Almost there with Success and Failure (Long)

[willie]

ty giga -aaaaahn.

[skipperbob]

"S.T.F.U." Donny; you're outa your element

[adanthar]

[ QUOTE ]
Use your bets to pull information from your opponent, and then when you know what he has, trust your judgement 100%. If you think he is on second pair, but will not fold unless you bet your whole stack, then bet your whole stack(unless of course you have a better hand than second pair, which is unlikely since players like us can rarely beat bottom pair), even if it means your tournament is over if you are wrong. Practice trusting yourself, you will be wrong enough in the beginning to doubt yourself, but don't let that stop you.

[/ QUOTE ]

I got the math part of poker and the logic part of poker in 2 weeks. 15 months later, I'm still working on this part and am *finally* getting somewhere with it.

I really wish I'd seen this thread a year ago...but then again, I wouldn't have understood it then.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
I got the math part of poker and the logic part of poker in 2 weeks. 15 months later, I'm still working on this part and am *finally* getting somewhere with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand the breakdown between the "math part" and hand reading. Hand reading is a source of information that you can then process mathematically; they aren't totally independent entities. It's a much more difficult skill to learn than calculating pot odds, true.

There's a good thread by Tom Weideman in RGP from a few months ago entitled "Confessions of a Math Guy, Part 1" here that addresses some of these topics. Part 2 and Part 3 are also worth reading, as I remember. Sklansky also talks about it a lot in Theory of Poker, with all the little bits about estimating how likely your opponent is to have various hands based on his actions.

[The Yugoslavian]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's good to know that a player as successful as yourself believes in God.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is very funny. It also looks like you have completely misundertood what Giga was trying to say about being "successful" or being "a failure". But what the hell. If you think believing in "god" has anything to do with playing strong poker, well........

[/ QUOTE ]

But PM, didn't you see that post coming? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] I was only surprised at the rapidity that it was called out as a standalone and important in-and-of-itself. And, I didn't think it would be referenced so delicously as to also make use of the word 'success,' in direct opposition to the most obvious thrust of Gigabet's post.

Seriously, as I read the original Gigabet sentence, I immediately thought 'there's 100% chance someone boils this whole post all down to that somehow.'

Personally, that one sentence gave me the warm and fuzzies - the hell with the rest of Gigabet's post - he's obviously a man of God, doing God's work and that's what counts! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Yugoslav
(Who wants to know what God has to do with it?)

[adanthar]

I don't mean hand reading. That part's just logic and it's relatively easy.

It's going with your instincts and the hand reading combined *despite* the math that's a real bitch.

[Burno]

Wow.

First post I've ever printed out.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't mean hand reading. That part's just logic and it's relatively easy.

It's going with your instincts and the hand reading combined *despite* the math that's a real bitch.

[/ QUOTE ]

When is this going to be a good idea? If your hand reading is absolutely top-notch and you know what an opponent has, then all that means is you are no longer putting your opponent on a range, but a single hand. Is it a hand that you can make them fold if it beats you? Is it a hand that you're getting the right price to draw against if you can't get them out? Is it a worse hand that you can get them to pay you with? How sure are you about any of the actions they can take given how you behave? These are the exact same questions that we ask in other situations, we're just doing it with much more specific and narrow information. It becomes much easier to calculate our EV, and we're still going to make plays to maximize this.

Advertising and constructing an image can throw a bit of a monkey wrench in here, but all those things are really doing is setting it up so that in future situations, you have a better idea about what kind of plays your opponent will make, and try to influence them to make plays that you know you can profit by.

The math doesn't go away. It just gets practiced so often that it becomes intuition.

[adanthar]

[ QUOTE ]
When is this going to be a good idea? If your hand reading is absolutely top-notch and you know what an opponent has, then all that means is you are no longer putting your opponent on a range, but a single hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's never really gonna happen unless you're Gigabet. I'm talking about the situations where the math says you're behind to his whole range but your gut says that if you push he's going to fold.

This by no means implies you can ignore the math - it's still in the background and it forms part of your instincts. But what you're doing at that point isn't really ABC poker anymore.

[shayneon]

Man, I have not felt like this much of an intellectual hack in a long time. Thank You.