evolution of a poker player...

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
I think one huge factor these days is our exact understanding of equity calculations. I'm sure that players in the 70's understood a lot of it intuitively, and I'm sure they were very strong at making "reads" postflop. But I'd bet they would've made a lot of pure mathematical errors wrt simple (i.e. - not so simple) equity calculations which could've been exploited in ways ranging from simple preflop tactics (e.g. - knowing exactly which hands to 3-bet and with what frequency) to more sophisticated postflop tactics (e.g. - specific range manipulation based on stack sizes).

Limon, I know you're a pretty big fan of Super System. And clearly Doyle presented a framework for playing the game which intuitively has a lot of merit (aggression, playing strong draws and big hands hard, being careful with one-pair hands on scary boards, etc.). But many of his ideas are also fairly inexact and unsupported, and some are downright wrong. I think at a couple points he alludes to things like 3-betting all-in on the flop with all of his 8-out OESDs just so they don't "play back" at him in the future. Clearly something like that could be VERY exploitable.

I'll be curious to hear what you think when you read my book with Matt and Ed. We obviously tried to address NL situations in a much more exact fashion. And sure, many times the answer ends up being the same, but as we all understand the actual process instead of just "what works", we have the capability of finding more edges and exploiting them more thoroughly.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think another poster addressed this "advantage" earlier when describing why players are better on line. the best players realize what they should be 3 betting your range w/ then the fish see what your 3betting them with and adjust (after saying something like, "you 3bet me w/ that?") so all your advantage lasts about 2 hands. which is an advantage, no doubt. it seems it comes down to online v. live. online you can just keep hammering somebody and theyll come back adjust and then youll have to readjust. live there is this strange dynamic where they wont come back. theres an embarassment factor. so live players learn how to keep people around, keep them passive, online players view that as week but its practical. a prime example of this is comparing live table talk to what appears in an online chat box.

[HOWMANY]

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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.


[/ QUOTE ]

i agree with this. the crazy part is this is even true when all of the players at the table PLAY ON LINE EXTENSIVELY...how do you explain that?

[/ QUOTE ]

If I knew more about NL I might be able to come up with a better explanation. The most obvious situation where we see this is on something like HSP. The best reasoning I can provide on this from my primitive NL knowledge is that perhaps the ultra loose and fairly passive preflop play of the fish makes it less correct to 3bet lightly. This reminds me of discussions I have read about shortstackers online that makes it so laggy players get [censored] because they can't 3bet as much as they normally would when they have to worry about the half of the table with a 20bb stack coming over the top with whatever hand that is obviously a favorite against them and then they have to call a lot as they are committed. I'm not really sure if I got across what I wanted to say here, especially the part about HSP because it sounds sort of like one of those dumb "if only they respected my raises" things but I think my point may be reasonably clear even if it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it to.

[limon]

[ QUOTE ]
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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.


[/ QUOTE ]

i agree with this. the crazy part is this is even true when all of the players at the table PLAY ON LINE EXTENSIVELY...how do you explain that?

[/ QUOTE ]

If I knew more about NL I might be able to come up with a better explanation. The most obvious situation where we see this is on something like HSP. The best reasoning I can provide on this from my primitive NL knowledge is that perhaps the ultra loose and fairly passive preflop play of the fish makes it less correct to 3bet lightly. This reminds me of discussions I have read about shortstackers online that makes it so laggy players get [censored] because they can't 3bet as much as they normally would when they have to worry about the half of the table with a 20bb stack coming over the top with whatever hand that is obviously a favorite against them and then they have to call a lot as they are committed. I'm not really sure if I got across what I wanted to say here, especially the part about HSP because it sounds sort of like one of those dumb "if only they respected my raises" things but I think my point may be reasonably clear even if it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it to.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think your on a good path. hsp is one of the few places where the stars of yestgeryear do play against the young guns. i havent seen barry and doyle get used...mostly just try to make money off elezra, gold, farha and negreanu...just like everyone else. the game is semi-loose passive regardless of the lineup.

[Sunny Mehta]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think one huge factor these days is our exact understanding of equity calculations. I'm sure that players in the 70's understood a lot of it intuitively, and I'm sure they were very strong at making "reads" postflop. But I'd bet they would've made a lot of pure mathematical errors wrt simple (i.e. - not so simple) equity calculations which could've been exploited in ways ranging from simple preflop tactics (e.g. - knowing exactly which hands to 3-bet and with what frequency) to more sophisticated postflop tactics (e.g. - specific range manipulation based on stack sizes).

Limon, I know you're a pretty big fan of Super System. And clearly Doyle presented a framework for playing the game which intuitively has a lot of merit (aggression, playing strong draws and big hands hard, being careful with one-pair hands on scary boards, etc.). But many of his ideas are also fairly inexact and unsupported, and some are downright wrong. I think at a couple points he alludes to things like 3-betting all-in on the flop with all of his 8-out OESDs just so they don't "play back" at him in the future. Clearly something like that could be VERY exploitable.

