Bryce is "In the Well"

[The Bryce]

[ QUOTE ]
I have to queestions regarding HU limit holdem.

1. In which situations and under what circumstances do you find donking the flop after having called the preflop raise to be a good play.

2. In which situations and under what circumstances do you find checking behind on the flop after having raised preflop from the sb to be a good play.

[/ QUOTE ]

I kind of have to give the cliff notes version here, but:

1. When I have a made hand and leading is likely to induce action / to mess with my opponents. Note that in small pots in LHE bluffs have to succeed quite often and in a situation where a bluff succeeds 50% a check-raise is no more expensive than a lead, since the times your bluff fails you win an additional bet and the times your bluff fails you loose an additional bet. Even in situations where your bluff succeeds less often what often happens is people are much more likely to retaliate against a lead than a c/r, so a c/r ends up being the much more profitable play.

2. Checking behind is often only a good idea if you have a weak hand and are quite likely to induce action with a check, if you have a hand that you cannot bet for value (eg. JJ on a KQ2 flop) or if you cannot win the pot unimproved (eg. opponent is a maniac).

[dying2win]

yay,

my question is,

can you tell me everything you know about TexasLimitKing. he crushed the biggest limit games on ftp for a few million i think. did you ever play him? why was he so successful? did u ever talk to him outside of poker? what was so different about his style that made him such a big deal? any idea what he does now?

also - where do you see the big limit games going within the next few years? do you think they will dry up completely?

thanks

[The Bryce]

[ QUOTE ]
yay,

my question is,

can you tell me everything you know about TexasLimitKing. he crushed the biggest limit games on ftp for a few million i think. did you ever play him? why was he so successful? did u ever talk to him outside of poker? what was so different about his style that made him such a big deal? any idea what he does now?

also - where do you see the big limit games going within the next few years? do you think they will dry up completely?

thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

TLK's nosebleed play preceded me by about a year, so I never had any experience playing with him.

Hard to say about where high stakes LHE goes in the future. I doubt you'll ever see much 6max action at bleeder levels. Right now we have about 5-6 players playing bleeders HU a couple days a week, so it's actually a pretty healthy environment, but obviously that's a pretty volatile field. Right now David is stimulating a lot of the high stakes action in that he's encouraging a lot of other players to come out and take shots (many of which, ironically, are weaker players than David), so if he packs it in things may slow down.

[volcano1976]

1- Were you " Ifustigateyou " at Party ?

2- Why dont you play Hoss hu ?

[The Bryce]

[ QUOTE ]
1- Were you " Ifustigateyou " at Party ?

2- Why dont you play Hoss hu ?

[/ QUOTE ]

1. No.
2. Well, I should maybe take a poke at him sometime here to get an idea of what he's like (I haven't played much against him). That being said, even if I turned out to be a small favorite I likely wouldn't play if the edge was very thin.

[TheMetetron]

The Bryce,

Just a comment. Your approach of asking for an hour-long video from your students with commentary and then your coaching sessions consisting of you watching that video and writing your comments down to send back to your student make me want to seriously reconsider coaching again. That sounds like a good way for someone to learn.

[piggity]

Hello Bryce,

One of the top Go players in the world once remarked that if there were a "perfect" (i.e., game theoretically optimal) Go player, he would estimate that he'd need a 4-stone handicap to play against him.

My question is, if you were pitted against optimal LHE opponents (either a table full of them in full ring or just one in a HU match), what would you estimate your EV to be? In other words, how far off from an optimal player do you think your current knowledge places you?

Thanks.

[Kyle]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello Bryce,

One of the top Go players in the world once remarked that if there were a "perfect" (i.e., game theoretically optimal) Go player, he would estimate that he'd need a 4-stone handicap to play against him.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was actually having a similar discussion with a friend of mine tonight.

Bryce correct me if I am wrong here but doesn't a GT optimal line yield an EV of 0? i.e it keeps you from being exploited but also keeps you from exploiting another player?

So if the above statement is correct then wouldn't +EV play always be exploitative?

[The Bryce]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hello Bryce,

One of the top Go players in the world once remarked that if there were a "perfect" (i.e., game theoretically optimal) Go player, he would estimate that he'd need a 4-stone handicap to play against him.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was actually having a similar discussion with a friend of mine tonight.

Bryce correct me if I am wrong here but doesn't a GT optimal line yield an EV of 0? i.e it keeps you from being exploited but also keeps you from exploiting another player?

So if the above statement is correct then wouldn't +EV play always be exploitative?

[/ QUOTE ]

Regarding the last statement, that's correct. "Optimal play" is sometimes used as two different terms. Some people use it to describe game theory perfect play which is EV neutral (I usually refer to this as game theory optimal, or GTO play, which can be good for shutting opponents down in areas where they are strong). Usually when I use the term optimal play I mean applying the best possible line to the most accurate assumptions possible (always a tricky point to define this, since it's a non-deductive process, so it's never 100%) yielding the highest average rate of return.

Now, to answer the first question, I'm not entirely sure. I'm familiar with what balanced play looks like in a lot of areas and can shut a lot of spots down, but my understanding of many of the larger areas is far from comprehensive. The reason it's hard to give a solid answer on this is that, since all this isn't quantified yet, there's always the potential for some stuff I don't know I don't know (as opposed to stuff I know I don't know) that could throw things way out of whack.

To give you an idea, though, I'm still learning new stuff every day.

[chesterboy]

hmm i'm not sure i get the using game theory to shut a spot down thing.

Maybe you could for example explain how to use game theory to shut down an opponent that is 3 betting a lot preflop?