evolution of a poker player...

[HP]

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Sometime in the last year I was playing PLHE at a club in Dallas.

I believe there was a live straddle UTG and it folded to me in LP, and I opened for a pot sized raise w/ QQ. I think I was about 200 BB's deep.

A player I had a lot of history with raised from the SB. I think I opened for $40 and he raised to $130 or so. iirc, we had similar stacks. my friend was sitting next to him, but the SB didn't know we were friends. He didn't even know we knew eachother. I mucked QQ faceup after about five seconds worth of thought.

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Am I missing something? You had to call 4.5% of your effective stack, closing the action, with position, with a pocket pair. And you folded.

edit: nevermind thought you had a 2k stack

[Oki-Oki]

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for me, i've spent a long time discovering new spots where nobody would suspect you were bluffing, then bluffing a lot there until somebody caught on. eventually it wouldnt work against that guy, so i'd stop doing it against him (and players whose styles are like him) and keep doing it to players who hadn't caught on. and then i'd find a new spot that was given too much credit, and bluffed a lot in it. so on and so on.

one standard example of this is the stackadonk line. (raise preflop, get called by a guy in position. bet flop, he calls again. then you checkraise the turn allin, if stacks are appropriately sized for it). It used to be used all the time by good players with a big overpair or something else equivalently huge when they were playing against bad players (right about the time that floating with medium pairs and stealing the turn when checked to became popular amongst bad players who thought they were good). It didnt take long for these players to catch on as to what was happening and stars folding most things they showed up with in that spot, so once I noticed that I began to use the line a whole lot as a bluff or semibluff, and it worked to perfection against weak-tight regulars who werent that creative but just assumed that poker by the book (or small/midstakes online forum) would get it done. Eventually the good players caught on to the fact that i was doing that as a bluff often enough, and so then I stopped bluffing that way against them, but doing it even more for value. (But kept doing it against the weaker players as a bluff, of course). Now, my range in situations like that is mixed between value and semibluff and bluff, and depends on the situation, the player, and my semi-subconscious random action generator (which I can't really explain, other than the fact that I think my play is pretty well mixed up in most situations because I don't play by any 'book'). But i've got other spots that are similar, but a little more recent. Until they become well-known, you kinda just have to groove on them and hope not to show things down often. And when they do, you switch it up and do something other than what the standard opponent expects.

So, basically, what i'm saying is, the best players at any given time and place don't have some ancestral tome of wisdom that makes them the best. They are simply the ones who understand their opponents play and their own image the most accurately, and know the underlying math and game theory well enough to implement effective counter-measures. Give any great player a short amount of time in a new game, and he'll figure out how to beat it.

As to the question of old players versus new players, I think the new ones would have an immediate advantage because they understood the game theory and probability to a more efficient degree, and the internet poker scenario had trained them to learn quickly and play tons of hands to learn all types of strategies. But the long-term winner would be the one who best adjusted to the style of their opponent, and predicted the future adjustments that their opponent would make so as to be ready as soon as those adjustments came.

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This really is a great post.

[creedofhubris]

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1. multitabling

2. pokertracker


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agreed. no doubt. but i would categorize these as something other than playing better poker. if technology allowed basketball players to play four games at once would they be a better basketball players or just the same guys in four games? would lebrons jumper improve if he was in 4 games at once...how?

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Well, pokertracker lets you spot leaks in your game more effectively. You can say, wow, in this situation I'm losing a ton of money, figure out why, and fix it, whereas in the old days it might've been harder to find specific problems with your game.

The multitabling lets you get a handle on unusual situations more easily. (This dude is check/raising allin all the time. That dude is minbetting and calling all raises. That guy is 3betting a lot preflop. etc, etc.) Since you've played particular types of opponents more than a live player might've, you know better how to deal with them.

Basically, imagine a successful old-time player 12 years into a poker career, having spent lots of time reflecting on his game and its flaws. I would say a skilled internet guy who's been playing for 2 years at reasonable stakes is at the same level for technical poker skills, though he may be highly deficient at people reading ability. The learning curve isn't as steep; it's gotten easier to reach your potential.

