Where Is This Player's Money Going?

[PokrLikeItsProse]

A few random comments on how you are wrong.

You should give opponents a chance to make a mistake when they call preflop. Many times, your main edge on an opponent is simply that they call too much pre-flop, but play reasonably well after the flop. Failure to raise preflop means you lose your advantage.

By limping, you encourage a multiway pot. Especially if you fail to raise out potential callers who have position on you, you have just made your work harder. If you have JJ and an ace flops, but you actually have the best hand, limping and creating a multiway pot puts you in a spot where you are more likely to make the mistake of folding the best hand compared to raising and narrowing the field get heads up.

Your decisions with a smaller pot are less meaningful because less money is at stake. For example, the mistake of folding when you have the best hand is a bigger mistake if the pot is big than if the pot is small.

What you are actually doing is sacrificing profit in an attempt to keep down variance. Actually, since you appear to be an apallingly bad player, I suppose you are actually minimizing your losses and allowing normal variance to give you a better chance of falsely appearing to be a winning player.

[Leonardo]

To say that decisions are less meaningful when the pot is small is just flat out wrong. You need to understand that I am talking about a good player playing against bad (or less good) players. How often do you see a bad player and think, he folds too much ? Not often. Most bad players call too much and by keeping the pot smaller, you are letting them make mistakes. Essentially keeping the pot smaller on the flop means that you should fold more on the flop, which you will do if you are good, and the bad players will call more. That is why in pot/no limit bad players get destroyed so easily. They see a flop and one of two things happens. They are in front and bet somewhere between half and full pot giving somewhere between 3-1 and 2-1 on the call and a good player will fold. On the other side of the coin the good player is in front on the flop, bets the same and the bad player calls too often. In limit holdem when you raise in a game with fairly bad/not so good players they a. dont tend to fold as much as they should preflop and b. chase on the flop more than they should. If you can keep the pot small preflop then your main advantage will be getting away from hands on the flop when you are behind, where the opponents will call too much when they are behind.
Let me ask you this. If you are so sure about yourself, and your poker understanding is so deep, why did you even start this thread?

[diebitter]

Interesting post.

I'm starting to form the opinion that the general advice to reraise whatever with KK-QQ + AK - particlarly in late - is flawed. I do think reraising with AA is always wise except when on the button and you've only got 0-1 loose callers in before you.

If there's lots of callers and you're late, raising will not reduce the field as the pot's too big by then. Therefore you've most likely got reverse implied odds on your big cards and it may be (don't know for sure) this raise is -EV.

Similarly if there's no callers, a raise may fold the blinds, and that's all you get... (though that's still wise with QQ,AK, I'd say, but not AA-KK,IMHO)


Any comments?

[diebitter]

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Finally, not raising with some hands can be disastrous if you allow a multiway pot to develop with a hand that plays best short-handed.


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[diebitter]

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Finally, not raising with some hands can be disastrous if you allow a multiway pot to develop with a hand that plays best short-handed.


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That is the main lesson of this thread, I'd say.

However, there are lots of preflop strategies that don't consider what to do if a multiway has already developed.
They suggest reraising, say, AK even after it's multiway. Is such a thing +EV?

[Dov]

The truth is that this argument is discussed in detail in SSH.

It appears that you haven't read it yet, so I would suggest that you do.

If you have read it, then it appears that you missed some important concepts and a reread is in order.

[ QUOTE ]
Essentially keeping the pot smaller on the flop means that you should fold more on the flop, which you will do if you are good, and the bad players will call more. That is why in pot/no limit bad players get destroyed so easily.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is NOT why the bad players get destroyed so quickly in NL. It is because they play dominated hands and weak hands OOP. It doesn't help that they draw without odds, but the dominated hands are the real problem for them.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

[ QUOTE ]
To say that decisions are less meaningful when the pot is small is just flat out wrong. You need to understand that I am talking about a good player playing against bad (or less good) players. How often do you see a bad player and think, he folds too much ? Not often. Most bad players call too much and by keeping the pot smaller, you are letting them make mistakes. Essentially keeping the pot smaller on the flop means that you should fold more on the flop, which you will do if you are good, and the bad players will call more. That is why in pot/no limit bad players get destroyed so easily. They see a flop and one of two things happens. They are in front and bet somewhere between half and full pot giving somewhere between 3-1 and 2-1 on the call and a good player will fold. On the other side of the coin the good player is in front on the flop, bets the same and the bad player calls too often. In limit holdem when you raise in a game with fairly bad/not so good players they a. dont tend to fold as much as they should preflop and b. chase on the flop more than they should. If you can keep the pot small preflop then your main advantage will be getting away from hands on the flop when you are behind, where the opponents will call too much when they are behind.
Let me ask you this. If you are so sure about yourself, and your poker understanding is so deep, why did you even start this thread?

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I find many bad players who fold too much. Ever heard of the term "weak-tight"?

By limping, you make a lot of bad preflop decisions by bad loose players more correct. It usually correct to play more hands at a passive table with not a lot of preflop raising. By not raising, you do not punish players who make the mistake of playing too many hands. By limping, you encourage more limpers behind you, creating a moderately sized pot that gives weak draws on the flop reasonable odds to take one more card off for one bet anyways. Sometimes, you turn what would have been a clear mistake to call two bets cold pre-flop into a correct or marginal action to call a single bet with a speculative hand.

My main advantage is in building a large pot when I have either the best hand or the best draw and a bet/raise is +EV. If I feel the need to affect the odds my opponents are getting to outdraw me, then I play less aggressively on the flop and push harder on the turn.

Also, I started this thread to see if anyone had any insight into whether it was possible to target a player who is making the obvious mistake of playing too passively preflop. I am amused that someone who reads this forum can be so wrong as to dispute that idea.