Conflicting Theories?

[DonT77]

I’ve been reading a lot lately about how we don’t want our opponents “to play perfectly” against us - which means we don’t want to act in such a way that our opponent will fold worse hands and only continue with hands when they are better than ours (thus we win the minimum and lose the maximum). This is basically another way of restating Sklansky’s Fundamental Theorem of Poker – which says that a player gains when he plays as he would if he could see his opponent’s cards, and a players loses when he acts differently than he would if he could see his opponent’s cards. The logic here seems flawless to me, and I’m a big advocate of not allowing my opponent to play perfectly against me.

OTOH, I’ve been reading on this forum for a while about the benefits of “defining your hand”. The benefit to defining your hand is that you are basically telling your opponent that you have a strong hand to see how he responds which could save you more chips on future streets when you are behind. Defining your hand usually (except against the trickiest opponents) requires that your opponent define his hand as well, which – even though it allows your opponent to play perfectly against you – allows you to play perfectly against them too.

Of course “defining your hand” (a good thing in some situations) allows your opponent to “play perfectly” against you (a bad thing in almost all situations), so we seem to have a conflict here. Is it really important for us to define our hand, and if so – when?

I guess I’m looking for your thoughts here or at least to create a discussion on how these two theories interact.

I’ll throw out a few thoughts to get the discussion rolling-

IMO, you want to define your hand when:

1) The information you gain is more valuable than the information you give – i.e. you invest a few chips to save a lot of chips
2) The quality of information you are getting is of high quality / very reliable (i.e. you are against a straight-forward player rather than a tricky player)
3) You need decisions on further streets to be easier


Let’s use an example. Assume involved players have 20-30BBs and getting near the bubble. MP limps and you raise 4x with AJo on the button. Folded back to MP who calls. The flop comes J62r. MP checks. What should you do?

It would appear that this is very much a player dependent situation. If MP is a weak/tight, straight-forward player he will fold hands like 88/77/AQ to a large bet and only continue with overpairs and sets – so betting 2/3P+ does not allow him to make a mistake, but it does tell you that you are in trouble if he continues. OTOH, if you check when you are ahead, he will be given a free card to hit his 2 or 3 outter – which is probably not a big deal, but you may want to bet enough to make calling incorrect, say 1/3-1/2P – which against some players will still reveal the strength of their hand.

Now, if MP is a tricky player, then he may see a 1/3-1/2P bet or a check behind as a sign of weakness (depending on your betting patterns and perceived ROHs) and either check-raise or lead into you ATT. Of course this is exactly what you want when you are ahead, but now you’re not sure if you are ahead (you’re feeling you’re WA/WB) since you’ve haven’t represented any strength ATF, and now it becomes much more difficult for <u>you</u> to play perfectly. Against tough, aggressive or tricky opponents – appearing weak when you are moderately strong could make life very difficult for you. OTOH, against the very loose, very aggressive-type players who bluff too much, acting weak when you are strong can be a very effective tactic.

Of course a lot of this ties into psychology and game theory. If you can master all of these aspects of NLHE, then you’re well on your way to becoming a great player. These are a few of my thoughts. I’m anxious to hear what others think or can expound on.

[AceLuby]

Should this be moved to poker theory? It isn't MTT specific, but poker theory specific.

[John Shiznit]

1. one of the most important things ive learned on this form is, just because the guy shows you the best hand does not necessarily mean you played the hand wrong. for example, say in the AJ example you gave, you bet one/third of the pot and your checkraised all in. your read is that he takes this as weakness and comes over the top. You call he shows your QQ. This does not necessarily mean you made a mistake. (i.e. a high percentage of the time he would have made the same play with air.) so you still may have played the hand correctly but lost.

2. there may come a situation in an MTT where i want my opponent to know my hand. (an example of this is late in a tourney a late position raiser from the cutoff, a reraise from the button. i have 99 in SB. here im thinking 99 is the best hand (based on my reads on how the players play). but it way more beneficial to my hand to be able to tell them i have the best hand. because i really dont want a call. so if a third all in push is interpreted correctly as strength this is not really a bad thing for me in this spot.

[Foucault]

Thought provoking post- you raise some good questions. I've never liked the concept of defining my hand, for obvious reasons. As you point out, the goal really is to get one's opponent to define his hand, which may require giving away some information about your own. But the goal is always to give away as little as possible while getting as much as you can in return.

