A Better Thought

[Jason Strasser]

Ok, this next post is definitely much better than the previous one I made today, and more concrete (read: Johnnybeef will understand [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]).

This idea comes from something I see a lot on two plus two, here is the core:

If you are analyzing a hand, one of the very first things you should do is throw out cases that involve similar outcomes regardless of the line taken.

For example, say you are deep stacked in a tourney with 100bb. You raise with 88 and get called by an opponent. Some stuff happens, and on the river, the board reads Q8853.

So when you are trying to think of a line to take on the river, you start an analysis. The first thing you should do, in this analysis, is forget about the cases that involve your opponent having QQ, or any other hand (If this is a 5$ tournament and your opponent will for sure get it all in at whatever cost with AA on this board, then AA would be a hand you throw out) that has the same outcome as if he had QQ, like a lower set probably. If you plan to check-raise the river, bet out, blah blah, its all the same. Your money is getting in. You will also be able to throw out other cases.

Say your opponent has 77 on this board. Many times, he will always fold to a river bet of any size, and will always check if checked to. So you can take the possibility of your opponent having 77, and, in your analysis, disregard it. It's just not an important thing to consider because whatever action you take the same thing will happen.

I guess this sounds kinda basic, but this idea can be extended to very many hands that are discussed here. Sometimes the entire hand can be ignored because regardless of the path the hero took the same thing would happen, or sometimes parts of analysis that people do here (IE, when people do analysis involving a range of hands) can be cut out or ignored.

The options you need to weigh are stuff like hands that he might bet with if checked to (air, AQ?, overpair?), hands he will call a bet that will check behind (AQ? range obv. depends on opponent), hands that he will call a big bet with but that you could checkraise against and maybe also have him call, and on and on.

You can clear away a lot of the clutter of analysis once you take the important step of understanding what information to ignore.

-Jason