b&m sklansky vs online: are we trying to win pots or chips?

[astroglide]

some of the stuff i disagree with the most in poker writings are the 'maximize your chance of winning the pot' stuff when your hand wins more than its fair share given the number of people in the pot. i was re-glancing at _poker, gaming, and life_ by DS and ran into the recommendation that if there are 8 limpers to you in the big blind, you should raise 99 because you have odds to flop a set and raise AA for value - but you shouldn't raise JJ or QQ because they have a harder time winning in big pots.

i'm always bugged when i see authors talking about checkraising people off of their gutshot / bunk draws when they don't have odds to call, everything done of course in the name of maximizing one's chances to win the POT.

my perspective as a multi-table online player is that i want to win CHIPS. however, i think this is a MUCH easier perspective to hold in that position because the long run happens much quicker.

paluka and i were chatting about this last night on the unofficial two plus two chatroom (download hydrairc freeware, connect to irc.efnet.org, and join the channel #twoplustwo). looking at streaks, upswings and downswings, it's pretty apparent that instead of playing a bunch of 15/30 games simultaneously and losing my ass for several days in a row i could be going to a casino and losing for a couple hours in an 80/160 game every day for like 2 months. he couldn't get how people could handle it, and neither can i. it could certainly inspire me to checkraise some gutshots out of the pot.

it just makes me happier that i can play 25,000 hands in a month because i can pump up 4-handed pots with a hand that wins more than its fair share rather than worry about winning it. really, if we're thinking LONG term, are knockout plays the kind of things we want to do? how many of you would rap queens when 8 people limp to you, and is it just because you want to book a win?

[LarsVegas]

Astroglide, it's more a question of playing the most profitable. 99 and AA plays most profitable with a raise in that spot, QQ/JJ are more profitable when checked.

I think the "schooling" principle comes into play here. The multiway pot means each and every one help each-other make a smaller or even no mistake at all when calling you pre-flop and on the flop.

Compare this to when you check you Queens, the flop come down T-8-3, it's checked by some, then JT bets it, you checkraise and maybe get to play the rest of the pot against a five-outer (possibly reduced to a two-outer by the turn) and with redraws if he hits.

That's a very good spot to be in.

Lars

[astroglide]

it's more a question of playing the most profitable

i disagree. furthermore, checkraising crap draws out of a hand when they lack odds is unarguably less profitable, and people recommend it all the time

[Clarkmeister]

"the recommendation that if there are 8 limpers to you in the big blind, you should raise 99 because you have odds to flop a set and raise AA for value - but you shouldn't raise JJ or QQ because they have a harder time winning in big pots."

This, along with the "don't raise JJ against 3-4 opponents" advice is one of the worst pieces of poker advice written by 2+2. David and Mason simply don't understand just how poorly the vast majority of players play, both pre and post flop.

[Clarkmeister]

"QQ/JJ are more profitable when checked."

Absurd. You vastly underestimate how good both of those hands are. You cannot recoup lost equity preflop by making people fold correctly postflop.

[David Steele]

This, along with the "don't raise JJ against 3-4 opponents" advice is one of the worst pieces of poker advice written by 2+2

Prove it! It seems plausible to me when the players are not terrible.

The pre-flop equity does't seem very useful for evaluating this kind of a hand, there are too many times when JJ folds well before the river and you will rarely be able to confidently collect bets the whole way.

At worst it is an excellent way to mix up your play, putting in a post-flop raise with a hand that most players would rule out by your non-raise pre-flop.

David and Mason simply don't understand just how poorly the vast majority of players play, both pre and post flop.
This is pretty damning, how did they get the rest of the book right? I think they have a pretty accurate idea of how players play everywhere. Besides playing a ton, they have been reading these forums for years like us.

D.

[Joe Tall]

David and Mason simply don't understand just how poorly the vast majority of players play, both pre and post flop

During this poker boom in B&M and the amount that are playing online, this is an understatement.

Peace,
Joe Tall

[risen]

[ QUOTE ]

Prove it! It seems plausible to me when the players are not terrible.


[/ QUOTE ]

Please repeat after me.

The players are terrible. That's why we make money off of them. And when you are confident that you can outplay everyone at your table, you can raise your high pocket pairs preflop and know when to get away from them post.

[David Steele]

Which games are you talking about? There are all kinds
of players in the 15-30 games I play, sometimes the 2-3
that limped in are not terrible.

D.

[David Sklansky]

The advice about raising with nines, but not jacks, relates mainly not to pot odds on later sreets but rather to setting up a raise on future rounds. Keeping a pot smaller merely to cut down chasers odds is a fallacious concept (unless you might become the prospective chaser as I explain in my Razz book).

