UB now has high limit HU TD -nt-

[fnord_too]

nt

[MarkGritter]

I thought most of the high limit TD tables were usually HU anyway. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[MarkGritter]

Ah, I see what you mean. $300 and $600 tables. Nice. There were actually a couple people playing $300/$600 when I logged in. (And 14 observers!)

My bankroll isn't quite there yet.

[BluffTHIS!]

Although I have only played up to 80/160 when I like the game, and do play as low as 4/8 just because I like TD, there is something that anyone who wishes to play limits higher than 5/10, and even lower needs to be aware of when playing headsup. This is namely that there are many players, most of whom do not actually play well enough to consistently beat a full TD table, that can instead be winning players headsup because they are not only bad but also aggressive. The main concern however, is that most of these types of players are only interested in "hustling" you, which means they are only willing to lose a relatively small amount, but if they get up on you by such an amount will usually quit you and leave you stuck without other opportunities to play other players and recoup. You can spot these players by the relatively small buyins they use, like 10x the bb for example with possibly 1 rebuy, and by the fact that if a 3rd player joins in they frequently quit. If you like money you will always keep these points in mind when playing anyone headsup anywhere whether online or in B&M cardrooms. The counter strategy is to only be willing yourself to lose in one session what they are willing to lose approximately, and if you have identified such a player and get him stuck good, to quit him as soon as he starts to recover some ground, just like he would do to you. I realize that this advice goes counter to normal advice about not quitting while a game is good, but you have to realize that the game has changed and he isn't really willing to lose anymore after a certain point, but only allow you to get him even or ahead. I also don't mean to imply that the majority of players who are willing to play headsup are like this, just that some of them are and you need to recognize who they are over time, especially at the higher limits.

[Ezcheeze]

[ QUOTE ]
This is namely that there are many players, most of whom do not actually play well enough to consistently beat a full TD table, that can instead be winning players headsup because they are not only bad but also aggressive

[/ QUOTE ]

I can assure you that bad play + aggressiveness does not translate into a winning heads up player. Sure being very aggressive in the early betting rounds is right heads up but you still have to be able to play on the last 2 betting rounds which can be very tough and revolves around reading your opponent.

It sounds to me like you need to go back to the fundamental theorem of poker and realize how it is that a person can beat other poeple at poker.

-Ezcheeze

[lucas9000]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This is namely that there are many players, most of whom do not actually play well enough to consistently beat a full TD table, that can instead be winning players headsup because they are not only bad but also aggressive

[/ QUOTE ]

I can assure you that bad play + aggressiveness does not translate into a winning heads up player. Sure being very aggressive in the early betting rounds is right heads up but you still have to be able to play on the last 2 betting rounds which can be very tough and revolves around reading your opponent.

[/ QUOTE ]

are you going to call the aggressive early raises every time just so you can get to the last 2 betting rounds?

[fnord_too]

In my experience, over aggression will win you a little until your opponent realizes what you are doing. (In my experience, I am usually the opponent HU). At that point, expect to spew chips on a high variance ride if you don't adjust to your opponent's adjusting.

I haven't done starting hand math yet, but I have played against several run you over type players, and it usually ends up being a highly profitable extremely volitile situation for me, though not as volitile as one may think since I do a lot of calling vice raising against these guys.

One thing Russ G. wrote about HU matches that I have pondered long and hard is to try to keep all the pots about the same size. Obviously there will be variance due to the cards (when you have two number 3 or better hands clashing, the pot is going to be bigger than when you have a pat 9 and T fighting it out). I can't speak to the veracity of the notion, but I have a hard time poking holes in it, and Russ does know something about poker even if his forte is cheating.

Also, Caro has very simple advice that seems to work really well for dealing with overly aggressive and fancy play syndrome players alike:
Bet less, raise less, call more.

