted for the chance that Button or Blinds would raise when you called the first bet of 60. If you thought it was going to be raised too often to cut down your implied odds, then you fold the first time.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In the 2nd scenario, the correct implied odds calculation is 1105/120 = 9.2:1 and so you fold (albeit the re-raiser probably brought the necessary odds down to around 13:1).

[/ QUOTE ]

You should have accounted for the chance that Button or Blinds would raise when you called the first bet of 60. If you thought it was going to be raised too often to cut down your implied odds, then you fold the first time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats what makes his post interesting. The vulnerability to a reraise isnt something which is easily quantifiable in terms of pot odds og lost/gained EV.

So basically if you go by his reasoning, when you get to the next decision point, and you realise you messed up in the first place, you fold.

Almost like coding a bot. Take the solution, which is not maximal by any means, but one that could work reasonably in quite a few situations.

That is if he intended it that way, and does not believe the math is accurate as he painted it.

Definitely food for thought.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

I really don't like this. The table's second biggest stack opens 3x from MP1, table's biggest stack pops it to 9bbs from OTB, folds to MP1 who has 83BBs behind.

MP1 can play for set value. MP1 can easily have the best hand. Seems like an easy call.

Sure, being OOP sucks on the flop but I don't think that this situation is marginally +EV or anything. It's a clear edge.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]

MP1 can play for set value. MP1 can easily have the best hand. Seems like an easy call.


[/ QUOTE ]

As someone said earlier, I'm not sure we can have it both ways. We either need to think we are good pre a large part of the time say 50% or more, and play accordingly, or play for set value.

If we aren't good pre-flop, our implied odds on the set go way down. If we aren't good pre-flop, but play in a way which tries to get value from the hand as if we were, then we have some serious negative implied odds issues.

Reg, what are you planning on doing on a 10 high flop?

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Hi Baltostar.

Its the nature of interweb message boards that everybody gets flamed and abused sometimes, so you don't always have to take it seriously.

However, sometimes its worth taking a bit of a step back and looking at yourself and your posts and asking if there's anything going on here.

I've been flamed before here, and sometimes it was well deserved. I had posted something dumb, and then tried to back it up so I didn't look stupid. Othertimes, I had a think about what I'd written, and decieded that it was OK.

Here, you know that.

1. Most of your posts get flamed pretty badly.
2. Not many, if any. other posters get treated in the same way.
3. You are getting abused by people who have won a lot of tournaments, and also generally are pretty reasonable with other posters, writing good arguments when they disagree with others.
4. The HSMTT board is different to alot of the others, people seem to actually klnow what they are talking about.


You are obviously a smart guy, so you must have thought about this. What have you concluded is the reason for all of this? Do you honestly believe that you are 100% right and everyone else is wrong?

I really think you need to at least consider your position, the inability to see when you might be wrong can be pretty dangerous.

Finally I think you seem to think too much about your own arguments. These are often well constructed and well thought out. But sometimes you seem to get yourself into a way about thinking about things which is wrong, and leads to incorrect conclusions. Often people here will try and argue with you, but they are coming at it from a different angle. because this doesn't fit in with you you are thinking, you seem to dismiss it out of hand, and carry on repeatin your own argument.

I seriously suggest you try considering other peoples arguments afresh, and seeing if there's anything in them. If you cant reconcile the two views, think about why not.

People really apreciate it if you respond to their arguments, rather than just repeating and expanding on your own views. Even if you are right, this is not the best way to win arguments and convince people.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]

Reg, what are you planning on doing on a 10 high flop?

[/ QUOTE ]

Folding on the turn a lot of the time.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Reg, what are you planning on doing on a 10 high flop?

[/ QUOTE ]

Folding on the turn a lot of the time.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you think you can play post flop profitably, if you dont hit your set?

