Because it really deserved its own thread.

[Jaran]

For those of you who might normally avoid statts posts, I thought this post from Aaron deserved some discussion in it's own thread.

-Jaran


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I think the key is to look at W$WSF and W$SD in tandem. With all this aggression you fold out a lot of people before it ever gets to a showdown. I've been running at 35 percent W$WSF and I thought that was good.

My W$SD has been drifting down from 51.5 to close to 50 and I've been wondering if I should care and looking for places where I should back off. Too bad you don't have a larger sample size to really show if you can sustain a gaudy winrate with a W$SD in the mid- to upper-40s.


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I was thinking more about this last night. How much should those 'extra' river calls affect your BB/100? If you go to the showdown 35% of the time you see the flop, and you see the flop 20% of the time, then 7% of the time you see a showdown. If you call an extra 10% over what you "should", that affects only about .7% of your hands. If you say that a mistake of that type costs 1.5 BB (a loose turn call and a loose river call, but sometimes you win), then the error seems to be on the order of .1 BB/100. (That's 1.5 BB lost once every .7/100 hands.) This is a mistake, but not a very large one. (It's not a large mistake if you don't have the chance to make it often and it's not an expensive one. Losing 1.5 BB less than once every 100 hands isn't a big mistake).

Calling on the river isn't a big mistake, as long as you're calling down with decent hands. As I thought about it more, I don't make many 'tough' river folds. If I find myself having to think hard on a river bet, my inclination is to just call it.

Here's something from SSH (p. 217):


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[O]n the river, even though you freqeuntly will not like the results, if your hand has some value, your chips will often need to go into the center of the table.


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Most of your money is probably made by building up big pots early with the best hand.

Here's a simple example: Suppose you have two opponents on the turn. They have a combined 10 outs against you. This means 78% of the time, you're going to win the pot. Suppose further that they will only bet the river if they make their hand AND you will always call them (even though you know you're beat). To make things worse, they will NEVER call missed draws on the river, so you can't make any more money off of them.

EV = 78%*(2 BB) - 22%*(-2 BB) = +1.12 BB

So even in this bad condition (smart river play by opponents, dumb river play by you), you are still quite profitable. The size of the error of *NOT* betting the best hand on the turn is about the same as the size of calling the extra amount on the river (within 1 SB of each other), but you see more turns than rivers, so failing to make this bet is more costly than calling those extra 10% of your hands on the river.

I hope this spurs on more discussion. Too bad I won't be around for it since I'm gone this weekend. I leave in a couple hours (11 AM in California), but I'll check back at least once before I go

[nomadtla]

I hadn't caught this one last night thanks for bringing it back Jaran

[Jaran]

This post really points out how important it is to not fold when the pot is big on the river for one bet, and you have a decent hand for showdown. I get the feeling from some of the posts I've read recently that people here are trying to make big laydowns on the river. This is a bad thing to do.

-Jaran

[bottomset]

[ QUOTE ]
This post really points out how important it is to not fold when the pot is big on the river for one bet, and you have a decent hand for showdown. I get the feeling from some of the posts I've read recently that people here are trying to make big laydowns on the river. This is a bad thing to do.

-Jaran

[/ QUOTE ]

there is some of that, but it also gets taken too far in the other direction a lot of the time, like when facing 2cold, or overcalling with weak hands

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
Here's a simple example: Suppose you have two opponents on the turn. They have a combined 10 outs against you. This means 78% of the time, you're going to win the pot. Suppose further that they will only bet the river if they make their hand AND you will always call them (even though you know you're beat). To make things worse, they will NEVER call missed draws on the river, so you can't make any more money off of them.

EV = 78%*(2 BB) - 22%*(-2 BB) = +1.12 BB

So even in this bad condition (smart river play by opponents, dumb river play by you), you are still quite profitable. The size of the error of *NOT* betting the best hand on the turn is about the same as the size of calling the extra amount on the river (within 1 SB of each other), but you see more turns than rivers, so failing to make this bet is more costly than calling those extra 10% of your hands on the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

The point of this example seems to be that if you value bet the TURN with what you think is the best hand, you're pot-committed on the RIVER, and I think that's equally dangerous thinking, especially in micros. There are too many variables blah-blah-blah to make any kind of hard and fast rule about this. (Not the least of which, a good player who notices this behavior will start calling you down on the turn to set you up on the river.)

That said, OTOH, I agree that there are a lot of "Was this a good fold?" posts flying around these days, and some additional thought needs to go into it before making the big laydown.

[Jaran]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This post really points out how important it is to not fold when the pot is big on the river for one bet, and you have a decent hand for showdown. I get the feeling from some of the posts I've read recently that people here are trying to make big laydowns on the river. This is a bad thing to do.

