($215)- archived [wchen] hand A J

[Oluwafemi]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
anybody in favor of calling?

[/ QUOTE ]

Out of position vs a know aggressive, tricky player?

Not with AJ.

[/ QUOTE ]

so you would have called with A K after being reraised all-in with 9-players left with 15/30 blinds?

[Daliman]

Depends on my opponent.

If it's wchen, yes, but I ain't happy. You're getting odds on a race.

[Gramps]

[ QUOTE ]
IMO:

He OVERestimates his pot equity when he is called.

He OVERestimates his opponents opening range (this one is not so clear but it is my experience that a typical range at this buyin and for that position and raise size calls more then 66%)

He mentions decreasing value of chips but dismisses it by suggesting that improved hourly rate makes up for the difference which is a bit of a cop out agrument

[/ QUOTE ]

This hand/explanation blew my mind (coming from supposedly the "smartest" poker player on the planet) when I first saw it in the WPT Forum. It's a good example of two skill sets in poker/SNGs. Some people are brilliant at working the numbers once you give them a fixed set of assumptions. However, if they make incorrect assumptions to start with, then no matter how brilliant they are at working numbers, their conclusions will be off.

Sometimes being really "smart" can be a curse - instead of just acknowledging to yourself that you f-d up and made a mistake, you'll go to extreme lengths to either justify it or say, "well, maybe it was a mistake, but it was still very close." Perfect example here.

And we all make overaggressive/dumb plays from time to time, I'm hating on the 20/20 hindsight "variable-tweaking flawed analysis," not so much the mistake itself.

I guess FPS continues to manifest itself in many different ways...

[Oluwafemi]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
IMO:

He OVERestimates his pot equity when he is called.

He OVERestimates his opponents opening range (this one is not so clear but it is my experience that a typical range at this buyin and for that position and raise size calls more then 66%)

He mentions decreasing value of chips but dismisses it by suggesting that improved hourly rate makes up for the difference which is a bit of a cop out agrument

[/ QUOTE ]

This hand/explanation blew my mind (coming from supposedly the "smartest" poker player on the planet) when I first saw it in the WPT Forum. It's a good example of two skill sets in poker/SNGs. Some people are brilliant at working the numbers once you give them a fixed set of assumptions. However, if they make incorrect assumptions to start with, then no matter how brilliant they are at working numbers, their conclusions will be off.

Sometimes being really "smart" can be a curse - instead of just acknowledging to yourself that you f-d up and made a mistake, you'll go to extreme lengths to either justify it or say, "well, maybe it was a mistake, but it was still very close." Perfect example here.

And we all make overaggressive/dumb plays from time to time, I'm hating on the 20/20 hindsight "variable-tweaking flawed analysis," not so much the mistake itself.

I guess FPS continues to manifest itself in many different ways...

[/ QUOTE ]

does Gigabet's Q 3 hand ring a bell? although i prefer folding this hand, i agree with his [wchen's] play and reasoning a whole lot more than Gigabet trying to justify and explain his.

[Gramps]

[ QUOTE ]
does Gigabet's Q 3 hand ring a bell? although i prefer folding this hand, i agree with his [wchen's] play and reasoning a whole lot more than Gigabet trying to justify and explain his.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whoa, hold on there...I agree Giga's Q3 post was a bit rambling and probably pushing things too far, but the underlying point about the intangible aspect of relative stack sizes in SNGs affecting $EV (+$EV for some -cev plays, and -$EV for some +cev plays) is solid - that was really the point of his post and the hand he gave as an example was probably the most extreme one he could find. Giga's backed his shat up with some solid results for a long time, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things, and his posts (even the ones that go out there) are centered around solid logic/play (maybe he pushes it to and past the parameteres of that sometimes, but he doesn't ingore SNG reality/variables to make some neat numberical calculation work).

W. Chen was trying to argue that his AJ play was +cev (or on 2nd glance, at the least only slightly -cev), when in fact if you gave it more realistic variables it was more than slightly -cev. On top of that, it pretty much whiffed on the intangible aspect of SNGs where the skilled player has more +EV plays late in the game, and that by putting your entire tourney life on the line, you're passing up these later +EV plays a good % of the time (making it really bad from a $EV standpoint).