The play works because eschewing an earlier raise that adds to your immediate EV often means you will be bet into on the next round where you add even more to your EV by thinning the field. This later addition of EV is most apt to make up for loss of earlier EV when you have jacks or queens. The play doesn't work if people are playing terrible cards or if players are just as likely to bet into you even if you have put in an extra bet preflop.

[daryn]

i just want to take a minute to suck up.


david thanks for the books, the forum and thanks for posting. i really enjoy thinking about and talking about poker theory and posts like this make me want to even further analyze the game and better myself.


thanks!

[astroglide]

This is pretty damning, how did they get the rest of the book right?

which book, HPFAP? it's great, better than any of us could have written, and downright amazing for the time it was written. doesn't make it perfect or future-proof. i think that offsuit non-pairs (e.g. JTo, QTo, etc) are overvalued and pairs are undervalued in their preflop standards.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Absurd. You vastly underestimate how good both of those hands are. You cannot recoup lost equity preflop by making people fold correctly postflop.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm... I'll have to think about that one. Interesting comment, seriously. If I read DS's post correctly above he disagrees.

DS wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
The play works because eschewing an earlier raise that adds to your immediate EV often means you will be bet into on the next round where you add even more to your EV by thinning the field. This later addition of EV is most apt to make up for loss of earlier EV when you have jacks or queens.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps this means the players are folding incorrectly? Don't think so though.

[Clarkmeister]

"Keeping a pot smaller merely to cut down chasers odds is a fallacious concept "

I alluded to this earlier. But I guarantee you that more than 80% of the people on this site don't get this. Every day the "I don't want to give them correct odds to chase" crapola appears in dozens of new threads.

"The play doesn't work if people are playing terrible cards or if players are just as likely to bet into you even if you have put in an extra bet preflop. "

I might add to this, it doesn't work if you don't catch a flop you like or if you might not like where the bet comes from. In other words, it needs nearly a perfect game texture and an extreme amount of luck to work properly. In other words, it has almost no practical application for your average winning player against the retards that populate the vast majority of todays games.

Heck, the "it doesn't work if people are playing terrible cards" qualifier instantly makes the "don't raise QQ and JJ in the big field" advice useless because in order for it to be a family pot, its almost a necessity that people are playing terrible cards.

The problem is that there are so many caveats and qualifiers for both of the preflop plays I critisized in my initial post, that they are both essentially useless almost all of the time. Regardless of how technically correct the advice may or may not be for a specific hypothetical scenario.

[DcifrThs]

I think you've combined a few concepts here astro. when you rap qq after 8 limpers and the sb completes that means that there are 10 people (or nine if you mean 8 limpers including the sb). when you bet out after rapping pat and sb checks (which will most often be the case) the following limpers are getting either 11:1 or 10:1 on a call. they ARE getting their odds to peel a card off and take a shot at beating your hand because of the implied odds you're giving them on the later streets. i know if i was in a later position and you bet and i had a gutshot on a none two flushed board i will call if the remaining players/player are passive.

when you checkraise, you WANT me to call because i'm no longer getting odds to call and i'd be making mistake #3, calling when you should fold.

that being said, when you raise, in addition to what david wrote in this post, sklansky states that you've also given your hand away. Further, that raise makes it correct for them to call EVEN if you somehow manage to c-r them which if fairly unlikely but still minutely possible.

i brought up this exact topic a little while ago and have now built very strong feelings based on the responses to my thread (which did not include davis sklansky but nonetheless made me feel strong enough to use my conclusions at the table).

i now feel for sure he is right here all things being considered and i'm sure he doesn't need little old me to tell him that. but to all the doubters out there it really is correct to check those queens, imo (as a result of his and much thinking and posting about this). Jacks and tens, however, i sometimes raise for set odds since the probability of hitting makes it +ev to do so combined with the probability of overcards flopping (which is much noticably higher for jacks than queens and certainly for tens).

i hope i help you think about this more as david certainly has made me think about this one aspect of play a great deal. and for that, and all his other work, i thank him and all of two plus two for that matter.

without them i wouldn't have nearly the results i have because i could not have EVER learned this stuff on my own and david, next time i have time in vegas you can be pretty sure i'll email you for a private lesson or two.

questions? comments?
-Barron

[chesspain]

[ QUOTE ]
Keeping a pot smaller merely to cut down chasers odds is a fallacious concept.


[/ QUOTE ]

I assume that you are referring to preflop action only? Or are you repudiating the sections in HEFAP where you and Mason suggest not automatically raising a nearly bloated pot on the flop so as to cut down the chasers' odds between the turn and river?

