Am I in the minority?

[bicyclekick]

Maybe once per week I actually count outs and do a division with the pot size and figure out if i have odds or not.

Other than that I've just got a general enough idea of how hands work and I just don't think of odds in the heat of the battle. I just play the hand the way that seems intuitively correct.

I'm curious if other good players actually count down the pot a lot and figure out odds and stuff. I play 4-6 tables and that would seem kinda silly.

Of course I did this (counted outs/pot odds etc) more when I was learning, but after awhile, hands just seem almost more second nature that they don't need the counting...

[Cosimo]

Disclaimer: I'm not a good player.

I count outs whenever it looks close. I figure sooner or later I'll memorize the number of outs for common situations (ISD+BDFD+one clean over = 8) but I'm still counting most of those. I don't expect I'll ever go on feel alone, especially online where the site tells me exactly how big the pot is. I'm a numbers guy; I like having stats.

Thing is, I normally use implied odds, so what I'm often counting is implied pot size, not outs.

[Greg J]

First -- it is good to see intelligent posts on this forum again.

Second -- I would love to see what other experienced players have to say about this topic. Take this for what it's worth b/c I am very inexperienced by comparison to you and many others on this forum. I play largely intuitively right now b/c so many of my decisions are not close ones. When I have to make a close decision I count my outs and consult a spreadsheet I have made. As I get more and more experience this might well change.

I would be very interested to see what the veterans do in this regard.

[Danenania]

I pretty much always count outs. However, since I've gotten really used to playing on-line I sometimes have trouble remembering to keep track of the exact pot size when I play live. It's not too hard to think back and figure it out, but it still makes me feel dumb.

But to answer your question, I don't think it's a very good idea to rely on intuition. It's not hard to count outs and figure odds and doing so certainly prevents some amount of error even if your intuition is strong. No reason to give up any edge.

[fsuplayer]

I thought i was the only one.

Other than that I've just got a general enough idea of how hands work and I just don't think of odds in the heat of the battle. I just play the hand the way that seems intuitively correct.

Exactly what i do while i am playing. in fact last night actually i was thinking to myself whether or not i need to be counting them when its close.

maybe, maybe not.

fsuplayer

[thirddan]

i usually only count the pot exactly when I have to face more than one bet cold...

[AncientPC]

This thread (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/favlinker.php?Cat=&Entry=41885&F_Board=holdem&Thre ad=1113298&partnumber=1&postmarker=) seems to correspond to this one.

I tend to play rather loose in small pots vs aggro opponents (i.e. higher implied odds) or in big pots. I play tighter vs better opponents and less aggressive post-flop against a lot of limpers. In other words, I fudge around with pot odds in the former, and play proper poker in the latter.

[NLSoldier]

I am the same way, and I was actually thinkin about making a post very similar to yours because i was wondering about this as well. Thanks for saving me the effort /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[bicyclekick]

Yeah, that thread was what got me thinking about this again. I had the same feelings months ago but didn't post them.

It's nice to hear that other players are the same way...and thirrdan...yeah, I think you're right, that sounds like one of the situations where I'll count it down, too.

[sourbeaver]

I like to calculate implied odds in multiway pots.
Otherwise I pretty much go instinctively because, as is you case, I've seen enough hands to get the hang of it.

[bicyclekick]

[ QUOTE ]

But to answer your question, I don't think it's a very good idea to rely on intuition. It's not hard to count outs and figure odds and doing so certainly prevents some amount of error even if your intuition is strong. No reason to give up any edge.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have any interesting thought about that. I'm probably over thinking this, though...

EV1 = the ev if you take all of the time you spend figuring out your exact outs and making plays based on that like you say. This takes up a good chunk of time.

EV2 = you play quickly and based on intuitiveness like I've said, generally and only count if you think it's close or can't quickly make a judgement.

Given that you'll play more hands per hour using EV2 because you wont have the added x seconds per hand to count down odds...is EV2 > EV1? Is it close? Suppose it adds 15 seconds to every hand you're involved in. That's quite a bit of time that will add up. 4 hands of that and you just got about 1 hand less that hour.

Also, I don't know how to put this, but I feel I've been a pretty successful poker player and I go on intuition (which is of course partly based on the numbers of things) so saying it's a bad thing doesn't quite fit.

[DyessMan89]

I dont count my "outs" all that often. I know most of the time what the situation is. I know that making a flush on the turn if you have 4 to a flush is 20%, and making it on the turn OR river is 35%. Making a straight is around the same, maybe a little less. I know the chances of making a full house if i have 2 pair or a set, etc. However, I always try and keep track of the pot odds. Knowing how much is in the pot AT ALL TIMES is very important.

And since I play online mostly, its very easy to know how much is in the pot since most sites give it for you. It takes more concentration off-line.

[Joe826]

At first it's really important to count as outs, but as situations become more and more familiar you don't even think about them. A good example is drawing to a gutshot on the flop or the turn. I always calcuated this situation when I first started playing but now it's just intuitive that if there was a raise preflop with a few players in, I can take one off on the flop for one bet etc. The same goes with things like drawing with your four to a flush, except these situations become familiar even more quickly. I still count outs obviously, but it's in situations where my hands are a little more unique like bottom pair with an overcard and a backdoor flush or something like that.