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Just read this thread

Cliff notes:

[x] Baltosar wrong
[x] Baltosar tries to make up for his wrong by writing long, awful, incorrect posts
[x] Baltosar claims he is right and the rest of the world is wrong and the reason he is right is the reason us successful MTTers have such and such misconceptions and leaks
[x] Baltosar derails an interesting thread, gg any chance of good discussion

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In the 2nd scenario, the correct implied odds calculation is 1105/120 = 9.2:1 and so you fold (albeit the re-raiser probably brought the necessary odds down to around 13:1).

[/ QUOTE ]

You should have accounted for the chance that Button or Blinds would raise when you called the first bet of 60. If you thought it was going to be raised too often to cut down your implied odds, then you fold the first time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats what makes his post interesting. The vulnerability to a reraise isnt something which is easily quantifiable in terms of pot odds og lost/gained EV.

So basically if you go by his reasoning, when you get to the next decision point, and you realise you messed up in the first place, you fold.

Almost like coding a bot. Take the solution, which is not maximal by any means, but one that could work reasonably in quite a few situations.

That is if he intended it that way, and does not believe the math is accurate as he painted it.

Definitely food for thought.

[/ QUOTE ]


In risk analysis / game theory, this is an area known as "event risk".

You are not primarily basing your decision to play for set value on you perception of opponent's hand, or you ability to outplay them post-flop. You are primarily basing you decision on the outcome of an event, namely the flop.

In my Scenario 2 above, part of the risk of calling for set value is that you will be raised by the button. This risk should be built into the multiplier that primarily accounts for likelihood of stacking (I used 2:1).

In Scenario 2, if you are raised you should fold because you don't have the necessary maximum payout odds for the event risk, and this should not bother you: Your original call was correct based on assumptions accounted for in your multiplier but now the scenario has changed.

This type of analysis is also why raising a bunch of limpers with a big pair tends to be such a profitable strategy. Very often, you are enticing one or more of those limpers who call to overpay for their event risk. In the long run, this increases your avg reward/risk while it reduces that of those opponents who incorrectly call.

For those who quickly dismiss what I'm saying, please offer an explanation for why a rational player would play in the following manner:

You have a small PP and are sandwiched between two bigger-stack opponents who min-re-raise each other until they are all in. You choose to make each successive call because basing your calculation of implied odds given on cost-to-call at each decision point you find that they exceed your calculated requisite implied odds. In this manner you eventually committ all of your chips, so that across the event (the flop) you have accepted ~2:1 odds to play for set value only.

It is true that the multiplier you use to calculate your requisite implied odds should gradually decrease to 1 as your opponents incrementally commit their stacks to the pot, but nonetheless your accepted payout odds of ~2:1 are far below even the base odds of hitting your set of ~8.5:1.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

It doesn't work like that because there would be two reraises back to you and you wouldn't call those two cold. Try again.

EDIT: And even if you still get odds facing the raise/reraise then you should fold because a good player recognizes the fact that it's very possible there's going to be a reraise since hero isn't closing the action.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Wow if thread goes to show one thing, it is that gobbo you're a bit of an a$$. I already knew this by watching your total absence of class when losing to Hansen at the Aussie Millions.

Grow the fk up and let someone express their opinions without shooting them down in flames.

You are a good poker player.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Wow if thread goes to show one thing, it is that gobbo you're a bit of an a$$. I already knew this by watching your total absence of class when losing to Hansen at the Aussie Millions.

Grow the fk up and let someone express their opinions without shooting them down in flames.

You are a good poker player.

[/ QUOTE ]

I assume you are not reading HSMTT forum every day? If so, you would clearly understand why Gobbo is reacting this way. This is not the first time 'baltostar' has come up with stuff like this, and every single time he has refused to admit he's wrong. Believe me, we've tried to explain this to him in a mildly manner, but it doesn't work.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
balto,
the time to worry about the issues you bring up is before you put the first chip in the pot. So, in this hand for example, when you raise QQ to 600 you need to consider the possibility that you will be putting in more chips than just the 600 and its implications for playing the hand. After you have put the 600 in, and the action comes back to you facing a reraise, you need to consider your immediate odds, which is the amount of money in the pot now vs how much you now have to put in. Part of that consideration of course is how likely you will be to lose chips after the flop (negative implied odds), and how likely it is you will make additional money (implied odds). You are right in that many players make mistakes BEFORE they put the first chip in the pot because they dont consider how many more chips will continue to go as action progresses. That does not change the fact that at the current decision points you cant use the money you've already put in to calculate your odds because you dont get that money back. In this example right now you have to put 1200 more and see a flop (with no risk of putting anything more in the pot before the flop), or fold and put in zero more.

