SSH broke my game!

[Monty Cantsin]

This is in response to Puck'n'Poker's post in Nate's tightness thread. Rather than unravelling yet another sub-thread out of that one I am replying to this here.

Puck sed:

[ QUOTE ]
The thing is, I did ok until I read SSH lol (well I think I was doing ok, sample size was pretty small). I have no doubt it is an excellent book, I am just trying to figure out which parts I am applying incorrectly or if I have just been running bad for the last 3k hands (doubtful).

[/ QUOTE ]

I see this comment a lot.

Here are a couple of thoughts in response:

It's not that doubtful that you are running bad for 3k hands. It's easy to run bad for 3k and much, much more.

First of all, get some goddamn confidence.

You are a winning player. Anyone with the desire and discipline to study the game and the basic intelligence to find the right table is capable of playing a winning game. Yes you have leaks, but if you don't start out with a solid belief that you have a positive expectation then don't bother playing.

Don't try to extrapolate your leaks from your results. The lag is just too great. Poring over your stats to tweak your game is actually something that is more appropriate to advanced players.

Guys like Nate and Peter_Rus are long-term winners with huge databases and the analytical skills needed to squeeze knowledge out of this data. Guys like us need to forget about results and focus on what's right in front of our faces.

That means finding your leaks in real-time. Are you in a hand without a plan? Leak. Are you feeling uncomfortable and out of your depth? Leak. Feel like someone at the table is playing sub-optimally but don't know how to exploit it? Leak. Are you caught by surprise by someone's bet or raise and not sure how to respond? Leak.

Are you making plays because you think you're supposed to instead of understanding why? Big, big leak.

I think you'll get a lot more value out of SSH, 2+2, and all other forms of strategy if you take the following approach:

The main lesson to learn from these tools is not "play loosely in large pots" or "don't call a raise with AQ" or "bet out on the river when the 4th card to a flush comes and you've been the aggressor the whole hand".

The main lesson to learn is how to think about the game.

I think a major disease for Poker novices is rule-of-thumb-itis. Our heads are stuffed with so many heuristics and guidelines that we become sloppy state machines. We get into a situation and check our look-up tables to see what the "expert" response is. We're like the guy in Searle's Chinese Room, just manipulating tokens.

When you read SSH, you shouldn't come away with a better set of rules to apply to your game you should come away with a deeper understanding of the process of Poker thinking.

Stop asking "what should I do with an unimproved AK?" And start asking how does Ed Miller, or David Sklansky, or Nate tha Great, or Tommy Angelo, or Izmet Fekali - or whomever you want - how do they think about the game? How do they analyze a situation in order to find the value in it? What conceptual tools are they using to break down complicated situations into understandable chunks? What skills are they using to develop their own rules of thumb and guidelines?

Because if you aren't creating your own strategy you aren't on the path to expert play.

Btw, don't take this personally. I'm a major offender in this respect and this rant is directed at myself as much as anyone else.

/mc

[medaugh]

[ QUOTE ]
The main lesson to learn is how to think about the game

[/ QUOTE ] You know I never thought of it that way but that is the exact reason that I like that book so much. Don't care if anyone else likes this topic but I think it is great. Thanks.

[Bluffoon]

Great Post Monty. Independent thinking is a skill all unto itself that can be developed and applied with great results in all areas of life.

I believe It is incorrect to consider SSH to be a complete guide to profitable play. It certainly doesn't purport itself to be.

SSH was the fourth of fifth Holdem book I read and I have a lot of practical experience to boot. After studying the concepts in SSH I was able to incorporate a couple of changes to my game with positive results. Without the information in the other four or five books and my playing experience, following the results in SSH would have been disastrous IMO.

If your game has suffered while trying to incorporate SSH concepts it may be that you need to further develop your fundamentals.

[cowboyzfan]

[ QUOTE ]
Without the information in the other four or five books and my playing experience, following the results in SSH would have been disastrous IMO.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think it would be really informative if you explained why you have this opinion. I read comments like this a lot but it rarely goes beyond "IMO". Just as this excellent thread discusses, we are really not learning anything in these discussions unless we are learning "why" we do X or think X.

thanks

[cowboyzfan]

Just to follow up, I understand that SSH is not "complete" in that it does not cover every possible game situation. For example, it does not say much about short handed play. Also, the writers of SSH did assume that most readers have read books such as WLLH or ITH.

But what I really want to know is what in SSH do people find so "dangerous"? These comments border on implying the book is wrong in some way. Because if someone says it is dangerous simply if you do not follow the advice correctly, that could be said about any poker book ever written. What is so exceptional about the danger of SSH?

[witeknite]

First thing off the top of my head is hand protection. I can see where an inexperienced player could raise trying to protect their hand without realising that their hand isn't worth protecting.

WiteKnite

[Monty Cantsin]

[ QUOTE ]

But what I really want to know is what in SSH do people find so "dangerous"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Compared to, say, Winning Low Limit Hold'em, SSH recommends folding less with your marginal hands. In some cases it recommends playing marginal hands pretty strongly. In general it recommends folding less in large pots.

