Cross-Post from MHUSH: Theory of Learning

[The Bryce]

I don't think I've posted here before, but I thought you fellers might get the most out of something like this:

There’s a common problem with the way poker is discussed. Everyone does it, you do it, I do it. When I’m trying to teach someone, in a one on one environment, or when I’m trying to learn from someone, however, there are a few things I try and remember as a gospel truth.

Knowledge is only as useful as what you can do with it, and in poker there’s a whole lot to know. You can’t memorize all the different combinations of things that could happen with all the possible people who could be involved and learn optimal poker that way. Trying to learn this way would be silly. Power in poker comes from understanding it, not memorizing it.

Knowing this, you can see why telling anyone what they should have done in a hand is kind of silly. “You should have folded here, I would have raised there.” In terms of learning, what a person should have done is of the least importance, it’s why they should have done it that matters. A clever player may be able to correlate your answer with a few things he already knows and deduce your reasons, but should he fail to understand, or should he have failed to do the correct thing in the first place because the way he reasons about these things is incorrect, then he has learned nothing, and grown little.

The more generalized a piece of advice is the less powerful and the more inaccurate it becomes. Simple blanket statements like “don’t fold in large pots” and “always protect your hand if it could be best” are crippling. You might be better off doing these things than if you did the exact opposite, but the truth of the matter is you should often fold in large pots, and it is often not the best idea to protect your hand. When should you fold? You should fold when your expectation is greater than the size of the bet in relation to the size of the pot, of course. What goes into knowing if your expectation is greater than the size of the bet in relation to the size of the pot? Quite a bit!

The unfortunate truth is, of course, that a new player can’t get by without some of these generalizations. They don’t have the backlog of experience to make accurate judgments about their opponent’s actions and they can’t be expected to understand enough theory to make complex, complete decisions on the spot. Yes, they should use hand charts, yes they shouldn’t fold big pairs in big pots, but these ideas should be discarded early and replaced with something better. Ultimately, the goal of any player should be to use nothing but the hardest, most finite facts, yielding the most accurate, complete play.

How to discuss poker, then? Ideally, there would be much more discussion about theory than there already is. For any given player there’s a natural ceiling on their ability based on what they understand about poker. When a disciplined player makes a mistake it’s not because they’re stupid or inattentive, it’s because they don’t understand why what they did is a mistake. It’s no wonder most new players in the poker community think they’re better than the majority of their peers! As far as they know, they rarely make a mistake!

Again, it all comes down to the important of knowing “why”. If you ask a question, first ask yourself what you want to understand. If you ask a question like: “should I fold here?” you’re sampling other people’s judgments about the situation, based on their experiences in similar spots with what they think of as similar players. When you ask a question like: “should I check behind here and call a river bet, or should I bet and fold to a raise?” you’re, again, just asking for judgment. Inevitably, most questions asked are like this, and asking for judgment from afar is a slipshod process. The people answering weren’t there; they didn’t see the preceding hands, the timing, etc. Where players tend to gain in these discussions is when someone corrects a theoretic or mathematical mistake, an oversight, or they interject something that gets the player on track, such as: “to know if you should re-raise here you need to count the combinations of the hands which you believe your opponent could possibly hold before you can determine whether it’s mathematically profitable”. These things usually occur in a less direct fashion, but when they occur, and they are noticed, the player learns something, and that player grows.

[Mossberg]

I was going to suggest in the other thread that you post this over here as well.

Very well written. That last paragraph is something that everybody on this forum should read. It's true, and I'm guilty of often ignoring the underlying math and theory that is behind a hand, and responding simply to what appears to be an easy decision to me. I hope to change this.

Thanks for the post.

[RunDownHouse]

This sort of thing really irked me in this thread I posted the other day. Lots of, "Raise the flop!" responses with nonexistant or pretty thin justification.

[milesdyson]

do i get a pat on the back for posting math (with variables) in mossberg's thread. i actually learned something from it too. my intuition was off, and while it was correct enough to make me do the right thing in that situation, it's good to know the reality...

theory and math discussions take effort. like, there have been hundreds of times when i'll start wondering, "i wonder wtf is right here, i think it's a raise/call/fold/whatever" and i get out a piece of paper and start at it, only to stop after 1 minute because im lazy.

[The Bryce]

[ QUOTE ]
do i get a pat on the back for posting math (with variables) in mossberg's thread. i actually learned something from it too. my intuition was off, and while it was correct enough to make me do the right thing in that situation, it's good to know the reality...

[/ QUOTE ]

*pat on back*

[Mossberg]

[ QUOTE ]
do i get a pat on the back for posting math (with variables) in mossberg's thread. i actually learned something from it too. my intuition was off, and while it was correct enough to make me do the right thing in that situation, it's good to know the reality...

[/ QUOTE ]

Ya definitely man. I appreciate that, and it pushes me to stop ignoring an aspect of my game which really needs work. I don't understand any of the complex math behind the decisions, and I need to confront that issue. I feel guilty/jealous when I see you put together a complex string of math and prove a point you're attempting to make. It is interesting though how that thread pretty much died after you posted those calculations.

On the same topic, I think there are ALOT less posts and questions containing math/theory than there was a few monthes ago here. We can't assume everyone understands the math presented, and there should be posts questioning/explaining HOW the math works in certain situations.

[milesdyson]

[ QUOTE ]
It is interesting though how that thread pretty much died after you posted those calculations.

[/ QUOTE ]
agree. like i said, it takes effort. going over my math takes time and effort. i post mostly from work, so i don't have time to go through and check a bunch of equations - especially when they're based on a ton of questionable assumptions.

like when someone posts an "EV calc" of an entire hand, there's no way i'm even beginning to read that because all "EV calcs" are founded on assumptions that significantly affect the outcome. as you change the assumptions slightly, the results sway back and forth. i'm really not a fan of entire-hand calculations. it's hard to find spots where math can almost decisively prove something. your AA hand was an anomaly.

[Mossberg]

[ QUOTE ]
so i don't have time to go through and check a bunch of equations - especially when they're based on a ton of questionable assumptions.

like when someone posts an "EV calc" of an entire hand, there's no way i'm even beginning to read that because all "EV calcs" are founded on assumptions that significantly affect the outcome. as you change the assumptions slightly, the results sway back and forth. i'm really not a fan of entire-hand calculations. it's hard to find spots where math can almost decisively prove something. your AA hand was an anomaly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point. I think this is a large part of the problem we're discussing here.. The times I do see someone take a shot at figuring out a problem mathematically, they are usually shot down by another poster saying "well you didn't take this and that into consideration".. If instead of just shooting it down, we took the time to re-adjust the calculations and suggest how it effects the outcome, this forum would be 100x more valuable to us all.