[/ QUOTE ]

Baltostar,

Did you actually read this post by MLG? It explains thoroughly why your line is wrong. Just wanted to highlight it again in case you missed it.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Wow if thread goes to show one thing, it is that gobbo you're a bit of an a$$. I already knew this by watching your total absence of class when losing to Hansen at the Aussie Millions.

Grow the fk up and let someone express their opinions without shooting them down in flames.

You are a good poker player.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you get 10% of the information and flame me. Awesome. Glad you're getting the story straight.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
balto,
the time to worry about the issues you bring up is before you put the first chip in the pot. So, in this hand for example, when you raise QQ to 600 you need to consider the possibility that you will be putting in more chips than just the 600 and its implications for playing the hand. After you have put the 600 in, and the action comes back to you facing a reraise, you need to consider your immediate odds, which is the amount of money in the pot now vs how much you now have to put in. Part of that consideration of course is how likely you will be to lose chips after the flop (negative implied odds), and how likely it is you will make additional money (implied odds). You are right in that many players make mistakes BEFORE they put the first chip in the pot because they dont consider how many more chips will continue to go as action progresses. That does not change the fact that at the current decision points you cant use the money you've already put in to calculate your odds because you dont get that money back. In this example right now you have to put 1200 more and see a flop (with no risk of putting anything more in the pot before the flop), or fold and put in zero more.

[/ QUOTE ]

Baltostar,

Did you actually read this post by MLG? It explains thoroughly why your line is wrong. Just wanted to highlight it again in case you missed it.

[/ QUOTE ]

+1

Baltostar. Can you please respond to this argument. (By respond I dont mean just repeat what you've already said)

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Balto you're completely wrong but its quite obvious you're very happy basking in your own ignorance.


[/ QUOTE ]

Balto - please write a book, you could start another 'poker boom' all by yourself.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Wow if thread goes to show one thing, it is that gobbo you're a bit of an a$$. I already knew this by watching your total absence of class when losing to Hansen at the Aussie Millions.

Grow the fk up and let someone express their opinions without shooting them down in flames.

You are a good poker player.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you get 10% of the information and flame me. Awesome. Glad you're getting the story straight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not being rude but i have to say the way you acted towards Hansen was appalling. He admitted he got lucky and you just had to stick the knife in, even though he offered you an admirable defeat without patronising you one bit.

I understand this a high stakes forum but as gp has said the guy is trying his hardest and does want to learn off people like you. He may not show it but it must be the case or otherwise he wouldn't be playing this game (compliment).

Rant over.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Wow if thread goes to show one thing, it is that gobbo you're a bit of an a$$. I already knew this by watching your total absence of class when losing to Hansen at the Aussie Millions.

Grow the fk up and let someone express their opinions without shooting them down in flames.

You are a good poker player.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you get 10% of the information and flame me. Awesome. Glad you're getting the story straight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not being rude but i have to say the way you acted towards Hansen was appalling. He admitted he got lucky and you just had to stick the knife in, even though he offered you an admirable defeat without patronising you one bit.

I understand this a high stakes forum but as gp has said the guy is trying his hardest and does want to learn off people like you. He may not show it but it must be the case or otherwise he wouldn't be playing this game (compliment).

Rant over.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you really think baltostar is trying his hardest? He's just trying to stir up [censored] with everyone and not trying to learn from us, he's trying to teach people how to do things that don't make sense. He's spreading confusion around and making people who are just now developing their games doubt their fundamentals, which is incredibly dangerous.

If there were someone on the boards when I was just starting out who spread nothing but blatantly false things like baltostar is doing, then it might have affected how quickly I would've developed as a player. I want to stop it before it causes significant damage.

