Balancing Bluffs vs Balancing Strategy

[JaredL]

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I don't really understand your comments about "different games" - the turn and the river are part of "in every sequence" from my comments above. To specify a strategy for the game, you must specify an action in every possible sequence, from preflop through all possible flops, turns, and rivers, and all betting sequences with nonzero realization weight (ie, any sequences you allow to happen.)

jerrod

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Jerrod:

Surely you recognize by now when you are dealing with people that do not understand the difference between "[theoretically] solveable" (if every atom in the universe were harnessed for computing power) and "has been solved." Similarly, you have retards on this forum that confuse "optimal" with "best" (although Daniel Negreanu made the same mistake on the Circuit internet show where Bill C. was interviewed).

In my opinion, every poker player should be very interested in optimal strategy under every circumstance. And should almost never employ it.

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Referring to best-response strategies as optimal is not a mistake, it is standard. Referring to equilibrium strategies as optimal is bizarre and an overwhelming majority of researchers that do work game theory do not do this. Your last two sentences give the reason for that.

Jared

[leaponthis]

Jerrod,

Do you know of this article? If it is true, I believe that it goes a long way in explaining optimal Game theory in poker. I say if it is true because I did not attempt to verify this fellows work. Maybe because I couldn't but that doesn't matter.

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~swanson/in...ame_theory.pdf

leaponthis

[JaredL]

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Jerrod,

Do you know of this article? If it is true, I believe that it goes a long way in explaining optimal Game theory in poker. I say if it is true because I did not attempt to verify this fellows work. Maybe because I couldn't but that doesn't matter.

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~swanson/in...ame_theory.pdf

leaponthis

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I haven't read it in detail, but I think it's basically the AKQ game that Ankenman and Chen have in their book and go through quite thoroughly.

[adios]

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The Mathematics of Poker assumes you are taking this approach. And just like using Game Theory to bluff and call bluffs, using Game Theory to balance an overall strategy, practically guarantees a long term win. My experience tells me that the vast majority of games will be beaten for a greater amount if this approach is shelved for my more exploitive approach but time will tell.


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I'm not sure but perhaps using an optimal strategy as opposed to an exploitive one is more readily suited to an automotan of some sort. That's not a knock on using an optimal strategy at all either. Not sure how well the average player, perhaps like myself, would be able to employ a truly optimal strategy correctly much less derive such a strategy. I need to get the book though [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] as it sounds like a great read.

[leaponthis]

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It's not only likely, it's proven. (von Neumann and Morganstern, and then Nash proved the existence of equilibria in games with more than two players).

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O.K. I'm no genius but I can tell you that within the above paragraph is the most likely reason for the confusion. It has to do with the word exists. Do you see why? (lol)

leaponthis

[schroedy]

If you want to attack the terminology, fine.

Just don't state that the strategy is not optimal, when according to the careful definitions offered by the authors, it is.

The complaint is not that the strategy is not what the authors explain it be -- the complaint is that the terminology is confusing.

I am not done yet, but so far, the book does not purport to offer a strategy for HE that a robot could play (btw -- if this is what you want, Blair Rodman has a pretty good system in Kill Phil, and Blair told me that Sanford Wong looked it over on the math front and gave it his blessing, using inputs from Blair and Lee as to what kind of hands people tend to call all-ins with).

I have found that the Chen-Ankeman book is extremely helpful in examining the mathematics behind some of the conventional wisdom surrounding the game of Hold Em.

[JaredL]

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If you want to attack the terminology, fine.

Just don't state that the strategy is not optimal, when according to the careful definitions offered by the authors, it is.

The complaint is not that the strategy is not what the authors explain it be -- the complaint is that the terminology is confusing.

I am not done yet, but so far, the book does not purport to offer a strategy for HE that a robot could play (btw -- if this is what you want, Blair Rodman has a pretty good system in Kill Phil, and Blair told me that Sanford Wong looked it over on the math front and gave it his blessing, using inputs from Blair and Lee as to what kind of hands people tend to call all-ins with).

I have found that the Chen-Ankeman book is extremely helpful in examining the mathematics behind some of the conventional wisdom surrounding the game of Hold Em.

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I agree with all of this.

In the books/publications thread I made an argument that their terminology isn't standard and that it makes less sense than the standard terminology (to which Bill replied that it is standard among some computer scientists and other researchers working on 2-person, zero-sum games). I have made that argument, and as far as I'm concerned it could end there in terms of me discussing it with the authors.

The issue I had was with your post. More specifically, "Similarly, you have retards on this forum that confuse "optimal" with "best" (although Daniel Negreanu made the same mistake on the Circuit internet show where Bill C. was interviewed)." Calling people retards because they use optimal in a way that most likely more than 90% of game theorists do doesn't seem appropriate to me. Similarly, while I don't know the quote from Daniel, I strongly suspect that he didn't make any mistake at all.

Once again I wish to reiterate that I too have thoroughly enjoyed the book, and it does a good job of what you say - examining the math behind conventional wisdom (which can be wrong in some cases).

[schroedy]

The person was being called a retard because he was denigrating material that he hadn't even read because he assumed he knew what it said because he heard other people talking about it. If he had only taken the time to read it, he would realize that "optimal" didn't mean what he thought it meant at all.

Daniel N. objected to Bill's statement that Bill thought he (Bill) played a "more optimal" game than Daniel. When Daniel became defensive, Bill clarified that "I didn't say better."

Again, the mistake is not misinterpreting the term. The mistake is jumping to the conclusion that the OTHER PERSON IS WRONG without bothering to clarify.

[JaredL]

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The person was being called a retard because he was denigrating material that he hadn't even read because he assumed he knew what it said because he heard other people talking about it. If he had only taken the time to read it, he would realize that "optimal" didn't mean what he thought it meant at all.

Daniel N. objected to Bill's statement that Bill thought he (Bill) played a "more optimal" game than Daniel. When Daniel became defensive, Bill clarified that "I didn't say better."

Again, the mistake is not misinterpreting the term. The mistake is jumping to the conclusion that the OTHER PERSON IS WRONG without bothering to clarify.

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This is all fair enough, I apologize for misinterpreting your comments.

I will take Daniel's understandable defensiveness as further evidence that their terminology is suboptimal [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[Shandrax]

Jerrod, Jared...this is getting confusing... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Anyways, this is about Jerrod's example of betting the turn with the "correct mix" of hands. I know how many pair-combinations I play in certain positions and I can ballance it by adding as many other combinations like 2-suited-card or offsuit-cards with max-stretch. Unfortunately I have no idea how often those 4-card draws and those made hand monsters come up on the turn, so all that knowledge doesn't help. If I bet everything just as it shows up, I am almost certain to have an incorrect mix.

It would have been nice to see some stats tables in the book and maybe one of example of how the ballancing is done, but that's of course missing....too bad I am not Brian Alspach.