taking your coinflips......1000 nl

[LuvDemNutz]

Good post soah.

Much of what you say is common sense, yet it eludes many on on this forum.

[pzhon]

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The notion that you should never pass up a +EV gamble is great, assuming that you have an infinite bankroll. But in reality, no one has an infinite bankroll, and many players will stretch their bankroll a bit thin at times. If losing a couple of 55/45 all-ins means you must drop down in stakes in order to continue playing comfortably, then you would be correct to pass up some of those opportunities, if you KNOW that there will be better gambles available if you are patient. Research the "Kelly Criterion" for more information.

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The Kelly Criterion says the optimal amount to wager as a 55:45 favorite is 1/10 of your bankroll. It says to walk away if you have to wager more than 19.9% of your bankroll.

If a half buy-in represents more than 19.9% of your bankroll, you haven't been paying attention to the Kelly Criterion before, so why start now?
<font color="white">Of course, there is dead money in the pot, but it is quite likely that you are not a favorite against the range of hands the SB would push.</font>

[creedofhubris]

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Someone playing 5/10 on a $15,000 bankroll simply cannot take the same risks as someone with a $150,000 bankroll. Maybe it cuts their winrate from 10bb/100 to 8bb/100... but this "suboptimal" strategy would still be better for them than dropping down to 2/5 where they can push more edges and win 10bb/100.

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And that is why you play a level you are adequately bankrolled for.

[IgorSmiles]

If youre laying down the 55/45 edge here with proper pot odds, then I guess you should never put your money in on a flush draw or open ended st8 draw when given the proper odds either.

[IgorSmiles]

By the way, I dont see it as a lock that you are up against an over pair or overcards. I do conceed that this is a laydown based on the way the hand was played, but against aggressive opponents you may see an underpair here. AA or KK will probably reraise but not all in. I agree with the Queens guess, as Jacks or Queens are likely here, but I dont rule out an underpair.

[soah]

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The notion that you should never pass up a +EV gamble is great, assuming that you have an infinite bankroll. But in reality, no one has an infinite bankroll, and many players will stretch their bankroll a bit thin at times. If losing a couple of 55/45 all-ins means you must drop down in stakes in order to continue playing comfortably, then you would be correct to pass up some of those opportunities, if you KNOW that there will be better gambles available if you are patient. Research the "Kelly Criterion" for more information.

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The Kelly Criterion says the optimal amount to wager as a 55:45 favorite is 1/10 of your bankroll. It says to walk away if you have to wager more than 19.9% of your bankroll.

If a half buy-in represents more than 19.9% of your bankroll, you haven't been paying attention to the Kelly Criterion before, so why start now?
<font color="white">Of course, there is dead money in the pot, but it is quite likely that you are not a favorite against the range of hands the SB would push.</font>

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Using exact Kelly betting gives you a risk of ruin of around 5%. Most people would not consider this to be acceptable. In general, the harder it would be to replace your bankroll, the more you should protect it. If replacing your bankroll means waiting for next week's paycheck, then go ahead and take all the 55/45 gambles that you want to. But if you rely on poker to pay the bills, then why risk it all on thin edges? As I recall, some of the more successful high stakes card counting teams were betting at the 1/8 Kelly level. This means that you would need 80 buy-ins in your bankroll to call all-in with a 10% advantage. (Although it's more common for card counters to be betting in the 1/4 to 1/2 Kelly range.)

Most of you would probably consider 80 buy-ins to be too extreme... but where do you draw the line? You cannot examine EV without also taking variance into consideration. There is no right or wrong answer about the proper level of risk aversion.

[pzhon]

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Using exact Kelly betting gives you a risk of ruin of around 5%.


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That may be true if you start with the Kelly Criterion, then ignore it as you start to lose. If you follow the Kelly criterion, then you move down when you lose, and you won't go bankrupt.

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But if you rely on poker to pay the bills, then why risk it all on thin edges?


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Is being a 5:4 favorite a thin edge, or a significant edge? The point of using the Kelly Criterion, and variations, is to give a consistent answer.

