Collusive Entanglement

[Cerril]

It is in the 21C ed, invovling two people playing junk cards because one knows the other one has 'nothing' and the other knows the first has less than his 'nothing'.

We all see it when we call down someone, holding Queen high, with a scary board and take out the missed draw. (or for that matter make the crying call because it -does- pay off one in twelve or whatever, that time it does pay off we look like a genius)

Anyway, what that all comes back to is one of those fundamental rules not to force your opponent to play better when you could otherwise have him playing stupid. Don't give him odds to chase, don't bluff into the calling station... all that stuff. He's not playing smarter, but the quality (EV) of his play is substantially higher because you're playing as if he's better than he is.

Of course it may not make a -EV player +EV, but anywhere he improves against you, you lose.

[Cerril]

Forgive me if you're going over my head, but once the jargon level reaches a certain critical mass you risk people like me missing the point entirely.

This seems both simple and a little complicated. At the heart though, it goes like this:

Against one bad strategy you need a given strategy to beat it. Against two bad strategies you need either a completely different strategy to beat them both, or you need to wait for luck to sort things out.

In this case you want Cousin to lose his chips, because they're much easier to get from other people than from him. At a normal table there's a good strategy involving turning to the other players and (essentially) saying 'alright, he's ready to put a lot of his chips in the pot, let's gang up on him and even if we take the worst of it, he's only got 30 or 40% to take the pot.' This isn't a play where you're going to be winning money up front, heads up it's a gamble and with a couple callers you have the added ability to take the money from their stacks later.

So you add in the maniacs behind you and suddenly the worst part of the gamble, you putting in a pot-sized bet to induce callers and more, isn't necessary. From here on out Cousin is Not Your Problem. Now's where you're happy to be on his left, because you know that any hand he's not in (almost every hand), you can manipulate the other exploitable strategy at the table. The rest of the time you can't help is because Cousin, when he's in, has the best possible strategy against the maniacs (i.e. having the best hand and betting the heck out of it).

All you can really get out of this, and it's not a terrible lesson, is that you can fool all of the people some of the time... yeah, that thing.

[Sredni Vashtar]

Andy posted, "In the linked Weideman thread, Vince Lepore questioned how a stupid tactic could result in a more positive outcome for the stupidman than a smart tactic for a smartman. If a stupid tactic ends up +EV, how can it be stupid?"

Easily due to collusive entanglement or just dumb luck. Vince's objections hold no water. Probably he was riled up by the terminology. However, tournament players who intentionally adopt what appears to be bad strategy for overall strategic gain our not stupid at all, they are masters of Shania.

Andy Fox posted, "Would it be logical that, since smart players can end up with stupider results than stupid players would in the same situation, that stupid players can then also end up with smarter results than smart players would in the same situation? Or is this itself an illogical conclusion?"

Sredni won't pretend to understand that. Andy, very meshugina of you.

SV

[Sredni Vashtar]

Yes, the Led Zep lines were integrated in for sanity purposed (mine not everyone elses). Had to lower the Sredniness of the post because otherwise it becomes to complicated a subject.

Yeah, that sounds like a well invested $5.

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Other than that, all I know is "I've got a woman I want to ball all day......"

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I'll leave it at that then and let you return to your task.

SV.

[Sredni Vashtar]

[ QUOTE ]
Good stuff, Sredni, as usual. Shades of the Prisoner's Dilemma, Abdul's fishes schooling together for unintentional mutual benefit, and Caro's A beats B and B beats C, but, somehow, C beats A (which struck me as one of Mike's typically long-winded ways of playing rock/paper/scissors).

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Not sure where Prisoner's Dilemma fits in, and Caro's A beats B thing is not quite the same idea, but Morton's Theorem is definitey a sub case of the general form of collusive entanglement.


[ QUOTE ]
One problem I have is getting from Mr. AA's cousin to " . . . impossible to beat over the long run." Because the exploitable strategies (or should I say, tactics) are not, in actuality, employed 100% of the time (e.g., andyfox's pump-or-dump occurs 100% of the time on paper but maybe only 85% of the time at Commerce) or the situation comes up so rarely (e.g., Mr. AA's cousin having A-A, K-K or A-K UTG and the exploiter being directly on his left).

[/ QUOTE ]


To demonstrate the general case I chose a very simple situation, improbable though it may be. IF you were really on a *Coilean* and wanted to do the work, you would have to approximate the times the maniacs raised, approximate the various percentages the "cousin" makes a devastating reraise (note from Phat Mack's point of view, he has to fold, so it won't matter if cousin is getting funky with something loosey goose like JJ [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

So we are getting into an area that is very difficult to do at the table. At the table, as is often the case with poker strategy, we are frequently better off using baselines and general principles.

Remember a few things:

1)Just because there are mulitple bad strategies at play doesn't mean that this is necessarily the time to enter the pot.

2)Imagine if the other players were actually intelligently colluding against you. What wou their strategy look like? To what degree do the actually strategies match collusive ones albeit unintentional?

3)When playing, ask yourself, how do I make the collusive entanglement work for me?


SV

[Sredni Vashtar]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what pills you're on,

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Change that to Pilsner....

SV.

[Sredni Vashtar]

I [ QUOTE ]
don't think this is quite as paradoxical as it appears, and in fact conventional strategy addresses this type of situation when, for example, you 3-bet a strong player who you think might be raising to isolate a weak limper, or when you consider how the rest of the table is adjusting to your adjustments to a maniac.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since collusive entanglement to varying degrees is all over the place, conventional strategy does deal with it routinely and effectively.

But there is a fairly small class of cases where conventional strategies seem to fail. That's one area of research I am now doing.

Yes, with mulitple exploitable strategies one will inevitably be able to exploit it in the real world. Mainly because the highly entangled situations won't arise often enough to be concerned. Note in the Phat Mack hand, while that particular situation is hard to beat, the table itself would likely be highly profitable.

SV.

[Sredni Vashtar]

[ QUOTE ]
Against one bad strategy you need a given strategy to beat it. Against two bad strategies you need either a completely different strategy to beat them both, or you need to wait for luck to sort things out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, waiting might be an option, since in other hands the exploitable strategies shouldn't collude enough to harm you. But ferrets wouldnt wait for luck to sort it out. They'd go in there and sort em out.

And there are cases where the entanglement is such you are better off leaving the table. But they are quite rare in full games, less so in short games.


sv

[Sredni Vashtar]

[ QUOTE ]
Can a realman economy result from economic girliemen?

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps we could consult Van Damme and Steven Seagal.

SV.

[Tommy Angelo]

"I'm usually the Planck's constant in such equations. Which is n-n-nobody's fault but mine."

Oh man, Monty, sweet post and especially the ending. I'm sitting here just home from practicing with Lee Jones' band because he invited me to play drums with them at an upcoming fundraiser for Kerry. I must admit this was the first gig I ever had where the first interview question was "Who are you voting for?"

I was all over Sredni's post and thinking I had something to say in reply, and you totally derailed me now by planting "m-m-m-m-monkey on my back back back back" in my brain, supplanting, so to speak, what had been on replay there, leftover from practice, some bluegrass tune I think. I forget.

Thanks bye.

Tommy