DERB

[Leaky Eye]

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Are you just repeating words you have heard used in poker conversations, or do you mean actual game theory?

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Are you and idiot? yes. of course i mean actual game theory. His turn and river plays work, for the most part because of the mix of hands with which he makes the plays. I believe his success to be largely an application of game theory in much the same way that an effective NL flop/turn strategy may be based on game theory.

-Brad

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Since I am posting on the internet I probably am an idiot. I ask because your posts are in no way a discussion of game theory, they just use the words "game theory". Even after your response I think my question is valid. I don't mean to pick on you. I am just tired of seeing this term thrown about in a context that is in no way related to its meaning.

[BradL]

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Are you and idiot? yes.

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Calling you an idiot was maybe a little harsh: just thought that your post sounded insanely condescending with little purpose. After reading a few of your other posts I can see that you are actually trying to help and learn most of the time and maybe I just caught you during your monthlies.

-Brad

[LearnedfromTV]

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Are you just repeating words you have heard used in poker conversations, or do you mean actual game theory?

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Are you and idiot? yes. of course i mean actual game theory. His turn and river plays work, for the most part because of the mix of hands with which he makes the plays. I believe his success to be largely an application of game theory in much the same way that an effective NL flop/turn strategy may be based on game theory.

-Brad

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Since I am posting on the internet I probably am an idiot. I ask because your posts are in no way a discussion of game theory, they just use the words "game theory". Even after your response I think my question is valid. I don't mean to pick on you. I am just tired of seeing this term thrown about in a context that is in no way related to its meaning.

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What Brad has said is that this DERB character uses aggression on the bigger streets to manipulate his opponents' interpretation of his actions such that in the aggregate his aggressive actions take place under favorable circumstances. In other words, he is customizing a strategy that generates opponents strategies that it fares well against. How is this not game-theoretic?

(Whether this is an accurate description of DERB"s play is another question).

[Leaky Eye]

How is it?

While Game Theory is a tool you could use to study the effects of actions (particularly those you might describe as metagame actions) on the interactions between the players. Simply calling such an action or sequence of actions "game theory" is meaningless.

I actually read it as an implication that the player had done this research and was using the results accordingly. I find this to be as wild a speculation as claiming he can see my hole cards.

I will now stop derailing this entirely focused thread with my nits.

[Peter666]

Thanks. I read a little about Jalib before. I don't understand this Arab name secret society kind of thing they got going. Probably played too much Dungeons and Dragons in their youth.

[mmcd]

Will someone with one of those huge mined databases post Pastir's (I don't recall his current screenname off the top of my head, but he's the only other reg. from Ljubljana in the Party 50 and 100 games) stats? IIRC he plays at about 23/15 or so and definately makes some DERB-like postflop plays, but he's a little more under control. I'd be interested to see how his stats stack up against DERBs.

[BradL]

Well I just typed out an increadibly long winded response to clear up everything I was trying to say and when I clicked submit it told me that the form had expired and erased everything I wrote. So instead of retyping it I will point you to this link to an article in a recent Card Player . Its a no limit application but I think it explains what I am getting at.

I am wondering if DERB's play doesnt resemble a strategy based largely on concepts of game theory. This may help to his rather one dimensional game. He may be working toward a style that effectively reduces opponents ability to make profitable good decisions against him... or he may just be a psychic and can always make the correct moves and then piss away money on stupid plays just for fun. (wonder why no one has thought of that explination?)

-Brad

[mmcd]

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I am wondering if DERB's play doesnt resemble a strategy based largely on concepts of game theory. This may help to his rather one dimensional game. He may be working toward a style that effectively reduces opponents ability to make profitable good decisions against him...

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If he is in fact the winner he seems to be, then this is clearly the answer, but I think the how and why of it are the far more important questions.

[creedofhubris]

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Loijzka plays like Erik1234.

-or--

Loijzka plays like steve95

--or---

Loijzka plays like MaxMuller

discuss.

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what % of the people on this forum have even played a single hand against any of these people?

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Wow, MaxMuller used to play on my tiny lil' ol site for tiny lil' ol 10-20 action.

Caveat: I am neither a high limit player, nor a game theory expert. But this guy is either 4 or 5 sigmas out on the normal distribution curve, or there is something to his play.

Think about the game of Hold'em for a moment. Full ring, standard betting/blind structure, no rake, everyone playing correct game theoretic poker. What would their VPIP and PFR be? 15/10? 30/20? Higher? I don't know what it is, and the search space is so large as to make this impossible to calculate, but I suspect it's fairly high.

OTOH, the Sklansky/Malmuth/Miller style of play espoused in HEFAP and SSHE is designed to beat real world games. These games are actually less than zero sum (i.e, there is a rake), and they contain several players playing poorly (or else we would look for another game). This style that we play is an exploitive strategy, created to extract money from games filled with poor players, and deal with a fairly draconian rake. Playing tight reduces variance, and has little effect on earn, since most of it comes from our premium hands, which unobservant players give us action on no matter what our VPIP is. Other winning players are mostly using the same strategy as we are, so even if we are playing far differently than game theory might dictate, they certainly aren't taking advantage of it.

As stakes get higher, rake becomes less of a factor, and a higher percent of the players have a style close to S+M, or at least a VPIP and PFR right in that range... and 50/100 is pretty high. I have a couple thousand hands logged of his play, and some of it seems as bizarre to me as anyone, but not his aggression or VPIP/PFR. He is likely doing one of two things: 1. Playing a style that just happens to be close to correct game theoretic poker, or 2. Playing another exploitive strategy designed to take advantage of the S+M style of play.

I read the entire previous DERB thread, and mostly I saw people posting hands where he was betting / raising really light and showed down a loser - I saw none of the hands where everyone folds. However, those godawful river overcalls make me think he is using a near optimal strategy rather than some sort of exploitive one. Still, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a script that analyzes DERB's amount won from / lost to totals versus different types of players, which would give a better idea of what he is actually doing.

Senni