[Blarg]

I think good players can afford to go on intuition a lot more than lesser players. Guys like Brunson have so much experience and such a good feel for situations that he has been said to almost always make or be aware of the right play. Guys like him can get away with not counting precisely pretty easily.

I think your talking about adding 15 seconds per hand when you count outs exaggerates a bit. The less you count, the longer it takes, but the more you're used to counting, the quicker it becomes. Kind of like you have a feel for the game to come to quick conclusions, practice counting outs makes you faster at it too. The only thing that can get slower is implied odds sometimes, and often that's fairly quick too.

One thing to keep in mind, too, is that being very aware of how the numbers are working is not just useful to analyze what your own situations and opportunities. It also tells you a lot about how your opponents play.

If you play back in your mind(or on your replayer) hands you've been through, you can get very different ideas than you started with on how someone plays if you compare his play to what the odds were for his making those plays. You can find holes in his game, and patterns of thought, or that in the way he plays the numbers, he's much less consistently tight or loose than you thought.

This can only be to your advantage. It can lead you to call more against someone you used to think was only making logical moves, for instance. Or if you have an excellent read on someone who folds on you in a very tight situation, that may key you in that villain is not recognizing all his outs or isn't willing to pay his fair share of money to defend his hand when the outs aren't obvious. Like someone who will fold inside straight draws because he doesn't have 10.5 to 1 pot odds, even though he could also be drawing to six more outs on two overcards that could also win. If you want those overcards out of there before they snap off your pair of 10's or jacks, you can think a little more about when to get in your raises or check raises so that you can fold him out of the pot even though he actually has the odds to call, but just doesn't recognize them or has a quirk in his play or outlook such that he recognizes his outs but just doesn't care or have the courage to go forward by counting them.

This is just one example, but anything that lets you know with more prescision how your opponents play is invaluable. I find knowing what odds my opponents need to make certain plays reveals an awful lot about their playing style, aggression level, and knowledge of the game. This matters less if you're never going to see this person again, but if you're playing in a casino where you tend to see the same faces a lot, it's extremely valuable, and even in online play, you'll often see people again. Having a precise and correct idea of their play can be worth a lot more than a hazy or incorrect one.

I think it depends on how much past ABC-poker you're willing to try to play.

Personally, I'm not very good at hold'em, but I aspire to be, so I press every advantage. I can't afford to let them slip away too casually. Others either brighter or more talented may need mathematical analysis of their opponents' play much less than I do, but I'm grabbing every advantage possible. I take copious notes and think a lot about my opponents' play, and times beyond counting, it has made or saved me many bets.

You may be better even going on raw intuition than I could ever hope to be, and I wouldn't actually be surprised a bit, but...that doesn't mean you couldn't still sharpen and refine your weapons. It's kind of like athletics -- if you don't rise too far, you can beat the heck out of everyone you know at basketball, but if you want to get to the big leagues, the whole story changes, and people will take for granted what you've already got and have a lot more besides. Or like my friend who went to MIT said -- he was the valedictorian in high school and aced his SAT's, and felt like a hotshot about it, until he realized in his first day at MIT that every single person there was also a valedictorian who aced his SAT's. It shocked him into a much different perspective. If you want to eventually play at a very high level in poker too, maybe just riding on talent and inherent intelligence won't be enough one day, and you'll have to take every part of your game extremely seriously or be content to never advance beyond a certain point.

Hey, you don't want want no-talent schlepps like me catching up to you one day just because you're lazy, do you? The chances may be very small, but...how embarassing! ;P

[GuyOnTilt]

Hey Kick,

I play probabilistically, meaning I'm constantly having to do math and division and multiplication while playing. With flushes, gutshots, open-enders, etc. of course I never do the math. Anybody who's played a while will know instinctively whether their getting the correct pot odds to call. However, if you're in a headsup pot on the turn and put your opponent on AA or KK or QQ 30%, AQ 20%, KQ 20%, JJ 10%, and AK 10%, you'll have to do some arithmetic to know how many outs to give yourself on a QT64 rainbow board holding AJ and whether you're getting correct pot odds to call a bet. That's the type of math I have to do mentally at the table.

GoT

[bicyclekick]

GOT - Of course I often try to put players on range of hands, but I guess I never thnik of the 30% this hand 40% that hand excplicately.

Blarg - nice, thoughtful post.

I think you are right. I think that just may hold me back from becomming a great player. In a way it's kinda nice to see there is still plenty of room to grow in my poker career.

I think I really need to work on blind steal play in the higher limits. Both steal position and out of the blinds. I've been working on it lately and I do feel I've improved.

[Ian J]

Kick,

I'm with you on this one and was always wondering whether others felt this way. I guess so /images/graemlins/smile.gif. Sometimes you just don't need to sit there and figure things out, you just know. I mean, you know whether the pot's large enough for a turn call with a flush draw, when you should take one off on the flop, etc. A lot of it becomes second nature when you play as many hands as some of us do.

