The Poker Mindset

[gurgeh]

[ QUOTE ]
how can u beat againt this?

[/ QUOTE ]

With tissues on hand?

[BigAlK]

I think OP is at least partially right. I've read the book and remember reading something like what he said. However, as you've implied, his statement is misleading. As you've said the book emphasizes that over the long run skill will beat luck, but that variance can cause some pretty nasty downswings. (And he talks about just how nasty they can potentially be if you're unlucky enough to be a statistical outlier.)

As I remember it the place where he said what OP paraphrased was more an attitude that you should take, that your bad results aren't all due to variance. This is because when you're running bad the possibility (likelihood?) of this impacting your play is higher. If you think you're still playing the same without giving your game a through review then leaks due to the psychological impact of running bad could cause you to continue to run bad because of the leaks, not variance.

Of course if OP's game is perfect and he never reacts emotionally no matter what bad breaks he encounters when playing then it doesn't apply to him. Most humans aren't that good at controlling emotions.

[gurgeh]

Okay, I'm done reading the book. I know people here generally like it or even love it, but I have problems with it, not the least of which is that so much of the material is mere regurgitation of Inside the Poker Mind and The Psychology of Poker. Parts that I was happy to see often did not go far enough, like the discussion of downswings (only mentioned in terms of big bets, and therefore limit poker) or bankrolls (where you need more to play shorthanded, but no mention of how much).

Specific issues I have include the following, which I'm hoping to hear something about from others:

Page 69- They're talking about playing on loose versus tight tables, and how the loose tables are more profitable. Some people prefer the tight tables in order to score smaller but more frequent wins and avoid the extremes of variance. Direct from the book: "Effectively, they give up long-term value to decrease their variance or risk of a large loss." At the end of this sentence there is footnote number 20, stating "It is worth noting that it may actually have the opposite effect. If you decrease the mean and the variance of a random variable then it may well be that the chance of a large negative value is higher."

I don't understand. If you decrease the variance, your losses can be greater? I'm not even sure exactly what they're referring to as this "random variable."

Page 74- Spurious Regression and Superstition appear to me to be the same thing, especially given the example cited for the former.

Page 132- The authors' example of when to move down a limit sounds ludicrous to me. In this case you have a $5-$10 player with $3,000 go on a 100 BB downswing. Hilger and Taylor claim he should move down to $3-$6 at this point. But that's not all- they also say this player is comfortable with a 250 BB bankroll, so the vast majority of it is in tact either way. Good god, should he move down a limit if he's a dollar under 300 BB, too?

Page 174- I'm cross-posting this question in the High Stakes forum: A bankroll example is given where you have a high-stakes online LHE player who plays professionally and derives all his income from poker, with no backup. He must protect his bankroll, I understand, and he often has to play shorthanded, I understand. But claiming this guy would be suicidal to play with fewer than 1,000 BB in his roll seems to be way, WAY overkill to me.

Page 205- The paragraph that begins "Labels such as tight-passive are less helpful. No player in the history of poker has ever made a decision by thinking 'I'm tight-passive, so I will check," sounds like a misfired shot at parts of Schoonmaker's book Psychology of Poker. The authors have just gotten done labeling players things like "rock" and "shark" in order to understand their motivations. Well I have some bad news for Taylor and Hilger, because no player in the history of poker has ever made a decision by thinking "I'm a robot, so I will check." Looking beyond the symptoms of playing styles for the causes might be helpful. Might. Given that you probably won't be able to do that, you'll probably stick to labeling people on tightness/looseness and passivity/aggression.

Page 224- In the discussion of sub-optimal plays, the authors mention opening the button with 64s. And then "No matter what happens, show this hand. You won't lose much in this one play, but the image that you sometimes play 64s will help you get paid off for quite some time." Awful, awful advice. If you steal the blinds and show that you're willing to open light, the blinds will protect more often. If you're already opening with a wide range of hands (and you absolutely should be), then this is very bad for your image. When you're stealing, you want fold equity to be maxed out; that's why they call it stealing! The authors would have been better served to use an existing example of opening UTG with 76s and showing, so that your tightest position (usually hands where you WANT action, unlike when you're stealing blinds) raises are balanced by what is clearly something unexpected.

