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Old 01-03-2007, 10:06 PM
corsakh corsakh is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Kitty said what?
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Default Re: NL50 6max Video #2

"Say you are prone to making a particularly bizarre error: Every time you are dealt a royal flush, you check and fold. Well, this error is very expensive, as you forfeit an entire pot you are guaranteed to win. Yet you could make this egregious error every time and still be a successful poker player. That is because you get the opportunity to make this mistake only once or twice per year. So even if it costs you $100 on average each time you make it, it still costs you only $100-$200 per year. A good player can easily overcome the effects of such an error with otherwise sound play.

Taken individually, preflop errors lend to be much less expensive. If you call with a hand that you should fold, it can obviously cost you no more than the price of the call. For instance, if you are playing $2-$4 and call a raise with

KT

(a clear error), your mistake cannot possibly cost you more than the $4 you used to call.18 It does not cost even that much, as you will sometimes go on to win the hand. So it theoretically costs a fraction of the $4 call, perhaps more like $ 1 or $2 in this example. Yet you cannot call raises with king-ten (and other similar hands) and expect to be a long-term winner. While each individual mistake is not expensive, you make a preflop decision every time you are dealt a hand. So while you could fold a royal flush only once or twice per year, you can make weak preflop calls tens of thousands of times per year. So if each loose call is, on average, a $1 error, over a year making that error could cost you well over $10,000! Thus, a solid, almost mistake-free preflop strategy is critical to long-term success in small stakes hold 'em. This chapter teaches you to avoid bankroll-draining preflop errors and lays a solid foundation for winning hold 'em."

Small Stakes Holdem, Sklansky and Miller
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