A5s in blind battle.

[RobertJohn]

Okay I’m wired so I thought I’d take a shot at revising Baltostar’s prose to make it more palatable for the masses.

I’m taking a break from finishing up a paper too, so this is kind of easy and fun.

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I can't help it if I notice serious flaws in mechanisms of thought that have become de rigeur in the poker community.

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I’ve noticed glaring mistakes in the thought process of many players.

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The common pattern of ignoring relative stack risk when deciding to play across an event has been bothering me for nearly all of the two years I've been studying poker.

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Players often ignore the amount of risk involved in their decisions.

Also:

How the hell do you “play across” an event? Why are you deciding to do this?

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And yet players routinely use cost-to-call to calculate implied odds given across event risk, compare the result to implied odds required (typically also mis-calculated), and base their decisions on it.

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Here you’re being so needlessly verbose that one has to assume it’s intentional. I just can’t figure if it’s for comedy or if you’re just on shrooms.

I think you’re trying to say the following:

You can’t just take the cost of a call and compare it to your stack size to come up with an accurate picture of your real risk/reward.

This is true and has been pointed out many times on 2p2. The fact that players commonly overestimate their true implied odds is nothing new. You should probably drop the whole I'm-on-some-revolutionary-[censored] vibe.

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For those decisions (only) where probability of achieving the most desirous outcome is *primarily* dependent on event risk, I recommend basing implied odds calculations on the total hand risk your stack is incurring. This too is an imperfect tool, but it's better than what most players are doing.

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Before you use terms like “total hand risk” you should define them! Why? Because no one knows what the hell you’re talking about.

Also, when you say “the total hand risk your stack is incurring” - is it your hand or your stack that’s incurring the risk? WTF?

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If a decision criteria for playing across event risk is to be useful, it should not incur radical swings in validity when successively applied to similar scenarios.

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This is a one-way conversation that everyone here is a part of.

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In my min-re-raises example, a player is offered a sequence of propositions

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No he’s not.

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each of which is logical to accept according to his criteria for playing across event risk.

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Awesome.

[JammyDodga]

Hey robertjohn, thanks for this.

Baltostar, your idea of

"If a decision criteria for playing across event risk is to be useful, it should not incur radical swings in validity when successively applied to similar scenarios."

Doesn't actualy aply in your min-raising battle example.

You assume that our criteria is simply "cost-to-call" so that in your minraising example we would just stack off with a drawing hand. But thats not actually what we are saying.

We say, consider cost to call, if you are closing the action, that's all you need to think about.

If you aren't closing the action, make an educated guess (we are allowed those in poker, and most of us are quite good at them) as to what chance you have of actually seing a flop.

So in your min raisng example, the first time it would come around we'd go, hmm cheap call, I have the odds, chance of guy behind me re-raising is reasonably low, and I have good odds, lets call.

The second time around, we'd go, WTF, these guys are stuck in some kind of min-raising battle, I don't want to be in the middle of it, my immediate cost to call is low, but I'm not closing the action, and my chance of seeing a flop cheaply has just gone way down, I'll fold.

If you don't get it the second time, you'd definitely get it the third and only an absolute moron would stack off using our criteria here.

SO our criteria does work in your min-raising example, as people have already pointed out. As this seems to be the only thing you argument is relying on, you really need to respond to this specifically.

[Willd]

I'm surprised noone has said this before but the most obvious counter point that I can come up with is a direct example.

Using the hand from the other thread as a base, you have a 10000 stack with blinds at 200/400 and raise 3bb from UTG with QQ. UTG+1 who you have a read only ever minreraises with AA and will commit postflop, minreraises you and has you covered. It's folded back to you and it costs 800 to call.

This is a trivally easy call based on your reads as you're risking 800 to win the 3800 already in the pot + 8000 more when you flop your set and double up, offering you combined implied and pot odds of ~15-1. However using baltostar's theory your risk is actually 10800/2000 or ~5-1 so it would be a fold.

This is obviously a very artificial example but it seems the simplest way of pointing out the major flaw in baltostar's thinking.

[NHFunkii]

baltostar, at one point you recommended that someone take an intro probability course
as I have taken an intro probability course, can you explain to me what 'better quality variance' is?

[baltostar]

[ QUOTE ]
baltostar, at one point you recommended that someone take an intro probability course
as I have taken an intro probability course, can you explain to me what 'better quality variance' is?

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On the avg hand risk distribution curve, if your strategy involves adding variance to move your mean to the right (because right-skew comes along with the variance), then better quality variance is an achievable shape that better improves your mean.

I think that the flood of similar-styled players is causing the tails to get too long and fat and is reducing the amount of skew. I think that if you avoid pursuing lines that tend to scale to allin in the most marginal perceived cEV+ scenarios that you can slim-down the tails and get back some of the skew.

