paradox of poker decisions

[alphatmw]

something i just thought of.

the harder the decision is in poker, the more even the decisions must be EV-wise. is this true? if so, doesn't that mean the most difficult decisions are also the least important ones?

[AKQJ10]

Pretty much, yes.

But once you learn the easy decisions, pretty much everyone in a tough game is going to make them correctly. So to beat a tough game, you're going to have to make more marginally correct decisions than your opponent.

[JaredL]

Depends.

Sometimes your opponent played it oddly so it takes a while to determien her range. If you had a lot of time, the decision might not be that close.

Most of the time you're probably right.

BTW I have thought this before about life decisions. For example, people spend a ton of time thinking about which school to go to. At the end of the day it probably matters a lot in terms of how their life turns out, but they would probably be about equally happy either way.

[SplawnDarts]

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something i just thought of.

the harder the decision is in poker, the more even the decisions must be EV-wise. is this true? if so, doesn't that mean the most difficult decisions are also the least important ones?

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Not sure this is true. There are decisions that are hard because they're very close. IMO getting those "right" is usually unimportant. In fact, there tend to be overriding meta-concerns other than pure EV for that hand that decide which way you should go.

Then there are decisions that are hard because there's not enough information. Those often are NOT nearly EV neutral, and getting them right is the difference between a good player and a great one.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the great players of the game did not get there by accumlating small edges. They did it by making use of large edges no one else was able to get at.

[AKQJ10]

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Then there are decisions that are hard because there's not enough information. Those often are NOT nearly EV neutral, and getting them right is the difference between a good player and a great one.

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I get your point, and a good-to-great player will be observing and obtaining more information for the decision. It might tilt a marginal decision in the right way. But against other good players, those decisions will still be marginal.

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I think it's pretty safe to say that the great players of the game did not get there by accumlating small edges.

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I don't think that's self-evident at all. Obviously some people like Hellmuth claim an extraordinarily strong intuitive ability to read people, and they may be right. But Hellmuth doesn't read every strong opponent like a book.

In my view an extraordinarily strong intuition means you get a 50-50 decision right 55% percent of the time, maybe. Over time that extra 5% adds up!

[ottsville]

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There are decisions that are hard because they're very close. IMO getting those "right" is usually unimportant.

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I wouldn't totally discount the value of pushing small edges. Match up several players who are of the same general skill level and the one who is willing to push small edges will be the larger winner over time(all other things being equal).

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Then there are decisions that are hard because there's not enough information. Those often are NOT nearly EV neutral, and getting them right is the difference between a good player and a great one.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the great players of the game did not get there by accumlating small edges. They did it by making use of large edges no one else was able to get at.

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IMO the truly great players are the ones who can get at edges no one else can get at, but are also capable of pushing small edges.

[SplawnDarts]

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I wouldn't totally discount the value of pushing small edges. Match up several players who are of the same general skill level and the one who is willing to push small edges will be the larger winner over time(all other things being equal).



IMO the truly great players are the ones who can get at edges no one else can get at, but are also capable of pushing small edges.

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I think there's some shady reasoning going on here. Who says I want to be at the same general skill level as my opponents? That seems like an invitation to make little to no money.

In any case, I definitly DON'T think it's the small edges that matter, it's the big ones. For example, snapping off a bluff has a 100% chance of working if you diagnose the situation right, and gets you an entire pot. Whereas correctly figuring out that your draw has a 2% edge with implied odds and playing it instead of folding wins you about a tenth of a bet. Yet snapping off the bluff is the more advanced skill, and doing it right once makes as much money as a weeks worth of correct few % implied odds decisions at the same limits.

[jipster]

i have an example: Omaha hi PL playing KKQQ

The flop came down A 10 3 (suits dont matter)

Now i checked and my man bet into me....

Now one figures (if he doesnt have AAA) that i have 8 outs; 4 jacks for a straight and 2 each of k and q for trips...

My thinking was as follows... if i Hit the J i dont get paid cos we either split he folds

Also if i hit the q or k i probably still dont get paid cos again i have the blockers on the hand that would pay me..

I dont know if this is a great example (i hapenned to feel my opponent was weak)... but i figured 3 differing views:

Optimist: I hit and get paid
Pessimist: I hit and still lose
Poker Player/Realist: IF i hit; im unlikely to get paid.

I folded.

These decisions come up all the time; esp at omaha.... at holdem it usually comes down to when you have a mediocre hand (top pair bad kicker/ medium pair etc) and all you can beat is a bluff on the end...

Flop decisions are easier i find; you either commit or dont if your a small/medium stack... big stack play is different again... position etc all have bearings on whether a slightly +ve or -ve EV decision actually trabslates to a large +ev decision.

[AKQJ10]

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For example, snapping off a bluff has a 100% chance of working if you diagnose the situation right, and gets you an entire pot. Whereas correctly figuring out that your draw has a 2% edge with implied odds and playing it instead of folding wins you about a tenth of a bet. Yet snapping off the bluff is the more advanced skill, and doing it right once makes as much money as a weeks worth of correct few % implied odds decisions at the same limits.

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But you're missing the point by thinking of snapping off a bluff as a binary, right-or-wrong decision.

What if there's a 33% chance your opponent is bluffing, and you estimate it at 35%, but your other opponents in the same situation estimate it as 20% and 50% respectively? You'll make more right decisions than your opponents, but you won't be right anything close to 100% of the time.

If 97% of your decisions regarding bluff detection are correct, then sure, you have a huge edge that will make you a fortune. But no one reads people that well. And good players don't "always bluff" or "never bluff" in a given situation.

But what about tells? If someone has a really blatant tell, so bad that you're certain of what to do, they can't beat the stakes they're playing at in live play and most perceptive opponents will pick it up. But if they have only a small tell, that tell's probably not 100% reliable. It might help you guess right on 60% of your "bluff or no bluff" decisions instead of 50%. Again, that's a small edge that will add up.

If there's some 96% reliable tell from a third party that, say, Phil Ivey picks up but Todd Brunson doesn't, then that constitutes a huge edge for Ivey. In that sense I grant your point as plausible. Though I don't play poker with experts and am certainly not an expert myself, I don't get the impression most of their decisions work like that. In the context of the OP, I'm sure that when such a tell exists Ivey would say that the decision was "easy" for him at the time, even though developing the observational skills necessary probably wouldn't be easy (or even possible) for most of us. The latter is just your point as I take it.

I maintain that it's wrong see bluff catching as an always-right-or-always-wrong decision. In reality, it's a question of estimating probabilities, and he who estimates best will win most.

Good topic and good comments by all.

[SplawnDarts]

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But you're missing the point by thinking of snapping off a bluff as a binary, right-or-wrong decision.

What if there's a 33% chance your opponent is bluffing, and you estimate it at 35%, but your other opponents in the same situation estimate it as 20% and 50% respectively? You'll make more right decisions than your opponents, but you won't be right anything close to 100% of the time.

If 97% of your decisions regarding bluff detection are correct, then sure, you have a huge edge that will make you a fortune. But no one reads people that well.

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I don't think that's true. At one point, when I was being anal about note taking, I kept track of every binary read I made and whether it was right or not. At low limits (2-5 spread at that time) I was about 85-90% accurate, depending on how you scored some of the more unusual cases where I might have been right for the wrong reason.

Up through 30/60, I was still about 80%, but I had slightly fewer reads where I formed an opinion at all per hour. I compared notes with some other winning players and they thought their percentage was about the same.

If you're playing 30% ball, I would say that's a HUGE weakness.