[Adman]

gurgeh, did you even read my post or did you just pick a sentence at random to respond to? I was NOT talking about Matthew Hilger or his book, I was talking about Alan Schoonmakers's Card player article which you can read here: http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/112/7200

Matthew Hilgers book is great and he puts the realities of variance into perspective very well. Morons like Schoonmaker just dismiss the whole idea of variance and draw stupid analogies between poker and sports where luck is almost a non factor. (Golf, Tennis!?) He insists that if you are running bad then luck has almost nothing to do with it. It MUST be bad play on your part and you need to re-work your game. And he is wrong. Totally wrong. If you read The poker mindset you will understand that.

[gurgeh]

Yes, I did read your post. And this thread is about Hilger's book, and you only said "He" rather than anyone's name, so I thought you were referring to The Poker Mindset. I see now this was really a continuation of a post you made previously, but come on man, calm down, it was just a mistake.

I did just finish The Poker Mindset as noted above. I think I'll read the article by Schoonmaker now, given the controversy, but that topic should probably have its own thread if it doesn't already.

[magx]

i guess ill try for the last time to ask for more opinions...
thx

[Adman]

Hilgers book is very good. Buy it, read it. Anything Matthew Hilger puts his name to is worth buying. Some of the material in TPM is not available elsewhere- there is some material there that has never before appeared in print. Recommended.

[gurgeh]

[ QUOTE ]
Hilgers book is very good. Buy it, read it. Anything Matthew Hilger puts his name to is worth buying. Some of the material in TPM is not available elsewhere- there is some material there that has never before appeared in print. Recommended.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you please cite one or two examples of this?

[Dima2000123]

[ QUOTE ]
Page 69- They're talking about playing on loose versus tight tables, and how the loose tables are more profitable. Some people prefer the tight tables in order to score smaller but more frequent wins and avoid the extremes of variance. Direct from the book: "Effectively, they give up long-term value to decrease their variance or risk of a large loss." At the end of this sentence there is footnote number 20, stating "It is worth noting that it may actually have the opposite effect. If you decrease the mean and the variance of a random variable then it may well be that the chance of a large negative value is higher."

I don't understand. If you decrease the variance, your losses can be greater? I'm not even sure exactly what they're referring to as this "random variable."


[/ QUOTE ]
Note that he says that if you decrease the mean and the variance, not just if you decrease the variance. What he's saying is that when your mean decreases, then your range of outcomes shifts, so the bad days become even worse and the good days become less good days. The decrease in variance that you're trying to achieve by adopting a strategy with smaller mean might not shrink the range of outcomes enough to compensate for that.

[Mason Malmuth]

[ QUOTE ]
Page 69- They're talking about playing on loose versus tight tables, and how the loose tables are more profitable. Some people prefer the tight tables in order to score smaller but more frequent wins and avoid the extremes of variance. Direct from the book: "Effectively, they give up long-term value to decrease their variance or risk of a large loss." At the end of this sentence there is footnote number 20, stating "It is worth noting that it may actually have the opposite effect. If you decrease the mean and the variance of a random variable then it may well be that the chance of a large negative value is higher."

I don't understand. If you decrease the variance, your losses can be greater? I'm not even sure exactly what they're referring to as this "random variable."



[/ QUOTE ]

If you decrease the standard deviation just a little bit, and the win rate alot, then it is likely that your long term swings will be bigger But in general, assuming you play well, a small decrease in win rate will produce a relatively higher decrease in your variance, so the opposite will in almost all case be true.

One time when the first situation may be true is when good players move to a higher limit that is a much tougher game, and then they decide to play extremely tight and conservative. Here, they may actually be reducing their standard deviation a small amount even though the limit is higher, but significantly reduce their win rate. If the lower limit was often played short handed but the higher limit is not, then this effect is more likely to be true. But in reality, while this can theorectically happen, it should be a rare event.

Best wishes,
mason