Think about a common play such as a continuation bet. You raise, from late position, BB calls, flop is AT5 rainbow, he checks, you bet, he calls. Have you defined your hand? Not really- you ought to be betting pretty much anything you raised with on this flop. Has Villain defined his hand? Somewhat- he's probably got at least a pair of some sort, though maybe not an A. Tricky players are tricky because they will call here with nothing, knowing that you don't need a strong hand to bet this flop and hoping to take it away from you later.

At higher levels poker becomes more and more about finding ways to play your hand optimally without allowing your opponent to do the same. For instance, you want to build a bit pot when you have a set, but you don't want your opponent to fold. This means your opponent has to know that you would bet other hands besides a set in the exact same way. A draw of some sort is a good candidate for mixing up your 'juicing the pot' range, since you would also like to have a big pot the times that your draw hits. A very good opponent might be able to determine that you have either a flush draw or a set, but even if he is, he can only optimize his play against you to a certain extent, since he would want to play very differently when you have a set than when you have a flush draw.

This is pretty related to another concept I've wanted to talk about for a while, so I'll bring it up now. There's been some talk lately about "mixing up" pre-flop raising ranges, especially from early position, and I think a lot of it is somewhat misguided.

Imagine a player who only raises AA and KK UTG, and is not very good at getting away from them after the flop. How would you play against him? You could just fold any time he raised UTG. But what you'd really like to do, provided stacks are deep enough, is to call him with almost anything and then stack him after the flop whenever you can beat one pair.

So how can Tighty McNuts mix up his range against you? He could just start folding his pairs any time he is raised on the flop, but then he never makes any money with them and observant opponents might start raising him with air.

Let's say he throws QQ, JJ, and TT into the mix. This doesn't help much, because you can still play pretty much the same strategy against him.

So he starts raising AK and AQ UTG. Now your implied odds aren't quite as good to go calling him with small pocket pairs, because you can't count on taking his stack every time you hit. Some of the time, he will fold because he doesn't have anything. However, he might still stack off when he makes TPTK, and although your implied odds strategy is less profitable, it is still quite profitable.

Not how he is now more difficult to figure out after the flop though. When the flop comes A-high, you can put him on a narrow range, but it's hard to play optimally against that range, because the flop was either very good (he's got top pair good kicker or top set) or very bad (he's got an underpair) for him. Adding AK and AQ into his range made Tighty harder to play against because they are different kinds of hands from overpairs. A strategy that works against AA/KK does not work nearly as well against AK/AQ.

So when you are talking about expanding an UTG range beyond these hands for deceptive reasons, hands like 99 and KQ are not good candidates. There may be other good reasons to raise them UTG, but you are not 'mixing it up' very much by doing this. This is because they are very similar to the types of hands you are already raising (big pairs or big broadway), and your opponents can profitably play very similarly against them.

So if you feel the need to widen your UTG raising range, you need to find a third type of hand to include. Suited connectors are a popular choice because they play so differently from big pairs and broadway hands. If you are going to play them UTG, however, you need to know why you are doing it and you need to do it selectively. Raising everytime you get 34s UTG is going to get expensive, and is likely unnecessary. Especially at lower stakes, you can play a tight range because your opponents won't play optimally against it anyway. You can raise KQ UTG, not for deception, but for value: your opponents will call with dominated hands and often let you know with a re-raise when you are dominated.

One other thing to recognize is that so far I've been talking about reverse implied odds as the primary reason why you might want to mix up your UTG raising range. When stacks get shallow, this is no longer an issue. Instead, you are concerned about getting action when you pick up a big hand UTG. There are few worse feelings than patiently watching your stack dwindle, finally picking up those beautiful bullets, and having everyone fold because you haven't raised UTG in an hour. Suited connectors won't cut it because they are too weak- chances are there are least one or two short stacks at the table, and you will be committed to calling a push if one of them happens to catch a hand when you open UTG. So now you are expanding your range for the same reason (deception) but you are being deceptive for different reasons (to get value from your hands, rather than to cut down reverse implied odds) and so you should choose your range differently. High cards and medium pairs go up in value, and implied odds hands like small suited connectors and pairs go down in value.

I want to conclude by saying that while I find this to be a very fruitful though experiment, it is very often unnecessary or at least overrated. The typical online player at almost any stakes makes enough fundamental mistakes that you don't need to be very deceptive to beat him.

[DONTUSETHIS]

[ QUOTE ]
1. one of the most important things ive learned on this form is, just because the guy shows you the best hand does not necessarily mean you played the hand wrong. for example, say in the AJ example you gave, you bet one/third of the pot and your checkraised all in. your read is that he takes this as weakness and comes over the top. You call he shows your QQ. This does not necessarily mean you made a mistake. (i.e. a high percentage of the time he would have made the same play with air.) so you still may have played the hand correctly but lost.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sometimes the hand you represent will put in a bad spot because of what the other player thinks that you have. You may play a hand in a weak manner and he decides you have nothing and makes a move on you. Then you think at a lower level and say " wow if I have this he must really be strong to do that instead of looking at what you have represented. All that being said, sometimes you overthink yourself and get yourself busted anyway.

