Useful frameworks or things to factor

[asg]

-What hand do you put your opponent on?
Based off of:
Betting pattern
Past play
Gut feel
Timing (careful)
Texture of the flop
Experience (is the player smart enough to make this type of play?)

-Are the pot odds correct?
Even if you’re pretty sure he’s bluffing, is the amount of chips necessary to make a play worth it if you’re wrong?

-What type of opponent am I playing against? What strategy should I take to most effectively beat him? How can I maximize extraction?

-Anything I can take advantage of? For example:
He calls too much OOP
He limps on the button too often
He plays too straightforward
He has a definite betting pattern
He is too aggressive/passive
He is tilted, drunk, or high

-Do I have to take pots or can I patiently wait for them to come to me?

I wrote this in a hurry and probably left out a ton. Please comment on this and add your own insight. Thanks =)


HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL!!!

[Nudge]

Good list! Was actually planning to write an identical list later today, thanks for the pointers

[asg]

bump...i feel this thread could use more love

[cwar]

This is a fantastic idea, Ive been thinking about writing something similar myself for a long time but its SOO hard to quantify these things. I think it would really be valuable to figure out how strongly you should weight these factors because invariable the human brain is so poor at weighting % and such we MUST be making mistakes in spots like these. I think the largest problem with deciphering these issues is that we need a concrete way to quantify them, Ill think about it for now, any ideas for that should be welcome.

I think its an especially hard thing to quantify because most good poker players have a really good "feel" for how to weight them but its infinitely hard to explain and certainly even these good players are making serious mistakes.

[daveT]

I believe that the first step that every new player must learn is how to play against a completely random hand.

It takes sitting down with a pen and paper, doing some math (shocking, I know), and figuring out your hand versus your other opponent's hands, combination of ranges, etc. Baisic game theory is not too difficult. And when I say basic gt, I am talking about pot-odds, reverse implied pot odds, and pot equity.

The reason is that in the low limits, you are playing against people that cannot lay down a hand.

Step two is learning how to play in a random fashion. This is vital because you cannot out-think a random object. Although your opponent is not random, his cards are, and if he is playing everything, or even 80% of his hands, you may as well be playing versus a random hand. In order to maximize your profit against a random hand, you must play in a random fashion yourself.

Learning these two things are vital, and that is why I always suggest learning to play Limit. To be honest most NL players never get these concepts, and that is why they are forever stuck in low limits, losing.

[cwar]

Rarely in poker will you ever be against a random hand IMO but I do agree the first thing someone learning poker should do is learn how to play ABC straight forward poker in a winning style.

I believe asq is talking learning how to interpret the information we get as players and interpret in a concrete way as opposed to the way we all do it, subjectively.

[mjws00]

Poor players are anything but random. A wide range is something we exploit with position and on later streets. At low levels there are tons of holes that should be easy to spot and quantify. I don't think a simple or even complex framework will be able to find the small edges, but we should be able to spot large ones.

I think this could be a brilliant project, and it is definately something I've considered a lot. My thought was to go street by street considering their range, past actions, and bet size. We are creatures of habit, and poor players are especially inept as recognizing how much information they give away.

Basics I'd consider Preflop:
Range on button, Range in bb, Difference in range sb bb, Calling range bb vs (limp, min, 2x, 3x, 4x+), 3bet range (bb) vs (l,min,2x,3x 4x), rrai freq and cards, limp rr freq and cards, exact hands bet/limped (1x,2x,3x 4x+), shove freq and cards (lots show), was bet higher than or lower than avg and cards what other hands were played like this.

On the flop:
We consider all the same betting raising patterns, but we have to add frequency based on hands and draws hit. In addition we need to consider pf action and related patterns. Things like bet size as it relates to semi-bluffs, in relation to made hand strength, betsize as it relates to board texture, cbet frequency and size trends in comparison to hand strength, etc... But there are still basic essentials that could easily be analyzed by a player in concert with common tools.

Obviously as we consider more detail and we must on later streets. It becomes more difficult for a human to keep up, but a HUD could show us a lot and break it out realtime easily. Next Gen tracking like Holdem Manager, PT3, capture and store much of this additional information. Even if we could only spot 10 major leaks or confirm a players subjective 'feel' and analysis of common HUD stats it would be a powerful tool.

A few programs attempt to show holes and fundamental errors in play (chasing bad odds, loose calls etc) but I haven't seen one tailored for HU. It's tough to build a framework to win HUNL autonomously but it isn't tough to give a decent player better information to increase thier edge. For beginners it provides fundamentals and a framework for what must be studied.

