A5s in blind battle.

[PrayingMantis]

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This must be the most absurd collection of words I've ever read on 2+2, in one post.

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No. You're just not educated regarding concepts like avg hand risk distribution curve (using risk in the 2-sided mathematical sense). You need to take a basic course in probability.

You're also uneducated regarding how a flood of similar-style players into the ecosystem necessarily implies that your profitability will suffer unless you move away from their over-reliance on similar patterns. You need to take a basic course in game theory.

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This is necessarily true; however...

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(note: not sure if your last post was a joke, it might very well be, so I'm replying seriously)

Soulman, Just for the record, I happened to take all the "basic courses" in those areas. And more (edit: but surely I'm very very far from being an expert on these). Not that I care to defend my understanding of any these subjects. I really don't need to, on those boards. The fact that I don't tend to post in an overly "mathematical" manner, should not confuse you, and I have good reasons for not doing so, I believe.

It's nice that you find baltostar's ideas worthy of your thinking seriously about what he actually means, and in what ways it might relate to actual poker, but sadly, he fails, miserably and repeatedly, to make any coherent sense, even if some of his points are true in the most basic and uninteresting way. See my little dialog posted on the QQ thread.

Also, and as an example, a few times during those "baltostar's threads", he used the term "game theory" in completely irrelevant and flat-out wrong contexts, and few people have made comments about that. This is a symptom found in a lot of his "arguments".

[baltostar]

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This is necessarily true; however, I fail to understand why a tendency of aggressiveness in many players would automatically lead to risk reduction as a more profitable strategy. Wouldn't merely being tighter, opening less aggressively (in order not to get restolen, i.e. closing the gap between open raise range and calling range) lead to a more profitable strategy? Risk reduction almost seems counter-productive, since the aggressive players will continue to abuse you. Can you reduce risk without being weak-tight?

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I'm not advocating risk-reduction, per se. I'm advocating altering the shape of an aggressive player's avg hand risk distribution so that the mean moves to the right (always a good thing).

I really should have some pictures of player avg hand risk distributions, but I don't, so here's a try:

Imagine a normal distribution. The x axis is your risk (in the mathematical 2-sided sense of the word, so loss/gain). The x axis is bounded on the left at 0. On the right, it is effectively unbounded (because at the end of the tournament your are playing for huge stacks relative to the avg stack you play for). The y axis is the relative likelihood of that risk occurring. The total risk slices add up to 1. The mean and the median are at zero.

In the following, always start with a normal distribution:

Now, imagine you're a donk. Your distribution skews significantly to the left. (NOTE: skewing is not the same as shifting).

Now, imagine you're a weak tight player. Your distribution fattens up (squishes towards the center and upwards). Maybe it skews to the right, if you play against a high % of donks. Maybe it skews to the left, if you play against a high % of aggressive players.

Now imagine you're a skilled aggressive player. Your distribution significantly flattens (squashes downwards and towards the outsides). It has long fat tails because you scale risk.

Your distribution also is significantly skewed to the right because you only scale risk when you perceive you are cEV+. The primary component responsible for skewing your curve to the right is your fold equity. FE is the single most powerful weapon in the aggressive player's arsenal and is the single most common reason why a line may be perceived to be cEV+.

Now imagine a flood of similar-styled players enter your game. You still scale risk whenever you perceive cEV+. But, much more frequently than before, when you scale risk your opponents scale up too. Your FE is no longer nearly as powerful.

The result is that your distribution has even longer fatter tails, but it skews back towards the center -- not all the way, but part of the way. Your mean is not as high as it was before the flood of similar-styled opponents entered the game.

Your curve continues to suffer from flattenning and leftwards skewing as the % of similar-styled players in your game increases over time.

How do you combat this ?

One method is to start avoiding scaling risk in the significantly sub-par cEV+ situations.

You still scale risk in most cEV+ situations. But in those situations that are marginal cEV+ and where you can expect better during your current M-bracket, you avoid lines that scale risk. The avg scenario in which you scale risk is more cEV+ than your avg opponent's avg scenario.

