Like Father, like Daughter

What is the Game Theory optimal strategy for the % of times to stick with your Rock, Paper, Scissors selection for the next throw? That was the question posed over dinner last night.

Not sure that we confirmed my guess of 33% when my 17 year old daughter challenged me to a game up to 10. Of course, I accepted. But what happened next was very special for me as the parent of a teenager.

We literally couldn’t continue because we were laughing so much. After about 15 or 20 throws, we had matched each and every time. We were both changing, staying the same, anticipating etc. but every selection we made was identical. Our attempts to outwit each other were identical. As a parent, it really was a very special moment to realise how much is passed on to the next generation. Or am I reading too much into pure coincidence?

As a poker player, I have to wonder how exploitable my poker style is. Am I really that predictable? I’ve thought a little more about it and I wasn’t trying to choose because of what my daughter would pick but rather what a logical person would do. Presumably she was doing the same and consequently predictable to an observant opponent.

Scissors, Paper, Rock - Player Profile

As per MBB's comment on my last post, I have found that increasing post-flop aggression has forced me to become more aware of player profiles. I've been aware that my post flop passivity has been a problem for some time. HEM just presented it in a format that I could no longer ignore.

Coincidentally, I was reminded of the maths of Paper, Scissors, Rock over the weekend and revisited a strategy site. The parallels with poker are amazing. I completed a Player Profile Survey and would be very interested to see if all aspirational bloggers are from a similar mould. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to add your Profile as a comment.

Apparently, my Spiritual Player Profile is as follows ... "You trust your emotions. When competing, you focus on your own game seeking inspiration from within and rely on inner harmony to select your throws. Winning or losing is not the primary focus of your game. Instead you focus upon playing the right throw for any given situation, regardless of your opponents actions. The Spiritual player can usually benefit greatly from strategies that rely upon proper form and technique (such as Cloaking and Shadowing). The downfall of the Spiritual Player comes from being so inwardly focused that you fail to recognise an opponents obvious mistakes."

Not too far off. Strategy for little old Scissors, Paper, Rock, eh? Who would have thought.

Red Lining it

It amazes me that after all of the years that I've played poker, listened to podcasts and read books that there are still Ah-ha moments that are both shockingly obvious and have so far gone unnoticed by me. I'm hopeful that this one will transform my game. You need to be an eternal optimist for poker, eh?

So what is this miraculous find? Don't laugh. The good old Red Non-Showdown Winnings line. I got Omaha Manager free with my Card Runners Full Tilt sign-up and love the product. For the first time I can see what was going on. By comparison, PT Omaha is a dinosaur.

Anyway, a quick click on Graphs showed my Showdown winnings going up at a 30 degree gradient and my non-SD winnings dropping at a 30 degree gradient. Almost symmetrical and straignt as a die almost.

Thinking about it rationally, I spend a lot of time working out if my cards are ahead or behind and acting accordingly. The problem is that most flops miss most people and my opponents are doing the same plus c-betting, stealing blinds, picking up orphans and pushing me off missed draws on the river etc.

I've always known that I am passive post flop and tried on multiple occassions to rectify this but my Mr Logic side quickly kicks in again and lets me down. I find that no matter what I do, I struggle to make inroads into my AF stat.

The Red Line is different though. I have taken to having HEM Graphs open with AI EV and Showdown Winnings clicked for the last 1000 or so hands. Every big hand, I find myself glancing at my chart to see if I am playing well and playing aggressively enough. My results have been flattered by running good, but I know that I am playing better too. Just need to be careful not to get rope-a-doped (which has happened a couple of times). Or betting Pot on the river to manipulate my stats :-).

The real improvement came fromn reading several excellent strategy articles and posts on Showdown Winnings. They really put things into perspective. Including a reference to Fgators "famous" graph. Sad to say, mine was as bad or worse. Hopefully those days are behind me now.

Another word for Passive ...

Jeff Hwang's book has paid for itself already 10 times over and I've only read 20 pages. If you have been following my PLO posts, you'll see that my solitary attempts at playing style analysis of winners over a much too small sample size threw up a surprisingly high number of passive players. Totally different to the 6-max aggression of NLHE. I've now discovered the correct term for it - Floating - thanks Jeff.