[Foucault]

[ QUOTE ]
2. there may come a situation in an MTT where i want my opponent to know my hand. (an example of this is late in a tourney a late position raiser from the cutoff, a reraise from the button. i have 99 in SB. here im thinking 99 is the best hand (based on my reads on how the players play). but it way more beneficial to my hand to be able to tell them i have the best hand. because i really dont want a call. so if a third all in push is interpreted correctly as strength this is not really a bad thing for me in this spot.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a situation where you want your opponent to think you are stronger than you are. Say there is a raise to 1800, call, and you push for 12,000 with 99. The raiser folds, and the caller is thinking about what to do with AQ. You are trying to define your hand as more strong than it is. If he knew exactly what you had, or even that you had a medium strength hand of some sort, he would have to call. You are basically semi-bluffing a premium hand, hoping to get other medium-strength hands to fold but being in decent shape even when they don't. If you had AA in this same spot, you would instead prefer if if your opponent were not able to put you on a premium hand and decided to make a big call with his AQ. But at no point would you want the exact value of your hand to be defined.

[DONTUSETHIS]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a situation where you want your opponent to think you are stronger than you are. Say there is a raise to 1800, call, and you push for 12,000 with 99. The raiser folds, and the caller is thinking about what to do with AQ. You are trying to define your hand as more strong than it is. If he knew exactly what you had, or even that you had a medium strength hand of some sort, he would have to call. You are basically semi-bluffing a premium hand, hoping to get other medium-strength hands to fold but being in decent shape even when they don't. If you had AA in this same spot, you would instead prefer if if your opponent were not able to put you on a premium hand and decided to make a big call with his AQ. But at no point would you want the exact value of your hand to be defined.

[/ QUOTE ]

A question I have about this is how does this relate to your expected gain on a hand. In the aces example you have the nuts ( the two card nuts anyway). The idea by making the huge move is to represent a hand other than the one you have. Where does the line draw. When is it better to bet a little bit and get called everytime or bet a lot and only get called x out of y times? I am never sure when either play would be most effective.

[DonT77]

Thanks for the well thought-out reply Foucault. I was going to bring up Shania (mixing it up) but then I thought that I was already bringing together several other theories and I didn’t want to make things too convoluted.

Since one of our goals is to not allow our opponent to play perfectly against us, as though he knew our cards, then (again from Sklansky’s TOP) we need to mix up our play to confuse our opponent.


I’ll share my experience. 2-3 years ago I learned about the concept of “defining your hand” here on 2+2 while playing in mostly $11-$22 MTTs. Just learning that concept really improved my play, as I learned to avoid getting stacked with marginal hands like TPTK.

Now that I play several $162-215 MTTs per week, I’m learning that deception is so much more important, and that the theories in TOP are so much more applicable. There really isn’t a lot of 2nd level thinking going on at the $11-22 level. Most players at those levels play good hands fast, slowplay their monsters, and fold junk - without much regard to what his opponent(s) might have. Personally, I know that my hand reading skills have come a long ways since I played $11 MTTs as my regular game. In the $162-$215 games you have people that will float, check-raise with air, and all sorts of other plays that you rarely see at the lower levels, so you need to be thinking on higher levels to handle the greater pressure that these players will try to apply to you.

That said, I think I still have a long ways to go in the area of identifying tactics to obtain information without giving-up information. One tidbit I’ll throw out though, is that I like to raise in LP over limpers with a wide range of hands because as you said, it really doesn’t define my hand much, it helps to define my opponent’s hand, I’m in position, and now I have more FE ATF – what more can you ask for?

Regarding C-bets, I’ve found that they work great with a high frequency level at the lower buy-in levels, but at the $162-215 level if you CB too much you’ll find yourself getting CR’d by opponents OOP and raised by a lot of players (probably with air a lot of times) when they have position on you. I’m still feeling my way around to find the optimal C-bet %, but I know it’s a lot lower at the higher buy-ins. Of course at the higher buy-ins, players are more aggressive, so there is more trapping going on, and so if you trap with your good hands and CB with your bad hands you'll quickly find yourself in trouble.

As for your PFR-range when UTG comments, you may want to repost those comments separately in a new post - since those comments will not likely get the level of discussion they deserve in this thread.