Mike Caro statement do you agree??

Does anyone disagree with this statement from Mike C ? I put the the full message below to be sure it was not out of context.

thanks

JAque


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While hand selection is still important in short-handed games, it's not nearly as crucial as in full-handed games. Most of your profit in short-handed games comes from making the right decisions AFTER you enter the pot. <font color="red"> </font color> Most of the profit in full-handed games comes from playing the right hands to begin with. <font color="red"> </font color>

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I like short-handed poker. In fact, I prefer two-handed (heads-up) poker, and anything more than four-handed feels crowded to me.

Often, I'll sit at a nine-handed hold 'em game and tease that we should divide it into three tables. "There are three perfectly good poker games here, and we're all crowded at this table," is what I say. Sometimes this stimulates a heads-up challenge from someone who likes the fast pace of short-handed play. Remember, in short-handed games, you not only get to play more pots when you're dealt a hand, because there a fewer opponents who could have you beat, but there are many more hands dealt per hour. This means lots of action.

While hand selection is still important in short-handed games, it's not nearly as crucial as in full-handed games. Most of your profit in short-handed games comes from making the right decisions AFTER you enter the pot. Most of the profit in full-handed games comes from playing the right hands to begin with.

Anyway, here's what I'm thinking...

It's fairly hard to get short-handed games going in real-world casinos. You can start a game short-handed, but it's apt to fill up. Real-world casinos can't easily afford to spread many short-handed games, because they have fixed costs to contend with: Each table requires a dealer and there may be issues of limited tables.

These issues of cost don't apply on the Internet. So, what's your opinion? Do you think that if we pushed short-handed games on the Internet, where it's more cost effective, that we could popularize that method of playing poker? Should we?

Straight Flushes,
Mike Caro

[Pringle]

&lt;&lt;Does anyone disagree with this statement from Mike C ?

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While hand selection is still important in short-handed games, it's not nearly as crucial as in full-handed games. Most of your profit in short-handed games comes from making the right decisions AFTER you enter the pot. Most of the profit in full-handed games comes from playing the right hands to begin with.

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Absolutely. In most "good" hold 'em full ring games, you will be taking advantage of loose players (and thus playing tighter). So a tight hand selection to fit the game is very important. On the other hand, when shorthanded you will oftentimes be taking advantage of play that is too tight for a shorthanded game. Since you are playing looser, good hand selection is not as important.

Pringle

What about this?

**Most of the profit in full-handed games comes from playing the right hands to begin with. **

I have a lot of trouble with this statement!

JAque

[bernie]

not sure what you disagree with...

much of your profit comes from minimizing your losses. thus making your winnings more prominent.

going in to flops with inferior/out of position hands puts you in situations to maximize losses and make 2nd best hands, that you shouldnt have even been in with in the first place.

so the easiest place to start is starting hands...not to discount flop play, but getting to the flop is a big part.

not all starting hands have the same value in all full games....
game texture plays a big role in this too...

if it wasnt true, try calling anything reasonable to see the flop and see what happens...

just a couple ideas anyway...

b

[Ryan_21]

[Clarkmeister]

While Caro's statement that hand selection is more important in full games vs shorthanded games is true, his other statement is clearly false.

Most of your profit in full games clearly does not come from simple hand selection. Hand selection will break you even, and even turn a small profit in LL games, but anything beyond that it is useless. Otherwise, we could all just memorize some preflop situation flash cards and win. Bah.

Your profit comes from expert postflop play. This forum in general overfixates on preflop play and Caro's statement echoes that fixation. Try playing the 30-60 at Bellagio and beat the game Mason is in simply by playing correctly preflop. Ha!

[Jim Brier]

"Most of the profit in full-handed games comes from playing the right hands to begin with"

This is only true in low limit, loose-passive type games. In middle and high limit games, playing "the right hands to begin with" will only make you a break-even player at best. The real money in middle and high limit games, whether they be shorthanded or full-handed, is made post-flop.

[snakehead]

please expand on this, as I'm not sure I agree. I still think one of my strongest assets is hand selection. I don't have set rules, but rather a sliding scale that varies according to the player I am against. still, picking a starting hand that has a good chance to win is very important, as most high limit players will not allow you to out play them, and the fish in these games call every bet.

[andyfox]

The consistent losers at the level I play ( generally 30-60) play far too many hands. So their hand selection is certainly the first step towards losing play. They then call too much when they should fold. So losing, for them, is a combination of pre-flop and post-flop errors. I think the pre-flop errors are more important.

The superior players, on the other hand, out-think, and therefore out-play, their opponents post-flop. They probably play more hands than I do, but they win more than I do because they play better post-flop.

How about this, then: You can't win if you have poor hand selection pre-flop; you can't win a lot if you don't play very well post-flop.

I disagree. Hand selection is aways important, but not as important as how you play the hand in the particular situation. You simply choose to play different hands in different situations.