For The Record...

[TimM]

[ QUOTE ]
Please stop.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

Tx: Starting new threads everytime someone disagrees with you is obnoxious.

[Lestat]

<font color="red"> I still dont want eight way action with two aces.
</font>

Copy this quote and save it on a disk. Years from now if you ever really get good at this game, you can look at it and be reminded just how far you've come.

[bernie]

[ QUOTE ]
I still dont want eight way action with two aces. Is it possible to agree to disagree in this forum?

[/ QUOTE ]

So you still don't want maximum value on your aces?

Agree to disagree? No player worth a crap will ever agree with you on that concept. You're implying that it's just about winning pots and not 'quality' pots. It's been explained multiple times to you in multiple ways. It doesn't matter how showdown goes, it matters how you got to showdown regardless of who drags the pot.

That aside, I do like the effort I've seen in other threads where you're responding.

b

[BarronVangorToth]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="red"> I still dont want eight way action with two aces.
</font>

Copy this quote and save it on a disk. Years from now if you ever really get good at this game, you can look at it and be reminded just how far you've come.

[/ QUOTE ]



I've mentioned this scenario a number of times on 2+2 but at Foxwoods I had AA UTG and raised ... and all nine people called.

I knew when that happened, there was a chance I would not win the hand, however, would I like to be UTG the rest of my life with AA and raise and have 9 callers?

Obviously: Yes.

Barron Vangor Toth
BarronVangorToth.com

[DpR]

one could be so risk adverse that their utility function prefers 3 opponents with AA than 8 - i.e. the increased in expected return is not enough in their mind to account for the increase in variance. Of course this type of risk aversion does not make a succesful poker player.

While this AA example is so obvious to the point of obsurdity, I would say that there is a lack of recognition of EV/Var on this board. Many posters suggest that variance is a non factor in playing decision and Max EV is the end all be all. I think this often a significant oversight on this board, which is odd since it is so well understood in other forms of advantage play.

[Lestat]

I agree and I rarely fault an aversion to EV in examples of raising or 3-betting out of the blinds with AK or raising the field from the bb with TT. Even limping from the button behind many callers with JTs, 66, etc. However,

Can you come up with any good reasons to pass on a +EV play? The only ones I can think of are, a). You are not properly bankrolled for the game which you are playing, or b). You expect to gain more +EV in the future.

So I agree that +EV is not the end all be all and you certainly can win even if you sometimes pass on +EV (just ask Tommy Angelo). But one beautiful thing I find about this forum is to be able to learn how some very top notch players are able to squeeze EV from some very improbable situations. That's the hallmark of excellent play and I see no reason not to always strive for that extra EV (assuming you are properly bankrolled).

[steveyz]

I agree 100% with this assessment.

[DpR]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree and I rarely fault an aversion to EV in examples of raising or 3-betting out of the blinds with AK or raising the field from the bb with TT. Even limping from the button behind many callers with JTs, 66, etc. However,

Can you come up with any good reasons to pass on a +EV play? The only ones I can think of are, a). You are not properly bankrolled for the game which you are playing, or b). You expect to gain more +EV in the future.

So I agree that +EV is not the end all be all and you certainly can win even if you sometimes pass on +EV (just ask Tommy Angelo). But one beautiful thing I find about this forum is to be able to learn how some very top notch players are able to squeeze EV from some very improbable situations. That's the hallmark of excellent play and I see no reason not to always strive for that extra EV (assuming you are properly bankrolled).

[/ QUOTE ]

I certainly would never say that someone is wrong to go after every last piece of EV. But there are many practical issues the casue some issues in the attempt to achieve every last bit of EV.

First, no one is a robot. IMO losses affect everyone whether they know it or not. Additionally, I also think people play agasint you more correctly when you are losing rather than winning. Note, however that I think these are small issues. It is clearly a negative thing to go on a big losing streak, even when it is just variance. This conclusion can easily be reached by analyzing a theoretical exact 0 EV play (all meta factors included, not just the +/- in Poker Tracker). I think it is clear that most poker players are risk adverse in that they would not make a variance increasing play that had 0 EV. Now, the poker player must be given some EV to accept that volatility. How much is enough? The general assumption that anything &gt;0 is enough I do not agree with. For starters you need an appropriate return for the capital required to realize the EV. In many of these rare instances you need hundred of thousands of hands before you have &gt;50% chace of realizing the return. In any event, poker is like any other investing, it is a risk reward trade off and + return does not make it optimal. A simplistic example is imagine you could buy a lottery ticket for $1000 that was a +EV wager. However, you were only going to be able to make the bet once. I would not make this wager since for all intended purposes I am giving away $1000 - despite the +EV, the median wagerer is a loser, as are 99.9999999% of wagerers.

Anyway, I am just rambling. My issue with some posts advise is that we don't actually know the EV of the play. We can generally estimate it to be perhaps slighly positive and then it is assumed to be a good play despite the increase in variance. To me, why would I make a play that I am 100% sure increases my variance yet I only "think" it increases my EV.

Finally, I do not agree with the conventional wisdom that "expert plays" are the ones that grab ever last tiny piece of EV. I think the expert plays that are not common (duh - only made by experts) actaully have quite a bit of EV, only the EV is wrapped up in not easily quantifiable places - meta game factors and situational exploitation.

I don't think we disagree so much on this issue, my post is more generally speaking about the forums group think. Variance is clearly the enemy.

Its not beyond the possibilty that i'm wrong. i get what you're saying..the pots you win will make up for the pots you lose because they'll be huge, thus the +ev. Makes sense.
I didnt quite grasp that concept earlier.

If everyone would turn to page 258 in Chapter 25 in their book on the theory of poker, i think they might see what i noticed in my own game regarding the switch from 15-30 to 30-60 and my newfound success. The structure made me play better. I wish it didn't, but it did. I realized that this morning, the structure of the 30 game made me a better player, or as Sklansky puts it, it turns a fair player into a good player. Can anyone agree that by my moving up in limits, that I might have improved my game based on the structure of it? It seems to be the only logical explanation for it.

Thanks.

Tex

What he said. Took the words right out of my mouth. 500K hands and many discussion from now, that is.