prove higher level thinking to me

[alphatmw]

find any hand posted wherever or post a new hand in which it is demonstrated that one of the players used level 4 thinking or higher.

level 0: what do i have?
level 1: what does my opponent have?
level 2: what does my opponent think i have?
level 3: what does my opponent think i think he has?

level 2 is used fairy often, i see level 3 demonstrated pretty infrequently, but i've never seen an example of level 4. i honestly don't believe it exists, except maybe used in <0.1% of hands played.

[pencho]

Here is an example I played myself, though I admit that I rarely come accross such situations:
I had AJ and position to my only opponent in a holden live game, pot limit. I raised to three bets preflop, he called in the BB. The flop came something like AKx. I was pretty sure I had the best hand, but all of a sudden, he made a pot bet, which was now quite substantial.
So the thought-process started: I knew that he knew I had an ace (level 2), since my play was rather obvious and he knew me well as a player. Therefore I had to assume that he expected me to call and was not afraid of my obvious pair (level 3). So I strongly considered folding. But then I realized that this was exactly the way he WANTED me to think (4 level) and that it was "all of a sudden" very likely that he actually wanted me to fold this hand. So I played the hand through and, I am lucky to say, he was indeed bluffing.

[alphatmw]

i don't believe for a second that deciding whether to call a pot sized bet on the flop needs 4th level thinking or that it was because of your 4th level thinking that you came to the right decision. if he had flopped a set with XX, and he indeed knew you would rationalize that he knew you had flopped top pair, he would still bet.

[pencho]

You are right: I actually first bet the flop and he called. Then, on the turn, he made the pot bet. Sorry, I told it wrong.

[pencho]

And I want to add, that I of course could have been wrong all the way. He could have me beat. But this time I just had the right feeling of which level I had to think on or on what level he expected me to think on. We discussed this hand later and he confirmed that he was expecting me to think on the third level here.

[Iwineverypot]

Way to ask for examples and then shoot someone down when they give one. Why is it so hard to believe that it is possible to think on the 4th level, especially between regular opponents? Many pros see SO many hands with eachother that I wouldn't be surprised if their thinking went beyond the 4th level..

[Shandrax]

People hardly ever go beyond level 2, because most of them think there is only one correct play for any given situation anyways. Once you try to think on deeper levels, you don't know where to stop. The sky is the limit and therefore it's not very practical.

In my opinion it should be sufficient to try to figure out the best and the second best play based on 2nd level thinking and randomize them 2:1 [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[welzer777]

You did not mention the size of game that you are playing in, therefore, my answer may not be accurate. However, it seems to me that you have not had the need to use, what I will call, beyond level 2 thinking. It almost seems from your apparant frustration that you have the ability to think along these "higher" levels yet the opponents you are playing do not.... Simply put, if you and I are contesting a pot and I "comprehend" that you are a good player I will try and deceive you. You can call it "levels", making a move or whatever you would like. The point being psychology becomes the biggest part of the game. At its highest level, although all "level 4" thinkers would probably deny this, anything beyond this level is too complex and breaks down to its simplest form, that being the cards they are holding. Don't get caught up on levels get caught up on the ability of a given opponent!!

[GiantBuddha]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the biggest reason that you haven't seen the examples that you are looking for is that they involve a history of more than one hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spot on. If I sit down at a table with strangers and I get involved in the first hand, I can't start out with level 4 thinking. Knowing your opponents thought to this level requires knowing your opponents to this level.

Four things which reduce the level of thought involved in a hand:

1) Lack of knowledge of opponent
2) Opponent's lack of knowledge of your playing tendencies
3) Lower limits
4) Playing online

When players list their reads as a set of numbers, they don't have a read. They have a set of numbers. When you have an honest to goodness read, it's because you've played hundreds of hands with your opponent.

I have a friend who I started playing poker with in high school. We learned the game around the same time, and we used to play heads up no limit freezeouts back before everyone played no limit all the time. We got accused of collusion at a club one time because we could read each other's hands cold. On consecutive hands, we correctly put each other on specific unimproved pocket pairs. He had eights. The next hand I had nines. The other players at the table got a little freaked out.

Point being, after a certain amount of experience with a given player, if you're both perceptive and talk about the game a lot, you're not thinking on levels anymore. You just know exactly what the other person is capable of, and why. You might even be able to put them on a page, meaning that you know precisely where they got the concept that they're using at the time.

[Gonso]

They don't have all this in a given hand history, but this is about as close as I can get:

Level 0: I've got a real hand here. I'm raising this guy on the blind.

Level 1: This smart guy is reraising me... again. He could have just about anything, though. He's like that.

Level 2: He knows that I'm more than capable of going after his blind with Kx or better, so why wouldn't he defend here with any reasonable holding?

Level 3: He also realizes that I'm aware he could easily be on a resteal, which means I'm trying to trick him, disguising a real hand to look like my normal steal.

Level 4: At the same time, since it's less likely for me to have a junk hand than not, he might come to the conclusion that I could be milking the 'threat' of eventually tricking him with a real hand, in order to try to steal from him with trash right now.

***

Something like that.

But, yeah, I think 4+ is generally found at players a lot closer to world-class, where those guys are deep thinking all kinds of crazy levels.