I'll be curious to hear what you think when you read my book with Matt and Ed. We obviously tried to address NL situations in a much more exact fashion. And sure, many times the answer ends up being the same, but as we all understand the actual process instead of just "what works", we have the capability of finding more edges and exploiting them more thoroughly.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think another poster addressed this "advantage" earlier when describing why players are better on line. the best players realize what they should be 3 betting your range w/ then the fish see what your 3betting them with and adjust (after saying something like, "you 3bet me w/ that?") so all your advantage lasts about 2 hands. which is an advantage, no doubt. it seems it comes down to online v. live. online you can just keep hammering somebody and theyll come back adjust and then youll have to readjust. live there is this strange dynamic where they wont come back. theres an embarassment factor. so live players learn how to keep people around, keep them passive, online players view that as week but its practical. a prime example of this is comparing live table talk to what appears in an online chat box.

[/ QUOTE ]

good points re: the difference between live and online....definitely the psychology (which in turn affects specific game tendencies) is often very different between the two....

but I also think it just comes down to "evolution", as your title says.....why is Tiger so much better than the golfers of the '70s?.....why is Barry so much better than the hitters of the '70s?.....why are all hitters, as a group mean or median, better than hitters of the '70s?....evolution baby.....humans are bigger, stronger, and privy to more technological advances than 20-30 years ago - that means scientifically perfected drivers or irons, actual pitcher-batter video freezeframes, sports medicine/supplements, in depth statistical data, Shot-tracker, sabermetrics, Pokertracker, Pokerstove, etc etc......

[RainbowBright]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think one huge factor these days is our exact understanding of equity calculations. I'm sure that players in the 70's understood a lot of it intuitively, and I'm sure they were very strong at making "reads" postflop. But I'd bet they would've made a lot of pure mathematical errors wrt simple (i.e. - not so simple) equity calculations which could've been exploited in ways ranging from simple preflop tactics (e.g. - knowing exactly which hands to 3-bet and with what frequency) to more sophisticated postflop tactics (e.g. - specific range manipulation based on stack sizes).

Limon, I know you're a pretty big fan of Super System. And clearly Doyle presented a framework for playing the game which intuitively has a lot of merit (aggression, playing strong draws and big hands hard, being careful with one-pair hands on scary boards, etc.). But many of his ideas are also fairly inexact and unsupported, and some are downright wrong. I think at a couple points he alludes to things like 3-betting all-in on the flop with all of his 8-out OESDs just so they don't "play back" at him in the future. Clearly something like that could be VERY exploitable.

I'll be curious to hear what you think when you read my book with Matt and Ed. We obviously tried to address NL situations in a much more exact fashion. And sure, many times the answer ends up being the same, but as we all understand the actual process instead of just "what works", we have the capability of finding more edges and exploiting them more thoroughly.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think another poster addressed this "advantage" earlier when describing why players are better on line. the best players realize what they should be 3 betting your range w/ then the fish see what your 3betting them with and adjust (after saying something like, "you 3bet me w/ that?") so all your advantage lasts about 2 hands. which is an advantage, no doubt. it seems it comes down to online v. live. online you can just keep hammering somebody and theyll come back adjust and then youll have to readjust. live there is this strange dynamic where they wont come back. theres an embarassment factor. so live players learn how to keep people around, keep them passive, online players view that as week but its practical. a prime example of this is comparing live table talk to what appears in an online chat box.

[/ QUOTE ]

good points re: the difference between live and online....definitely the psychology (which in turn affects specific game tendencies) is often very different between the two....

but I also think it just comes down to "evolution", as your title says.....why is Tiger so much better than the golfers of the '70s?.....why is Barry so much better than the hitters of the '70s?.....why are all hitters, as a group mean or median, better than hitters of the '70s?....evolution baby.....humans are bigger, stronger, and privy to more technological advances than 20-30 years ago - that means scientifically perfected drivers or irons, actual pitcher-batter video freezeframes, sports medicine/supplements, in depth statistical data, Shot-tracker, sabermetrics, Pokertracker, Pokerstove, etc etc......

[/ QUOTE ]

This is all true and each new evolution in poker happens so much quicker because of it. Since so many more hands are played and people are talking across forums and people are able to access games easier that everyone knows about. The games change so much quicker today.

[TxRedMan]

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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.

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?

[/ QUOTE ]

am i misinterpreting this response? i.e., are you being sarcastic?

in your OP you asked for anecdotes from players progression through their ranks, etc, and went as far as to mention 'dont be afraid to be ridiculed'. so forgive me if i've misunderstood your response, but if i haven't, wtf?

[MilkMan]

Q: Will we ever see any of the old timers crushing the high stakes games online?

[SlowHabit]

The game is still the same. Check, bet, raise, fold. The players just execute it better.

I also can't help mentioning Mahatma.

[TheWorstPlayer]

The real differences come from the equity calculations and analytical tools, I think. Ask Doyle how AdAs does against all pocket pairs and combo draws on a 8s7c2s board and he'll have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, he'll have some intuition for the situation, but there are many situations where people's intuitions are off in these regards. So things like "How often does he have to fold here to make my semi-bluff +EV?" and similar considerations. I think those are relatively new questions. Previously it has just been "I think he'll fold" or whatever with no rigorous consideration for each of his possible holdings, the card combinations of each, and the likelihood that he'd play each holding according to his actual line and that he'd end up folding that holding.

[DJ Sensei]

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.