4 HE Errors--My Answer

Remember that I assume a tyoical LA ring game, which is pretty weak and loose. If the game was tougher all four errors would be about equal with a negative EV of about five bucks.


Folding AK I believe is about an eight dollar mistake compared to raising.


Calling with QT offsuit in the hands of a godd player who will not compound that error is about a four or five dollar mistake.


Raising mediocre players who have limped in middle position, with JT offsuit on the button is barely wrong if you play well. Call it a two dollar mistake.


Not raising those same players, plus the blinds with AT suited on the button costs a lot of money. Not only because it should be the best hand but also because the raise ties in players which should help more than it hurts. In fact the main reason I even came up with this quiz was to illustrate how important it is to raise in these type of situations. Not raising costs more than ten dollars, I am quite sure.

Interesting, many of us will be surprised at this answer (concerning the ATs). Give us some more of these quizzes, they are good learning tools.

Rounder- looks like he was the only one who got it very close right. His answer was D,A then close between B&C. Nobody else got the top two correct. In fact most of us were quite a bit off the mark with this one, my answer was ABCD- hell I put the biggest mistake on the bottom!

How would we go about confirming this?

There was one dissenter whose answer was exactly the same as David's.

Sklansky, why don't you give Rounder something like Caro does for his winners, $100. At least a signed copy of you latest book.

Just assume that if one of the 4 limpers had better than AT, they would have raised. Then it would be safe to bet your house (well almost).

Just be careful if I'm one of the limpers /images/smile.gif, that's all.

Oops, I missed that one. My mistake. Who was it?

"If the game was tougher all four errors would be about equal with a negative EV of about five bucks."


lol


Angelina gave her answer based on online hand histories.

My results are close to hers for AKo UTG when she said it is worth 20$ in a 15-30 (of course I have less hands than her).

Besides I am pretty sure she has enough online hands to have a very small confidence interval for that specific hand.


Yet we have to trust personal judgment. Plain crazy!

Sorry for being sarcastic. I was upset.

I don't think that Angelina has a very small confidence interval.

Still 20 - 3xsigma/sqrt(N) should be > 5.

Maybe all the 20-40 winners should expose their EV with AKo UTG.

... how come Angelina rated folding AK as a $20 mistake while David Sklansky says only $8. Neither gave a whole lot of reasoning, although both are presumably the result of some kind of calculation rather than just a guess/hunch, but to differ by a factor of 2.5 seems pretty major.


I'm just curious about this point; the biggest issue of dispute between them seemed to be about the not-raising ATs one.


Oh no!! Not again!

I know this is further heresy, but I would really like to see a little more derivation before blindly believing David's answers.


Even algebra and game theory professor Nes Ankeny, who was famous for, among other things:


- giving one problem set and no exams during a one-semester game theory class, and even that only because he was required to have something on which to base a grade


- leaving his glasses on top of his head and then spending the next ten minutes making no sense at all while lecturing, because he was looking for his glasses


- responding to a question in class, forgetting what the original question was halfway through the answer, and ending up answering some other question


would provide a little more detail in his answers than David just did.


The thing that worries me most about the ATo answer, for example, is that there's been no mention of how badly your hand is hurt when a worse ace comes in. When you have two big cards, your hand is a lot better when both of them are live, than when even one of your cards was dealt. If someone came up with an explanation of why I'm full of it here -- along the lines of "sure the chance of flopping an ace goes down, but you'll extract a lot of money out of the worse ace when it happens, and I think it's worth $x because of such-and-so" -- then I'll be a lot less worried about the ATo answer.


I guess there's another possible "out" here. My intuition is based at least in part on the belief that, as the game gets looser, the probability that someone calls given that they had an ace goes up higher than the probability that someone calls given that they don't have an ace. If someone can argue effectively that it actually goes the other way, then it seems that the looser the game is, the less likely it is that you're half-dominating someone when there are four callers ahead of you.


Anyway, that's the basis for my discomfort at being handed an unsupported scalar answer out of a fairly complicated problem. The simpler game theory examples that have come up in this forum are cut and dried enough that the Right Answer just grinds out, and we should not expect an authority to always provide the full derivation. But in this case, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask the authority for some support for his conclusion.


--JMike

What a coincidence. I played at Mohegan Sun last night and got dealt ATd at cutoff. Game loose. Four limpers to BB. I raised as per advice. Button, SB folded, BB 3-bets, (he's pretty aggressive and bluffs a lot! Everybody called including me.


Flop K rags, BB leads out, everybody called. Turn another rag, 3 callers, I fold. BB will bet any pair and I maybe drawing dead to an AK. River - another rag, BB bets, 2 callers. BB showed KK and scooped the pot.


Any mistake on my part? What's my lesson here?

... in David Sklansky's original question. Not sure how much difference it would make.


