evolution of a poker player...

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

SB used to hate me being at the tables when I first started playing 15-30 LHE, b/c I'd raise any two a lot, play stupid aggressive against him, and often got the best of it despite losing in the game overall for about six months. I'd played $25-50 PLO/PLHE w/ him before. He played straight forward, and sort of nitty, but mainly against players like me who he thought he was supposed to play that way against. i.e., the last time he played with me I was a much worse player than I was then.

I knew that for him to re-raise me out of the SB when I was playing deep and straight forward, he had QQ beat. My friend confirmed this.

A year earlier, I would have recklessly re-raised the pot and got it in, never considering what hand he might have. I suppose that's what I've learned in the last couple of years, that everything is relative, including hand values.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is a good thing to learn. a hand has only relative value. i think doyle wrote about recgnizing when your qq was beat in the 70's...what is new?

[RainbowBright]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In terms of how math and math models have effected poker games, a good example would be Single Table Tournaments. The Independent Chip Model has done such a good job at providing a model for giving a $ value to chip stacks and since at the later part of a tournament the blinds are so high relative to stack sizes that the game becomes a push / fold match which simplifies the options that we have a good way of playing near optimally if you can put your opponent on proper ranges (at the same time, many of the times you push is unexploitable regardless of the range of your opponent).

[/ QUOTE ]

this is good. i have studied icm extesively. BUT its really not anything new about poker you would have learned in the last 5 years because SNG's didnt exist 5 years ago and we all had to start from scratch. also you still need to put your opponent on proper ranges, which is nothing new. i put this in the same category as groundbreaking new work done on badugi. that said i do like the way sng's have been dissected. when im taliking about the new players, new style, new era im remarking about those who apply this "newness" to games that have been around, studied and written about for at least 20 years. what is new?

[/ QUOTE ]

ICM directly effects the $ value of chip stacks at the end of a tournament and deals have been made at the tournament for the past 20 years and now people can make better decisions based upon the actual $ value of their stacks relative to the other final table players. (sorry I'm just being difficult).

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
well, one of the most obvious is preflop aggression. people are much better now at putting pressure on opponents preflop by threebetting in position (with weak hands but that are relatively easy to play postflop), and then the corrolary to this is that people respond and start adjusting to some extent. todays top players are much better at adjusting to the adjustments, shifting ranges, intuitively calculating roughly how often someone might be threebetting light, squeezing vs a raise and coldcall, resqueezing because they suspect you are squeezing, fourbetting light because they suspect you are bluff threebetting, with what range, how often each hand folds, your equity vs the hands that call, etc etc.

this stuff is complicated and there is too much guesswork to ever know for sure for any of the specific situations, so the intuitive math capabilities of a regular HSNLer get a real workout in this day and age and in terms of the mental muscles associated with all of this the game has evolved to the extent that todays top players could own pros of the past just with this intuitive math aspect alone.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think what you are describing here is a situation where there are so many good players that they end up at the same table more often and need to adjust to each other. i would contend that he very best of a bygone era (sklansky, reese, doyle, zee, hoff, etc) if they were to find themselves at the same table would do the same things. so are you confusing more good players for better players? there is no doubt there are more good players now than a decade ago but quantity isnt quality...what is new?

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In terms of how math and math models have effected poker games, a good example would be Single Table Tournaments. The Independent Chip Model has done such a good job at providing a model for giving a $ value to chip stacks and since at the later part of a tournament the blinds are so high relative to stack sizes that the game becomes a push / fold match which simplifies the options that we have a good way of playing near optimally if you can put your opponent on proper ranges (at the same time, many of the times you push is unexploitable regardless of the range of your opponent).

[/ QUOTE ]

this is good. i have studied icm extesively. BUT its really not anything new about poker you would have learned in the last 5 years because SNG's didnt exist 5 years ago and we all had to start from scratch. also you still need to put your opponent on proper ranges, which is nothing new. i put this in the same category as groundbreaking new work done on badugi. that said i do like the way sng's have been dissected. when im taliking about the new players, new style, new era im remarking about those who apply this "newness" to games that have been around, studied and written about for at least 20 years. what is new?