[astroglide]

they ARE getting their odds to peel a card off

they're putting in 2 bets preflop with a much worse hand. i want them to do that.

sklansky states that you've also given your hand away

where does he state that? i raise often enough out of my blinds that my play is not flagged. i think anybody that doesn't is making a mistake.

[mike l.]

"The problem is that there are so many caveats and qualifiers for both of the preflop plays I critisized in my initial post, that they are both essentially useless almost all of the time. Regardless of how technically correct the advice may or may not be for a specific hypothetical scenario."

perfect.

hpfap 2005 edition needs to come and it needs to have a decent amount of significant changes. the games have changed a lot since 2000. a much looser more aggressive game, very similar to the sorts weve seen for years in california, is the sort you see at nearly all mid limit games. all sorts of adjustments and rethinking need to occur.

if david and mason would come and play 20-40 to 80-160 in LA, as well as online 5-10 and up, for about 3 months straight they would definitely see the need for a complete rewrite. too bad there's no way on earth that will happen.

[DcifrThs]

two very good points.

the non raise would have to make up for 8/9 sb's or 4 whole big bets when the hand does hold up...but i guess what david is saying is that the raise decreases the likelihood of the hand winning since people will now draw more librally. i must further presume that this fact must be significant enough to warrant david's suggestion to not raise. so is that the main reason to not raise with qq here? i think so since all the other considerations are not as crucial.

what do you think?
-Barron

ps- sklansky talks about 'giving away' the hand in the same essay that he talks about rapping qq in the bb after all limp.

[Kenrick]

I used to limp with JJ multiway until the threads and computer simulations on here swayed me otherwise. Playing against today's average players, JJ will often be the best hand going in, and if you're up against AQ or something, raising preflop draws in money from the other players to help subsidize both of you, like middle pair subsidizing both top pair and the guy with the flush draw, or when you raise on the button with a flush draw against five players just to get more money into the pot.

QQ is the third best hand in the game. I'm raisin'. If someone with A-10 hits their ace, or 8-9 makes a straight, good for them. If they want to fold preflop and not stick their noses into my pot, that's fine, too.

Has Astroglide's original question been answered yet? "Are we trying to win chips, or pots?" The whole concept of playing more aggressively soley because the pot is big always seemed like "chasing good money after bad" to me unless the situation would have pure aggression or intimidation be +EV. But if pure aggression or intimidation would be +EV against those particular players, then I would think it'd be +EV regardless of the pot size.

[shemp]

[ QUOTE ]
if david and mason would come and play 20-40 to 80-160 in LA, as well as online 5-10 and up, for about 3 months straight they would definitely see the need for a complete rewrite.

[/ QUOTE ]

Food for thought (I haven't convinced myself): the tight tough vegas 20/40 of HEFAP never really existed prior to publication, or to the extend it did, never figured into the money -- it merely offers a platform for which to contextualize the concepts from TOP. People want a hold'em book, so they get one -- what they need to get on the road to becoming experts are the concepts, which are in TOP. HEFAP, almost by definition works at cross-purposes, as the concepts are easily lost to the reader who is ultimately in search of a cookie cutter strategy which will reduce the Fekali Enemas in their diet.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
hpfap 2005 edition needs to come and it needs to have a decent amount of significant changes. the games have changed a lot since 2000. a much looser more aggressive game

[/ QUOTE ]

Nah, I like it pretty much the way it is. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[astroglide]

Nah, I like it pretty much the way it is.

yeah, heh. i guess it's better that everyone else sticks with that info...

[LarsVegas]

I agree Clark. I would never check Queens against limpers in the games I play. Very rarely Jacks, but it may have occured.

I was just trying to illustrate what David Sklansky meant by the concept he brought forward in HPFAP.

When discussing poker concepts, people have a tendency to focus on quite irrelevant things, such as the validity of the excample itself. Such as "absurd to check Queens against a field of limpers in BB".

The point is that Sklansky tried to make a point, that in some situations, it might be right to raise very good and decent hands, but check some of the hands in-between. Much like when the third flush card appears in a very very tight game, where you may now bet a flush of your own or top pair (folding to a raise), but maybe check two pair.

Sklansky used the AA/QQ-JJ/99 excample under game conditions that made this a valid, reasonable excample. I agree that these game conditions are far and few between in today's juicy poker climate.

The original poster misunderstood, because he thought this concept was about sacrificing EV for the sake of winning more pots. It's not. The concept, when used under the right circumstances, is all about gaining as much EV as possible. Playing as winning poker as one can.

