Play a hand with me (NLTRN)

[HokieGreg]

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Put it this way. I would rather play against the collective minds of 2+2 heads up forum in a $55 game than an unknown opponent, because i'll have such a strong read.

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I'm CERTAIN that this can be arranged.

[Somekid]

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Put it this way. I would rather play against the collective minds of 2+2 heads up forum in a $55 game than an unknown opponent, because i'll have such a strong read.

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This must be wrong. Even if you could claim to be +EV vs. collective forum, I think this would still be wrong.

EDIT: Well, I guess it wouldn't be wrong (since you're stating your preference), but it would certainly be foolish to believe.

[daveT]

Wow. Good reading over the past few days.

[xSCWx]

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Because if he ever reads the 2+2 heads-up at all. He knows our play style, collectly we pretty much TAGs...We raise around 60% preflop, don't ever step out of line especially OOP, take small stabs, keeps pot small unless we have it...etc

He has such a huge read on us even before we played a hand with him that he can easily adjust his play and level of thinking to exploit us.

The last hand was a good example. A bet of 40 in an unraised limp pot Axx flop with these read is easily just a "stab" and his raise would most likely take it down.

Put it this way. I would rather play against the collective minds of 2+2 heads up forum in a $55 game than an unknown opponent, because i'll have such a strong read.

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I'm gonna have to disagree here. The basis for our collective "standard" style may be pretty similar, but I don't think anyone is being very successful by following it mechanically.

I use the "standard" style to judge where my opponents fall (tight, aggressive, loose, passive), because the terms are relative and need a basis of comparison. Based upon how they play in comparison to this style I adapt my game.

I rarely if ever play "standard" for an entire session.

It shouldn't take long before a decent player realizes that you are exploiting their predictable play and starts making moves that are more difficult to follow. I'm not saying that understanding the collective line of thinking wouldn't be an advantage, but the typical $55 player has about 10x the flaws to take advantage of.

[dboy23]

if it looks like he is exploiting our standardness you betta believe we gonna adjust baby.

[Saitoh]

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I'm CERTAIN that this can be arranged.

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And how would you arrange this? I'm not talking about just you or a group of your close friends but the collectively thinking of this forum.

Putting Ego aside, that wasn't the point of my post.

Do you guys not agree that our collectively majority vote CAN be easily exploited by the right villian?

I mean how many of you can tell EXACTLY the action we are going to take, down to amount we bet, in each and every hand before the voting or action is taken?

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I'm not saying that understanding the collective line of thinking wouldn't be an advantage, but the typical $55 player has about 10x the flaws to take advantage of.

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I agree, I might have been a little hasty saying I would rather play the collectively mind than the typical $55 villian. But it doesn't take away from the fact that we are at a huge informational disadvantage here. One that can be easily exploited.

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if it looks like he is exploiting our standardness you betta believe we gonna adjust baby.

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I'm not sure we would adjust by the very nature of a majority vote. All the "standard" action we've taken so far doesn't point to that.

It is much much easier for the one villian to adjust to us, than for our collective to adjust to him. And by the time if/when we do make an adjustment we would already be at a (chip) disadvantage. Moreover any adjustment we make would be "standard"...if that makes any sense [img]/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

Let me put it another way that won't put egos on the defense...

I would put my money on any ONE of you guys who are winning regular poster here (who may very well be this villian), even Hokiegreg [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] in a 1v1 match against the collective vote of the forum.

[TNixon]

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I mean how many of you can tell EXACTLY the action we are going to take, down to amount we bet, in each and every hand before the voting or action is taken?

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Of course we know what action is most likely to be voted on.

We know what the cards are

Villain doesn't know this. And it's not a reversible transformation. If you know the cards, it's easy to predict the action, but you can't necessarily divine the cards, or even the hand strength, from the action. That's why nobody in their right mind recommends varying preflop raise size with hand strength. If you raise the same with AKo and 85s, then the villain has to take both of these possible hands into account.

Yes, the "stab" could be a stab, but unless we're completely retarded, we make the exact same bet when we hit, as well. If villain tries to raise us out of the pot every time we do something that *could* be a stab, he's either going to get caught at some point for a much bigger pot than what we're risking, or we're going to have to make a gutsy move with nothing just so that he can't raise us off from every bet.

I think you're very seriously overestimating the potential for exploitation here. If we play transparently, then there's absolutely a lot of potential. But "standard" is very different from "transparent", and I don't think anything we've done so far has been truly transparent.

[Dromar]

@Saitoh: I seriously don't think he's putting that much thought into it.

@daveT: "Wow. Good reading over the past few days."
Seriously or sarcastically?

When I came back today I was like "How could J[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]6[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] get so much discussion?"

Hand 25

(SB)Hero 1035
(BB)Villain 1965

Hero posts 15, Villain posts 30. Hero has J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].

Hero raises to 75. Villain folds.

Hand 26

(SB)Villain 1935
(BB)Hero 1065

Villain posts 15, Hero posts 30. Hero has 9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].

Villain raises to 80. Hero?

[Dromar]

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I would put my money on any ONE of you guys who are winning regular poster here (who may very well be this villian), even Hokiegreg [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] in a 1v1 match against the collective vote of the forum.

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There is something to be said for this.

"Making moves," for lack of a better name, is a standard part of HU play. But few people make the same moves at the same time. So a vote might occur where 3 people vote raise, since their style is to make a move at that time, while the standard play is to just call/check, which gets 7 votes. And even if a vote goes 2 or 3 ways, all the answers are usually correct to some degree depending on the style of that particular player. Having sound reasoning for a decision is more important than the decision itself.

As a result, our communal play is almost always going to be the "standard" play in a given situation, which really takes away from the quality of our play.

Recently, there's been more discussion regarding our image and Villain's image, and how we should react to it. I think this helps us to "be on the same page," so to speak. But a single person would undoubtedly be able to play a more coherent game than we are/could, because we're combining all our styles, and effectively playing "no style," almost exclusively standard plays.

That said, I don't think this is a futile exercise by any means. Any discussion is good discussion, and while we'll be playing relatively standard comparable to any single person's play, we're still discussing good spots for "making a move," what our result should be, and why it's a good spot to do it. We're also brushing up on our standard plays, and why we make them.

I suggest that, from now on, any voter who deviates from the standard play is encouraged to explain why. There has been a lot more discussion in the past few days than there was in the beginning; keep it up.

[HokieGreg]

I'm honored.