Winning players float and steal, float and steal at an alarming regularity. It's akin to Brunson stealing the blinds relentlessly when he wrote SuperSystem. Sure the games will change in the not too distant future, but for now an understanding of the game and that play is probably enough for you to stand a good chance of winning. Thankfully very few people visit my blog or the secret would be out.

Pub Poker - Strategy Question

$15 + $10 rebuy - 32 Starters, paying 3 spots.
Payout structure is $75, $150 and $250.

Blinds are 5K/10K and we're down to the last 4:
- UTG 8K
short-stack for some time, doubled thru blinds twice
- Button 41K
was short stack but just tripled up
- SB $80K
has only been playing a few weeks and playing a wide range preflop
- BB (Hero) 41K
has tightened up a little on the bubble with high blind structure

UTG folds, Button min-raises to 20K, SB folds. I look down and find AQo in the BB. What should I do, and why?

ICM and SPR

Thanks to a separate comment by Laff, I'm very aware that I don't even understand the implications of Independent Chip Modeling or Stack to Pot Ratios, so at least there is lots of room for improvement.

If anyone out there (read, either of you) know of any good links for in depth explanations of the implications of these concepts, please feel free to leave the links as comments for me and anyone else that may be bored enough to stumble across this post in the future. Maybe my kids, eh?

Aggression / Discipline experiment

Last night I tried single tabling to try out a combination of never raising pre-flop no matter what I hold and increasing my post flop aggression.

This is an acknowledge PLO strategy as PLO is primarily a post flop game. I still tried to restrict myself to the better hands when limping and was positionally aware. The second part of the experiment was to work hard on not calling. Either raise or fold. (I think I failed this bit eventhough I tried really hard.)

Results went well early doubling my stack and then selectively picking small pots up post flop on raggeddy boards with a tight image and large stack. I must admit that I got bored with the single table and started a second. This provided the balance between being able to think about each decision and enough hands to provide a realistic range of situations.

I then got cold decked a little (I think) and found that my stack dwindled but not nearly as much as it may otherwise have done. In fact, my usual style may well have lost my stack a couple of times. Giving up less with smaller pots at stake, I was able to get away from a few draws that I would otherwise have gambled on with a smaller SPR. The final result was 1 BI profit over 400 hands.

The most interesting thing for me was that my Aggr Factor was still only 1.55 and that was me trying my very hardest to be aggressive. Looking closer at the calculation, I believe that it isn't that I am not aggressive enough, it is a case of bloating the denominator with crying calls. All comments on my stats welcome ...

Flop 4+20/13 = 1.88; Turn 6+18/17 = 1.41; River 2+13/14 = 1.09; Total 1.55

Hopefully, that can be my focus for the next couple of sessions, "fold earlier when I think I'm beaten or am chasing a coinflip that is probably a crooked coin".

Laff's Hand History

Laff posted a few hands looking for comment, so this post is to be read in conjunction with Laffs entry ...

http://hmmog.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-am-fish.html

By way of disclaimer, I always struggle with hand histories on forum posts as I believe that there are many valid lines to take with any hand. The result should be secondary, its the decision making that counts. In isolation though, I find myself only able to make obvious observations such as fast playing trips, protecting TPTK etc. That said, here goes. I'd welcome any comments on my commenting.

Hand 1: I always play flopped trips fast. Partially to avoid this disaster but primarily to capitalise on my good fortune. The River escalation was a little crazy as it started with a check and got out of hand. No hand that we were beating was calling that AI.

Hand 2: I don't have too much problem with this hand. I'm guilty of crying calls on the river. The Turn check was good and the river call only needed to be right 25% of the time.

Hand 3: Opportunity lost pre-flop. A big difference between Limit and NLH is the relative strength of TPTK. In NLH, your stack is always at risk. This hand would have played itself out at Limit and no-one gets hurt. NLH is different. Preflop, thin the field with a potsized 50c bet. 9c7c may have called, maybe not, I would have looking for a solid hit. Let's assume $1.50 in the pot, that was a perfect flop to lead out for the pot again. I would have passed on my middle pair in that spot. Selective aggression is the key to NLH, don't slowplay. An aggressive style lets you get away from more hands too. When people tangle, they generally have the goods or air.