Hope that helped!

lars

[Ed Miller]

I assume that you are referring to preflop action only? Or are you repudiating the sections in HEFAP where you and Mason suggest not automatically raising a nearly bloated pot on the flop so as to cut down the chasers' odds between the turn and river?

Please reread that example, Chesspain. You missed something the first time around. I believe it's in the section called "Another Example" in the Loose Games section.

[chesspain]

I see from a rereading of these examples that S&M advocated not betting/raising the flop so as to try to get chasers to fold to a bet/raise on the turn. I realize now that they say nothing in this section about pot odds or the FTOP--indeed, these "slowplays" on the flop are simply about trying to get people to fold on the turn.

Ahhhhh!

[Ed Miller]

I see from a rereading of these examples that S&M advocated not betting/raising the flop so as to try to get chasers to fold to a bet/raise on the turn.

The purpose of waiting for the turn in the Loose Games examples is to induce someone on your right to bet into you on the turn. Thus, it is consistent with what David said above.

[chesspain]

Ed,

Thanks for taking the time to point me back in the right direction!

chesspain

[SoBeDude]

You cannot recoup lost equity preflop by making people fold correctly postflop.

Looking at my Pokertracker stats for QQ and JJ tells the story.

I'm raising preflop QQ, 96.55% of the time. With Jacks its 98.73%.

I'm winning with QQ, 62% of the time, and with JJ, 53% of the time.

What I don't have, however, is a win-rate breakdown based on number of opponents.

But it seems I'd be giving up a ton of EV by not raising preflop.

-Scott

[elysium]

hi astro
there's more to this situation than what appears on the surface. but basically, there are 3 situations that come up that pretty much give some clarity and indication of when to raise rather than call. now, these are the situations that i have on the top of my head. there are others i'm sure.

the first is a nut flush draw on the turn with top pair in a 5 or 6 way. your in EP and it's one bet to you.

the second, you have a small suited connector with 15+ outs on the flop. your in EP and it's one bet to you.

the third; you're in EP with an over-pair to the pair on board, which is also 2 toned, giving you 2 pair. you're in EP and one bet to you.

in any of these situations you could also have been in EP and checked with an LP betting behind you giving you a drive out check-raise ability, or an opportunity to bet-out first in, with an aggressive opponent on your immediate left. in these examples, the field will be narrowed to below correct odds. in other words, if your odds are 4 to 1, then the raise or bet should narrow the field down to a 3 way or heads up, and the action in the following round will slowdown, meaning that by calling, rather than raising, you actually will be allowing others in drawing thin or dead.

in the first 2 examples, i think raising is correct. in the third example, i think calling is correct. the reason i like raising, even though there is little chance of the raise folding everyone out, is that it gives me more control. in the first example, the raise may stop a raising war from breaking out on the turn, and since this hand loses value on the turn, as well as redraws, i like getting the money in up front while it's powerfully outed. in the second example, a raise gives my top pair the best chance of standing up. if, however, everyone calls, then i rely on my nut draw. in both situations, my raise also enhances my image in the right spots, especially when i don't showdown.

in the third example, i raise only when my image is solid. that's the type hand that i want weak and thin draws to bet into me with, or call. if i'm losing, then i only call.

as far as the standard calling with QQ on the flop in a large multi-way, that's pretty basic. i tend to do this only when ny RHO is lively and the field is large. i never call pre-flop, however, unless it's 3 to me or something like that. those other situations though, you raise every time. i know that you usually don't astro, but i think that's wrong. whether the pot is large or just average size, you should raise for value and to give you better control of the table.

[DcifrThs]

now this is the stat part about poker that i love. you cannot possibly use those numbers as a frame of reference to determine strategy in this particular instance. its like saying i sampled 5000 people from ny and 1/2 of them had large amounts of lead in their blood so therefore 1/2 the total population is likely to have large amounts of lead in THEIR blood. clearly the sample is not randomly selected from the group about which we are trying to draw a conclusion. similarly, of your sample of hands from pokertracker, a VERY small % of them will be against that many opponents, AND be in the blinds exactly when you have qq and jj. therefore the numbers are quite misleading because in THESE specific situations, queens and jacks are much less likely to hold up when raised because they are more likely to be outdrawn than the rest of the, say, 95% of the time you're NOT against 9 opponents.

this is not to say that raising doesn't give up equity preflop, it does. but i'm just pointing out THOSE reasons to raise that you gave based on that evidence cannot be correct. your argument for raising would be compelling if the same numbers were available for those times you are in the blinds against 8/9 players.

also keep in mind that the requirement that the hand occurs in the blinds is necessary because in a later position you have more info and are in a better position to knock out hands that check from up front.

-Barron