Thoughts on PNL?

[atmstuck]

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This is why we need a real online player to write a book instead of these live newbs that play 10 hands an hour.

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fwiw, Matt Flynn is an incredible NL player, who has played big games online as well. I've played 10-20 NL live with him and he is an amazing player.

Sunny as well is an accomplished NL player who has played for some time and posted for a while. I am not sure if he's played much online but he's certainly a very solid player.

Ed Miller is a strong limit player who was brought on to help with the writing. He's obviously brilliant and can WRITE well.

I think the pedigree of the authors shouldn't be in question.

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A good player doesn't have to be a good author. I don't know if they try to get fancy on the book or else. I personally don't think the material helps the current online play much, unless you have just started

[sebbb]

What I learned in the book:

1) I now 3 bet AK preflop more than before and it makes my decision easier postflop (I think)

2) This is not really in the book, but I've given some thought about my opponents' commitment threshold and it makes it easier to bluff them off a pot

[Sunny Mehta]

thanks everyone for the great discussion in this thread....Sean and Bobbo, thanks for the great clarifications....

things are a bit hectic for me right now, but I wanted to paste one post (and my reply) from the Review thread in the Books forum that I thought y'all might dig....

poster Sounded Simple wrote:


"I have a question regarding how to avoid being exploited when using SPR by setminers.

Pre-flop
- You are on the button with 100BB.
- BB is a setminer (although this is unknown to you since you have only played 20 hands) and also has 100BB
- You have AA and would like an SPR of <10 so you raise to 6bb (assume this is online so you cant easily raise more)
- SB folds and BB calls so there is 13BB and your stack is 94BB.
- Your SPR is 7.2 and you decide to commit provided no obvious draws come in.

Post Flop -
- The flop comes Jh 6d 3c, you decide to commit and set about getting the money in the middle
- BB checks, you bet the pot, BB calls, Pot = 39bb, stacks are now 81bb
- Turn and river are safe and it all goes in on the river.
- BB shows 66 for a set.

So how do we prevent "unknown" setminers from exploiting us when we use SPR for 1 pair hands?
We are giving them the two pieces of information they need
(a) We most likely will have TP on the flop.
(b) We WILL stack off with it.

Some of my initial thoughts are -
- Raise even more pre-flop (say 10bb) to deny them odds to hit their set.
(Problem with this is you wont get any action at all from these guys or even anyone else online)

- Dont commit with TP against these guys, steal pots with all sorts of hands (including trash) and get out if they look like they want to get the stacks in.
(Problem here is that you need a solid read on them that they will only stack off with a set or better - that takes time but if they know you use SPR then they have a read on you pretty quick)

- Mix it up against them. Similar to their last point just vary the raises and steal lots.
(Again the problem is that we need the read!)


So to summarise my question.
SPR is intended to simplify decisions for us against unknowns. How do we stop it from simplifying decisions for the unknowns against us?

BTW - This is not a criticism of the concept, Im just trying to get this right."



I replied:


"Hi Sounded Simple,

Thank you for the well organized post.

First off, poker is a game of gathering information, and if by "unknown" you are trying to imply that you have very little to no information about your opponent, your decision making is inherently going to be more difficult and less accurate than if you know even some tendencies of your opponent. SPR and REM can help, but remember that integral parts of both equations involve knowing things about your opponents' ranges and tendencies.

Secondly, you go on to mention playing against a "setminer." Perhaps if your regular game features a decent amount of these, that immensely helps make him less unknown. Even just knowing that he's a setminer tells you some important things about his range and tendencies. You know that he's probably very tight preflop and also fairly tight-passive postflop.

Start with your preflop raise. When you raise to 6bb, what range do you expect to get called by? How much of that range includes worse hands on this flop? Can he have KK or QQ or AJ or even TT? Or will he never stack off with those hands? It would be very hard for me to believe that he'd never commit with a hand worse than AA, but if indeed it is true, you simply need to realize that your target SPR against this player is very small with one pair hands.

