[baltostar]

JammyDodga IM'd me and asked me to respond to his post:

I'm well aware of the standard thought mechanisms of aggressive play, and your arguments are standard. Believe me, I've carefully considered the concerns I raise in the context of how today's aggressive player's approach the game. I'm not starting from a blank piece of paper.

Why is it surprising that standard is exploitable or subject to overuse and thus loses strength over time? It's always been this way in poker and it always will be this way. The player ecosystem does matter, it matters a lot, moreso in poker than probably any other competitive activity.

The more skilled players entering the game who are willing to scale risk on significantly sub-par marginal cEV+ opportunities, the more aggressive players will tend to play for big pots on those opportunities: Hero perceives that hero has marginal cEV+, villain perceives that villain has marginal cEV+. Both are aggressive players, both are willing to pursue lines that tend to scale up.

Even if we assume hero is the better player and on avg wins more of these hands than loses, hero still tends to scale risk more frequently as more and more similar players enter the ecosystem.

What is the problem ? The problem is that standard aggressive play becomes sub-optimal play.

How do we know it's sub-optimal play ? Because a lot of aggressive play is dependent on healthy fold equity. An uptrend in the player ecosystem of similar players tends to reduce avg FE enjoyed by an aggressive style.

How does hero play more optimally ?

If hero learns to avoid lines that tend to significantly scale risk in significantly sub-par opportunities, he accomplishes two things of great benefit to his game:

1. Hero's avg hand payoff distribution curve, already skewed to the right, becomes skewed to the right a little bit more. It also has flatter tails and a juicier center. Effectively, you have relocated some of the fat in the tails into the slightly skewed center.

2. Hero's avg stack utility in mid-game M-brackets increases, allowing him to play even more aggressively (in those opportunities that truly deserve it).

Is adjusting play in this manner easy to accomplish ? No, it's an art, not a craft, but there are guidelines and rules-of-thumb which can be established to help hero move his play in the right direction.

Does this mean that hero is no longer an aggressive player. No, it does not. Hero still falls squarely in the aggressive category, he is just more prudent about scaling risk than his aggressive opponents. Hero has taken the game to the next level. His opponents have not.