If I'm sitting in lecture and some lifetime econ. professor is talking out of his ass on something that doesn't jive with logic, it's probably because his ideas haven't had to have surived the reality of the business world. On the contrary, if some ex-CEO who kicked ass at the helm of a couple of Fortune 500 companies is saying some out there stuff, well...maybe his success has gone to his head and now he talks out of his ass, but I'll give him the benefit of doubt given his track record.

[Oluwafemi]

[ QUOTE ]
Giga's backed his shat up with some solid results for a long time, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things, and his posts (even the ones that go out there) are centered around solid logic/play (maybe he pushes it to and past the parameteres of that sometimes, but he doesn't ingore SNG reality/variables to make some neat numberical calculation work).

[/ QUOTE ]

so let me get this straight, you're willing to give Gigabet the benefit of the doubt with his Q 3 hand because it was, "centered around solid logic/play" and " he doesn't ingore SNG reality/variables to make some neat numberical calculation work)"? c'mon Gramps. forget to the extreme. the logic of that play was plain dumb, period! i don't care if it's Gigabet or Barry Greenstein.

[Gramps]

[ QUOTE ]
Quote:

Giga's backed his shat up with some solid results for a long time, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things, and his posts (even the ones that go out there) are centered around solid logic/play (maybe he pushes it to and past the parameteres of that sometimes, but he doesn't ingore SNG reality/variables to make some neat numberical calculation work).

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
so let me get this straight, you're willing to give Gigabet the benefit of the doubt with his Q 3 hand because it was, "centered around solid logic/play" and " he doesn't ingore SNG reality/variables to make some neat numberical calculation work)"? c'mon Gramps. forget to the extreme. the logic of that play was plain dumb, period! i don't care if it's Gigabet or Barry Greenstein.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt - even the rambling, going off stuff is prefaced with very logical, solid points that he attempts to give an example of -

[ QUOTE ]
For those that do not know, there was a very long and controversial thread(in the MTT forum) about another hand that I had played. Basically, I had made a -ev call because I had felt that the positive ev I would gain later in the game, if I win the hand, outweighs the negative ev of the specific hand. Because you cannot mathematically prove the positive equity of future happenings with any certainty, this is all theory...

[/ QUOTE ]

Giga opens that Q3 thread with a very solid point (referring to the KJ post in the MTT many months ago re: a -cev hand that (arguably) became +$EV because of the chip gap it'd open up the times he won/giving a big stealing edge that people in that particular tourney (2-table Step-5) would tend to respect). Maybe the Q3 example itself goes off a bit with how you recognize such -cev/+$EV situations and the model for such (or maybe not), but there's some phenomenal stuff in the underlying reasoning in a lot of his other posts, and he's a great SNG player (or that's my opinion having played 100s against him back in the day). I'm not saying, "because Giga said it it's right, I give him the benefit of the doubt and accept it as correct." I'm saying because he sees variables/nuances that some "theoriticians" completely whiff on and incorporates into his analysis & play, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on some of his opinions (not that I agree with all of them), because I know he considers variables that other (supposedly) very smart players miss.

WChen's post was a perfect example of a very good theoritican (with a fixed set of variables) who arrived at his numbers through flawed assumptions (IMO and ITO of just about everyone else), and completely whiffed on some SNG strategic concepts that made the highly aggressive play at Level II even worse from an $EV standpoint. Who cares how great your are at crunching the numbers once you've simplified everything down to numbers that you're comfortable/interested with. Playing poker is reality, if you're not great at figuring out what's going on, and/or you whiff on some of the nuances & intagible things going on in SNGs, that number crunching ain't gonna do you a whole lotta good.

[Oluwafemi]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe the Q3 example itself goes off a bit with how you recognize such -cev/+$EV situations and the model for such

[/ QUOTE ]

maybe is pusing it.

also, there's a big difference between the K J hand and Q 3.
i could completely understand his play and logic in that hand [K J] but trying to dress his Q 3 as anything other than what it was--- a quackish move that got lucky---- damn near deserves an Oscar for:

[ QUOTE ]
Best Theoretical Explaination For Justifying Playing A Crap Hand When You Know Better Award

[/ QUOTE ]

[curtains]

IMO this is a pretty terrible play.

I think you are looking at the results rather than the actual play. Giga won the Q3 hand, but that is not the reason the play was made and not even the expected outcome, and I still think he makes valid points in that post. I agree that wchens play is not a good one, and his math is skewed to make it seem better than it was.