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I heard from your Dutch friends that you always thought you were right, but I didn't believe them until now.
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But then you also heard that over the past four or five years or so, I have been the biggest winner by far in the PLO games - so that I may actually have been correct in being correct. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]
One thing that I respect in you a lot actually, Dave, is that you are not afraid to show that you are going through a bad run, both in the short as well as in the long run. Very few players have the courage to do that. I respect that a lot.
But at the same time, when you approach a problem in an incorrect manner, like "we have already established the other guy has aces too", well then obviously it is not hard to see that there lies the crux of this problem of yours! The same reason why I have had so many conflicts over the years with my Dutch friends: they always thought I was wrong - yet my results consistently showed that I had to be either very right, or very lucky. When tackling a problem like the one here, I always tend to look at the BIG PICTURE. This means that if I estimate the chance of someone having aces too at 85 or 90%, I estimate that as 85 or 90% - not 100%. If you do that, you will almost certainly reach the wrong conclusion - as you did when you said it "was no great shakes either way". Things were exactly the same way with my friends in Holland, who could not understand me when I reraised all-in against someone who I *knew* had aces, while holding a mere T986ds or something similar, or folded crummy aces preflop from the big blind, when the small blind raised into the field, and the money was too deep to shut everyone out. And when I explained them, they still wouldn't believe it, and they would fail to leave out the important details that led to these decisions being correct. For years, people have told me that my analysis was wrong and that I was just lucky. Yet I am still standing there, while they are struggling - same as you, basically. Yet the only thing I hear is that *their* (and your) analysis is correct, and that *mine* is wrong. Well, then I would say: Yeah definitely there is something wrong - but I am fairly certain it is not my analysis.
Anyway, I hope we can leave it at this. I actually think you are a good guy, and hope that you won't be the next one in my (already very long!) list of enemies. I genuinely mean it when I wish you all the best - and I have no problem if in this case we will simply agree to disagree.
Rolf Slotboom
www.rolfslotboom.com