In doing so you change the shape of your distribution: Your tails are still long and fat, but not quite so fat near the ends. However, the mid-sections of your tails are fattenned up.

Your skew moves back to the right a bit. Not all the way to where it was before the flood of similar-styled aggressive players, but enough to be very significant to your results.

True, you have somewhat reduced your overall variance, but you also have improved the shape of your avg hand risk distribution curve so that your mean is more positive.

You are still an aggressive player, you still have high variance, but your avg hand risk distribution has a better shape than your similar-styled opponents. On avg, you will accumulate chips faster because you are better utilizing your stack utility.

[baltostar]

Actually we should use lognormal distributions as the base distribution. (I was thinking of a logarithmic x axis, but it's better to keep a linear x axis.)

[Eagles]

Balto,
You make rambling incoherent posts that nobody understands, mainly because the explain fairly simple ideas in an extremely complex manner. When people respond with confusion you blame it on them being unintelligent, not because you write like 8 paragraphs explaining what can be summed up in one sentence.

[Ansky]

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This must be the most absurd collection of words I've ever read on 2+2, in one post.

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No. You're just not educated regarding concepts like avg hand risk distribution curve (using risk in the 2-sided mathematical sense). You need to take a basic course in probability.

You're also uneducated regarding how a flood of similar-style players into the ecosystem necessarily implies that your profitability will suffer unless you move away from their over-reliance on similar patterns. You need to take a basic course in game theory.

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You're uneducated on 'how to play poker' and you're lecturing people on a poker forum.

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[curtains]

This thread is still retardo

[Soulman]

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This is necessarily true; however...

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(note: not sure if your last post was a joke, it might very well be, so I'm replying seriously)

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Bleh, I wasn't being specific enough with that statement. What I meant to be "necessarily true" was the fact that if everyone plays in a certain way, it's usually correct to play in a different way. Or in other words, adjust to a always changing metagame, so nothing new obviously. "Necessarily true" was wrongly worded.


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It's nice that you find baltostar's ideas worthy of your thinking seriously about what he actually means, and in what ways it might relate to actual poker, but sadly, he fails, miserably and repeatedly, to make any coherent sense, even if some of his points are true in the most basic and uninteresting way. See my little dialog posted on the QQ thread.

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Well, like a few others have said, I think some of his ideas have merit, although I think he misapplies them (like advocating risk reduction instead of adapting your play to a changing metagame, but still having +EV at the core).

Also, although I think HSMTT is less guilty of this than most forums, herd mentality and group think is always worthy of being aware of. I've been guilty of summarily dismissing new posters' ideas too much earlier, being open to new ideas is always nice.

That being said, I agree with most of what you say on balto...and he did not give any examples/relate his theories to specific plays this time either.

[dmk]

[gobboboy]

It would be absolutely hilarious to watch baltostar play a limit holdem tournament.

He'd limp the button with JTo, the bb would raise and he'd fold because he's risking TWICE AS MUCH OF HIS STACK AS BEFORE.

[baltostar]

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It would be absolutely hilarious to watch baltostar play a limit holdem tournament.

He'd limp the button with JTo, the bb would raise and he'd fold because he's risking TWICE AS MUCH OF HIS STACK AS BEFORE.

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All this shows is that you have made absolutely no effort to understand my arguments and recommended tweaks for the aggressive player's game. You continue to insult me with simplistic nonsense based on totally incorrect interpretations of my arguments, and that's wrong of you because you are quite capable of understanding me.

I am arguing that a flood of similar-style aggressive opponents into today's NLHE game has blunted the aggressive player's most dangerous weapon, fold equity, because scaling-up marginal perceived cEV+ situations has become significantly more likely to result in an allin.

Therefore, I am researching methods to avoid lines that tend to result in allins in the most marginal perceived cEV+ opportunities (because on avg a better cEV+ opportunity will become available in the current M-bracket). In this manner, the aggressive player can pursue better quality variance.

FE is a valuable weapon in LHE to a far far far lesser extent than it is in NLHE. My strategy recommendations are not targetted at LHE.