[edrugtrader]

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VERY RARE, VERY SLIM +EV SITUATIONS ARE NOT PROFITABLE, BECAUSE OF THE LIKELYHOOD THAT WE WILL NOT SEE THEM ENOUGH TIMES DURING OUR POKER LIFETIMES FOR THE NUMBERS TO NORMALIZE.

This notion is 100% erroneous. How often you are offered a bet does not determine in any way whether it is profitable or not.

To prove this to yourself, you can view any set of bets as a single bet with many possible outcomes. For instance, say you flip a coin three times. For each time it comes heads, you win $1. Each time it comes tails, you lose a $1.

Instead of looking at it as three different bets, you can view it as a single bet with eight possible outcomes. That is, if it comes HHH, you win $3. HHT, and you win $1. Etc. There is no difference in "profitability" whether you view it as a series of N independent "common" bets, or one "rare" bet with 2^N possible outcomes.

Likewise, your bankroll doesn't care what game you are playing, or what situation came up. All it cares is that you made a bet with an EV of +$X/wager with a std. dev. of $Y/wager. It doesn't care if that wager was made at faro or tiddle-e-winks.

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thank you very much for your reply... this was the concept that confused me. i'm still not sure about it, but thank you none the less. independence is tricky in these situations. look at my post about gambling gus in the probability forum. i don't believe your sports betting analogy applies though, because the outcome chances are not fixed...

the TT in seat 5 for 3 bets recommendation will probably win about 6% of the time in that situation. you'll generally need the trips. the times you hit trips and so does someone else will even out the times when you win without trips (because even though rarer, you'll lose a lot more when you both flop trips)

in my mind, the DEFAULT play would be to fold unless you were sure that both of your raisers very likely don't have JJ, QQ, KK or AA, because if they do, it is -EV. the rarity and variance issues came up as i was trying to prove this. TT should not call there because it is GENERALLY not +EV even in these loose games. an early raise is still an early raise, and 2 early raises is screaming AA,KK,QQ,AKs.

anyways, i'm sure the postflop sections will give me a few new insights, and i look forward to the rest of the book.

until then, i want to remind you again that you were wrong on the explanation of why position has value... it is because you KNOW what they are doing ALWAYS. their guessing wrong does not imply profit ALWAYS, only most of the time. you should add a footnote in the second edition. something like "* unless they guess you will bet and they intend to raise in a situation where you are favored".