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Old 11-26-2007, 04:36 PM
jackaaron jackaaron is offline
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Default Is this still correct?

A contributor to 2+2 mag had this to say:

“If you think you have a significant skill advantage over your opponents then you should play a more conservative game and not try to gamble with close decisions. If you think you are one of the weaker players left, then you need to gamble it up more, push some risky situations, and hope to get lucky. The better you are, the more important survival is to you and the longer you want the tournament to last. If you are weak, then it is best to try and get the game over with as soon as possible. You have a better chance of winning that way.”

I think this is completely wrong, and my reason is that when a very good, high volume player gambles and creates a large stack (or busts and moves on to the next tourney) he knows what to do with that stack better than a bad player. For example, what I can do with t20,000 in the 100/200 versus what the top 5 tourney players can do with that same amount is VASTLY different. I would probably pick many more wrong spots to steal, pot stab, resteal, etc., and just spew the chips all over the place.

Conversely, I think the weak players, because they aren’t good with their chips, nor at hand reading, or discipline, and so on, need to stay conservative and wait for really good opportunities because the decisions are much, much easier for them. Let’s take me, for example. When I flop a boat, or a set, I should try to get as much as I can and go from there. But, when I have QT in MP, and it’s folded around to me, and I raise…if I’m reraised, I’m likely to base my decision solely on whether or not I want to see the flop with QT, not on what my opponent’s range is, nor the tendencies my opponent has displayed over the last twenty hands, effective stacks, M, etc. (Not really, but I am a bad player, so I'm using myself as the example.)

So, which is it? Should a very good player gamble it up to create a large stack, and use his skill edge (is this a chip utility discussion? I don’t know), or should he do as the magazine contributor says, and stay conservative, and survive.
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Old 11-26-2007, 05:16 PM
SDone SDone is offline
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Default Re: Is this still correct?

If you're a good player who knows that if he waits for the right time he can bust a player, or at least outplay the player in big pots, will you wait for those times? Or call his all in with 55, because you have a slight advantage over two overs?
A sort of mathetmatical way to look at it is, if you think you have a 70/30 advantage on the player skill wise after all streets of play, then it would be +ev to wait for those situations to outplay him, or if you want to gambool a slight advantage such as a small pp against two overs

Hand 0: 54.267% 54.05% 00.22% 925431 3791.50 { 5d5h }
Hand 1: 45.733% 45.51% 00.22% 779290 3791.50 { AcQh }

I apologize if this is at all incoherent, it's because I'm in class and I just kind of came up with all that.
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Old 11-26-2007, 07:22 PM
Small Fry Small Fry is offline
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Default Re: Is this still correct?

I think you're confusing conservative with tight.

Let's take a player like Daniel Negraneu for example. He's going to be playing a lot of hands. But, he isn't going to be risking large amounts of his stack on any one hand unless he thinks he has a significant edge in the hand. He'll play small pots picking and choosing his spots. Only when he feels strongly that he has you dominated will he risk a lot of chips.

He'll pick up a lot of chips in the small pots. But he plays conservatively in the respect of putting a lot of chips at risk on very little +EV. He knows he can wait as a better chance will come along.

More time means more opportunity for that better chance to arise. It also means that all those small pot situations, where he manages to take a few hundred or thousand here and there, are going to happen a lot more. It gives the worse player more opportunities to make mistakes.

So while the poor player should be willing to take any coin flip he can, the better player can wait, he can bypass the 55/45 chance because he knows he can get you to put it all in when he's 65/35. He can't do this forever though.
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Old 11-27-2007, 12:54 AM
Waingro Waingro is offline
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Default Re: Is this still correct?

If you only play premium hands the better players will simply fold whenever you put money in the pot. And then continue to steal all the pots in between, because premium hands won´t come around that often. That is like a slow and fairly certain suffucation. Better instead to gamble with your QTo, and hope villain has a hand like 88 or A9 or whatever.

That said, playing only premiums could easily be a winning strategy because of all the other players who play atrociously. Or a lot of lags who try to out-lag each other.
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