[ALAEI]

There are a lot of examples in this thread about how the game has changed and you say, "Doyle did that 30 years ago, or Johnny Moss did that too". I don't think it's fair to take the top 0.1% players of then and say that just because they did it the game hasn't changed, it has. People in general are much smarter now then they were 30 years ago. Just look at the difference in movies from now and then, people now have a much better capacity to understand. If you are looking for a simple answer to this question there just isn't one. There are only a few different moves in poker (bet raise fold check raise etc). What makes poker great is not the ability to make those plays but the whole psychological side of the game and making those plays work in harmony. There are a lot more smart players playing now because of how big poker has gotten, it's not just cowboys anymore. There are a lot of brilliant minds dedicating themselves to poker that could probably excel in something far more important if they wanted to so the result will be a much more sophisticated general style of play and because of all the forums and online games other players can learn from these great minds in an easily accessible way. As far as the major changes the game is much more aggressive now, people have learned how to interpret and exploit everything that's being thrown at them. People are also more aware and are able to easily calculate hand equity and put their opponents on possible ranges in a more effective manner. 30 years from now I don't imagine there will be any new plays but I do think you'll go a few levels deeper.

[TheWorstPlayer]

good post. just to second your opening statement. if everyone in the mid/high stakes games today plays like Doyle Brunson and Johnny Moss, then I think that's a huge change indeed, since in the olden days only the two best players played like that.

[ALAEI]

[ QUOTE ]
There are a lot of examples in this thread about how the game has changed and you say, "Doyle did that 30 years ago, or Johnny Moss did that too". I don't think it's fair to take the top 0.1% players of then and say that just because they did it the game hasn't changed, it has. People in general are much smarter now then they were 30 years ago. Just look at the difference in movies from now and then, people now have a much better capacity to understand. If you are looking for a simple answer to this question there just isn't one. There are only a few different moves in poker (bet raise fold check raise etc). What makes poker great is not the ability to make those plays but the whole psychological side of the game and making those plays work in harmony. There are a lot more smart players playing now because of how big poker has gotten, it's not just cowboys anymore. There are a lot of brilliant minds dedicating themselves to poker that could probably excel in something far more important if they wanted to so the result will be a much more sophisticated general style of play and because of all the forums and online games other players can learn from these great minds in an easily accessible way. As far as the major changes the game is much more aggressive now, people have learned how to interpret and exploit everything that's being thrown at them. People are also more aware and are able to easily calculate hand equity and put their opponents on possible ranges in a more effective manner. 30 years from now I don't imagine there will be any new plays but I do think you'll go a few levels deeper.

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BTW, in my opinion that's the most important thing of poker today.

[indigo]

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As to the question of old players versus new players, I think the new ones would have an immediate advantage because they understood the game theory and probability to a more efficient degree, and the internet poker scenario had trained them to learn quickly and play tons of hands to learn all types of strategies. But the long-term winner would be the one who best adjusted to the style of their opponent, and predicted the future adjustments that their opponent would make so as to be ready as soon as those adjustments came.

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The newer players are just much better. The pool of poker players is much larger, the skill level of the average opponent is higher so the competition is much tougher making it much harder to be a winning player than it used to be.
But of course you are right, the long term winner is the one who makes the correct situational adjustments.

[stigmata]

poker+internets+geeks = evolved game

[LyinKing]

I think there's a certain psychology about playing online which has less to do with the game itself, and more to do with the divorce of value from money. There is a conspicuousness about shoving in an entire stack of physical chips in a live situation, and a certain maddening feeling that arises when the dealer sweeps them away. Money has even less value when it's controlled by mere keystrokes. I think a lot of the aggressiveness I employ online dissipates in a live setting because it seems 1) unnecessarily reckless 2) overkill for the level of competition.

[Triumph36]

limon:

Just to add on to what people have been saying, there aren't really many new plays - the greats of the game intuitively understand the plays routinely being made by the best and highest-stakes players. The difference is, the greater mathematical understanding of the game means less leaks and more precision among the top players.