Probabilities/Statistical Mastery v. Natural Skill

[Bluegoose75]

I've often heard of professtional poker players that he / she has 'natural ability'. I'm assuming this means the ability to read opponents, to notice betting trends and/or prevent himself/herself from playing into predictable patterns etc.

What I'm curious about is to what extent do you believe all the math guru's probabilities of 'odds of flopping middle pair at a short handed table' really matter? Clearly it's important to understand pot odds, implied odds, odds of drawing a flush or flopping a set etc. To what extent does it really improve your game to have to run through 600 calculations per hand trying to figure everything out?

I guess my point is that with the advent of pokercalcs and online hand monitoring people can break down the game statistically better than the 'experts' could ever have using raw data. But does this new information make you a better player? Does it just give you 'tired head' more often, creating the tendancy to need more breaks in playing or cause you more mistakes?

What are your thoughts...

[CCraft_42]

I have wondered the same thing, have read good players change the way they play similar hands and adjust there play to match the game. How do stats help in these situation. Sorry, not answering your question but would like to see some responses.
thanks

[Bluegoose75]

No problem. I'm interested in other people's responses too. My experience is that it's very easy to analyze any particular hand in hindsight, even to disect it and offer it up for review from other people that make their own judgements. To me however, given that you have to analyze position, betting patterns, stack size, number of players in each pot and of course the size of the pot even BEFORE you take into account the cards themselves (all this done in a matter of seconds naturally), I wonder what level of 'probability' you really need to succeed.

One of the things I enjoy the most about live games is the table experience over online gaming (luckily I live in an area where live gaming is plentiful). I consider myself fairly good at the aforementioned 'decision factors' but I couldn't tell you the odds of catching middle pair on a 7 person table with 4 callers and the subsequent odds of being beaten with runner-runner heads up if starting under the gun and with suited connectors on the fly or whatever either.

[TStoneMBD]

the players who have a mathematical understanding for the game are much better off than those that dont. no limit is a game of psychology, while limit is more mechanical. the no limit players can get away without knowing the math as well as limit players, but in the long run numbers matter. by the tone of your question, i assume that you are basing your inquiry with the players on television lingering in the back of your mind. just because someone makes a final table in a tournament, or wins it, doesnt mean they are a good player. there are many famous tournament players who are flat broke, because they were bankrolled to play in the event that they won and therefore kept a small percentage of the profit. math is everything, and the best highstakes players understand it better than anyone.

[jason1990]

I would guess that all poker experts know the math. They know, at least roughly, what the odds of everything are, whether through experience or prior calculation. They then go a step further by allowing their decisions to be based not only on the odds, but also on other (sometimes psychological) considerations. I think it's a matter of having to know the "rules" before you know when to break them.

[Bluegoose75]

Well maybe I didn't pose the question clearly enough. I do agree that having the ability to 'know the odds' is superior to not having this ability. I guess what I'm asking is at what point do you reach a severe level of diminishing returns on the amount of time/study it takes to know the odds on the very strangest possible hand probabilities. By that I mean that there are clearly sets of probable hands/outcomes that everyone should know (much like the starting hands a beginner would want to play in early position). However, as you progess you want to incorporate more information / probabilites in your repetoire to then move up to another level of play. At some point though, the extra bit of information you could add would be so obscure that the time it took to figure out/master would not be worth the effort. In poker terms, the expected payoff would not justify the price.

Here's an example of what I'm asking in a baseball analogy. Lets say a high school pitching prospect has a dominant fastball. This is great. He crushes the competition with his 97 mph fastball. But that's all he's got. He gets to college, finds he can't get by on that pitch alone and develops a nice slider. He crushes the competition. He gets to the Majors and finds he needs more. Lets say he develops a third and fourth pitch. He can surely be successful now. But is it worth his time to develop a 6th, 7th, 8th or 9th pitch? In baseball terms, no. It's just not worth it. So my question is at what point in Hold'em is knowing every single possible probability not as worth while when you could spend your time/effort on minimizing your mistakes, or gathering more information about how your opponents play or whatnot.

As for the question about me looking at the players on TV and wondering what 'natural talent' they have or whatnot, not really. I guess what I'm saying is that there is alot of information to analyze in a very short period of time. Given that most of us have finite skills to analyze data in a given time frame, I think that at some point analyzing other factors takes precedence over obscure probabilities, at least that's what I'm asking anyway.

[That guy]

The more probabilites and odds-scenarios I learn, the more I feel I understand the game. But it does seem that the assumptions in making a mathematical decision are pretty shaky... how do you estimate accurately the chance that someone is bluffing or would play X hand that way?... you can do some weighted avg summations and come up with a mathematical answer but there is a point of: 'gabage in, garbage out'... Also, there are plays to make which simply have no (near-term) mathematical justification.

It seems to me that the more math you understand, the better off you are... but this is BECAUSE of the fact that you understand enough to know that the math might be very close much of the time and whether something is slightly +EV or slightly -EV depends on a few shaky estimations for inputs... add to that the fact that often you simply must call a slightly -EV situtation to 'show you can't be run over' and not a 'folder' and the result seems to be that many plays in poker really COULD be correct even if mathematically incorrect.

net net, math is huge... the players with 'natural ability' somehow find a way to do the mathematically correct thing without thinking about it mathematically... and they have the savvy to sniff out the right play to make rather than just rely on 'what is right in the long term, mathematically'...

[Bluegoose75]

Also to add to your question about players making the final table at the WSOP or whatever event is on TV. I find it hard to believe that ANYONE that makes the final table is a 2500+ person tournament is that lucky. They are all good players. Certainly some are better than others, but it would be such an anomaly (sp?)that I wouldn't consider it even feasible. There are just too many hands played in the tourney by the time you get to the final table to be lucky that often.

[dana33]

[ QUOTE ]
To what extent does it really improve your game to have to run through 600 calculations per hand trying to figure everything out?

[/ QUOTE ]
The best players, I believe, spend a lot of time AWAY from the table running through various scenarios and calculating the associated odds. So when they are AT the table, any calculations they need to do are fairly simple -- the rest is just recall.

[johnc]

Knowing the math, thinking away from the table, studying, discussing, etc Isee as essential tools to be successful. The top pros have the best "set" of tools but, I firmly believe that much of the instinct or natural abilty - the seemingly uncanny ability to make the tough decisions on the fly under tremendous pressure (I dream I had) lies in their intellect. That being their mind's ability to automatically or maybe subconsciously process the data instantly and bingo call, raise, fold. That's the real magic, some people got it others never will no matter how much they study, crank out opponent data, or whatever else.