And as for australia, everything happened within a few minutes and I lost a HU for 500k after getting ridiculously unlucky about 18 times and controlling the table for four hours. Allow me to make one offhanded remark that wasn't even meant the way you think it was. He said he was pretty damn lucky, I confirmed it. Whoopee. I wish I didn't have to defend myself in every [censored] thread I posted in.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I understand this a high stakes forum but as gp has said the guy is trying his hardest and does want to learn off people like you. He may not show it but it must be the case or otherwise he wouldn't be playing this game (compliment).

[/ QUOTE ]
He sure has a funny way of showing it.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
This type of analysis is also why raising a bunch of limpers with a big pair tends to be such a profitable strategy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Dear baltostar,

Your long winded, distorted and irrelevant analysis is not needed to explain why raising a bunch of limpers with a big pair tends to be such a profitable strategy.

It is such a profitable strategy because it is simply very much +cEV.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Baltostar,
Plz just stop posting him, like can a mod ban him. Because every thread he posts in he makes ridiculous arguments that are obviously wrong and derails the thread from potentially good discussion. Or maybe an alternative just have a baltostar discusses poker theory thread and only allow him to post there.

[/ QUOTE ]

genius.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

baltostar, have you noticed that in every one of your examples you are not closing the action, where in this case you are?
also, call because you have QQ, not for set value. I don't understand why people are even considering folding here.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

For one thing he promotes debate. When he says something, I like to hear the responses so I am learning the do's and the dont's so to speak. I haven't seen a nasty streak to his posts nor have I seen a deliberate troublemaker.

You get the best of both worlds. You get the fish learning from him hence adding to your +ev plus it highlights the antithesis between yours and his posts...

Amazing that a fairly simple preflop spot has provoked so much action. Carry on.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
balto,
the time to worry about the issues you bring up is before you put the first chip in the pot. So, in this hand for example, when you raise QQ to 600 you need to consider the possibility that you will be putting in more chips than just the 600 and its implications for playing the hand. After you have put the 600 in, and the action comes back to you facing a reraise, you need to consider your immediate odds, which is the amount of money in the pot now vs how much you now have to put in. Part of that consideration of course is how likely you will be to lose chips after the flop (negative implied odds), and how likely it is you will make additional money (implied odds). You are right in that many players make mistakes BEFORE they put the first chip in the pot because they dont consider how many more chips will continue to go as action progresses. That does not change the fact that at the current decision points you cant use the money you've already put in to calculate your odds because you dont get that money back. In this example right now you have to put 1200 more and see a flop (with no risk of putting anything more in the pot before the flop), or fold and put in zero more.


To be fair to you, you are not bad at pointing out mistakes players commonly make. However, and this is why everybody including myself is losing patience with you, you constantly attribute your observations to your own brilliance at spotting the communities problems, instead of learning the fundamentals of poker well and coming to understand that the issues you are spotting have been brought up before, and talked about, and are generally grasped by good players.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please believe me, I have been diligently studying poker for 2 years, including every respected book written on NLHE (just now starting on Ed Miller's latest.)

You have to understand I have multiple degrees in math, engineering, computer science, and I've been gambling in varous forms for almost 15 years, and I can't help it if I notice serious flaws in mechanisms of thought that have become de rigeur in the poker community.

The common pattern of ignoring relative stack risk when deciding to play across an event has been bothering me for nearly all of the two years I've been studying poker. Relative stack risk as in "relative to other similar scenarios". (In my Scenarios 1,2 above, immediately prior to the event Scenario 2 has twice the stack risk as Scenario 1.)

Implied odds (required and given) and reverse implied odds (required and given) for playing across an event are badly flawed tools. You can not just rely on the calculations. And yet players routinely use cost-to-call to calculate implied odds given across event risk, compare the result to implied odds required (typically also mis-calculated), and base their decisions on it.

Either the criteria is way off or it is being badly mis-used.

