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  #21  
Old 11-26-2007, 06:20 PM
Heisenb3rg Heisenb3rg is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

RZK, the reason these exploitable folds can be made,
is my range isnt very strong compared to his on this river and very few opponents are capable of bluffing the river with one pair to fold out top pair.

Since the worst hands in my range are top pair right now
and the worst hands in his range is bottom pair, all of those factors must be true..

It's just not something people do, so I thought an exploitable fold was correct in this situation.

Ive also debated in many threads about optimality with ILP... it'll go no where [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

My opinion is that we should play as to exploit the opponent to the best of our abilitites.
If we are unsure of what our opponents are capable of, or if they may be better than us, we should strive to play as optimal as possible.

I also think its very important to be aware of the "optimal play" in most situations, because it gives you a starting point to figure out how much you wish to deviate, in order to exploit your opponnent.. How much you should deviate from the optimal strategy can be derived from how much they deviate from the optimal strategy.
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  #22  
Old 11-26-2007, 07:24 PM
ILOVEPOKER929 ILOVEPOKER929 is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

"ILP,i think some of our disagreement comes from semantics but some is conceptual. i think your disagreement with this statement comes from our different understanding of the word optimal. whenever i say "optimal" i always mean it in the formal game-theoretic sense. with this in mind, i think you'll agree that the above statement is pretty obvious."


Perhaps your right that this could be a semantics issue. When I play poker I dont resort to a game theory perspective. I simply try to make the best play possible at every stage of the hand given my reads and my accumulated knowledge of the game. I know all the "standard" lines. Figuring out when and how to deviate from any putative line is what makes this game fun and challanging.


"i think i do. i understand that an exploitable play is not the same as a bad play. when you are playing against a bad player the best strategy is usually a very exploitable one. but for this hand it's important to keep in mind that (a) heis is very far from the type of player who you would want to find "where you can be as exploitable as possible and get away with it"

I disagree. Heisen is exploitable, youre exploitable, I am exploitable. Almost all players are exploitable. The trick is figuring out how one is exploitable and using that information to your advantage.

"and (b) he himself shouldn't consistently be making such exploitable plays as folding to a river raise with 39% of his range against observant opponents because they will start bluff-raising him to death with any two cards. this second point is what my quoted statement was about."

This sounds like an appeal to fear. Ive never worried about people bluff raising me in the future just cuz I made a good fold. Heisen make this river fold becuz he felt like it was the right play against this opponent on that board in this situation. It doesnt matter if you call such and such play exploitable, if Heisen think's its the right play given the information he has at his disposal then he should go with it.

"my point is that his play is consistent both with a top pair type hand and a flush draw, so i think it's misleading to say that a river card that completes a flush is unlikely to have helped him. i guess "unlikely" could mean very different things."

No unlikely means unlikely. This river card is much more likely to help OP than Heisen. I know Heisen can have a flush but this hand type should still be significantly discounted cuz we cant assume Heisen will check/raise with a turned flushdraw 100% of the time in a spot where it appears he has very little fold equity.



"these two quotes are really about the same thing and may be our biggest point of disagreement. it is easy to show that (unless you are planning an elaborate b/3b bluff) _in a optimal strategy_ you should reserve your bluffs for hopeless hands."

No, you should reserve your bluffs for those times you think bluffing is the right play.

"indeed, when you are bluffing, an optimal opponent will fold just enough for the ev of a bluff to be exactly 0. so as long as there exists a play with ev>0 you should make it instead. in our case that play is calling."

I have never played against an optimal opponent before.

"the perspective "that we already have to commit one bet on the river means we are now getting much better odds on a bluff raise" is flawed because compared to bluffing with a hopeless hand there are now less _better_ hands that will fold."

Um, Hiesen is gonna have the same range here whether we have a hopeless hand or a calling hand. The fact that we already have a calling hand does mean we are getting better odds on a bluff. The range of hands were trying to fold is the same whether we have a calling hand or a folding hand.

"against a non-optimal opponent sometimes bluff-raising with a calling hand may be better than calling, but in that case bluff-raising with a hopeless hand would be _way_ better than folding."

This statement cannot be correct. There will be times when bluff/raising with a calling hand will be more profitable than bluff/raising with a folding hand.

"overall, i wanna say that one _should_ care what optimal plays are, even if the correct strategy is to sometimes make non-optimal ones. if you have a good idea where optimality lies you can make more informed decisions about how, when, and whether to deviate from it and you will also be much better equipped to find exploitable traits in your opponents.