At any rate, there are a lot of good players who will just try running over you but tighten up when they realize you can adjust. There are also a lot of players who fail to tighten up when you adjust: they are great to play against.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]

are you going to call the aggressive early raises every time just so you can get to the last 2 betting rounds?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think I answered this expressly: No. But I will call more liberally and draw more creatively against him, and pay off a lot more hands. (By draw creatively, I may start drawing to a 9 from round 1 or something like that.) Also, I will bluff these guys a lot in favorable spots. I can detect their snows with reasonable accuracy, and take enough pots away from them to make up for some missed loose calls. (Of course it sucks those times they actually have a real hand, but mainly because they get to see you were putting a play on them, but then they pay off more too, so that makes up for some of the loss.)

[nate1729]

Dude, that is crazy talk. If you have an edge you have an edge, one hand at a time. However many hands he wants to play is his business. Anyone who believes your commentary on a hit-and-run opponent should find the nearest roulette table and set a $10 loss limit. (Clearly the casino has the worst of it there, because you can only lose $10 in this arrangement, whereas the casino will "reload" indefinitely.)

--Nate

[BluffTHIS!]

ECheeze, perhaps you need to revisit TOP as well particularly where it says that someone, whether a bad player or not, who is always betting could have the best of it if his opponent does not adjust properly, which granted a good player would do. Also you are taking this comment out of context with my overall point about such players who also hit & run, which since there is really not much TD action does not often give you enough opportunities to come out ahead if you constantly play with such players and they get lucky.

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
Dude, that is crazy talk. If you have an edge you have an edge, one hand at a time. However many hands he wants to play is his business. Anyone who believes your commentary on a hit-and-run opponent should find the nearest roulette table and set a $10 loss limit. (Clearly the casino has the worst of it there, because you can only lose $10 in this arrangement, whereas the casino will "reload" indefinitely.)

--Nate

[/ QUOTE ]

And you probably don't have enough high stakes headsup experience to know what you are talking about regarding such types of players, nor are you seeing the point that you are not really in the context of playing many hands over time since there just are not enough opportunities to play TD available to be able to continuously play. If you allow a bad player who is only willing to lose $100 to you on various occasions, but who will let you lose more to him and then hit & run when it starts to turn against him or he gets up a certain amount, to have opportunities at will to play you, then you not only have to play better, but also come out ahead of the high swings that any headsup matches entail. Another similiar example that I have often had occur, is playing nl headsup and beating a player for several buyins who then buys in real short. My standard response is that I will not continue to play unless he buys in for a more reasonable amount since the most extra I can then win is his last short buyin whereas I could get him even or up. It's just not good business to play this way headsup. But don't take my word for it, go experience it yourself in analagous situations where there is not always another headsup game with another player available when one of them quit you.

[randomstumbl]

[ QUOTE ]
If you allow a bad player who is only willing to lose $100 to you on various occasions, but who will let you lose more to him and then hit & run when it starts to turn against him or he gets up a certain amount, to have opportunities at will to play you, then you not only have to play better, but also come out ahead of the high swings that any headsup matches entail.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true, but lets make an extreme example. You and the other player gamble on the roll of a die. You win $1 if the die lands on 1,2,3 or 4. If it's a 5 or a 6 the other player wins $1. The other player usually will quit the game once he loses $2 or "hit and run" if he wins $5. Are you happy to play this game or will you shy away?

Of course, the variance in TDL is ridiculiously high. So, you're going to have a lot of bad results with this type of player, but you expect to win more than you lose.

It's emotionally annoying when they take you for double or triple what you could have won and then leave, but that doesn't mean you didn't have the best of it. On the other hand, it's probably very easy for some people to tilt in this situation - so that could be a factor that lowers your EV.

[flatline]

[ QUOTE ]


And you probably don't have enough high stakes headsup experience to know what you are talking about regarding such types of players, nor are you seeing the point that you are not really in the context of playing many hands over time since there just are not enough opportunities to play TD available to be able to continuously play. If you allow a bad player who is only willing to lose $100 to you on various occasions, but who will let you lose more to him and then hit & run when it starts to turn against him or he gets up a certain amount, to have opportunities at will to play you, then you not only have to play better, but also come out ahead of the high swings that any headsup matches entail. Another similiar example that I have often had occur, is playing nl headsup and beating a player for several buyins who then buys in real short. My standard response is that I will not continue to play unless he buys in for a more reasonable amount since the most extra I can then win is his last short buyin whereas I could get him even or up. It's just not good business to play this way headsup. But don't take my word for it, go experience it yourself in analagous situations where there is not always another headsup game with another player available when one of them quit you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please don't tell me you play 80/160 with nonsense reasoning like this. Nate is completely correct. All you are talking about is short term variance. Of course the "short-buyer" has an oportunity to win more money, but, if you are the better player, the times you win his short buy-in will more than make up for it. Just because you try something a couple times and get burned doesn't mean it couldn't have been +EV in the first place.

