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  #121  
Old 10-19-2007, 02:01 PM
jlocdog jlocdog is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

I am actually enjoying this discussion very much. Seeing as how this is a strategy forum, locking a thread with theoretical discussion seems quite counterintuitive IMO.
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  #122  
Old 10-19-2007, 02:23 PM
registrar registrar is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

[ QUOTE ]
I think what is going on here is that a lot of players who don't understand the prob theory behind this stuff have chosen to go with scaling up variance at every perceived EV+ opportunity because it puts them in the winners circle more often. Bragging rights kick butt, especially amongst young players.

But in the long run it is not near optimal, nor maybe even a winning, strategy.

As the voice of reason in poker, 2p2 should not be fueling "gambling it up" as the preferred approach to MTTs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hang on a minute. What's the alteranative strategy to being in the winner's circle more often? That's unquestionably the key to profiting in MTTs (which is why I don't see poker as particularly similar to stock trading). You need to win MTTs to make a profit.

I'm all for pursuing a debate on whether decreasing variance can lead to more FTs. I thought that's what was up for discussion. The old mantra was that cEV = $EV almost always in MTT play. Most people on 2+2 think this holds. Baltostar thinks this does not. I would like to agree with Baltostar, because I like being contrary, and because I've always had problems with the +cEV = +$EV equation, in the sense that I think it can blind us to the overall aim if we forget that the equation does not always hold true. However, I think MLG is correct in that my reservations are more to do with what +cEV play is these days, not with the basic equation.

However, getting to the final three and taking 'em down is unquestionably what MTT play is about. Not even the best nits consistently ITM >20% so you simply have to make outright victory your objective given payout structures.
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  #123  
Old 10-19-2007, 02:59 PM
registrar registrar is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

OK, this hand kind of illustrates what I am talking about and what I thought Baltostar was talking about. It may also my fairly sketchy understanding of the mathematics of poker - feel free to berate me. $5r FT. Payouts $250 or so to $2k.

Let's make the following assumptions based on specific reads and generic play. UTG does not have a big hand. People are more likely to fold pf if I make it 80k to go and then shove any flop.

If, as I suspect, and please correct me if I'm wrong, shoving has a greater chip expectation but also provides greater variance, should I shove or raise?

Poker Stars
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t6000/t12000
(Ante: t1200)
7 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: t498228
UTG+1: t393075
MP1: t250460
CO: t391140
Button: t390052
SB: t80053
Hero: t187492

Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is BB with K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
UTG calls t12000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t26400)</font>, UTG+1 calls t12000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t38400)</font>, 2 folds, Button calls t12000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t50400)</font>, SB calls t6000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t62400)</font>, <font color="#cc0000">Hero raises
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  #124  
Old 10-19-2007, 03:00 PM
gobboboy gobboboy is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

Baltostar hates variance but loves putting in 30% of his stack as a raise with a good hand with no intention of getting to showdown.
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  #125  
Old 10-19-2007, 03:10 PM
djk123 djk123 is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

[ QUOTE ]
OK, this hand kind of illustrates what I am talking about and what I thought Baltostar was talking about. It may also my fairly sketchy understanding of the mathematics of poker - feel free to berate me. $5r FT. Payouts $250 or so to $2k.

Let's make the following assumptions based on specific reads and generic play. UTG does not have a big hand. People are more likely to fold pf if I make it 80k to go and then shove any flop.

If, as I suspect, and please correct me if I'm wrong, shoving has a greater chip expectation but also provides greater variance, should I shove or raise?

Poker Stars
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t6000/t12000
(Ante: t1200)
7 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: t498228
UTG+1: t393075
MP1: t250460
CO: t391140
Button: t390052
SB: t80053
Hero: t187492

Pre-flop: (7 players) Hero is BB with K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
UTG calls t12000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t26400)</font>, UTG+1 calls t12000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t38400)</font>, 2 folds, Button calls t12000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t50400)</font>, SB calls t6000 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t62400)</font>, <font color="#cc0000">Hero raises

[/ QUOTE ]

shoving has both greater chip expectation and lower variance imo. just raising would be higher variance because sometimes when they just call preflop you will get outflopped. 15 bbs with AK oop and a bazillion limpers.. shove.

i don't know why im in red but it's kinda cool
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  #126  
Old 10-19-2007, 11:19 PM
Dan87 Dan87 is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

this thread hurts my head imo

I never thought T.S. Eliot would be applicable to poker theory but I think he was talking about balatazasor or w/e:

"Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool."


If I am reading right you are just stating over and over in different words that you want to pass up EV in order to maximize your EV, which to me seems completely backwards, but if Phil Hellmuth can do it then more power to you.
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  #127  
Old 10-20-2007, 09:23 AM
baltostar baltostar is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

[ QUOTE ]
Baltostar,
I see you consistently conflating two similar, but crucially different ideas.

1. People scale up varience at every perceived +EV opportunity. Which I interpret to mean that people think that simply increasing their varience will increase their EV. You are saying, this is not the case. I agree, people can often get way too caught up and being aggro and throwing chips around, and that many times it does not increase their EV nearly as much as they expect it to.

2. A player should sacrifice his EV in order to reduce variance. This is almost always a huge mistake. And is always a huge mistake early in a tournament. That debate as has been pointed out to you has been held frequently here over the years (if you look in the archives and anthology you will see me consistently arguing my case over and over and over again). There are lots of reasons for this. While the mathematical arguments you state are true, the fact remains that the impact on strategy early in a tournament is so small as to be negligible.


I will say one other thing, and I think it may be the point you are getting at. For a long time, players in MTTS by and large were bad in a very specific way. They were weak tight, especially when faced with a decision for all their chips. Therefore playing in a manner which increased your own varience almost definitionally increased your EV. That in my opinion is no longer the case. That doesnt mean that you should turn down EV ever, it just means that increasingly the most EV strategy may not be the most aggresive one.