Yes I agree with what you are saying as far as knowing all the standard lines is a very important prerequisite for learning when to take the nonstandard lines. I prefer to skip this tedious conceptual step of thinking in terms of "standard/nonstandard and optimal/nonoptimal" becuz these terms can belie what were trying to accomplish at the table, and that is simply to make as much money as possible. That's why I just divide all hands into money lines and non-money lines. There is only one money line for every hand you play and the key or fun is in finding it.
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  #23  
Old 11-26-2007, 08:17 PM
sethypooh21 sethypooh21 is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

This is so table flow and image dependent. Heis IS a candidate for this play because he CAN both have and fold a marginal 1 pair hand here given the action. I think I have done something like this to him on occasion but only if in the course of the session, I'd taken a similar line with the hand I was actually representing here on several occasions.

As an aside, this is a spot where your actual hand matters almost zero%, because if you have evaluated the situation correctly, he's calling your raise with a worse hand almost never. If you've evaluated the situation incorrectly, just type "SHANIA" in the chat box and move along...
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  #24  
Old 11-26-2007, 08:26 PM
waffle waffle is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

[ QUOTE ]

In general, it is game-theoretically suboptimal to raise with calling hands.


[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm.. that's good.. but how we do know what a raising hand is and what a calling hand is? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]


[ QUOTE ]

_in a optimal strategy_ you should reserve your bluffs for hopeless hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

What "hopeless" hands will our hero have in his range after the action sequence occuring from the beginning of the hand to us facing Heisen's river bet?
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  #25  
Old 11-26-2007, 08:45 PM
Tryptamean Tryptamean is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

ILP: I like your word choices. I like the terms money line/non-money line. That is clear. People use the term optimal way too loosely imo which causes all sorts of confusion. Optimal implies money/+EV/etc, but thats not the case if villian is exploitable. Exploitable also implies that its a bad/losing play, which is not always the case.

As an aside, when speaking about being game-theory optimal, is there even such a thing as an 'optimal line'? Doesn't game theory tell you to do every single action x% of the time? So as soon as somebody recommends a specific line, they are already tossing game theory out the window and looking at the specific situation?
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  #26  
Old 11-26-2007, 09:02 PM
waffle waffle is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

[ QUOTE ]

People use the term optimal way too loosely imo which causes all sorts of confusion. Optimal implies money/+EV/etc, but thats not the case if villian is exploitable. Exploitable also implies that its a bad/losing play, which is not always the case.


[/ QUOTE ]

Exploitable doesn't mean it's bad play or a losing play. I think this board has generally decided to follow the definition of 'optimal' and 'exploitable' as used in the <u>Mathematics of Poker</u>. Neither have emotional value (bad/good) and they have clear definitions. I think they should be used.

[ QUOTE ]

As an aside, when speaking about being game-theory optimal, is there even such a thing as an 'optimal line'? Doesn't game theory tell you to do every single action x% of the time? So as soon as somebody recommends a specific line, they are already tossing game theory out the window and looking at the specific situation?


[/ QUOTE ]

No. In HE, because most ranges have so many hands in them, most hands can play "Pure" strategies. Hands on the border play mixed strategies.

In other words, you can often use your kicker to balance your play. If you have ace high in a certain situation and you've decided you only want to call down with ace high some of the time, you might call down with AK,AQ,AJ and fold others (if they're in your range.)

For a simple example (that makes no sense in context of a game), let's stay your range after an arbitrary action range is:

A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 AT AJ AQ AK

"Optimal" strategy might be:

AK-AQ: Raise/Call
AJ: 50%: Raise/Call 50%: Call
AT-A6: Call
A5: 80%: Raise/Fold 20%: Fold
A4-A2: Fold

Just because you recommend a specific line it doesn't mean you are tossing game theory out the window.
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  #27  
Old 11-26-2007, 09:13 PM
Tryptamean Tryptamean is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

aha, well perhaps 'all sorts of confusion' is just me personally heh. i should probably get around to finally reading that book.
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  #28  
Old 11-26-2007, 09:38 PM
TheHip41 TheHip41 is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

heis range on the turn is AA-QQ, AJ, KJ, QJ, JT, or possibly top set or middle set, but unlikely he has a set.

Hands that heis is calling a river raise with that are in his range:


exactly.

A tag that is playing well "can't" call this river. Every draw got there, and the TAG, Heis, knows his opponent knows his wtsd down is 5000.

This hand is so pretty.
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  #29  
Old 11-26-2007, 09:43 PM
Heisenb3rg Heisenb3rg is offline
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Default Re: River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

[ QUOTE ]


What "hopeless" hands will our hero have in his range after the action sequence occuring from the beginning of the hand to us facing Heisen's river bet?

[/ QUOTE ]

A pair of 4/6's.. Possibly worth a call down on the turn because of semi bluffs in my range. Once the river card hits, its a hopeless hand.

Great now I think my WTSD is going to go to 46% after this thread..
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