Hand 4: Similar to Hand 3, betting the flop would have put pressure on. When the A came, you had a big enough pot to fire again and price out the gutshot. As it was, you got lost, slow played a great turn card and it all became costly. Playing trips fast you can throw in the occassional bluff when you have taken the lead early pre-flop like this. Don't worry about being re-raised, then it is up to you if you want to play for stacks at that stage or fold (see Hand 1).

Hand 5: Another case of slowplaying. NLH is a case of Big Hand, Big Pot, Small Hand, Small Pot. This is only a subset of your hands, but try not to get too clever. Simplify your decision making on all streets by taking the initiative. You need to find out where you are at before the significant bets start flying.

Hand 6: I liked your bet-size bet here and you have to call in this spot. Opponents AI was a classic case for playing fast with an overbet and simplifying things - imagine a TJQ or flush flop making a flop decision a little tougher. These hands just happen and you'll have plenty more in your favour in your career. Would you shove in his spot on what looked like a steal? I'd suggest that it is a good play as it smells of a re-steal.

PLO Strategy Primer

I love Google; it never fails to impress me. So when Laff asked for a Strategy Primer, off I went to look for one. The first suggestion for "Omaha Strategy" on Google was this post by NOFX PUNK on the Full Contact Poker Forum.

www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-forum/index.php?showtopic=66345

I must confess, I have stopped my search for a better primer. It's not perfect and statistically (like life on other planets) there is probably better out there but this is a great benchmark.

Having played for a couple of months here, this post is full of all of the things that I have been picking up through experiential learning. I'm convinced that if you follow this advice and play microstakes you will be a winning player almost immediately without any table selection. The micro stakes are full of competent Hold'em players regularly making the mistakes contained in this article.

I'd welcome any strategy questions that the article prompts to further my thinking process as I continue to learn.

Pocket Pairs in Small Stakes Hold'em

Optimal maths poker isn't natural or intuitive for many and the math is only one aspect of poker. The requisite to fold for equity rather than chase for excitement is also unnatural psychologically.

Sometimes I miss my Limit Hold'em and as I learn other games I find that I struggle to win at it now. I used to win at $5/$10 consistently (when the games were much softer) and have played up to $20/$40 occassionally. But Adam's suspended blog got me thinking when I watched his hands play out. It reminded me how frustrating the game can be if you don't have the confidence in your own actions and focus on getting it in good.

Today, there appears not to be much wrong with Adam's play. He has recently posted about a new LAG approach though which inherently incurs more variance and attracts action so you will take more bad beats. That aside, I read a snippet last night in "Small Stakes Hold'em" by Ed Miller (I recommend it). The maths seemed so wrong that I was going to check it out. Turns out (no surprise with Sklansky and Malmuth at the helm) that it was spot on.

Using PokerStove Monte Carlo simulation(www.pokerstove.com), with 5 opponents willing to take a flop with 40% of their hands {44+,A2s+,K2s+,Q5s+,J7s+,T7s+,97s+}, which doesn't seem to be unreasonable looking at what reaches showdown with Adam.

The book states that with AA you should be jamming on a dry board with almost 50% equity, but with TT in this spot you should be calling because your equity is closer to 21%. I was amazed! I extended the simulation to see the spectrum. The inter-pair gap gets greater with higher pairs, for the record -

AA thru 22 is 42.3%, 33.2%, 27.5%, 23.6%, 20.4%, 18%, 16.5%, 15.3%, 15.7%, 14.9%, 14.2%, 13.9%.

My interpretation is something that I've experienced and posted about before. When playing against 5 loose opponents willing to get to showdown with marginal hands and draws:
- QQ thru 99 are really middle pairs; (Adam inspired this insight)
- 88 is the cut-off where you are becoming a dog.
- 77 thru 22 are set mining hands with implied odds - flop or stop.


BRAINTEASER : I've run the simulator a few times ... why does it always deliver the pre-flop equity for 77 to be 15.3% while 66 is 15.7%, at first glance an anomaly?