Oh no!! Notagain!

I'll read more carefully next time.


I threw ATs into some of the same home-brewed computational crapola into which I had previously thrown ATo, and the results are a little different. One thing is, though, that ATs still loses value when it is half-dominating someone. It is second- or third-best out of five hands in a lot of these situations. The "raise when second-best in a multiway pot in order to drive out the weaker hands, from which you gain more EV than your remaining opponents" principle probably does not apply when you're on the button, as most or all of your opponents are going to call. But if I throw together the numbers to the same precision as I did before (i.e. fairly slapdash) then it looks like a one-or-two-dollar mistake. Again, that's only giving position a couple-dollar value.


--JMike

It seems that the cost of not calling or not raising is always a candidate to be more expensive than calling or raising, because calling or raising can cost you at most a fraction of a bet, whereas not calling or not raising can cost you a whole pot.


Furthermore, seeing as it is not being in that costs you the most money, and being in in late position is where you make the most money, it would seem that not raising in late position would have to cost you the most money of all.


What were those hands again?


- the guy

My initial thought was DBAC with B and A pretty close. Of course I didn't post it (but I did write it down) and changed my mind a little after reading some the other responses.

I think the value of AKo under the gun depends a lot on game conditions. It will have more value in a tough game than in a loose game. She said it is worth $20 in a 20-40 game, which means about $15 in a 15-30, so they aren't *that* far apart. I don't play online that much, but I am guessing that a LA 15-30 game is going to play a lot looser than an online 20-40 game, which probably accounts for the rest of the difference.

Check out the post entitled "A dissenting guess."

folding AK: 8 dollars

calling QT: 5 dollars

raising JT: 2 dollars

not raising ATs: 12+ dollars

capping AKs in a family pot and raising and reraising it when you hit your ace on the flop all the way to the river and getting called down by A2, A7, second pair and pocket 66: priceless...

I am surprised by the low value David give to folding AK, (but not the high value given to ATs). I would have though that in a looser game AK would go up in value; The extra pre flop profit more than making up for the lower winning percentage. Typically the last caller is drawing almost dead.

I'm probably being very thick here, but can someone please explain why it is such a big mistake not to raise with ATs? I don't really understand.


Do you want to get more money in the pot in case you hit a flush? (I presume the limpers would call in a loose game) Or drive the blinds out? Or for value as the best hand since there's been no raises?


I'm not at all saying I don't agree, just that I don't understand the reasoning.


Thanks very much,

Daisy

I think AKo on the button would be worth more in a loose game than in a tough game. But, under the gun in a tough game I think it will be worth more than under the gun in a loose game (unless it is also very passive). Its a lot harder to play AKo out of position with 5-6 loose aggressive action, than head up or 3 ways against more "solid" players.


My experience in 15-30 and 20-40 is that often the loose players biggest mistake is playing too many hands, but they often play pretty well after the flop. Of cousse, if they are loose and also make a lot of other mistakes then almost any hand is going to be worth a lot more in that game than a game full of tough players.

For all those reasons! You just may not know which in advance.

I had the same analysis as David...but got the first two backwards...


which is what I was afraid of...but no...I had to trust the first instinct


RB

[Clarkmeister]

Bumping to top, relevant to current Small Stakes discussion.

[rigoletto]

Raising makes a big pot to tie in the limpers when you hit the flop big. It also gives you a better chance of taking down the pot on the flop, fx. if the flop comes A rag Rag. The point is that:

A) raising improves your chances of winning overall
B) when you win it'll be a big pot!

[Pokerhantas]

If a good player called with QT offsuit, then he is not really a good player is he, and he will lose more than 4 or 5 dollars, tubby.

<font color="pink"> Pokerhantas </font color>

[SittingBull]

it would make no difference. /forums/images/icons/shocked.gif The reason is that u are playing only ONE of the 4 dimensional aspect of the game;namely,the Preflop. /forums/images/icons/mad.gif
But since u have MORE chips to play the game to completion if u choose,u need to consider ALL 4 dimensions of the game. /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
Playing good poker is the science and art of creating OPPORTUNITIES and capitalizing from these opportunities when conditions are favorable in various spots /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif --always being aware of the nuances of the play(s) in progress to FIND opportunities to improve your chances of winning pots /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif .

By RAISING,U have created the following OPPORTUNITIES: /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
(1) Free card play post-flop if rags hit u /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif (2) An option to continue to drive IF U believe ALL your opponents might fold /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
(3)Tying in your opponets when U do hit /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
(4) Making much more money when u do hit /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif

Calling does not provide u with these opportunities. /forums/images/icons/frown.gif
BTW,u would play KQs the same way as ATs if u are the button and the other conditions are satisfied. /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
Happy pokering, /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif
SittingBull