[/ QUOTE ]

ICM directly effects the $ value of chip stacks at the end of a tournament and deals have been made at the tournament for the past 20 years and now people can make better decisions based upon the actual $ value of their stacks relative to the other final table players. (sorry I'm just being difficult).

[/ QUOTE ]

yes. you're absolutley right. the deal aspect of icm is better. a player now would have a tiny, but real, advantage. good call! best example so far.
dont tell them old timers they can negate the entire field of study by refusing to make deals.

[greg nice]

[ QUOTE ]


i think what you are describing here is a situation where there are so many good players that they end up at the same table more often and need to adjust to each other. i would contend that he very best of a bygone era (sklansky, reese, doyle, zee, hoff, etc) if they were to find themselves at the same table would do the same things.

[/ QUOTE ]

actually, the typical story that i remember reading, would be either them all playing super nitty and no preflop raises getting called and surely no hyper aggro 3betting (leading to initial demise of NLHE), or not play at all and wait for a fish whos too loose and stop the game as soon as theyre gone

[HOWMANY]

The most obvious thing is how much looser people play. I don't even know what "standard" vpip/pfr was back when 10/20 6max was at the higher range of lhe stakes, I think it was something like 20/15 but I'm way too lazy to look for super old posts by Schneids or Diablo to see their stats. That was "normal". Now "normal" is 30/20. The online fish learned from the good players that you need to do lots of raising to win so they start raising and playing better. We need to combat this and not let them run us over completely so we play almost 50% more hands, the majority of them from CO/button/BB.

I can remember last year in the sh forums there was absolute showdown fever. A high? Showdown. Pair? SHOWDOWN DEAR GOD. This was the Party days. The fish learned again and started playing closer to solid poker. The result of this is that people are now actually willing hands that almost nobody would even consider folding a year ago. It's gotten to the point where there are people that would have been fish before are now people that seem to play too many hands, give you fits with their aggression, yet they are actually winning.

No clue how any of this relates to NL because I am just a limidonk that wanders in here once in a while to read gossipy threads and interesting live hands. The point is that there are definite spots where the way the bad players play has forced the "good" players to either adjust or get slaughtered by the previously bad players and the evolving good players as well.

I think the best way to look at the evolution of almost any game is to compare how it is played online vs live. In this situation I am somewhat conscious of what it's like in NL. Take your average 5/5 1k buyin live game in comparison to your average 1/2 or 2/4 online game. Online people will 3bet in position and out of position often. Live people rarely 3bet. To combat the aggressive 3bets of people online one must sometimes 4bet lightly. In a similar stakes live game when you are 4betting a normal player's 3bet you probably have a very strong hand because their 3bet range is much smaller and consisting of mostly strong hands.

When it comes to tightness or looseness of a game and whether you can theoretically win playing X amount of hands the most important thing I realized was that even if everyone played every single hand the best player would still be a winning player. The swings would be absolutely insane I assume, but he would still win. It feels like poker has headed in that direction with the percentage of hands people are playing and the increased size and duration of downswings. The bad players online learn much faster than the bad live ones at similar stakes (result of the amount of hands played?) and there seems to be continuing adjustments by the winning players to adapt to the changing style of the bad players in order to maximize winnings.

[RainbowBright]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
well, one of the most obvious is preflop aggression. people are much better now at putting pressure on opponents preflop by threebetting in position (with weak hands but that are relatively easy to play postflop), and then the corrolary to this is that people respond and start adjusting to some extent. todays top players are much better at adjusting to the adjustments, shifting ranges, intuitively calculating roughly how often someone might be threebetting light, squeezing vs a raise and coldcall, resqueezing because they suspect you are squeezing, fourbetting light because they suspect you are bluff threebetting, with what range, how often each hand folds, your equity vs the hands that call, etc etc.

this stuff is complicated and there is too much guesswork to ever know for sure for any of the specific situations, so the intuitive math capabilities of a regular HSNLer get a real workout in this day and age and in terms of the mental muscles associated with all of this the game has evolved to the extent that todays top players could own pros of the past just with this intuitive math aspect alone.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think what you are describing here is a situation where there are so many good players that they end up at the same table more often and need to adjust to each other. i would contend that he very best of a bygone era (sklansky, reese, doyle, zee, hoff, etc) if they were to find themselves at the same table would do the same things. so are you confusing more good players for better players? there is no doubt there are more good players now than a decade ago but quantity isnt quality...what is new?