Many people already play too many hands and go too far with them. For them, the rule of thumb "don't fold in large pots" could cause problems if they don't understand the fundamental reasoning behind this idea which is that your expectation is a product of your winning chances times the size of the pot. (Btw, I think Ed Miller does a good job of communicating this idea.)

Also SSH stresses using bets and raises to protect vulnerable hands. Again, the fundamental idea is that there is a cost associated with betting and raising and there is a corresponding payoff in terms of increased winning chances. These values are always different for each unique situation, if you don't get into the habit of calculating for yourself the cost/benefit of each of your plays you could easily end up playing aggressively for its own sake and not making the most profit on your plays.

Here's a good example of someone thinking beyond the "raise to protect your vulnerable hand" and getting greater value because of it: Stellar Wind's Difficult 99 Hand. Whether you agree with his play or not, you have to admire this example of someone seeing past the rules of thumb to understand the thinking process behind them.

/mc

[Bluffoon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

But what I really want to know is what in SSH do people find so "dangerous"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Compared to, say, Winning Low Limit Hold'em, SSH recommends folding less with your marginal hands. In some cases it recommends playing marginal hands pretty strongly. In general it recommends folding less in large pots.

Many people already play too many hands and go too far with them. For them, the rule of thumb "don't fold in large pots" could cause problems if they don't understand the fundamental reasoning behind this idea which is that your expectation is a product of your winning chances times the size of the pot. (Btw, I think Ed Miller does a good job of communicating this idea.)

Also SSH stresses using bets and raises to protect vulnerable hands. Again, the fundamental idea is that there is a cost associated with betting and raising and there is a corresponding payoff in terms of increased winning chances. These values are always different for each unique situation, if you don't get into the habit of calculating for yourself the cost/benefit of each of your plays you could easily end up playing aggressively for its own sake and not making the most profit on your plays.

Here's a good example of someone thinking beyond the "raise to protect your vulnerable hand" and getting greater value because of it: Stellar Wind's Difficult 99 Hand. Whether you agree with his play or not, you have to admire this example of someone seeing past the rules of thumb to understand the thinking process behind them.

/mc

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly. You said that so much better than I did. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Bluffoon]

[ QUOTE ]
Just to follow up, I understand that SSH is not "complete" in that it does not cover every possible game situation. For example, it does not say much about short handed play. Also, the writers of SSH did assume that most readers have read books such as WLLH or ITH.

But what I really want to know is what in SSH do people find so "dangerous"? These comments border on implying the book is wrong in some way. Because if someone says it is dangerous simply if you do not follow the advice correctly, that could be said about any poker book ever written. What is so exceptional about the danger of SSH?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry Cowboy hopefully I play poker better than I express myself.

SSH preaches aggression. Without the proper fundamentals this aggression can easily result in a lot of chip-spewing.

If you don't fully understand the differences between a loose/tight/passive/aggressive games you are going to be playing aggriessively with a lot of hands you shouldn't be playing. Evaluating a game and adjusting your hand selection is a fundamental skill.

Folding is also a fundamental skill. If you don't fold in appropriate situations you are going to to be playing aggressively with a lot of losing hands. Very expensive.

Gutshots and second pair with an overcard and back door draws are tricky and dificult hands to play. It takes a lot of experience to know when these hands can be played and when you should push with them and when you should lay low. SSH advocates that you play these hands very aggressively. Without a lot of experience playing these types of hands you can get cleaned out very quickly.

So I guess what I am saying is that I believe that it is better for a novice to play in a weak-tight Lee Jones style and to add aggressiveness and skills slowly in order to be able to better evaluate how effectively you are implementing various plays.

So I have worked on various skills and my fundamentals are sound and I am winning steady and I pick up SSH and I see that I can improve my hand protection skills and be more selective with overcard play. So I plug these skills into an already functioning agame and I immediately see positive results. But if my semi-bluffing skills were weak and I peeled too many cards on the flop with I would be making horriblly expensive mistakes trying to protect hands on the turn with inadvisable semi-bluff raises with hands that I should have either folded or never even played.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]


Because if someone says it is dangerous simply if you do not follow the advice correctly, that could be said about any poker book ever written. What is so exceptional about the danger of SSH?

[/ QUOTE ]

The danger of SSH is that it is easy to misinterpret what it is saying if you read the book superficially.

First of all, it is easy for the uninformed to view it as a beginner's book. It is not. The book assumes a certain level of knowledge and experience. This is particularly dangerous for a new player with an instinctively aggressive style.

Secondly, the book advocates what at first glance appears to be a much more aggressive style than almost any other non-expert book. It is easy for an uninformed player to mistake selectively aggressive strategy for generally or universally aggressive strategy. It is interesting that the only other writer in this area that focusses on aggressive play is Gary Carson, who is also the only other author quoted in the book.

Thirdly, the authors assume a certain knowledge of starting hand strategy, and focus a lot more on postflop play, since this is the major weakness of players at this level. This focus can lead inexperienced players to think that they can play more hands if they play them more aggressively, which is certainly not what the book recommends.

All of the "dangers" of the book fall under your catagory of not following the advice correctly, but these dangers are more subtle and easier to fall into than not following advice like don't cold call a raise with 54 offsuit.