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As I recall, some of the more successful high stakes card counting teams were betting at the 1/8 Kelly level. This means that you would need 80 buy-ins in your bankroll to call all-in with a 10% advantage.


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1/8 Kelly seems absurd. When people are more conservative than 1/4 Kelly, I assume it is because they are just guessing at their advantage.

The 1/8 Kelly Criterion doesn't say you need 80 buy-ins to take a 55:45 gamble for a half buy-in. It says you need about 20 buy-ins. <font color="white">Of course, it is quite possible that this is no coin-toss.</font>

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There is no right or wrong answer about the proper level of risk aversion.

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There are inconsistent sets of choices. If you are inconsistent, then you accept extra risk for less of a reward than you could have. I think that happens very frequently. People decide some action like getting into a coin-toss is wrong and they avoid the possibility while ignoring more serious dangers.

If you win 5 PTBB/100, and your standard deviation is 50 PTBB/100, then every 100 hands you play is like taking a 55:45 coin-toss for 1/2 buy-in.

[captZEEbo1]

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There are easier ways to make a lot of money in NL than taking 55/45 edges.

[/ QUOTE ] It is very hard to make lots of money in holdem if you are willing to give up a 55/45 edge.

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This seems to imply that you will rarely get a chance to put much money in the pot with better than 55/45 odds. This is ridiculous. The types of players that are willing to push preflop with AK are going to give you plenty of opportunities to get your money in as a huge favorite against them. El Diablo's statement is much more accurate than yours... taking these 55/45 shots will win you more money than not taking them. But that hardly means you won't still make plenty of money without taking them.

The notion that you should never pass up a +EV gamble is great, assuming that you have an infinite bankroll. But in reality, no one has an infinite bankroll, and many players will stretch their bankroll a bit thin at times. If losing a couple of 55/45 all-ins means you must drop down in stakes in order to continue playing comfortably, then you would be correct to pass up some of those opportunities, if you KNOW that there will be better gambles available if you are patient. Research the "Kelly Criterion" for more information.

Here's a fun game for you: Suppose you're given a $10,000 bankroll and you are given the chance to play 2000 hands of heads-up NL poker at whatever stakes you desire. At the end of each hand, you will each reset your stacks to 100 times the big blind. And to make things simple for you, your opponent is going to go all-in preflop on every single hand. You are even given a chart which tells you the equity of your hand versus a random hand. What would be the optimal strategy for this game? Here's a hint: It's not to play with 50/100 blinds and go all-in the first time you have at least a 51% chance of winning.

There was a poll a while back in the Mid-High Limit forum recently in which many people said they would give up as much as 30% of their winrate in order to completely eliminate variance from their results. Knowingly passing up situations with very marginal EV is not going to cut your winrate by 30% (unless of course your winrate is extremely low), but it will certainly cut your variance a lot. If someone chooses to sacrifice part of their winrate in order to reduce variance, I don't see how someone else can tell them that what they are doing is right or wrong -- they are aware of what they are doing, and it's their own choice to make based upon their tolerance for risk and the size of their bankroll. Someone playing 5/10 on a $15,000 bankroll simply cannot take the same risks as someone with a $150,000 bankroll. Maybe it cuts their winrate from 10bb/100 to 8bb/100... but this "suboptimal" strategy would still be better for them than dropping down to 2/5 where they can push more edges and win 10bb/100.

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Although you present interesting points, soah, I guess my implied assumptions were that you are adequately bankrolled. If you aren't adequaltely bankrolled, then imagine this exact scenario at the 400 or even 100 nl game (assuming same skill caliber of players as the 1000 nl game).

[soah]

I was not responding directly to your original post. I was reacting to the general opinion some people seemed to have that knowingly passing up any +EV gamble will seriously inhibit your ability to win any money at poker. Unless your game selection is nothing short of terrible, then this should not be the case.

As for your original question, it is an obvious fold because you don't know that your opponent has AK.