Players Skill Comparison

[clovenhoof]

In one way, at least, we treat "poker" like "the common cold" -- there's really no such thing, at least, no such single thing. Comparing no-fold'em holdem to the games that HEFAP is designed for (I believe $10-20 and up) is like playing checkers with chess pieces and pretending it's chess. They're two very different games, requiring different skill sets to succeed.

HEFAP takes a game theory-like approach to Hold'em. But game theory is designed to beat a game, regardless of how well or poorly the competition plays. I'm not an expert on the topic, but I believe that in all competitive situations that can be "solved" by a game theory approach, weaker competition is beaten faster and bigger by departing from game theory and playing weaker moves, with a higher upside, that your opponent lacks the ability to counter. That's certainly the case in games like chess, and sports like football. To take an obvious (and famous) example, throwing a submarine sandwich in the pot might win you extra money in a home game, but in any kind of real game it's just going to cost you a sandwich.

Mason talks about this quite a bit in his Poker Essays books -- players who have learned to beat a single game or structure, but can't move to other games (including games they recognize as "weaker"). They have found some winning tactics, but don't have a real understanding of strategy.

HEFAP gives you lots of weapons for your arsenal, but what lots of readers don't take from it is that lots of those weapons (eg semi-bluffs) can't be used in loose games because the prerequisite circumstances don't exist. In those games, the only thing that really matters is pot odds, and manipulating the pot size so that the odds are in your hand's favour.

Of course, I'm basically a fish, so take all that with a grain of salt.

'hoof