-Jaran

[/ QUOTE ]

there is some of that, but it also gets taken too far in the other direction a lot of the time, like when facing 2cold, or overcalling with weak hands

[/ QUOTE ]

You have a point. However, facing two cold is a whole different kettle of fish. What I've been seeing lately is hands like the fold the str8 on the river when the flush card falls (not to pick on that poster, but that is the hand that immediately comes to mind), and not making loose calls with mediocre hands.

-Jaran

[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Here's a simple example: Suppose you have two opponents on the turn. They have a combined 10 outs against you. This means 78% of the time, you're going to win the pot. Suppose further that they will only bet the river if they make their hand AND you will always call them (even though you know you're beat). To make things worse, they will NEVER call missed draws on the river, so you can't make any more money off of them.

EV = 78%*(2 BB) - 22%*(-2 BB) = +1.12 BB

So even in this bad condition (smart river play by opponents, dumb river play by you), you are still quite profitable. The size of the error of *NOT* betting the best hand on the turn is about the same as the size of calling the extra amount on the river (within 1 SB of each other), but you see more turns than rivers, so failing to make this bet is more costly than calling those extra 10% of your hands on the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

The point of this example seems to be that if you value bet the TURN with what you think is the best hand, you're pot-committed on the RIVER, and I think that's equally dangerous thinking, especially in micros. There are too many variables blah-blah-blah to make any kind of hard and fast rule about this. (Not the least of which, a good player who notices this behavior will start calling you down on the turn to set you up on the river.)

That said, OTOH, I agree that there are a lot of "Was this a good fold?" posts flying around these days, and some additional thought needs to go into it before making the big laydown.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've only got a couple minutes, so I won't go into much detail here. That wasn't the impression I meant to give. The point was the building up pots with the best hand early is important, and more important than learning how to make good folds on the river. Obviously, you would do better if you knew how to fold the river when villain bet his better hand (you do better by a mere .22 BB). But failing to bet the turn is a huge mistake (a 1.56 BB error).

Edit: I should be leaving, but that last statement was wrong. The size of the error is actually 1.34 BB.

Edit continued: Thanks, Jaran. I hope to see some good discussion when I get back.

[VBM]

[ QUOTE ]
This post really points out how important it is to not fold when the pot is big on the river for one bet, and you have a decent hand for showdown. I get the feeling from some of the posts I've read recently that people here are trying to make big laydowns on the river. This is a bad thing to do.

-Jaran

[/ QUOTE ]

the collective mentality of thie micros forum tends to vacillate between LAG & weak-tight, with the latter being the current case.

for me, only very recently has the light come on w/ the application of NPA's principle of, "when in doubt, if the pot is big, play more loosely & more aggressively. play more tightly & passively when the pot is small"

Now, i'm one of those that believes you should always try to make the right decision. if you've somehow made it to the river with 23o vs 5 other people and the board AAKT7 rainbow, i don't care if there's 1000 bets in the pot; you're not winning. Save a bet & fold.

But when there's doubt, as there should often be, when the pot is large, especially HU and especially with position, you should release your inner-LAG. that's not carte blanche to just go raise-happy- sometimes even calling is LAG'ish.

Pots lost on river-play that Hero should or can win is a statistic we can't track in PT but i'm sure has an overwhelming impact on the most important stat of all: $$-won...

edit: my 1st hand example was bad...

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]


I've only got a couple minutes, so I won't go into much detail here. That wasn't the impression I meant to give. The point was the building up pots with the best hand early is important, and more important than learning how to make good folds on the river. Obviously, you would do better if you knew how to fold the river when villain bet his better hand (you do better by a mere .22 BB). But failing to bet the turn is a huge mistake (a 1.56 BB error).

Edit: I should be leaving, but that last statement was wrong. The size of the error is actually 1.34 BB.

Edit continued: Thanks, Jaran. I hope to see some good discussion when I get back.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, all this I agree with. Failing to bet your solid hands before the river, especially against loose players who are willing to draw to the river regardless of the odds, is an ENORMOUS mistake. Even if JoeDonkey across the table tells you he's holding A5o and the board is J53, you need to be betting QJ on the flop and turn.

[bozlax]

Party Poker 0.5/1 Hold'em (9 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is BB with A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].
UTG calls, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+1 raises</font>, <font color="#666666">6 folds</font>, Hero calls, UTG calls.

Flop: (6.50 SB) J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 6[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(3 players)</font>
Hero checks, UTG checks, <font color="#CC3333">UTG+1 bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises</font>, UTG calls, UTG+1 folds.

Turn: (5.75 BB) 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, UTG calls.

River: doesn't matter so much.