Preflop Aggression: More or Less Luck?

[Mempho]

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Thinning the field is a myth. You almost never gain 'folding equity' and defining your hands to your opponents only makes them play better.

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Are you including winning the blinds uncontested?

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Thinning the field is a myth. You almost never gain 'folding equity' and defining your hands to your opponents only makes them play better.

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Are you including winning the blinds uncontested?

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I am unsure as to what you are asking me, and what it has to do with what I said. Could you please respecify?

[Mempho]

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Depending on the situation, raising can either lower or increase the 'luck' factor. Like Andyfox says, if it's used to thin the field and increase your chance of winning a pot (albeit a smaller pot), it can reduce your variance.

But if you're raising AJs in the BB after 7 people have limped in, then it will have the opposite effect on your variance.

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I challenge this assertion. When you raise AJs in the BB after 7 people limp in you have an equity edge. As your equity increases, your variance isn't as negative. For example win rate 5, variance 10 = swings from -5 to 15. win rate 15, variance 10 = swings from 5 to 25. This is just an example of how increasing your win rate makes your variance less noticable, these numbers do not represent anything real.

Certainly by raising more often there are some effects which mean higher variance, but there are other effects that make that variance not as "painful".

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I understand the assertion you are making. Have there been any studies on how marginal preflop raises affect variance and expectation....certainly they increase expectation but do they do so to the point where they actually reduce the variance from not raising?

[Mempho]

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I like your thinking and I think this is a well thought out post FWIW. LAGGY action with big pots pre-flop with less of an edge after the flop leads to more fluctuations which IMO means that reducing the luck factor to the noise level takes a lot longer. In todays poker universe of 8-tabling, high speed internet action this probably is ok though.

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Thanks for the comments. I have wondered if passivity should be the most important part of table selection if most of your edge comes from postflop play.

[Mempho]

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Thinning the field is a myth. You almost never gain 'folding equity' and defining your hands to your opponents only makes them play better.

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Are you including winning the blinds uncontested?

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I am unsure as to what you are asking me, and what it has to do with what I said. Could you please respecify?

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I was responding to Spoohunter's assertion that thinning the field is a myth.

[mike l.]

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[andyfox]

Good stuff there.

Your analysis indicates what percentage of the time you will win with the best cards. It doesn't indicate how many times you can win without the best cards; whatever that percentage is, it will be a much higher, one would think, without the two players behind you. The flop will miss everybody more often with just three of you and you'll be more confident betting it when they check to you than you will be with two others still to act behind you. So it's not just raising the blinds out, but raising the players out behind you that should be considered. This is especially crucial as one move up in stakes and a larger percentage of the pots are won not by having the best hand on the river but by having the only hand before the river.

BTW, when I plugged in the cards into Twodimes, it showed Ad-Ks winning 50.92% against Jd-9d and Ah-Jh.

[mike l.]

"This is especially crucial as one move up in stakes and a larger percentage of the pots are won not by having the best hand on the river but by having the only hand before the river."

maybe it was a misperception on my part, but it seemed like there was a dip in the number of showdowns around the 20-40/40-80 level but then that table showdown percentage went back up as i played higher. does that make sense?

[andyfox]

I've played minimally at 80-160 and 100-200. You might be correct for So. Calif., especially Commerce. I would suspect not for Las Vegas, but hopefully others can chime in here, and for online too. Regardless, I think when you lose you lose more with the two players behind you, so when we say we win 56.21% (or whatever) of the time, I think we lose more $ with the two behind than we do, proportionately, when our raise buys us position. That, I would think, is especially true as you move up and the players are trickier and more aggressive, especially with position on the turn and river.

I dont bump the pots as much now for these reasons. Unless you have a significant edge over an opponent or opponents then I prefer to hold back on the marginal EV raises.

Hands like AKo unimproved are harder to throw away in big pots plus your hand range becomes obvious. By just calling 3bets people are more likely to make mistakes with draws and dominated hands it also becomes easier to fold obviously beat hands.