Difficult Decisions, Bad Designs (Pooh-Bah?)

[Grunch]

[I guess this is a pooh-bah post, but since I've been a CT for ever, maybe it's just the random ramblings of an old man...]

Difficult Decisions, Misplayed Earlier Streets

In my other life (the one where I get a paycheck) I'm a software engineer. I've been programming for a long while. I've built big systems from the ground up, maintained other systems, and helped on all kinds of stuff. For a long time my professional interest has been the reliability & design of code and diagnosing errors in production software. This is something I've thought a lot about over the years. (This is leading somewhere, I promise.)

Here's one thing I believe to be usually true about software in complex systems. If a piece of code is difficult to write, it's probably because the surrounding system is either badly designed or has defects in it. I'm amazed how often this is the case. A block of code is difficult to write usually because the surrounding infrastructure isn't quite suited to the task, or because some facility or data isn't easily available from that context, or because the code you are trying to write is semantically incorrect. It's almost as if the code knows it's wrong somehow and resists being written.

But when everything is designed well -- both the code you are writing and the system you are adding it to -- code seems to practically write itself. It just flows, effortlessly, right out your fingertips. This is true even with very complex code that you might think would naturally be hard to write. But it's not hard to write if the system is well-designed. It may take time, or a lot of code, but it won't take a lot of wrangling or struggle to get the pieces to snap together.

This does relate to poker. Here's how.

Often times when I'm playing a hand I'll do something on an early street, and then I'll be put in a difficult spot on a later street. I'll have to make a decision for a lot of money where it's very unclear what the right thing to do it. A (not great) example of this came up yesterday, (link). I came in to a (virtually) unraised flop with a weak offsuit connector, flopped a potentially marginal trips hand, and tried an unorthodox (read incorrect) flop line in order to extract the maximum from my 2 opponents. The line I took was passive, and I didn't wake up until the next street, when the LAG led in to me. I raised, the ATM folded, and the LAG re-raised. Now I'm faced with a difficult decision.

Do I have the best hand? Is the LAG overvaluing an even more marginal hand, as he is wont to do? But this LAG is a fairly good LAG, in that he doesn't get involved in big pots late without a solid hand. My thoughts were all twirly, and I was totally unsure about the correct line.

The problem was I designed the hand wrong on the flop. My intention was to get value from the other opponents, but I failed to consider the possibility that I may be the marginal one. The correct line on the flop was for me to lead (or at least check-raise). This would have caused the rest of the hand to play differently. But on the later streets, my decisions would have been much easier, not impossibly difficult as they actually were. As played, my turn was difficult because of things I did wrong on the flop.

This happens all the time. In fact, I believe that in almost every case where I'm faced with a decision that is hard to make it is because I misplayed the hand on an earlier street. That is, when it is hard to make because I don't have enough information. There are also hands that take some work to figure out, but you still may have the information & the tools to do that work. Those hands aren't instances where misplayed earlier streets result in the challenge. Those hands are just the heavy lifting we all have to do in poker.

No, the hands I'm talking about are the ones where you think to yourself, "I have no idea what to do, and I don't know how to figure out what to do!" These hands are difficult because you put yourself in to a difficult spot. These are the hands I look the most closely at in my own play.

Maybe this post will help some of you. Maybe it was just too long, and you didn't read it. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Heine]

Nice post.

for those who think tl;dr.

Cliff notes version:
Don't screw up in the first place and later decisions are easier.

[subzero]

I'm a software engineer as well. Good software comes from good analysis and design (the first stages). Without that, it can be difficult to implement and maintain. It's also more costly (time & money) to deal with later. A very basic example of this in poker is calling preflop raises with trap hands like KJ. You hit the flop, face some heat, and get stacked by a better king or overpair. But it all leads back to the first decision (design) of calling preflop with a trouble hand. NH sir.

[Grunch]

Thanks for that excellent example.

[kitaristi0]

I think Green Plastic spoke about this in a video or article somewhere. Basically good NL players play hands in such a way as to avoid difficult decisions.

Nice post.

[Fallen Hero]

grunch, usually when you have easy decision, so do your opponents. If you're a better player than they are you'll get this right more often then they do and then, $$$.
Basically what you're saying is that you should have gotten a certain ammount of information on the flop so that the turn and river are easier, well, if you get the information you want that usually means your opponent folded most of the hands you're ahead of or at least he's not very happy with his hand if he's behind (I'm not talking about the specific hand you linked, just generally).

[los_toros]

[ QUOTE ]
I think Green Plastic spoke about this in a video or article somewhere. Basically good NL players play hands in such a way as to avoid difficult decisions.

Nice post.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is emphasized throughout all of GP's videos and thinking. It's standard for a winning player and especially helpful when multitabling to know what your line is.

[DWarrior]

Very nice Pooh-Bahesque post.

I find a lot of the hands posted here are people asking the forum to bail them out because they screwed up on a previous round and are desperately looking for a line to bail them out. I find this approach to be flawed. Instead, the OPs should concentrate on fixing their mistakes on previous streets so they don't end up in the situations they're posting.

I'm guilty of this myself.

[poincaraux]

1) the bits about software design are dead on. that's why stuff seems easier to good programmers .. it *is* easier for them.

2) i've read some interesting posts by samoleus in HSNL where he thinks it's more profitable to put himself in tough spots from time to time. i think he's probably right. when i'm playing $10/$20 and higher, maybe i'll see such spots as well. for now, though, i'm sure that teaching myself how to set things up to be easy is *way* more profitable. it's a little arrogant to care about the hard stuff when you don't understand the easy stuff.

[los_toros]

semoleus puts himself in tough spots only because he believes that by playing as such puts his opponents in even tougher situations and he can thus extract more value in a deceptive, non-standard fashion.

this kind of play is not necessary in SSNL.