[JammyDodga]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
baltostar, at one point you recommended that someone take an intro probability course
as I have taken an intro probability course, can you explain to me what 'better quality variance' is?

[/ QUOTE ]

On the avg hand risk distribution curve, if your strategy involves adding variance to move your mean to the right (because right-skew comes along with the variance), then better quality variance is an achievable shape that better improves your mean.

I think that the flood of similar-styled players is causing the tails to get too long and fat and is reducing the amount of skew. I think that if you avoid pursuing lines that tend to scale to allin in the most marginal perceived cEV+ scenarios that you can slim-down the tails and get back some of the skew.

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LOL! Ask and you shall recieve!

[Bakes]

Whoa holy ish! Baltostar is STILL TALKING! cuz all I can see is

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*** You are ignoring this user ***

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[PrayingMantis]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
baltostar, at one point you recommended that someone take an intro probability course
as I have taken an intro probability course, can you explain to me what 'better quality variance' is?

[/ QUOTE ]


On the avg hand risk distribution curve, if your strategy involves adding variance to move your mean to the right (because right-skew comes along with the variance), then better quality variance is an achievable shape that better improves your mean.

I think that the flood of similar-styled players is causing the tails to get too long and fat and is reducing the amount of skew. I think that if you avoid pursuing lines that tend to scale to allin in the most marginal perceived cEV+ scenarios that you can slim-down the tails and get back some of the skew.

[/ QUOTE ]

[LuckyLloyd]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
baltostar, at one point you recommended that someone take an intro probability course
as I have taken an intro probability course, can you explain to me what 'better quality variance' is?

[/ QUOTE ]

On the avg hand risk distribution curve, if your strategy involves adding variance to move your mean to the right (because right-skew comes along with the variance), then better quality variance is an achievable shape that better improves your mean.

I think that the flood of similar-styled players is causing the tails to get too long and fat and is reducing the amount of skew. I think that if you avoid pursuing lines that tend to scale to allin in the most marginal perceived cEV+ scenarios that you can slim-down the tails and get back some of the skew.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh for ffs. Enough already.

[baltostar]

[ QUOTE ]
Baltostar, your idea of

"If a decision criteria for playing across event risk is to be useful, it should not incur radical swings in validity when successively applied to similar scenarios."

Doesn't actualy aply in your min-raising battle example.

You assume that our criteria is simply "cost-to-call" so that in your minraising example we would just stack off with a drawing hand. But thats not actually what we are saying.

We say, consider cost to call, if you are closing the action, that's all you need to think about.

If you aren't closing the action, make an educated guess (we are allowed those in poker, and most of us are quite good at them) as to what chance you have of actually seing a flop.

So in your min raisng example, the first time it would come around we'd go, hmm cheap call, I have the odds, chance of guy behind me re-raising is reasonably low, and I have good odds, lets call.

The second time around, we'd go, WTF, these guys are stuck in some kind of min-raising battle, I don't want to be in the middle of it, my immediate cost to call is low, but I'm not closing the action, and my chance of seeing a flop cheaply has just gone way down, I'll fold.

If you don't get it the second time, you'd definitely get it the third and only an absolute moron would stack off using our criteria here.

SO our criteria does work in your min-raising example, as people have already pointed out. As this seems to be the only thing you argument is relying on, you really need to respond to this specifically.

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Good analysis Jammy.

The point I'm trying to make is not that we should throw away cost-to-call in favor of total-cost when calculating implied odds, or that we shouldn't involve other considerations. Yeah, if they min re-raise each other it's a probably a good read that they're both trying to suck each other in, and we should bail.

What you want out of an implied odds calculation given is an decent idea of whether the relative reward/risk is worth it (relative to other opportunities).

When my goal is to either hit the flop hard or abandon, I find it useful to calculate implied odds given based on total cost.

It's not a strict rule, just a guideline, just as calculating based on cost-to-call should also be.

Someone else mentioned that if you know that his min-raise means AA, and you know he'll stack, then using total-cost to calculate implied odds is useless. That's true. But I don't recommend using total-cost if you can make that additional read.

I find calculating implied odds based on total-cost is useful to prevent you from whittling down your stack-utility on sub-par set/FD/SD-mining opportunities.

Many times in a tourney, I've calc'd (and re-calc'd if raised) implied odds on many hands and then I felt I had to make the call because it was correct according to the math. Then at some point I notice my stack-utility has been frittered away and I wish I'd only paid the minimum for each set/FD/SD-mining opportunity.

I'm just trying to figure out ways to avoid getting yourself in trouble, to protect yourself from yourself.