[BluffTHIS!]

A key factor here is that any type of headsup play a good player is denied to a great degree one of his primary edges, that of better starting requirements. Nonetheless there is still an edge to be found, but it will be much smaller against an aggressive bad player who bets and bluffs a lot but also won't let you get away with bluffs. Of course the counter to this is to value bet much worse hands on the end than you would against a better opponent, but you still have to contend with a huge short term luck factor in a situation in which your edge is smaller. And again my overall point, is that when I cannot immediately find another headsup player to play me, I just am not willing to lose a lot to someone who will not lose much to me.

[nate1729]

I don't have lots of high-stakes heads-up experience, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm right. Now, I understand that this is a high-variance situation (both due to the stakes and to the game conditions,) and if your bankroll/temperament is such that you prefer to avoid such a situation, that is at least understandable.

It is indisputable, though, that you are costing yourself money by adopting this attitude. "Not [being] in the context of playing many hands over time" does not change the fact that you have an edge in every hand you play. The concept of EV is not limited to long sessions; short sessions, single hands, single streets, and single decisions have EV, and if, as hypothesized, you are better than your opponent you make money over all these intervals. Taking a profitable situation (if you can handle the variance) is far from "bad business."

--Nate

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
does not change the fact that you have an edge in every hand you play.

[/ QUOTE ]

This obviously not correct since every piece of crap hand you pick up cannot be used, even with position, to outplay a better hand that even a bad player gets his share of. Also since I stated this bad player also bluffs and snaps off bluffs more often, he is then playing closer to optimal for a headsup situation. And since it is a limit game regarding TD unlike the nl situation I also mentioned, you cannot punish errors to as great a degree as in nl.

Let me put this in another way via a question to you. If you and I play a nl freezeout for $X and I win, I then offer you a rematch on the condition that "Texas rules apply", which means that you must now buyin for 2*$X for the rematch and so on for subsequent matches. Are the second and subsequent rematches good gambles, and what degree of edge would you have to have over that player to make them good gambles?

[randomstumbl]

It seems like your argument is that these players aren't good at full ring games, but play fairly well HU. Since your edge is relatively small and they're not willing to play for very long, you're not giving up much value and you're drastically lowering your variance. That seems like a completely reasonable decision.

It's not that these players magically become better players by limiting the number of hands they play; it's that they're just not all that profitable to play against.

[nate1729]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
does not change the fact that you have an edge in every hand you play.

[/ QUOTE ]

This obviously not correct since every piece of crap hand you pick up cannot be used, even with position, to outplay a better hand that even a bad player gets his share of.

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought that it was obvious that I meant an a priori edge. That is, if you agreed to play one hand (or, to get rid of positional considerations, two hands) against a bad player, you'd have an edge.

[ QUOTE ]
Also since I stated this bad player also bluffs and snaps off bluffs more often, he is then playing closer to optimal for a headsup situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, but it is taken as given that this is a bad player. Definitionally he makes mistakes that you do not make (and can exploit.) If his style of play is not a mistake in this situation, he is not a bad player in this situation. To the extent that it is a mistake, he is bad. All of this should be glaringly obvious.

[ QUOTE ]
And since it is a limit game regarding TD unlike the nl situation I also mentioned, you cannot punish errors to as great a degree as in nl.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure. Meanwhile, other mistakes he makes are more costly in limit than NL. But see above, mostly.

