[ILOVEPOKER929]

"ILP,i think some of our disagreement comes from semantics but some is conceptual. i think your disagreement with this statement comes from our different understanding of the word optimal. whenever i say "optimal" i always mean it in the formal game-theoretic sense. with this in mind, i think you'll agree that the above statement is pretty obvious."


Perhaps your right that this could be a semantics issue. When I play poker I dont resort to a game theory perspective. I simply try to make the best play possible at every stage of the hand given my reads and my accumulated knowledge of the game. I know all the "standard" lines. Figuring out when and how to deviate from any putative line is what makes this game fun and challanging.


"i think i do. i understand that an exploitable play is not the same as a bad play. when you are playing against a bad player the best strategy is usually a very exploitable one. but for this hand it's important to keep in mind that (a) heis is very far from the type of player who you would want to find "where you can be as exploitable as possible and get away with it"

I disagree. Heisen is exploitable, youre exploitable, I am exploitable. Almost all players are exploitable. The trick is figuring out how one is exploitable and using that information to your advantage.

"and (b) he himself shouldn't consistently be making such exploitable plays as folding to a river raise with 39% of his range against observant opponents because they will start bluff-raising him to death with any two cards. this second point is what my quoted statement was about."

This sounds like an appeal to fear. Ive never worried about people bluff raising me in the future just cuz I made a good fold. Heisen make this river fold becuz he felt like it was the right play against this opponent on that board in this situation. It doesnt matter if you call such and such play exploitable, if Heisen think's its the right play given the information he has at his disposal then he should go with it.

"my point is that his play is consistent both with a top pair type hand and a flush draw, so i think it's misleading to say that a river card that completes a flush is unlikely to have helped him. i guess "unlikely" could mean very different things."

No unlikely means unlikely. This river card is much more likely to help OP than Heisen. I know Heisen can have a flush but this hand type should still be significantly discounted cuz we cant assume Heisen will check/raise with a turned flushdraw 100% of the time in a spot where it appears he has very little fold equity.



"these two quotes are really about the same thing and may be our biggest point of disagreement. it is easy to show that (unless you are planning an elaborate b/3b bluff) _in a optimal strategy_ you should reserve your bluffs for hopeless hands."

No, you should reserve your bluffs for those times you think bluffing is the right play.

"indeed, when you are bluffing, an optimal opponent will fold just enough for the ev of a bluff to be exactly 0. so as long as there exists a play with ev>0 you should make it instead. in our case that play is calling."

I have never played against an optimal opponent before.

"the perspective "that we already have to commit one bet on the river means we are now getting much better odds on a bluff raise" is flawed because compared to bluffing with a hopeless hand there are now less _better_ hands that will fold."

Um, Hiesen is gonna have the same range here whether we have a hopeless hand or a calling hand. The fact that we already have a calling hand does mean we are getting better odds on a bluff. The range of hands were trying to fold is the same whether we have a calling hand or a folding hand.

"against a non-optimal opponent sometimes bluff-raising with a calling hand may be better than calling, but in that case bluff-raising with a hopeless hand would be _way_ better than folding."

This statement cannot be correct. There will be times when bluff/raising with a calling hand will be more profitable than bluff/raising with a folding hand.

"overall, i wanna say that one _should_ care what optimal plays are, even if the correct strategy is to sometimes make non-optimal ones. if you have a good idea where optimality lies you can make more informed decisions about how, when, and whether to deviate from it and you will also be much better equipped to find exploitable traits in your opponents.

Yes I agree with what you are saying as far as knowing all the standard lines is a very important prerequisite for learning when to take the nonstandard lines. I prefer to skip this tedious conceptual step of thinking in terms of "standard/nonstandard and optimal/nonoptimal" becuz these terms can belie what were trying to accomplish at the table, and that is simply to make as much money as possible. That's why I just divide all hands into money lines and non-money lines. There is only one money line for every hand you play and the key or fun is in finding it.