How far has NL poker come? How far do we have to go? (abstract/long)

[VanVeen]

"Is it possible to use the PSC to predict future developments in playstyles?"

strategy evolves almost entirely through trial-and-error and imitation, with thoughtful forum-based analysis only providing signposts to guide people away from (likely!) crappy strategies and toward good ones.

the simple answer to your question is 'no, we can't'. evidence? no one has done it before. almost every good player thought Bld was a donkey when he first arrived. many think cts is a donkey, or that durrr can't play omaha. thus far i'd say the track record is pretty bad.

that said, one prediction i will make is strategies will tend to become more complicated over time. pure 14/12 strategies with unchanging and simplistic criteria to evaluate hand strength are not going to result in big monies anymore. more variability in preflop ranges, more variability in bet sizes, more variability in post-flop ranges.. this is what will happen. strategies can only get so complex, though, because we're all so dense. how complex they'll get is anyone's guess, but we're prob not quite there.

pretty cool article on a related topic.

[VanVeen]

Very apparent, but might be something a few people still overlook

yes, that is very apparently wrong, or at least your stated reasoning is.

i just had a genius idea! hire a bunch of my friends to sit around and shortstack all day! i'll pay them $15/hr so i'm competitive w/local call centers. sweet.

[Rick305]

There will never be a "perfect" way to play.

That's what makes this game so great.

[Event Duality]

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There will never be a "perfect" way to play.

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I disagree. It's just that the "perfect" way to play is constantly changing.

[w_alloy]

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it does not logically follow that strategies will converge toward game-theoretic optimal play or intrinsic unexploitability. the selection pressures acting on the player pool are not such that this is true. relatively speaking, there isn't a huge gap between your average 50nl grinder and the best players in the world when it comes to grasping the game-theoretic properties of the NLHE strategy landscape. none whatsoever. the computational limitations of the human brain, even the best human brain, do not allow anyone to explore the terrain without a blindfold on.

what is a logical necessity is that strategies will become less exploitable given the parameters defined by: a) the cognitive limitations of the players, and; b) the decision-making biases, both emotional and cognitive, of the players.

the best players probably: a) have frequencies that jive because of their own decision-making biases and quirks; b) a superior ability to exploit the decision-making biases of other people by out 'leveling' them; c) better emotional control than everyone else - information processing and decision making aren't as adversely affected when under stress (or are affected in a non-conventional adaptive way).

i'm sure as time goes on people will get a bit better game-theoretically and they'll probably get a bit better at exploiting the weaknesses of other people. how much room is there to go? who knows. eventually the skill level at the top will pretty much max out and thereafter strategy variation won't trend in either direction - it'll be random until someone either starts crunching #s (and using those #s to do more and better trial-and-error tests) or they invent super smart/emotional equanimity pills.

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I think you are overlooking some key point here. You are acting like players need to understand all the theory behind all the adjustments, when really they don't need to know anything.

In fact, if they all make random changes to their game, or enough new players arrive with random deviations from common strategy, play will still converge towards optimal.

It as an evolutionary process, and as long as the best players get the money and new players learn styles from old players, things will advance whether people understand it or not.

[w_alloy]

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So true.

Sometimes I will make a certain play (usually a fold), and I will think "Wow, this is so exploitable." That usually turns into "I should not make an exploitable play".

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I think another big misconception about unexploitable play involves players having a very limited view of what is exploitable. I think people often fail to see the whole picture when thinking about unexploitable play.

For example, things can happen in a hand where you get put in a situation where your opponent makes a bet and you realize that you would be folding nearly your whole range in this spot, and your opponent knows it. You might think you are playing exploitably in this spot by always folding, and try to fix it by bluffing or floating. But in reality it is just an unfortunate and rare situation caused by luck and earlier actions, or you might have made a mistake on a previous street that precipitated this situation, but you need to fold.

Another time where I think people make mistakes is thinking that playing unexploitably involves a boring or mundane style. If anything, I would guess the solved form of poker involves even more crazy agression then we are used to seeing. I am pretty sure that things like semibluff 3 and 4 betting preflop especially on agressive squeezes and resteals, floating oop, and check raise bluffing with air are all parts of an unexploitable game.

I alsot think its easier to see these plays that make your game unexploitable when thinking about the game from a purely exploitive paradigm.

[ImsaKidd]

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Very apparent, but might be something a few people still overlook

yes, that is very apparently wrong, or at least your stated reasoning is.

i just had a genius idea! hire a bunch of my friends to sit around and shortstack all day! i'll pay them $15/hr so i'm competitive w/local call centers. sweet.

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Wow, only 2 posts for someone to flame me.

Maybe I should phrase it like this: "Villain can only exploit me if he saw my hand in this situation" or "I could exploit my play in this spot only because I know my hand".

[w_alloy]

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the simple answer to your question is 'no, we can't'. evidence? no one has done it before.

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I think this is a very naive statement. Even if it were true, how could you possibly know? And just because noone has done it yet doesn't mean it isn't possible. The math of poker, as a feild, is still in its earliest stages. On the back of The Mathematics of Poker (which I haven't read yet), he compares modern poker to the bond and options markets of 30 years ago, dominated by intuition and experience. By the mid 90s, advanced math and analytical skills where overwhelmingly applied in these jobs. While this may be an extreme example, I think we are moving that way. So even if this isn't possible now (which isn't a point I'm willing to cede), as more hands are collected and the statistics of poker are better understood, who knows?

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almost every good player thought Bld was a donkey when he first arrived. many think cts is a donkey, or that durrr can't play omaha. thus far i'd say the track record is pretty bad.

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This is proof of my point, not yours. I think Bld is one of the best examples of this happening. Here is a player that people didn't understand, but was definitely one of the top on party from and objective standpoint. So the PSC was being influenced by him even if people weren't realizing it. As people started to realize the method of what he did, people adapted some of it or fixed leaks. I think today, as a whole, there are way way more players playing a style like bld than there used to be. If someone figured out right away what exactly he was doing and why it worked, they could have benifited from it before the poker community at large, if only very marginally.

Thats not to say that Bld had a profound affect on the PSC. But even a the smallest drop in the bucket adds volume and makes waves.

[w_alloy]

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Very apparent, but might be something a few people still overlook

yes, that is very apparently wrong, or at least your stated reasoning is.

i just had a genius idea! hire a bunch of my friends to sit around and shortstack all day! i'll pay them $15/hr so i'm competitive w/local call centers. sweet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, only 2 posts for someone to flame me.

Maybe I should phrase it like this: "Villain can only exploit me if he saw my hand in this situation" or "I could exploit my play in this spot only because I know my hand".

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Your specific hand is irrelevent; your range of hands is all that matters.

[w_alloy]

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There will never be a "perfect" way to play.

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While this may be true from a practical perspective, all signs point to poker being solvable. It will take a long time to happen, but it is possible it happens this century. This is another debate entirely though.

It doesnt matter if it ever will happen, my OP just needs it to be possible, and I think the majority of people think it technically is.