[ QUOTE ]
Let me put this in another way via a question to you. If you and I play a nl freezeout for $X and I win, I then offer you a rematch on the condition that "Texas rules apply", which means that you must now buyin for 2*$X for the rematch and so on for subsequent matches. Are the second and subsequent rematches good gambles,

[/ QUOTE ]

I assume that this is meant to be relevant to the discussion, and thus that I am assumed to have an edge over you.* If so, the rematches are good gambles until U(my bankroll before I put up my stake + (the stakes)*P(I win)) < U(my bankroll before I put up my stake + (the stakes)*(1 - P(I win)). [U is a utility function.]

That is, until I don't have enough of an edge to handle the variance.

[ QUOTE ]
and what degree of edge would you have to have over that player to make them good gambles?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's a function of my bankroll and the stakes, obviously. I probably have a little more gamble in me than many others.

By the way -- all snideness from me aside -- backers do exist, and if you are sure that you have an edge, but do not want to deal with the variance, convincing an investor of these facts might be something to think about.

--Nate

*The reasoning you have exhibited here makes this a rather easy hypothetical to imagine.

[Ezcheeze]

Obviously not. What point are you trying to make?

[Ezcheeze]

[ QUOTE ]
Also since I stated this bad player also bluffs and snaps off bluffs more often, he is then playing closer to optimal for a headsup situation

[/ QUOTE ]

More often than what? How do you know he is close to optimal play? If hes a bad player then he almost certianly deviates very far from optimal play since 1) no one knows what optimal play is and 2) it's different vs. different poeple (as long as your definition of optimal is maximizing wins and not game theoretical)

If he happens to be a heads up specialist and/or better than you heads up well then don't play him. As far as I can tell your whole point has been that you are frustrated that you can destroy some LAGs in a fullgame but can't beat them as bad heads up and aren't willing to risk the variance. YAY.

I hope you aren't of the opinion that no one could beat these players for very much heads up because I gaurantee you if they are a fish in a full table then there are many good players who would destroy them heads up.

Here's a thought: A Laggy 2-7 player is always bragging about the suckers he plays heads up. Unfortunately, there isn't always heads up action so hes forced to play in full games some of the time. The problem is the fish aren't playing so bad in this situation and they invariably get lucky and always hit and run. Because of this he gets frustrated and makes a post on an internet poker forumn warning other talented heads up players to stear clear of these apparent suckers when the table fills up. WARNING FELLOW POSTERS! theres nothing you can do about, just cut your losses and stick to heads up games.

The point: The LAG could in fact do something about it and that is get better at full games. And you could do something about these poeple you claim are fish and that is get better at heads up play. You did call them fish right?

[beset7]

You are way out of line. Anybody who has played or even extensively sweated high stakes (100/200 and up) games online knows what Bluffthis is talking about.

[Shoe]

I tend to keep playing when I think I have an edge, and stop playing when I no longer think the situation is profitable.

[schubes]

I don't play specifically TD HU, but I think this is a very relevant topic for any HU game where your EV is in some sense 'too small' with respect to your variance. Why does the aggressive hit 'n run artist seem to be such a problem?

The basic situation is that you allow the possibility of losing a large amount to one player, but you are unable to win a large amount. Since we are assuming you are beating your opponent and the rake, if you could play many sessions with the hit 'n runner, you should win a moderate amount often enough to compensate for the many small losses and the infrequent very big loss.

But because you only get to play your opponent once, the confusing nature of short term probability is evident. You need to consider playing many different hit 'n runners for EV to have much meaning. If you suffer a big loss to one player, you are never getting it back from them, and this is frustrating. But if you graph your HU results (I have done this for limit HE), you may see a typical looking random walk with upward bias. The downswings might be often lost to one player, but the upswings are not.

You might argue (and I believe BluffTHIS was in the post I'm replying to) that in a game like high-stakes TD, you can't simply keep playing different hit 'n runners, because the pool is limited. You may have +EV, but you don't have the ability to grind out the long term. I think it's clear that the problem is related to how we view gambling in the short term.

[Danielih]

[ QUOTE ]
You are way out of line. Anybody who has played or even extensively sweated high stakes (100/200 and up) games online knows what Bluffthis is talking about.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ezcheeze plays almost exclusively higher than 100200 so perhaps you are out of line. Way out of line.

