The EV of different playing styles - Part Two

[nykenny]

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Thus, the loose passive folks would logically have the lowest EV... and the data analysis confirmed that.

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i thought EV means in a given situation, the amount of $ win/loss a particular decision yields on average in the long run.

talking percentage really isn't all that important. of course, your conclusion "loose will lose" is right on the money...

[Warik]

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i thought EV means in a given situation, the amount of $ win/loss a particular decision yields on average in the long run.

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EV is EV... expected value... whether its of a given action or of a given style. You do have a point as far as specificness goes... if I only raise preflop with crappy hands, then although I am preflop raising 8%, I'm not going to win money in the longrun doing that. Same as if I only limp with unsuited 1+ gaps and only go past the flop if I don't pair or have any draw. I'll be playing tight, but tight with the wrong type of hands, and also lose money.

BUT... even if a bunch of players in this study did that, the winning rates of players playing correctly in a particular style is so high that it offsets the dummies.

[Nate tha' Great]

Wow, great stuff.

As a shorthanded specialist, I find it intriguing that passive play really loses you a lot of EV at the 6-max tables, even if you're maintaing good preflop standards. That certainly jibes with my experience.

-Nate

[CrackerZack]

It actually surprises me how poorly the LAGs do in the upper limits. I'm guessing this is skewed by a number of total idiot maniacs with VIPs in the 90% etc. I know its a losing style, but it surprises me by how much.

[NotReady]

These are great numbers and show how much PT can reveal. I hope you will do some more of this as your DB grows.

I have a theory that I would like some comment on. It appears that Normal-Aggressive does better than Tight-Normal at all limits. My guess is that people who are more aggressive preflop are more aggressive post flop as well, and it may be for that reason they have better win rates, at least I think it may account for a larger part of the difference.

In other words, aggression is more valuable postflop than preflop, and give a certain adequate tightness for the game being played, differences in tightness are also less important.

I tend to think this because I'm very tight, but raise preflop around 5%. I've spent a lot of time going over my hands, and I don't really see that more preflop raising would have made a big difference, but better postflop play might. This is for limits on Party from .51 through 24. I do think I should raise more preflop, but I think the biggest leak in my game is missed value bets - checking the river, not betting and raising draws enough - in other words, Tight-Normal, but the Normal hurts more postflop than preflop.

If this is true, then I couldn't expect much increase in win rate by raising more preflop, but should work on my postflop game.

One other thought, in the same vein. Those who are correctly Tight-Aggressive are very experienced players, or who at least have very good theory background and a fair amount of experience. That is, they tend to have better poker skills overall, tilt less, read better. They also have the ability to pull the trigger in marginal situations better than "Normal" players, which to me is one of the keys, as I have plenty of theory and experience, but am only gradually getting better at gritting my teeth and betting the margins.

[Spyder]

You know.....in the few weeks that I've been reading and participating here, I've always thought that two separate measures should be used: One for pre-flop play; and, one for post-flop play. This would yield much more precise and useable information on a person's game. Ie, is he aggressive/passive-loose/tight pre-flop, and, is he aggressive/passive-loose/tight post-flop.

Spyder

[rharless]

To your and Spyder's point, one thing I want to comment on -- the large part of a holdem player's profit is made post flop (I do not have the numbers to prove it but that is what I have always heard and it seems true). The "aggression" axis that I am using, however, measures preflop aggression.

So, a holdem player's EV is based largely on his postflop skills, yet I am tying EV to preflop aggression. Generally speaking there is a correlation between preflop aggression and postflop aggression, and postflop aggression is certainly one major factor of postflop skills.

It seems that it would be better to use a postflop aggression number instead of a preflop aggression. I know Pat just added a new export to PT. Perhaps I will explore this avenue sometime down the road.

[NotReady]

That would be great, as has been what you've done so far.

The main point I wanted to bring out was that one shouldn't expect much gain in WR by just raising more preflop, and might even do worse because the raise often sets up a hand that requires aggressive follow through.

I suspect you're right that pre and post flop play are correlated - not many people would change styles in midstream. If that's true, following post flop aggression should reinforce what you've already shown.

I really like your numbers because they show there's some hope for me at higher limits, without too much adjustment, though the adjustments required may take awhile.

[Jeremy'sSpoken]

Perhaps the aggression factor PT calculates at every stage could be used along with a % of seeing SD. I know these can all be exported to excel rather simply. What you do with after that, I have no idea.

[rharless]

Yes, I think the aggression factor is ideal. The problem, however, is that the post-flop aggression factor requires a significant number of hands to be ball-park accurate, especially for a tight VPIP player. Say we have just 100 hands for that player -- this means that they get to the flop about 20 times in those 100 hands (this includes their blinds). Calculating their post-flop AF on those 20 hands is really a shot in the dark. I don't even know if 500 hands would be enough to rely on AF as being in the right ballpark.

I think actually many post-flop measures (W$SD, Went to Showdown, etc) would only start to be accurate for players with hundreds of hands. I'd have to cut my analysis off to remove players with fewer than 500 or 1000 hands or so. I'd have a very small data set to work with after the fact.