Since you are well above your target SPR, even with a pfr to 6bb, you should play more carefully postflop and perhaps try and exercise pot control. To actually get your target SPR against this player heads up, you might have to raise to an obscene amount pf, which is simply not practical. However, that doesn't mean that raising to an amount that doesn't achieve your target SPR is unprofitable.

Remember ranges!

You are not going to always have AA when you raise to 6bb, and he is not always going to have 66 and flop a set. What will he do with hands like KQ when you raise to 6bb? If he'll call then you get his stack when he flops top pair. If he'll fold pf, then you can rob him blind by making a 6bb raise with a very wide range of hands. What if he calls pf but then check-folds everytime he doesn't have a set or strong top pair or overpair? You can rob him blind by raising to 6bb preflop and then betting the flop a high percentage of the time. The combined steal equity as well as pot equity that you have in this situation makes it highly positive EV.

You also don't have to raise to 6bb. If he'll fold the same range preflop, you can get away with making a smaller raise so that you keep the same pf steal equity but can manage the pot easier postflop. But if he'll call more liberally preflop but check/fold a lot postflop, then you actually make more by stealing when you raise to 6bb.

This is just a start on how to tackle these types of situations. Now that we have laid out the groundwork for how we negotiate these "equations" - (by using REM and SPR!) - we will have much more to say in future volumes on adjusting to specific situations and filling in the specific "variables".


Thanks for reading,

Sunny
"

[atmstuck]

Hello Sunny, since you replied to this thread promptly, I have a few question to ask if you are still around. My previous comments seem to be criticizing, however, I just feel that you guys don't really put enough information into this book for us readers. The best thing I like about Sklansky's books is that he knows how to put things in brief, while stating every key point precisely. I am not saying that you don't write a good book, but it might take you 3 books to express your understanding of poker. I will definitely buy Volume II if there is one. All I can say right now is Volume I is definitely not a completed book, and advanced players can't really profit much on this. It's a good read for beginners, no doubt

[corsakh]

I think I had been saying this since the first or second Discussion Group came out. Looks like a level or a joke.

[tubasteve]

when SSNL regulars start open raising to 6bb and crap like that, no one with half a clue is going to let them get away with it, pure and simple. i dont really know how else to put it. since we almost all play like 99% of our hands online, the book isnt very applicable.


another thing i dislike is the triskaidekaphobia stuff, because youre basically saying that 100bb deep we shouldn't be raising to 3.5bb preflop because our SPR will be 13. that seems kinda stupid, because you can't just open to $6 every time or you won't get any action unless youre behind or on one end or the other of a cooler. when youre playing live this is a lot better since raise sizing is a little less standard and no one will realize what youre doing.

[tubasteve]

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We only need one bible, which is NL:T&P. I wonder when will there be a book close to that level released, probably never

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lol

[Pokey]

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It's BAD??? I disagree, I think PNL is the best NLH book that has been published. Not close here.


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*sigh*

I guess I'll be re-reading PNL soon -- too many good players have found at least SOMETHING that they like in it for me not to have missed something. I think I fell into the classic blunder that so many experienced 2+2'ers have done: I read a part that was jarringly incorrect for my games and I mostly stopped listening. Time to re-open my mind and try it again.

As soon as I finish re-reading Schoonmaker's Psychology of Poker. I promised myself I'd do that almost a year ago, and I've finally gotten around to it.

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The main theme of the book seems to be this whole Pot-to-Stack Ratio stuff. Yes, it's very nice and interesting and all, but stack decisions are such a small part of my typical game that I can't imagine building my strategy around them. Given that 99% of the time you are fighting for a smaller-than-all-in pot, shouldn't we be paying a great deal of attention to these other hands?


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THIS is a great point. Basically, they are all about the "big" pot, where most pots (not 99%, more like 70%) are small pots. And yes, those affect your earn incredibly. That said, constantly thinking about SPR is vital.