[/ QUOTE ]


My points are not easy to explain, not by anyone. They are not boring deja-vu. I seriously doubt that my main point has been discussed on these forums before.

(Note to PrayingMantis: 2004 might as well have been 1904. The player ecosystem of the online game has radically changed since 2004. In online poker, you can't just stuff something in a drawer and consider it a done deal.)

My main point probably does arise from the major "added LAG" in today's online opponents. (From what from what I've read this has led to a number of high-profile previously very successful online cash game players going broke).

It's not just "added LAG". It's also the growing number of tricky snipers that are out there who are very good at setting-up good players' whose bread-and-butter is scaling stakes to scare out weak-tight players.

I'm working on a math proof that cEV+ is not always $EV+. But I am not a mathematician so maybe I don't achieve the rigor required by a proof. In any case, I'm going to post it in the theory forum, not here, because it is far from the main jist of my arguments. It is not what I started arguing, it was a tangent.

My main point (on this and other threads) continues to be that there is a pervasive persistent tendency on these boards to analyze hands to pursue EV+ lines without appropriate consideration of whether the likely incurred variance is worth it.

Apparently, at lot of you seem to think I'm arguing that there's some absolute amount of variance that should be avoided as some sort of function of the amount of EV+ of a line.

Not really.

I am arguing that within an M-bracket you can expect an avg opp. And it is easy to be drawn into (as in "draw yourself into") pursuing a below-avg opp without properly considering how likely the stakes are to scale.

Once you have become committed to a line, it is usually too late to back out.

If you consistently are willing to scale the stakes for below-avg opps you are playing sub-optimally. The degree to which you are willing to add variance should probably be in linear proportion to the difference of the opp's EV and avg opp's EV (for the current M-bracket). Maybe it's a more complex function than linear, I don't know yet.

I don't think this is occurring in today's good players' play by only a small measure. I think it is a very serious leak that will only become of greater impact to bankrolls as the game continues to get tougher.

I also think that within the next year successful, well-known players will be writing about it, maybe even publishing books about it, and it will become a huge topic in today's game.

You can make fun of me all you want because I am not a proven high-stakes MTTs player. But the fact is that I have a long life/career history of observing group behavior from the periphery and being very good at spotting detrimental patterns of thought that participants have unwittingly locked themselves into.
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  #128  
Old 10-20-2007, 10:17 AM
PrayingMantis PrayingMantis is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

[ QUOTE ]
(Note to PrayingMantis: 2004 might as well have been 1904. The player ecosystem of the online game has radically changed since 2004. In online poker, you can't just stuff something in a drawer and consider it a done deal.)

[/ QUOTE ]

If you understood what you were talking about, and bothered to actually go read the archives (like people are suggesting to you again and again), you'd have realized that this discussion has very little to do with "the player ecosystem". However, you are too stubborn, and think too much of yourself as for actually go and read them. The annoying thing is that you make your posts look so "deep", so some people actually think that there's something interesting to learn from them. There isn't. You are just full if it, which is something that really makes me mad, and that's why I keep posting in this thread.

Again, there's nothing new in your last post, your same ideas dressed with the same high words. But, for the first time and after denying it earlier, now you at least admit to think that what you say is indeed revolutionary ("I seriously doubt that my main point has been discussed on these forums before. "). Thank you for that! Well, You have no idea how wrong you are. People on these boards were thinking about "non-linear" graphs 3 years ago too. Nothing came out from all of it, and for very good reasons. Also, Weak-tight "theoreticians" of your kind come to these boards from time to time (not only MTTS), with their "risk management" ideas. No success.

Of course, the games change, this is obvious to any thinking player, and best +CEV lines change according to different circumstances. I generally agree with MLG's point about the decreasing value of aggressive strategies. This is not a new phenomenon, and it also could be found in SNGs for long time now (wider calling ranges, for instance, etc). Smart players realize this. However, they keep in pursuing the highest +CEV lines possible for them, considering their own and their opponents play (unless if it's in very particular bubble or FT situations, where $EV and CEV diverge too much).

GL repeating yourself in other forums here, if that's what you're actually going to do now. Maybe you should also try pocketfives, I hear there are some great poker minds over there.
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  #129  
Old 10-20-2007, 03:16 PM
baltostar baltostar is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

PrayingMantis: I went back and read all your posts on this thread. Never once do you address my arguments in any sort of specific manner. You have all sorts of ranting irate complaints about my style, my attitude, blah. But you just don't come through with any substance to add to this thread.

Who cares what the archives say ? This isn't history, this is poker. If you can't come up with counter-arguments right here right now then what good is the archives doing you (or any other person on this thread for that matter) ?

All you have is a bad case of protectionist syndrome. And no I'm not dressing up my ideas. I write how I think. And I respect other people who write how they think and I make an effort to understand them.
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  #130  
Old 10-20-2007, 03:35 PM
DJ Pattiecake DJ Pattiecake is offline
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Default Re: A5s in blind battle.

i didn't read it all but i hate this thread. like 3 pages in the middle were people arguing about whether balostar is qualified to have an opinion. The best player in the world is wrong sometimes and an idiot is right sometimes, so it doesn't matter if he is a pro, a trader or works at mcdonalds.

It would be helpful to have a read on the villain but if you don't have one you can bet/fold, bet call, check/fold, checkcall or (my least favorite option) check/raise. readless, i would bet about 1/3-1/2 of the pot, because i would do the same with a busted draw, a seven, 68 or 55.

edit: also readless i might bet the flop and i wouldnt bet the turn if i checked the flop.
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