2500th Post... Hand Reading

[alex-star]

Hello,

while I have very little experience in playing NL ring games, generally speaking - I cannot imagine that your preflop call can be very profitable in a long run. Therefore, the whole post-flop discussion is a little contrived, IMO. You got your "almost a miracle" flop here with a combo draw - but how can you be sure that UTG is not trapping with an overpair on the flop? I don't get it.

[rvg72]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello,

while I have very little experience in playing NL ring games, generally speaking - I cannot imagine that your preflop call can be very profitable in a long run. Therefore, the whole post-flop discussion is a little contrived, IMO. You got your "almost a miracle" flop here with a combo draw - but how can you be sure that UTG is not trapping with an overpair on the flop? I don't get it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Implied odds. NL cash is a whole new world.

rvg

[alex-star]

Implied odds of hitting a flop favorable for a mid suited one-gapper, with a UTG raiser present, out of position, with 2 bets to us? I see. So what kind of hand would not be good enough to call here?

[pooh74]

Fun thread...I love inter-forum wars.

I think this was mentioned but off the topic of the hand itself, I think the lack of respect STTF gets from other forums has a lot to do with the fact that we do not know how to play "poker", poker being the very general use of the word. This to an extent is true as I would get killed in any respectable ring game I am sure. However, SNGs have a nature all their own that is easy to understand, yet hard to master and for better or worse, hand reading just does not play a large enough part of the game for us to perfect it because it is inneffcient for someone to do so where it plays such a small role in your overall profitability.

We, typically, play such a small range of hands when our stacks are deep so that when most of our hands are played, decision making is relatively straight forward. Does this mean that being a top of the line SNG player is ABC? no...BigT mentioned this, but it takes a lot (besides hand-reading) to be a good bubble player...and it contains a dynamic that ring players who bash us don't really understand. If you think you do w/o having played 1000s of them then you don't...I still don't.

FWIW, I think/know that it takes much more of a player to be the cream of the crop in ring than it does in SNGs, but that doesn't make SNGs a "joke".

I disagree with BigT that hands like the OP are helpful for SNGs though but I do realize that wasn't his impetus for posting that hand per-se.

Ok, let the pissing match continue and thanks for the post BigT...don't feel like its lost on us.

[rvg72]

[ QUOTE ]
Implied odds of hitting a flop favorable for a mid suited one-gapper, with a UTG raiser present, out of position, with 2 bets to us? I see. So what kind of hand would not be good enough to call here?

[/ QUOTE ]

ummm... look at the stack sizes. He could call a bigger raise than that with 64s against most players. Not sure what else to tell you.

rvg

[aujoz]

I had been meaning to read and respond to this post when it was first posted, but bookmarked it. I think it is a great opportunity to draw two excellent ideas together:

Firstly, in *my* 1000th post, I mentioned a book called "The Wisdom of Crowds." The basic premise of the book is that a large group of independent and diverse people make better decisions than one person, even if that person is an expert.

Secondly, one of the poker players I respect very highly (2p2 name - TeddyFBI) maintains a genuinely excellent blog on poker. He [url=http://zbasic.com/2006/08/friday-august-25-our-new-ambassador.html]wrote recently on a great idea that recognises that there is rarely one single "correct" and solved answer for poker questions (it is self-evident that some ICM problems are solved and there is an absolute answer). This is something that has been discussed by stuff that i've read/listened to by Sklansky and Phil Gordon.

Let me quote at length from him:
[ QUOTE ]
...An outstanding suggestion that was unfortunately never really adopted on a wide enough scale was the proposal that strategy advice should never be doled out in the form of "this is a clear raise, call, fold", but rather should be given in the form of a ratio like x:y:z corresponding to the percentage of times -- in situations like that -- that one should call:raise:fold.

For examnple, imagine a situation where it's folded around to the blinds, the SB completes, the BB raises with AK and the SB calls. Now the flop comes K,7,2 rainbow and the SB leads out with a bet. The BB, sitting there with a very strong holding might make a post on 2+2 wondering how to extract the most from the SB who is unwittingly betting into a very strong hand.

The forums are full of knuckle-draggers arguing about the virtues of raising vs. just calling in order to raise on later streets, as though one were correct, and the other were patently retarded. I think a far more illuminating way of approaching the question is an "action ratio" presented in the form of something like 75:25:0, indicating that in situations like this the BB should raise 75% of the time, just call 25%, and never fold.

Other, more complex scenarios might produce action rations that look something like 60:30:10.? I think this more appropriately reflects the metagame features of a game of incomplete information; there are substantial advantages to changing up one's style of play, and the stark reality of the situation is that without knowing your opponent's hole cards, there is hardly EVER one clearly-correct course of action in a hand (unless, for example, you hold the nuts and have your opponent betting into you on the river.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I just went through the whole thread, and tallied up a list of people who believe that BigT played well, and those that didn't - before realising that the people who expressed their opinion were not a "diverse" group. It became a battle of STTF people agreeing with BigT, and non-STTF people disagreeing with BigT.

So, instead, consider this post to be one giant bump ('cause i think my idea is fundamentally sound, although not useful to this particular discussion 'cause I believe the people who are commenting are having their judgements clouded by the identity of the posters involved rather than the content and issue underlying)


I'll have to find another thread to use this idea.

[Pudge714]

[ QUOTE ]
guaranteed from your posts that you win alot less than me and alot of other msnl posters at 5/10nl.

[/ QUOTE ]
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[Josem]

ahnuld's post:
[ QUOTE ]
#6871415 - 11/08/06 10:55 AM

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pudge's post:
[ QUOTE ]
#9173537 - 14/02/07 12:55 PM

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Took a while to get the joke huh?