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OK; I trust that Matt, Sunny, and Ed will be tackling the small-pot stuff in Vol. 2, so I'll let that part of it go for now. As to the SPR stuff, it seems a bit stilted to me -- it looks like it's trying to quantify the "art" of poker. It's as if some art critic decided to "simplify" the process of judging art:

"What we do is we assign a score to brush technique from 0 to 10. Then we score the use of color from 0 to 10. Finally, we score the creativity from 0 to 20. Add these numbers and you have the overall painting quality, where 30+ is a high-quality painting and 35+ is a master work."

Does this description REALLY help us know good art when we see it? I find the SPR stuff equivalently vague but couched in equivalently mathematical ideas:

"SPR is the ratio of remaining stacks to the size of the pot on the flop. Now, determine how large a ratio of pot-to-remaining stacks could get into the pot while still making your postflop hand a favorite to win at showdown. This is the SPR you should aim for."

Did anybody else notice the vagueness in the middle? You've got 100 BB stacks, you're in the cutoff with QQ preflop and Isura is in the SB. How large should your PSR be to make sure that you're profitable at showdown if all the money goes into the middle and you've got an overpair? Do we really feel confident calculating this number with *ANY* degree of certainty? Even within a reasonable range? If we can't come up with a number for PSR then we can't make our estimates. Unfortunately, there's an even worse problem here: changing our PSR changes our target PSRs. When I make a huge raise, my opponent's calling range changes, both preflop and postflop. When I limp, it changes as well. By changing the PSR, my opponents become more aware of my hand and therefore they respond: I could always get a PSR of 2 with my 100 BB stacks by raising to 33 BBs preflop. Is that going to create a favorable all-in situation for my QQ? The act of manipulating the PSR changes the target PSR as well.

Also, some hands simply don't *work* with PSRs. If I've got JJ in the CO, this hand does not HAVE a "target PSR" with 100 BB stacks, because our most likely "good flop hand" is an overpair. There's no way to get 100 BBs into the middle with nothing but JJ unimproved and be a favorite against a typical opponent, regardless of the size of your PSR: if we limp we'll likely have the best hand preflop, but not if we're getting 30xPot into the middle postflop. Similarly, if we make a huge preflop raise, or we make or call a big three-bet, or we make or call a four-bet, we're either a coin-flip or a HUGE dog going into the flop, and we're definitely a huge dog if we get it all-in unimproved.

That does NOT mean that JJ is unplayable, but if it has *no* PSR, then how does this concept apply?

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OK, I get the point -- "if it's all going into the middle, you should have a plan." Fine. But why are we designing strategies around my betting double-pot on the flop, pot-and-a-half on the turn, and then pot on the river? Do any of us play against opponents who will let us do that on a regular basis? I have a hard enough time getting the live ones to pay off pot-on-the-flop, pot-on-the-turn, let alone a river bet as well. Are your opponents so dazzlingly stupid that they won't notice that you've changed your usual "3/4ths-pot flop, 1/2-pot turn" into "double-pot flop, pot-and-a-half turn"? Mine don't seem to be.



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Yeah, this is fair. I think sometimes you can't aim to put your stack in there, but you should aim to get the pot as big as possible. ie, pot pot pot. if your opponents ARE dumb enough though, by all means charge them.


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How does PSR help us if "getting it all in profitably" is IMPOSSIBLE regardless of our PSR? Are we saying that there are some hands that are inherently "small stack hands," and that any time we get all-in with them we've made a mistake? The PSR fails us with those hands? If so, why wasn't this mentioned in the book?

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reread the REM part, I liked that the best.

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I will. Thanks for the clarification, and I say that to everybody who has responded in this thread: I appreciate your comments.

[Matt Flynn]

Pokey,

i use a simplification:

you have AK. you know your opponents fairly well. how much are you happy putting into the pot postflop against them if you hit top pair? 2x? 4x? or 6x? ok can i reasonably play to get all-in?

that's it. since i mostly play deep-stacked live and occasionally 100bb online 10-20 6-max, i don't plan around getting all-in with AK except when the latter gets hyperaggro or i hit better than top pair. rather, i plan to steal or play a small to medium pot.


matt

[Unknown Soldier]

didint realise bobbo was writing a book. Or is it already out?