[/ QUOTE ]

But are you always just going to argue that just like today people have been betting, folding, calling and raising like before?

Players today have a much more sophisticated understanding of all these things. Back in the 70s JTs was the nuts...that's just not the case anymore. And a couple years back Mason posted on these boards that EV of AQs was the nuts compared to JJ and got ridiculed by the board.

[g-p]

there was a hand where durrr bet the river with a low PP vs foxwoodfiend for value (i think it was value because it was such a small bet), then fwf raised because he thought he was ahead of the range durrr was value betting, but then durrr pushed over the top of the value raise as a bluff and fwf folded

if you search fwf's post where he mentions durrr u can probably find it

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
well, one of the most obvious is preflop aggression. people are much better now at putting pressure on opponents preflop by threebetting in position (with weak hands but that are relatively easy to play postflop), and then the corrolary to this is that people respond and start adjusting to some extent. todays top players are much better at adjusting to the adjustments, shifting ranges, intuitively calculating roughly how often someone might be threebetting light, squeezing vs a raise and coldcall, resqueezing because they suspect you are squeezing, fourbetting light because they suspect you are bluff threebetting, with what range, how often each hand folds, your equity vs the hands that call, etc etc.

this stuff is complicated and there is too much guesswork to ever know for sure for any of the specific situations, so the intuitive math capabilities of a regular HSNLer get a real workout in this day and age and in terms of the mental muscles associated with all of this the game has evolved to the extent that todays top players could own pros of the past just with this intuitive math aspect alone.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think what you are describing here is a situation where there are so many good players that they end up at the same table more often and need to adjust to each other. i would contend that he very best of a bygone era (sklansky, reese, doyle, zee, hoff, etc) if they were to find themselves at the same table would do the same things. so are you confusing more good players for better players? there is no doubt there are more good players now than a decade ago but quantity isnt quality...what is new?

[/ QUOTE ]

But are you always just going to argue that just like today people have been betting, folding, calling and raising like before?

Players today have a much more sophisticated understanding of all these things. Back in the 70s JTs was the nuts...that's just not the case anymore. And a couple years back Mason posted on these boards that EV of AQs was the nuts compared to JJ and got ridiculed by the board.

[/ QUOTE ]

when was jts the nuts? and if i remember right (which i may not) mason set up his argument poorly becuase he used to post in a very arrogant manner (like sklansky) but once he revised his argument it had merit. i think what your're saying is in very specific situations the best players of today understand how different hand ranges relate to each other in respect to ev, and on that point i will agree. my goal is not to prove players of a bygone are were better, im sure they are worse, i just want to quantify and weigh the differences in a very specific manner.

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


i think what you are describing here is a situation where there are so many good players that they end up at the same table more often and need to adjust to each other. i would contend that he very best of a bygone era (sklansky, reese, doyle, zee, hoff, etc) if they were to find themselves at the same table would do the same things.

[/ QUOTE ]

actually, the typical story that i remember reading, would be either them all playing super nitty and no preflop raises getting called and surely no hyper aggro 3betting (leading to initial demise of NLHE), or not play at all and wait for a fish whos too loose and stop the game as soon as theyre gone

[/ QUOTE ]

this is semi true but i wouldnt consider it bad. sometimes the fish was mondo aggro and everyoine adjusted fine. and beleive me if the true fish leave again nl will meet its demise again. pray for wpt/wsop to stay on the air and online to be legalized in the usa again.