Caro Article

[New York Jet]

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i basically agree with caro that psychology is by far most important.

of course math is important, but that's implied. i'mean a good player isnt gonna chase a pot unless he knows he's roughly getting good overall odds on the situation.

and if i calculate something to be 55% in my favor, and in reality it's 45%, i think the luck factor cancels it out anyway. lord knows i've lost more than my share of 22-1 shots. as a favorite.

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Uh, there is no such thing as luck. If you are actually 45% to win, you are 45% to win. You will win that hand 45% of the time. Thinking luck will make up for a rather large error on your part.

No amount of minor tells you pick up, especially online is going to make up for the fact you are putting too much money into the pot when you calculate your odds 10% to high.

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Luck does exist. Do you see why? If your opponents believe luck exists, then it exists.

[Warren Whitmore]

I had a chat with Mike online at planet poker before this article was released. He means David and yourself.

[Peter666]

It should be obvious to everyone that the math never changes and psychology is open to manipulation. I can play with tells, change my style and do all sorts of things to screw people up. But the odds of hitting my backdoor flush draw are the odds of hitting my backdoor flush draw. Poker rests on a foundation of mathematics and everything else is built on top of this. I don't understand why someone would try to antagonize those who understand this basic fact.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Everyone:

An interesting sidenote to all of this is that a few months back I met with some people from Bluff magazine. I don't even remember exactly who it was I sat down with but I do think their editor was present (but again I'm not sure).

I emphasized to them that they needed to be more than just a fluff magazine -- that is it needed some real poker articles by people who really did understand something about poker, and that these articles needed to be longer and more in depth than one page.

Anyway, I never heard from them again. But it does seem like they are trying to do this and perhaps that is the reason for bringing in someone like Caro to write.

best wishes,
mason

"Poker rests on a foundation of mathematics and everything else is built on top of this."

Only if your opponents understand and apply this.

I played 6 handed 75-150 Limit HE some years ago at the Taj. The other players rarely came in and I was beating up on one guy I saw before but never played against. He always followed my raises and reraises to the river, but he never called me down in 10 (all the) hands. By the 7th or 8th hand I figured The Hell With It and played any 2 (always raising to get the players--who never seemed to enter anyway--out). I had a 76s on the 10th hand and raised coming in. He followed my raises and reraises to the river again (he would raise on occasion too). I totally blanked. 7 high. I thought, "He has to call me just to show me that he can call me, even if he thinks he is beaten." I must have hesitated a split second before betting and I guess he thought that meant strength. I don't know. He folded again and the game broke up.

Math means nothing if you can intimidate your opponent, or he is silly enough to fold all the time. I still have no idea why he folded on the river all the time after he, himself, raised more than a few times. It wasn't like I could shove all-in. It was Limit.

Math means something when you are taking flops with people who you know have the ability to call you on the river. It means a lot when you are up against very good or better players. But if your opponents frown when they have bad cards and/or miss and smile when they have good cards and/or hit the math is minimal.

I think I'm saying the same thing you are. I just wanted to point out that one weird incident.

[I am fish]

Poker is purely mathematical. But you need to be able to plug in the right numbers into the formulas. In your example, you quantified that he folded at the river 7 out of 7 times, so you just plug that in to the formula. If I bet the river, he will fold (plug in let's say 75% of the time) and compared to how much money is in the pot, any bet will show a positive expectation.

My point is that even a lot of what is considered psychology is very mathematical. If you observed someone bet out 18 out of 25 flops, you might say he is an agressive player. Your observations will give you what numbers you need to plug in your variables to make optimal decisions.

[MicroBob]

Not to mention the original point that Mason made:
That they never claimed that psychology WASN'T important in poker.

Obviously they believe the math is important...but Mason can make 'reads' on what he thinks is going through an opponent's mind based on the psychology AND the math.


I'm also kind of confused as to why Caro would claim that S&M are simply 'all about the math'.

[Peter666]

Even the Caro article says that the mathematical calculations are done before the game so one knows the tactics to use during the game. Concepts like the check raise and free card were determined to be beneficial because of the favourable math. Even weird or crazy players like those mentioned above who can't be read or use force of intimidation can be dealth with when applying sound math. This is poker, not wrestling [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

And yes, the fact that 2+2 Publishing has written two excellent books on Poker psychology, including Schoonmaker's which is the most systematic and practical psychology book of them all, just makes Caro look silly. What other book on the market comes close to the psychological depth of Schoonmaker's book? Has Caro written something similar?

The article is contradictory and merely posturing. It looks like Caro wants to start a debate or war to generate controversy and excitement in the poker world, probably to generate sales.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Pete:

Caro also claims to be the world's foremost authority in poker statistics. If this stuff was so unimportant, why would he even bother to make this claim for all these years?

Best wishes,
Mason

[Beavis68]

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. I couldn't notice that it had a Caro article that began as follows:


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So how did this get brought to your attention?