[Ezcheeze]

Your premise is false.

[timprov]

The problem with these players is not that their short-stack hit-and-run strategy negates your edge -- this is clearly false -- but that it's hard to ever be sure that you do have an edge when you're only playing fifteen hands or so with a player. If the guy sitting down with 1/5 of your chips is actually a better player than you, you're in a bad spot. Probably not as bad as if he stuck around longer, although pushing his larger edge before you adjust is clearly a good idea. In fact some of these players may have an edge only until you figure out their play, in which case their strategy would be good, and indeed you ought to avoid them. This probably means your own "default" play is a long way from optimal.

These players exist at every level. Personally I adore them, even though occasionally I get creamed by one.

[Shoe]

Your looking at this completley wrong. Anytime that you have an edge over someone (a big enough edge to beat the rake), it is +EV to keep playing, no matter if the person plans to hit and run or not. In the long run, you will win more from these hit and run artists than you would lose to them. However, that does not mean you should keep playing if you are tired, on tilt, at the end of a long session and not at the top of your game anymore, find another table that would be more +EV, or other reasons like that.

Take casinos for example. People will go up to the roulette, craps, etc..., and do the same thing everyday. Sure, the casino is going to lose a large amount on occasion to someone they won't ever see again, but all the small amounts they win will more than make up for this. Why? Because they have an edge, and in the long run you cannot beat the edge.

Now, as long as you have an edge against this hit and run guy, it is worth playing as many hands against him as he is willing to play. The key here is figuring out if you actually have an edge or not. If you have an edge, keep playing. Don't overestimate your abilities or the edge you have over this "fish", and don't play beyond your bankroll and you will end up with the winnings over the long haul.

[bobman0330]

Posts like this make people dumber about poker. It's articulate, coherent, convincing, and utterly wrong.

EV is meaningful even if you play one hand. Every bit of money you make at poker is made from playing single hands. If you suffer a big loss against one opponent hitting and running, you'll make it up at some other point in your poker career. As a player, you need to just accumulate +EV spots wherever you can. If you can add 10 +EV TD hands against a hit and runner to go with your 100,000 +EV HE hands, it's good.

By artificially subdividing things, you're distorting the analysis.

[schubes]

EV is meaningfull before you play that one session.

If you can add 10 +EV TD hands against a hit and runner to go with your 100,000 +EV HE hands, it's good.

It is meaningfull after the session in the sense that if you had +EV you can consider it a "good gamble" even if you lost.

If you suffer a big loss against one opponent hitting and running, you'll make it up at some other point in your poker career.

You most certainly do not get some phantom +EV after your loss that you can redeem at some later point in your career. You would be better off if you had never suffered the loss, but you are unable to predict how much you will lose or win, only your EV (and this only in theory). But if we sieze more +EV situations than our opponent, we should eventually win. This isn't a clear and trivial statement, and it doesn't directly follow from the law of large numbers, but I don't want to confuse you more.

I'll take it as a complement that you called my post "articulate, coherent, convincing," but it shouldn't bother you so much. I'm not saying that the hit 'n running can surmount +EV, only that you have the possibility of being a large lifetime loser against one or more of the players, while its only possible to be a small winner. I think BluffTHIS was dwelling on this point in the post I first replied to. It's still a "good gamble." I'm sorry if you can't handle anything but the "hourly-rate" paradigm.

[bobman0330]

I'm assuming that whoever is playing this high stakes TD is, in general, a high stakes poker player. If that's so, fearing the hit and run is just stupid.

If someone who never played poker, but was still good at it, was considering sitting in such a game, then maybe they might be concerned about short-term luck.

If you play frequently, you're just wrong to be worried about this. Would you refuse to play in an overtight holdem game because you can only win small, but might lose big in any given hand?

I'm not trying to say that losing will be compensated by "phantom EV," but if you're playing in these games, you should have the bankroll to deal with swings. You can play in other games to win. Risk aversion has no place in the mind of a cardplayer.

