Difficult Decisions, Bad Designs (Pooh-Bah?)

[Spellmen]

Great post, great analogy. I can't count how many times I've been put to a tough turn or river decision that would have been so much easier and cheaper had I taken a defined line on the flop or pf

[Fallen Hero]

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There are lots of similar situations where playing in the way that gives you the simplest decisions later in the hand is the way that forces your opponents to fold any worse hands and call or raise with better ones. That's what makes them simple: we know exactly where we stand. But every time we play in a way to get them to call or raise us with worse hands, we are doing better, even if this makes our subsequent decisions much harder.

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this is exactly what I meant

[maddog2030]

To those who are disagreeing with the idea in general:

You try not to put yourself in difficult situations because this opens you up to making mistakes. Hopefully you can see why making mistakes to avoid difficult situations isn't consistent with this idea.

[Fallen Hero]

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To those who are disagreeing with the idea in general:

You try not to put yourself in difficult situations because this opens you up to making mistakes. Hopefully you can see why making mistakes to avoid difficult situations isn't consistent with this idea.

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the problem is that we don't play poker alone. That's why the analogy doesn't work, because when you make your decisions easier you usually (and usually is an important word here, it's obvious that there are situations where you can make your life easier with no drawback and you should take advantage of those) make your opponents decisions easier too.

[dd323]

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Grunch, Huh? Your decision in the first example is much clearer, in the second you have no idea where you stand...

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The LAG check-minraised the paired flop & kept pushing. What could he have that I beat?

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Q [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], any two hearts QTo, any two cards trying to make you fold your J. You played the hand like a donkey plays a jack and I think your are ahead of his range.

[dd323]

I think the original example was much better.

[Jamougha]

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Grunch, Huh? Your decision in the first example is much clearer, in the second you have no idea where you stand...

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The LAG check-minraised the paired flop & kept pushing. What could he have that I beat?

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He could have ace-jack, for example, value betting against your worse J/fd.

In the original hand you turn your cards face up on the turn. Since he must know you have a 9, he has at least a 9 himself when he 3-bets. In the contrived example your line is consistent with a J, a draw or a 9, so he can easily be value betting a worse hand. You gain value because he's betting into you with a wider range of hands, but you can't tell where you stand.

[maddog2030]

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[ QUOTE ]
To those who are disagreeing with the idea in general:

You try not to put yourself in difficult situations because this opens you up to making mistakes. Hopefully you can see why making mistakes to avoid difficult situations isn't consistent with this idea.

[/ QUOTE ]

the problem is that we don't play poker alone. That's why the analogy doesn't work, because when you make your decisions easier you usually (and usually is an important word here, it's obvious that there are situations where you can make your life easier with no drawback and you should take advantage of those) make your opponents decisions easier too.

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This is true, almost by definition, only if you made a mistake earlier in the hand.

[bilbo-san]

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There are lots of similar situations where playing in the way that gives you the simplest decisions later in the hand is the way that forces your opponents to fold any worse hands and call or raise with better ones. That's what makes them simple: we know exactly where we stand. But every time we play in a way to get them to call or raise us with worse hands, we are doing better, even if this makes our subsequent decisions much harder.

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this is exactly what I meant

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This is very true.

What many people forget, however, is that some hands are SO marginal that making our decisions easier is far more likely to be profitable for us than disguising our hands (to get more value), simply because we are in far greater danger of making a mistake than a Villain is (if we play to maximize value).

[poincaraux]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
To those who are disagreeing with the idea in general:

You try not to put yourself in difficult situations because this opens you up to making mistakes. Hopefully you can see why making mistakes to avoid difficult situations isn't consistent with this idea.

[/ QUOTE ]

the problem is that we don't play poker alone. That's why the analogy doesn't work, because when you make your decisions easier you usually (and usually is an important word here, it's obvious that there are situations where you can make your life easier with no drawback and you should take advantage of those) make your opponents decisions easier too.

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My point may be a little different from what other folks are saying. In the process of teaching myself to play poker, I'd like to learn the easy things first. Then, I can use those as a reference and know, explicitly, why I'm doing harder things. Things like "if you'd just bet 3/4-pot instead of 1/3-pot on the turn, you'd be getting instacalling odds now, rather than trying to figure out exactly what his range is and how often he's bluffing."