[Michael Davis]

Greg J,

I don't like you or your underhanded attempts to insult me.

-Michael

[bicyclekick]

[ QUOTE ]
Greg J,

I don't like you or your underhanded attempts to insult me.

-Michael

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't like you're thread hijacking bullshit. Keep it out of here.

[BusterStacks]

If you do not count your outs and estimate pot equity you can still be a winning player, just not AS winning.

[bicyclekick]

While I believe and agree with you, I'm really curious to what extent it matters.

I pull down what seems to be a pretty decent winrate on the party 15/30's - 2.73 bb/100 over 79,000 hands so I truly am curious how much bb/100 I'd gain if I really paid close attention to pot size and outs and odds. My guess is I'd go batty and not be able to play the long sessions I often play because the focusing so hard would get me.

[BusterStacks]

you can justify it any way you want i guess. apparently in this case money is more important than outright skill. Your guess that you would go batty if you tried to count outs on the fly is probably correct, however for those that have been doing it since day one, it's simply reflex.

[Danenania]

You may be right about the EV of taking time to think/tiring out your brain/always getting it right versus the EV of going fast and easy with intuition. I'm sure it's possible that right now you do better without doing the calculations. However, I think the highest EV of all comes when you can learn to calculate AND play fast without tiring yourself out.

I'm sure it takes tons and tons of practice (I'm not even close to there) but I suspect the payout and the capability to excel in bigger games is well worth it. I'm not sure if it's really like this (since I don't have it) but I would like to think of it as sort of a "sixth sense" gained from many hours of practice and experience. A heightened state of poker awareness where one keeps track of pot size, odds, outs, etc. as effortlessly as a barometer tracks the air pressure. Ahh, poker nirvana.

[bicyclekick]

I wasn't trying to justify anything as much as I was trying to say that you can still be a substantial winner and also I was wondering how much ONTOP of a winrate those numbers add.

What do you mean money is more important that skill.

Money comes from skill. There is a positive relationship between the two of them, not a negative one.

I did do it on day 1. And i often look at pot size, but most decisions really aren't htat close, and ones that are I've probably had a number of times and I just kind of 'know' how to react.

[bicyclekick]

The thing is you don't really have to think real hard to know what you're likely outs are and I dunno, it just seems like after awhile most poker hands play themselves. I guess I'm half-assing it on the last little bit of EV out there which is what truly separates the great players from the merely good, and that is why I'm no where near a great player.

Maybe I'll make that a goal for the rest of the year to really pay attention to pot size/odds/implied odds/ and see how it goes.

I'll post an update after awhile, too.

[Danenania]

Sounds like a worthwhile pursuit. Good luck with it.

[lacky]

I memorized the common situations when I started, but after doing something a few hundred thousand times I feel comfortable with instinct on the close ones. My margin of error trusting instinct is propably not much more than the margin of error in placing percentages on all the possible hands the player could hold. It's an educated guess either way. Playing 6 tables of 6max leaves me just enough time to keep track of who the idiots are to and find new tables if they leave and only you guys are left. Thats about it. If I tried to figure things the way GOT is there is no way I could keep up.

Steve

[imitation]

I think you've answered your own question, yes you probably are sacrificing a small amount of EV, but the cost to you(wether it be mental strain or killing your ability to put in long hours) and I imagine numerous others of that additional EV is simply not worth it. I think playing intuitive tight aggressive poker with understanding of poker logic and theory, not neccesarily mathematical logic seems to be enough to beat most but the best opponents.

I've often wondered if writers/mathematicians like miller, sklansky and malmuth actually calculate everything precisely in there minds in this manner, I honestly believe and it may be in error, that from their writings they do not play poker in this way.

[lacky]

I'm sure kick read the section in SSHE that got him thinking about this. Me too. And if I sat at just one live table all day I would use every tool available to maximize my profit. But with online you can make more by scaling down the effort per table and adding more tables. Everyone has a threshold on what they can keep up with, so the more thought you add to the process the less tables you can play. It's an important point that what makes a great top earning live player and what makes a great top earning internet player is different. One isn't better or worse, but it is very different.

[nykenny]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe once per week I actually count outs and do a division with the pot size and figure out if i have odds or not.

Other than that I've just got a general enough idea of how hands work and I just don't think of odds in the heat of the battle. I just play the hand the way that seems intuitively correct.

I'm curious if other good players actually count down the pot a lot and figure out odds and stuff. I play 4-6 tables and that would seem kinda silly.

Of course I did this (counted outs/pot odds etc) more when I was learning, but after awhile, hands just seem almost more second nature that they don't need the counting...

[/ QUOTE ]

try counting pots and calculate odds in the middle of 10 tables...

anyhow, i do count pots and odds as necessary, tho not all the time. mostly things are instintive, like whether or not to chase a flush draw... or straight draw...

things like 5 outer or 6 outers usually take some cycles for me to process, but i should be fast on them soon too.

Kenny