Being able to think outside the box enough to challenge the hourly winrate paradigm is commendable, but don't waste your talent challenging unalterably correct statements such as "An adequately bankrolled player should never decline a +EV gamble."

[schubes]

You're so eager to attack a view, that you've pinned me to BluffTHIS. I never said you shouldn't take a good gamble because there is risk. I'm saying that I thought BluffTHIS was arguing (he came to argue this after dropping other points) from the fact that there is no long term in playing a single hit 'n runner. Posters were attacking him from the standpoint that "who cares, you get +EV from playing!"

I was pointing out that they're treating short term luck in different ways. One is frustrated that they may never beat an individual because they can't play enough hands, the other has learned to ignore the short term altogether. The first viewpoint isn't a very usefull one, but the second isn't strictly correct. The relationship between our short term results and eventually winning I think is interesting, both mathematically and philosophically. If you wish to ignore this, that's fine with me.

[beset7]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You are way out of line. Anybody who has played or even extensively sweated high stakes (100/200 and up) games online knows what Bluffthis is talking about.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ezcheeze plays almost exclusively higher than 100200 so perhaps you are out of line. Way out of line.

[/ QUOTE ]

My apologies.

[bobman0330]

I'm not ignoring your point, and I don't like to think I'm attacking it either, I just think it's really wrong. It's a subtle difference.

This is actually one of my biggest problems on the emotional side of my game, which might be why I really can't stand people trying to make points like this intellectually.

I'm a little tired now, so I'm not gonna post any content at the moment. But I don't want you thinking I bear any ill-will over this.

[Ito33]

It surprises me that it took so long for someone to make this point. Good heads up players are good because they can adapt to their opponents weaknesses. It's very unlikely that a fixed strategy/style is optimal when heads up. A player that fails to adjust will get ground down by a good player more quickly in heads up than in full table because there is a higher frequency of 'smart' plays against him that takes advantage of knowledge of his non-adaptive style/strategy.

As a corollary to this, if your opponent does not play enough hands for you to figure out his strategy and adapt to it, even a long-term weak fixed strategy can be short-term positive expected value against you.

A simple example is when villian plays a hyper-aggressive raising strategy where your 'default' play against an unknown player is tight-aggressive. He has a good chance of playing with positive expected value against you for the first handful of hands because you will give him credit for better hands than he actually holds.

Obviously the charade only holds up as long as the situation allows (you'll eventually catch him in a bluff or otherwise determine that he's overly aggressive) and at that point he can just leave (if he's smart).

Which brings up another poster's point. If he's smart enough to do this to you then you might not have had edge against him to begin with. You just are left with the perception of edge because if he continued to play that way you'd surely adapt and win in the limit but how can you be sure he'd stick to the same strategy?

I can't think of a 'defense' against this hit-and-run technique except perhaps to randomly adopt a different style of play against him when he starts so that whatever approach he's using has a chance of being sub-optimal or at least neutral against you for the first few hands.

[timprov]

This isn't really so much of an issue as it seems, because nearly every one of these short buy-in players is either extremely aggressive or extremely passive. Relentless value betting works pretty well against either (at least in TD and Stud/8 -- my HU hold'em game stinks).

[schubes]

[ QUOTE ]
A simple example is when villian plays a hyper-aggressive raising strategy where your 'default' play against an unknown player is tight-aggressive. He has a good chance of playing with positive expected value against you for the first handful of hands because you will give him credit for better hands than he actually holds.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think one can develop a good default HU strategy, the limiting case of which would be unexploitable. A hyper-aggressive player may push you off of hands he wouldn't be able to if you were adapted to his strategy. But your default strategy will show down enough hands that you can't be exploited by an opponent who simply never stops raising. In a worst case scenario, your strategy would be neutral - and both players would have -EV due to the rake.

Also, you might develop an 'opening' strategy designed to give you a quick estimate of how he's playing. For instance, in hold'em I sometimes limp early in the match with a marginal hand. If I am raised, I will play initially under the assumption that my opponent will be too aggressive. Of course, a very good player understanding the metagame may turn these opening moves against you.