paradox of poker decisions

[NMcNasty]

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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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No, in fact the exact opposite is true. A close to even EV play is like deciding whether to raise or fold something like 89s from middle position. Whether the play is +EV or -EV the difference is very small, maybe like a tenth the size of the blind. Its difficult in the sense that its almost impossible to calculate whether it is actually +EV or not, but no one will consider it "difficult" because a correct or incorrect decision is relatively meaningless as far as your bankroll goes. I would say that difficulty is a function of how much concentration is required to *maximize* your EV, not necessarily determine whether a play is +EV or not. Difficult decisions are usually big river decisions, where whatever play you make is usually very extremely +EV or -EV. Profit from over 500 marginally correct preflop decisions can be wiped out by just one bad river one.

[AKQJ10]

Well, you may be right. I don't play that high so I'm just speculating about how people in higher games make decisions.

Live play is obviously much different than online play in reads, too.

[Mhoram]

Someone who has read and understood The Mathematics of Poker could probably clear this up for us.

My poor understanding says that those tough river decisions are still very close EV decisions, the fact that the pot is bigger doesn't matter.

If you had stong reason to think you had the worse hand it would be an obviously -EV decision, and therefore an easy decision.
If you had strong reason to think you had the best hand it would be an obviously +EV decision, and therefore an easy decision.

The fact that it's a tough decision means that you have about equal reason to think you may have the best hand and you may not, so you could call everytime or fold everytime and it would work out the same, a close EV decision even though it is a difficult one for the sake of this given pot.

This assumes some sort of optimial play with strong understanding of the math with good reading skills, otherwise those easy decisions would be wrong sometimes and the close decisions wouldn't have really been so close.

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]
Someone who has read and understood The Mathematics of Poker could probably clear this up for us.

My poor understanding says that those tough river decisions are still very close EV decisions, the fact that the pot is bigger doesn't matter.

If you had stong reason to think you had the worse hand it would be an obviously -EV decision, and therefore an easy decision.
If you had strong reason to think you had the best hand it would be an obviously +EV decision, and therefore an easy decision.

The fact that it's a tough decision means that you have about equal reason to think you may have the best hand and you may not, so you could call everytime or fold everytime and it would work out the same, a close EV decision even though it is a difficult one for the sake of this given pot.

This assumes some sort of optimial play with strong understanding of the math with good reading skills, otherwise those easy decisions would be wrong sometimes and the close decisions wouldn't have really been so close.

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Ok, we're using "EV" in two separate ways here, and it's confusing the topic.

The way I'm using it is your actual expected value, ignoring incomplete information. In other words, in limit, the EV difference for all river decisions is at least 1 bet, and may be as much as the entire pot.

I think you're using the term from the player's perspective, including incomplete information.

In my terminology, all the important decisions create large EV differences. In yours, I'm guessing that's not true, especially for players that rely more on math and less on reads.