SSH - +EV or -EV?

[Brandon J. Fuchs]

Read Ed Miller's Book, I liked the ideas but one thing I disagree is with his unconditional stance on raising preflop with decent hands. This goes against many authors which advocate just calling with AK, AQ, etc... I've used Turbo Texas Hold'em and It's simulation to analyze which is more profitable. The funny thing is against loose players actually just calling preflop is best, it wins 14% more according to simulations against TTH. However against tight players it loses 20% more. Just an insight but I think Ed Miller's mistake in his book involves that concept which is better for TIGHT GAMES not LOOSE. Perhaps I'm wrong, anyone want to correct me.

[David Sklansky]

Firstly it is not clear you can trust TTH results. In any case I would suspect the syndrome you are referring to would occur in games where players are quite a bit looser when forced to put in only one bet rather than two. Thats a fairly rare animal.

[InfernoLL]

Ed Miller's argument is based on the idea of pot equity, that you make money forcing others to put in extra bets preflop when they will win less often by showdown. This works in loose games because people will put in money with worse hands. Implicitly, to take full advantage of this edge, you must also play well after the flop, but that's what the rest of the book is for.

[cartoonsoldier]

You win more money by putting in more money when you might be one of the favourites to win the hand [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[John Biggs]

By "decent" hands you seem to mean big offsuit cards.

This is an interesting point. At the microlimits (though I no longer play them) I used to think it was better to limp AQ after many limpers - HPFAP suggested this tactic (albeit for much higher limits) and I liked the added options it gave me postflop. However I would always raise AK - that's just too much hand to limp in.

Regarding lesser hands like AQ, SSHE is so well thought-out that there must be something to Ed Miller's argument to pretty much always raise it. I don't trust Turbo simulations except for extremely limited purposes, so I don't think you can rely on that by itself.

Comparing actual results for one approach vs. another in the hands of the same player is always difficult because other factors may change as well, but I think that would be the most useful measure.

If you search you can find at least one thread in which Ed Miller and others explain why flat-calling with big offsuit hands preflop is not as good as raising in a loose game with bad players. That may give you something to think about.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
you must also play well after the flop

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the sticking point for applying Ed's advice. To play as aggressively and loosely as he advocates, you must know what to do with your holdings once the flop comes, particularly if it comes up less than ideal.

This is exactly what beginners and less experienced players don't know. So for many beginners, reading Ed's book puts the cart before the horse.

The first thing they read is about preflop play and preflop hand selection. Absolutely anyone can choose any particular selection of hands to play preflop, no matter how broad or narrow, but the profitability of including as many hands as Ed does depends directly upon postflop skills. Any fool can play AA from any position to some semblance of profitability; not so A8-suited.

So the likely result for perhaps most beginners trying to play according to Miller's book will be that they get the first part right immediately, in that it's just mechanical(play a lot more hands) and easy to learn(play them aggressively), but their very success at applying the concepts of the first part of the book will leave them constantly in situations their postflop skills have not developed enough yet to handle.

Postflop skills and concepts are a lot more complex than preflop ones and encompass many more possibilities in the play of the hands. They take longer to learn and integrate conceptually, and longer to understand and reinforce through experience.

So newer or less experienced players trying to play by what they read in Ed's book will probably be unbalanced players for a good while, trying to balance loose aggressive starting strategies with mid-point and endgame strategies that don't get them out of the jams that such loose aggressive early play gets them into in the first place.

That's when they'll start to question and change Ed's starting advice to give them something more conservative that they can handle while trying to improve their postflop skills. This might even be a very good idea for them, to stop them hemorrhaging cash for a while. They can add in more hands later when they're more capable of handling what playing more hands implies -- many more marginal postflop situations that require a great deal more skill to handle than they might yet have.

Ed states right up front that his book is not meant to be anyone's first hold'em book. He's dead on. The thing is, you can get through 20 books before you've really gotten the first one completely down. Ed's book is not just less than ideal for people brand new to hold'em, it's also less than ideal for people who haven't developed a solid skill set yet, particularly postflop -- no matter how long they've been playing.

While experienced or especially sharp and skilled players can perhaps read Ed's book straight through and not be left off-balance by it, beginners and the less skilled probably can't. What they need is better postflop skills so the loose aggressive play Ed advises doesn't leave them stuck in a place their skills can't get them out of. Ed's postflop advice is very good, and many players would probably be better off if they never even heard of his preflop ideas before reading and working out in live play for a while his postflop advice. That integrates better and less dangerously into a new player's skill set than his preflop advice does.

What new players really need is to read more and play much more before paying much attention to Ed's book in the first place, or they could wind up making their game worse instead of better. As Ed's disclaimer right up in the front of his book suggests.

[Beavis68]

I come across these quite often. No one wants to be the first one to cold call a bet, even in the micro limits.

[Gamblor]

Firstly it is not clear you can trust TTH results.

I've noticed you and Mason talk a lot of trash about Turbo Texas Hold 'em.

Would you admit that:

Whether or not it is indeed a valuable learning tool, your incentive to encourage people not to:

a) improve their poker skills, and/or;

b) use a non-2+2 product to improve their poker skills,

would affect your recommendations on and public judgement of TTH?

[nolanfan34]

How does TTH define a loose player? I don't have the program, but I have a hard time imagining it could possibly mirror the horrible range of hands that B&M players will play. A computer also cannot possibly measure if someone is on tilt, etc.

[Senor Choppy]

TTH is a truly fantastic tool when used properly. However, it's very easy to run sims with improper assumptions or to simply misunderstand what test conditions you're using.

I trust my own TTH results because I have a solid understand of how the program works. But without seeing all the different variables someone was using, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in their results.