For those decisions (only) where probability of achieving the most desirous outcome is *primarily* dependent on event risk, I recommend basing implied odds calculations on the total hand risk your stack is incurring. This too is an imperfect tool, but it's better than what most players are doing.

The way to test if a criteria is logical is to isolation test it. You can't involve other criteria, such as hero somehow magically deducing at a decision point that a re-raise is going to occur. (And this is exactly what hero would need to deduce to correctly calculate his reverse implied odds.)

If a decision criteria for playing across event risk is to be useful, it should not incur radical swings in validity when successively applied to similar scenarios.

In my min-re-raises example, a player is offered a sequence of propositions, each of which is logical to accept according to his criteria for playing across event risk. He therefore accepts each proposition but nonetheless ultimately finds himself significantly overpaying to participate in the event risk.

In fact, the growing stack only serves to propel him forward to his doom if he bases decisions on cost-to-call: not only is he being given sufficient implied odds at each decision point, but additionally his required implied odds multiplier is being reduced, plus his pot odds are increasing !

The only conclusion that can be reached is that the player's criteria is either illogical or mis-used.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Baltostar,
You're argument is right in general except it is very simple and irrelevant to this hand. There are a fair amount of hands that get posted where guys flat pre or call a shove and people successfully argue that they should fold preflop because of the probability of another player entering the pot is overweighs the slight chip edge they gain. However in this case there are only two people in the pot Nobody can act behind you your logical test is based around an outcome which cannot exist unless Hero chooses to 4bet.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]

The way to test if a criteria is logical is to isolation test it. You can't involve other criteria, such as hero somehow magically deducing at a decision point that a re-raise is going to occur. (And this is exactly what hero would need to deduce to correctly calculate his reverse implied odds.)


[/ QUOTE ]

Serously, re-read this again. So you are saying that at any decision point pre-flop, where people are yet to act, you can't in any way make an adjustment or guess what it is they are going to do?

Finally, why quote the other guys post if you aren't going to respond to it.

REPEATING YOUR OWN ARGUMENTS AGAIN IN A DIFFERENT WAY IS NOT A REPLY!!!! PLEASE READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID AND ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]

The way to test if a criteria is logical is to isolation test it. You can't involve other criteria, such as hero somehow magically deducing at a decision point that a re-raise is going to occur. (And this is exactly what hero would need to deduce to correctly calculate his reverse implied odds.)


[/ QUOTE ] What. You make a judgement call as to the likelyhood of getting reraised. There's nothing magical about it, it's based on prior experience in similar situations with similar factors. Good players can come up with a very close approximation of how often this will happen. Obviously if we had no idea what the likelyhood of other people's future actions are, we couldn't use the analysis that we do. But this is not the case.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Baltostar your way of calculating pot odds is wrong. It's as wrong as 2x2= 5. I just don't know how else to say it. Some things you argue about are more opinion than fact, and while you are almost always wrong about those things, at least an argument can be made. In this case, you are just wrong, no argument.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Special Baltostar forum 4tw.
This is so sick, you know before reading a thread that he's trolled in it, because there's a bazillion replies to a seemingly noncontroversial topic.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

wow how did this thread get so long. 86bb effective plus sb and bb you can def call.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Hey guys, what's up?

And call.

See ya later!

IWEARGOGGLES

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

OP- Please call. Villain could have ANYTHING.

Balty- How did you deduce that villian stacks off 33% of the time?

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
balto,
the time to worry about the issues you bring up is before you put the first chip in the pot. So, in this hand for example, when you raise QQ to 600 you need to consider the possibility that you will be putting in more chips than just the 600 and its implications for playing the hand. After you have put the 600 in, and the action comes back to you facing a reraise, you need to consider your immediate odds, which is the amount of money in the pot now vs how much you now have to put in. Part of that consideration of course is how likely you will be to lose chips after the flop (negative implied odds), and how likely it is you will make additional money (implied odds). You are right in that many players make mistakes BEFORE they put the first chip in the pot because they dont consider how many more chips will continue to go as action progresses. That does not change the fact that at the current decision points you cant use the money you've already put in to calculate your odds because you dont get that money back. In this example right now you have to put 1200 more and see a flop (with no risk of putting anything more in the pot before the flop), or fold and put in zero more.