TRUST IN MATHS? Even if you "knew" all the other players starting range was 40% (and the maths above), would you ever prefer 66 preflop over 77?

Knowing your Limits - The "Coin Flip" test

It struck me tonite when I thought about playing 1 table of NL200 or 4-tables of NL50 that there is a very good game selection litmus test for me.

Basically, how do you feel about coin flipping for your stack pre-flop AK v QQ, or similar? If it was NL1, I can't see you giving it a 2nd thought. But NL1000 for me, that wouldn't be my idea of fun, or skill.

As I get increasingly aggressive though, I'm finding that it is essential to be willing to coin flip to avoid being 3-bet off strong marginal hands in position. Playing too weak there can be exploited easily (and its costly - 20+ nit hands a pop).

My last live game, I short stacked for $100 in a NL100-NL250 game, just so I could play comfortably and gamble if need be. I'd never thought about it before. Can you relate to this?

Needless to say, I took the multi-table option tonite, scored a relatively easy $16 over 1 hour of 3 NL50 tables, no risk, no stress and I've even written this post when grinding it out.

PS As if to prove my point, I'd unclicked Autopost Blinds and was in SB with QJ on one of the tables. Bet pot and LAG BB raised pot to $5.50. I shoved $50ish expecting a fold but got called to my dismay by AK. QxxJx - woo hoo! A nice +$73 session in the end. Goodnight!

Gotta give action to get action.

I think that I first read something similar to "Gotta give action to get action" in Super/System and again from Mike Caro. My propensity is toward TAG, so I struggle to get action fast playing trips, etc.

Now to the quiz (see last post), my SMS big winner friend sent me an email identifying himself. His poker history is literally no online poker, uses a poker program in MSFT Windows, watches it on TV and read one poker book on a business trip to Perth. He hasn't even played pub poker. At Perth casino, we played his only other live game and he exited early, probably TPTK loss, or similar.

On that night, my advice was to play tight just to rack up table time and experience. Needless to say, he bluffed me out of the 3rd or 4th hand we played. I recall laying down a good hand assuming he had the nutz. I was way off and he thought it was funny - I wasn't so sure.

Anyway, I have confirmed that there were many furious losers. At 2am he responded to one self-proclaimed English pro who was verballing him that he should consider another profession. At 4:00am, when cashing out, he asked if he could be watched to the cab rank by security. He was the last man standing having cleaned out both tables at that level.

Apparently, he rivered trips with 55 twice and another pair once more. He only lost a couple of hands all night and was a massive bully toward the end when he lost all track of chip to dollar values (a big advantage when it happens). The ultimate was a $1500 pot where he had KJ against AJ and got AI on a KKJ flop.

I can only imagine the scene as his chip stack grew. The regulars salivating when this recreational player sucked out on someone else knowing that the chips would eventually be redistributed. It just never happened.

I know it was a freak session, never to be repeated, but there is a lesson there with respect to speculating to prosper. May you have a quarter of my friends luck at least once in your poker career!

AQ Lucky or Unlucky?

Humans are phenomenal pattern matching machines and can spot coincidence in chaos. When 9s are about, people play them. Whilst irrational, when you see this phenomenon discussed in a live game, be a little wary of matching flops that night.

Anyeay, last night I had 3 AQ hands on less then 100 played. I was tired so played just 2 tables but went up to $1/$2 to make me think. I could've not played, but I'm keen to make sure that I can put in volume even when not feeling 100%.

My 3 AQ hands had 2 for me and 1 for my opponent. Results were 3 AIs, for $70, $130 and $200. All pots built steadily on all streets, abeit different pot %. After river there was TPTK with Q high board, a set with QQQ and A kicker, and heart flushes AhQh vs Kh6h.

I playes 2 hands well and 1 badly and finished the session up over $100. I got away with an amazing number of steals. I was also dealt KK and AA but no-one called my "steal". No matter how I look at it, I had a very lucky session.

Next time I have a bad session, I will realise that it is only the evening out of this one and hopefully I'm less likely to tilt.

If interested in my bad beat story, please click on 1st comment ...