Post deleted by Mat Sklansky

[randomstumbl]

Since I just finished posting something completely off topic, I figured I'd actually post something on topic.

Is position less important in Omaha than it is in Hold'em? It really doesn't matter. We can argue it back and forth, but here's what really does matter. Position is important in Omaha.

Is oxygen more important for life than water? It doesn't matter, it's still important.

A loose passive table makes position significantly less important because you can limp in EP and expect to have a lot of callers and not be raised.

Also, since your opponents don't bet very often, you'll seldom have the chance to raise in LP anyway (since no one will bet very often).

Position is always valuable, but it's less valuable when playing with loose passive opponents. Since, and I'm assuming here, the .5/1 LOH is filled with loose/passive opponents, position is less valuable in that specific game with those specific players.

You'll also find position is usually less important at .5/1 Hold'em than it is at 5/10.

[bygmesterf]

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I DO think about where my profit comes from. In point of fact, one benefit of a database is that it took me all of two minutes to pull up a month of hands from last year when I played the hand selection criteria the OP uses, pull out all dealt hands with As, and directly see how much it would have cost me to raise all As vs how often I'd have gotten paid off. I KNOW what my results would have been.

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Actually you don't know, because poker is not deterministic, your PFR might have changed how the hand was played out. Also not all Axs hands are profitable but most are. Collecting and analysing real world statistics is devilish problem.

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You say anyone who can play Party .5/1 profitably would make more money elsewhere, so it doesn't sound like you even play those games and are just "theorizing".

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I used to play the 3/6 and 5/10 Omaha for several months straight. I've played 5/10 Omaha in Home games. I've taught other people how to play and win in the 50/1 games.

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The other side is necessary precisely because of a point you made: most players who do any appreciable amount of PFR in those games lose money overall, so unless you're going to tell the OP exactly how to do it right, your quick advice can be dangerous -- especially the +EV is provably small advantage (making 5 or more .50 bets to collect 2-3BB every 5-6 hands) in a game where re-raises are rare, as they are in the site/limit under discussion.

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My advice was if you have a premium hand in position (especially one with a suited ace) you should raise if several people are in the pot. If you do this, you will win more. If you don't you will win somewhat less. You won't see this on a hand by hand basis, but over time your net result will be positive.

Not raising preflop when you have the best of it, is what Mason would call a "self weighting" strategy.

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but I STRONGLY disagree that "A good player seeks out varience because his varience has a positive skew." Positive skew doesn't doesn't even have a meaning in regards to variance. By definition, ALL variance is positive (there is no such thing as negetive variance) but that doewn't mean variance is good.

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Varience can be positive or negative. For example in a manufacturing process, you have products that may be over or underweight. Positive and negative varience from the expected result.

If the positive and negative variences are equal in number and amount, you will have a symetric distributuion. If they aren't you will have a skewed distribution.

In the case of poker results, because a good player will invest more in +EV situations, the magnitude of the positive varience will be larger than the magnitude of negative varience. Positive varience from the expected result will also be more frequent than negative varience as a result of good starting hand selection.

For example if you were to cacluate the sum of random samples that were 1.5 standard deviations from the mean of a distribution with a positive skew and longer positive tail, that sum would be positive. If the distribution were symetric that sum would be zero.

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The "positive skew" you're taking about is +EV, not variance, and the two are completely independent. The higher the +EV, the more money you expect to make in the long run; the higher the variance, the higher the Risk of Ruin with a finite bankroll. Why is that good?

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Because poker results are not symetricly distributed, but instead have a positive skew. Hence more varience is good for you since when ever varience occurs it's more likely to be positive and have somewhat greater magnitude whenever it is positive.

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To make this clear: imagine you are offered two options with an equal return in the long term (equal +EV), one has a very low variance (consistently pays off in most hands) and the other has high variance (rarely hits, but is a major jackpot when it does). Both are desirable strategies, because both are +EV, but by your argument, I should SEEK the higher variance option, which, by definition, won't pay any more, but will take a lot longer on average to pay off, and will increase my Risk of Ruin. Why should I do that?

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Maybe because you don't understand what I'm talking about and prefer to respond with an irrelavent example that you've seen elsewere on 2+2?

[bygmesterf]

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This is actually a pretty interesting argument. Does variance skew to the positive? I've never actually considered that it would, but I suppose it's possible that it does.

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If you have normal distribution (bell curve), it is symetric. But poker results are not normally distributed

For example every one agree's that the winning player's investment in pots that he wins, is greater than his investment in pots that he loses.That means that positive varience for a winning player is greater than negative varience.