To be fair to you, you are not bad at pointing out mistakes players commonly make. However, and this is why everybody including myself is losing patience with you, you constantly attribute your observations to your own brilliance at spotting the communities problems, instead of learning the fundamentals of poker well and coming to understand that the issues you are spotting have been brought up before, and talked about, and are generally grasped by good players.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please believe me, I have been diligently studying poker for 2 years, including every respected book written on NLHE (just now starting on Ed Miller's latest.)

You have to understand I have multiple degrees in math, engineering, computer science, and I've been gambling in varous forms for almost 15 years, and I can't help it if I notice serious flaws in mechanisms of thought that have become de rigeur in the poker community.

The common pattern of ignoring relative stack risk when deciding to play across an event has been bothering me for nearly all of the two years I've been studying poker. Relative stack risk as in "relative to other similar scenarios". (In my Scenarios 1,2 above, immediately prior to the event Scenario 2 has twice the stack risk as Scenario 1.)

Implied odds (required and given) and reverse implied odds (required and given) for playing across an event are badly flawed tools. You can not just rely on the calculations. And yet players routinely use cost-to-call to calculate implied odds given across event risk, compare the result to implied odds required (typically also mis-calculated), and base their decisions on it.

Either the criteria is way off or it is being badly mis-used.

For those decisions (only) where probability of achieving the most desirous outcome is *primarily* dependent on event risk, I recommend basing implied odds calculations on the total hand risk your stack is incurring. This too is an imperfect tool, but it's better than what most players are doing.

The way to test if a criteria is logical is to isolation test it. You can't involve other criteria, such as hero somehow magically deducing at a decision point that a re-raise is going to occur. (And this is exactly what hero would need to deduce to correctly calculate his reverse implied odds.)

If a decision criteria for playing across event risk is to be useful, it should not incur radical swings in validity when successively applied to similar scenarios.

In my min-re-raises example, a player is offered a sequence of propositions, each of which is logical to accept according to his criteria for playing across event risk. He therefore accepts each proposition but nonetheless ultimately finds himself significantly overpaying to participate in the event risk.

In fact, the growing stack only serves to propel him forward to his doom if he bases decisions on cost-to-call: not only is he being given sufficient implied odds at each decision point, but additionally his required implied odds multiplier is being reduced, plus his pot odds are increasing !

The only conclusion that can be reached is that the player's criteria is either illogical or mis-used.

[/ QUOTE ]

His criteria is obviously illogical, since he is not taking into account the possibility that he will be reraised, which he should. That is not an issue in this hand, period, since Shannon is closing the action preflop.

Additionally, here Shannon put in 600 chips not to flop a set but as a value bet, and perhaps to thin the field, because he believed that QQ was the best hand. Then, circumstances changed, and he was faced with a decision of whether to risk 1200 to flop a set. Even if you choose to ignore the indisputable economic fact that he's risking 1200 here since the 600 he put in no longer belongs to him (which 100% of people with degrees in economics, mathematics, probability or related fields would quickly agree with -- if you know anyone fitting this criteria, call them up and see if they agree with you), he is risking only 1200 to try to flop a set, because the first 600 was not put in to try to flop a set.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Responding to a bunch of different posts:

-- I'm not really commenting on this hand specifically.


-- Implied odds calculations are not facts, they're frameworks which you have to build-out. You have to decide if stacking an opponent is realistic, or some smaller max payoff. You have to decide the likelihood of achieving max payof if you hit your set. If tweaking a framework solves a problem then why not consider it ?


-- We're testing the validity of a criteria, not a player. We can't test a player unless we had a zillion rules describing the player.

The criteria supposedly tells us whether we have enough potential reward to justify taking additional risk. However, the min-re-raisers test clearly shows that successive applications of the criteria ultimately produce an undesirable result.