Mike

[daveT]

A large portion of playing 5/10/20 SNGs is seeing people call with A-high, middle pair, a draw, a set, two pair, etc. It is mandatory to understand the base-line exploitation against these kind of calling plays. If you play incorrectly, you will force your opponent's mistakes to become profitable.

I don't really know what to expect at the 100s, but I imagine that a good player learns the basics of these plays, and how to best exploit them. The learning curve would seem, to me at least, be dictated by how well you can play versus a broad assumption of tendencies and adjust from there.

By "random" I mean that many players will call pf with ATC, then about 60% of the time, they will call on the flop. Regardless, it is impossible to put these players on a hand.

I think we all agree with the goal, but disagree with on the foundation.

[mjws00]

They are only calling with ATC in response to your current bet size. If it is truly ATC then just shove a strong hand... guess what. They will fold. So it isn't ATC. Same on the flop. Your Cbet just hasn't hit their fold threshold, or they are overvaluing their holding. Both scenarios are exploitable, both allow us to play optimally and put opponents on a range. We can further narrow that range in response to our flop action and we still have two more streets.

Obviously you apply the framework to the population as a whole to determine baselines, and a particular opponents variance from it. In addition you look for errors and suboptimal plays.

You sound like a .01/.02 player that believes it is unbeatable because they 'call with anything'. Hand reading is definately an art, but it is NOT more difficult at these levels. These players seldom mix up their play, they telegraph with their bet sizes, and they are extremely predictable. People find them difficult because they don't adjust and end up over playing hands while behind. In HU our ranges are so much wider this can lead to huge postflop errors. El loose passive (call with any piece) donk makes comparitively small errors (at the cost of value), and simply allows you to hang yourself, especially if you are hyper aggressive and you can't read their hand.

Where is the disagreement on foundation? We are tailoring a solution against a specific set of opponents and building a basic beginners framework. Profiling, and exploiting specific weaknesses are pretty much all there is.

The challenge is that our edge (assuming you can actually read a hand) is increased dramatically on later streets where we can utilize additional information better than our opponents. Unfortunately factoring these scenarios and relating them to prior action, opponents variance from the mean, and our current strength involves considering thousands and thousands of variables which makes it tough to code and difficult to put into a framework a human could manage in realtime. Additionally if our opponent can adjust, or tilts, our framework must allow for that, and there is no statistical clue for a concrete framework to use.

We know how to do this intuitively, it is a matter of quantifying and expressing it. At this point while other forms of poker have standard plays, and fundamentals well documented HUNL is largely left up to 'feel'. Point blank the better players on here could sit down, play ABC, and absolutely crush the low levels. Documenting that play and thought process is the intent.

Mike

[daveT]

Please familiarize yourself with the posters before you write this kind of stuff:

"You sound like a .01/.02 player that believes it is unbeatable because they 'call with anything'"

[ QUOTE ]
They are only calling with ATC in response to your current bet size. If it is truly ATC then just shove a strong hand... guess what. They will fold

[/ QUOTE ]

This is plainly obvious, except in extreme cases. But then you continue with this:

[ QUOTE ]
Your Cbet just hasn't hit their fold threshold

[/ QUOTE ]

And poker is all about bluffing? I have never won a game on a bluff. It is about extracting value.

[ QUOTE ]
These players seldom mix up their play, they telegraph with their bet sizes, and they are extremely predictable

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why people are getting so confused. There is so much talk about "hand reading" when in reality the game is about making decisions.

You agree in one sentence that if you want to play, you must force them to call with bad hands, yet in the next, you want them to fold these bad hands so they can become more predictable.

You can't have it both ways.

If you are going to extract the most moneys from these opponents, you must be willing to force them to make bad calls with random hands, and learn how to extract the most based on these assumptions. There is no hand reading here.

[ QUOTE ]
Where is the disagreement on foundation?

[/ QUOTE ]

Two sentences later, you answer your own question.

[ QUOTE ]
Profiling, and exploiting specific weaknesses are pretty much all there is.

[/ QUOTE ]

And then:

[ QUOTE ]
fundamentals well documented HUNL is largely left up to 'feel'.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do experienced poker players expect a new player to have this ability?

[ QUOTE ]
Point blank the better players on here could sit down, play ABC....

[/ QUOTE ]

And yet, your entire post is based on NOT playing ABC poker.