Strategies that make more against better players

[JaredL]

OK, so as to avoid this whole thing devolving into a semantic argument, let me revise the question.

Suppose you have two sets of players, A and B. In the long run, the A guys will make more money (or lose less) than the B guys. You may assume whatever you wish about them otherwise. Suppose you are playing any form of poker you wish. Is there a strategy (ie plan of action for every situation) that does better against table A than table B?

[abcjnich]

What I would do is play like a major donk for a little bit (aka mini raising w/ made hands and slowplaying/small value betting made hands). Then I'll turn the gears and start betting big with made hands. I bet big, they think i'm bluffing, and I get paided off big.

Basically, against stronger players you have to mix up your play.

[JaredL]

[ QUOTE ]
What I would do is play like a major donk for a little bit (aka mini raising w/ made hands and slowplaying/small value betting made hands). Then I'll turn the gears and start betting big with made hands. I bet big, they think i'm bluffing, and I get paided off big.

Basically, against stronger players you have to mix up your play.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the bad players are looser then this would probably do better against worse players, no?

[Iwineverypot]

The answer is easily no, as if you have some exact strategy for every combination of situations, you become readable. A good player will exploit you, so even if this strategy is designed to beat good players and not so much for bad players(I.E. very agressive, bluffing often, playing somewhat loose - a strategy that will lose you alot of money vs the average donk) the good players will lose less or win more than the bad players will.

[ARTYFISHALL]

Game theory actually is only viable against good players.

[BluffTHIS!]

Jared,

I think a way of tweaking your question, and which allows the correctness of pzhon's argument & example to be illustrated better, especially with the 3 strategies of rock/paper/scissors, is instead of positing only 2 groups of players, to posit 3 instead of A, B & C, with A being an excellent player, B being good, and C being bad. And then as well positing a normal or skewed distribution of player types such that the the number of B "good" players predominates on the table. This would explain why player A might prefer to adopt a strategy primarily targeted at B players, rather than against C players as an overall strategy, despite such leaving himself exposed to more exploits by the C players. The only thing this doesn't account for is the frequency and size of pots played against B and C individually, which might instead argue for a preference of targeting C, despite the lower numbers of such players on the table compared to B players.

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
OK, so as to avoid this whole thing devolving into a semantic argument, let me revise the question.

Suppose you have two sets of players, A and B. In the long run, the A guys will make more money (or lose less) than the B guys. You may assume whatever you wish about them otherwise. Suppose you are playing any form of poker you wish. Is there a strategy (ie plan of action for every situation) that does better against table A than table B?

[/ QUOTE ]

Good players are good because they make fewer mistakes. If I think about the tough players in my games, they are better able to discern what the true situation is and react accordingly -- its that fact that lets them make more money. so it seems like by definition you can't have a strategy that will do better.

OTOH, good players adapt to take advantage of the specific mistakes others make, so if the good player is, say, playing too loosely to capitalize on a fish's extreme looseness, then i can capture some of the value from the good players mistake.

so i guess it comes down to whether adaptability is included and where in the adaptation you catch them.

-g

[JaredL]

[ QUOTE ]
if you have some exact strategy for every combination of situations, you become readable.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is false. I'm allowing for playing randomly and more importantly pooling. If you raise with a bunch of hands, then how does your opponent know which hand you hold when she sees you raise? Sure, she can know your range but that doesn't make you "readable."

One strategy for example, is to always bet or raise when it comes to you, no matter what you have, no matter how others play. Granted, you're going to lose a lot playing this way, but you are as unreadable as it gets.

[JackStrap]

interesting question, i think the answer is yes such strategy exist,

my obvious reasonning is that:

Group B: bad players tend to call too much and play too many hands (i.e. Calling Station)
group A: tight style with no bluffing and fold too much too aggression (i.e. Rock)

A beat B, simple

you have C who is loose/aggr then C beat A a lot more than B

[TempusFugit]

Certainly possible. Strenghts of strategies do not need to be transitive.

Strategy A: Only play 22 and 33 and always raise

Strategy B: Only play JTs, T9s, 98s and always raise

Strategy C: Only play AKo and always raise

Then we have A > C and C > B but not A > B.

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Of course that's trivial. Now in addition to that, a fixed non-adapting strategy might be perfect against loose passive opponents but sub-optimal against tight aggressive opponents whereas the standard tight aggressive approach might not make the maximum value against the loose passive players.

In literature, just compare play as advocated in SSH with play as advocated in HPFAP


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Now we cannot assume that players are allowed to adapt as that would render the problem trivial as we'd ultimately reach the optimal strategy. However, the optimal strategy certainly is not the maximal strategy against players with obvious leaks.