-- As I stated earlier, I agree that any previous cost-to-call belongs to the pot, not the player.

However, the problem with not considering total stack risk to participate in an event is that players tend to not consider relative stack risk for any given opportunity.

The importance of relative stack risk considerations become apparent if you scale up the scenarios:

Imagine a tournament where every time you limp or call to play for set value you are not raised.

Now imagine an identical tournament but where every time you limp or call to play for set value you are min-raised and you call the raise (because you calculate your given implied odds based on cost-of-call and they always exceed your calculated required implied-odds).

In the 2nd tournament, on avg lose you twice as much stack utility each time you miss your set. You are much more likely to do well in the 1st tournament than in the 2nd.

Now play 1000 type 1 tournaments, and a 1000 type 2s. All else equal, the type 1 tournaments have significantly larger $EV.

The real problem with only concentrating on cost-to-call is that players tend to get pulled into assuming excessive relative stack risk. Opportunities tend to look better than they really are when rated on a relative basis.

If you have some other way to adjust for this problem, more power to you. What works for me when deciding when to play across events is to consider total chip outlay in relation to max payoff.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

Todd,

Excellent post!


[ QUOTE ]
You are faced with a decision as to whether to put in a specific number of chips, 1200.

The "implied odds",... are what you expect to win if you hit, multiplied by the percentage that you hit. It's really that simple. And flopping a set or better is 7.5:1...


[/ QUOTE ]

(edit: faucoult had mentioned this to me last year when I asked about AA runs into set on the flop...)

My play on the flop is very different, so I'm not going to discuss that. But, I call pf here.

Re: QQ from upfront early in Warmup...Is this ok?
 

balto -- I think everybody here understands the point you are making. However, I think you may be missing a point that everybody is trying to communicate to you, so let me give it a shot.

The idea you're outlining here is important when you're initially deciding to enter the pot. Since poker is a game of incomplete information you estimate whether it's +EV to do so based on a number of factors, including, among other things, how much you expect to get paid on average and how often you'll be raised preflop. This should be taken into consideration before you first enter the pot. However, if it does get raised (which you've previously estimated will happen x% of the time), you are now faced with another decision. You now ask yourself the same questions: given the amount that is ALREADY in the pot and the amount you HAVE LEFT in your stack, as well as what the action that's taken place indicates about expected future action, what is the best decision NOW.

Effectively, it's the same decision process at each point, except with every further action you have more information to refine your evaluations.

In your thought experiment in which you're sandwiched between minraisers, after the first iteration you should realize that your likelihood of getting reraised is HUGE, cutting way down on your odds to continue, so you fold unless you have a monster.

However, this thought experiment doesn't apply to the case at hand.
(1) When initially raising QQ it's not just for set value -- you will definitely be called by worse hands, and the vast majority of the time nobody has KK+. The raise the first time around includes the unlikely possibility that you'll be reraised, but it's relatively insignificant.

(2) After getting reraised, you need to re-evaluate: What are the pot odds? What range of hands do you put Villain on? Given this range, what is your equity? What are your (newly-revised) anticipated implied odds vs. this range if you choose to continue with the hand? How do the actions of folding, calling, and raising compare now given all this new information.

The differences between (1) and (2) are that the amount in the pot is different, the amount in each of your stacks is different, Villain's range has changed, and this time you're closing the action. The thought process is the same, but several of the variables have changed.

this post is not about Baltostar
 

[ QUOTE ]

The "implied odds", which is really the implied expectation, are what you expect to win if you hit, multiplied by the percentage that you hit. It's really that simple. And flopping a set or better is 7.5:1...


[/ QUOTE ]

Does this mean if villain had you covered you would call mostly any amount as long as there were 7.5:1 ratio of what you can win and how much it is to call? This can't be right.

I am trying to develop a shorter hand way of figuring out when to call with small pairs for set odds (I only play live so don't fiddle w/numbers as much as I should). How does your stack and villain's play come into this equations (I realize with smaller stacks and w/a villain that won't stack off w/1 pair calling is less desirable, but how do you account for them mathmatically?).