20%??

[sahaguje]

Mmmmh,

Ok, I made a mistake. But still, I dont know why, I think being very selective in the hand you play is better. If you fold preflop when you are not in the blinds, your EV is 0. So I guess it is not too expensive to play only your better hands. Of course, you sometimes miss profitable spots, ie dont play optimally. But there are advantages : your raises are more respected, and you wont build as many 2nd best hands as you do if you play more hands. I agree you dont maximize your winnings by being conservative preflop, but I think your swings will be lower.
Anyway, I would really like to hear what a mathematician has to say about all this, especially the proximity of the optimal proportion of hands in each poker game.

I really think there is something to discuss about here. I will try to post some thoughts on the subject later. Thanks for your posts, anyway, I think it could become a very interesting thread if we continue to discuss this question.

++

sahaguje

[sherbert]

I can't discuss the game theory aspects of PLO - although FWIW we do know that poker as a whole as opposed to model games is not really amenable to game theory analysis except in specific instances and I would guess that PLO would be the game least amenable of all. I am very likely wrong about this.

However - it seems to me that there is no way around the fact that going to the table with a decent hand gives you a substantial edge. This is true of all poker games, isn't it? In Stud/8 OB, you can't start entering pots with 6,8 J single suited. It doesn't make sense.

Same with PLO. You can't enter a pot with something like Q,9,7,2 or for that matter the infamous 2222. There may be an exception to the Q,9,7,2 if you are specifically trying to exploit a player you "know" to have aces.

Getting the hands where you voluntarily enter the pot up to 30 per cent is easy - just play weaker pairs and any three broadway cards, suited or not.

However, few if any of these hands win more than their fair share. So the benefits of playing them are I think, fairly murky.

I also agree with Sahaguje that playing tighter than the rest of the crew gives your raises and bets far more credibility.

However, there is some evidence to suggest that the tighter you play - especially in loosed wild games, which a lot of the online PLO games are right now, pushes your variance UP, not down.

FWIW, in the very small database of online PLO hands I have, there is no evidence to say that tight is right. The range of winning players voluntarily putting money into the pot goes from 26% to 87% (!). But the sample sizes are almost meaningless.

Just my thruppence worth.

[greywolf]

personally i prefer not to be labelled as tight as my bets get to much respect, i think its best to have a somewhat looser but very aggresive approach to the game, this is true for many games but but there are also games where this style would kill you, then you must go into a tight aggresive or even tight passiv mode.

[sahaguje]

OK, after a good sleep night, I think I was right, and I am going to defend my position...

Let s redefine it : in each game, considering your position, the stacks and the level of other players, you can define an optimal number of hands to play. This number is closely related to two things :
- The numer of players in the game, because it defines your probability to have the first, second, third etc. best hand.
- The distribution of probabilities of winning among the hands : The best hand has a probability of p(1), to win, the second hand p(2) etc, in each poker game, but p(i)-p(i-1) is different in every form of poker.

In a future post, I am gonna try to prove this mathematically. Here I just want to explain why I think this is theoretically right to play only a certain proportion of hands, and this proportion is linked with the distribution of probabilities of winning the hands between players. First I will answer to pete's post, "fraught with logical errors"

[ QUOTE ]

This little thought-experiment is deeply misguided. The notion that you can guarantee e.v. merely by cutting the “losing” 20% of hands is ridiculous. Imagine for one second that the table contains 10 clones of yourself, and you play perfectly. On average, you play 30% of hands. Do you think one of your clones could actually improve his E.V. by decided to play only 15% of hands? What hands would he be cutting? Well, by the stipulation that you play perfectly, he would be dumping only profitable situations. Thus, the clone who only played 15% of his hands would be the fish! He would be failing to extract equity when it exists! Suddenly everyone at the table would have a + E.V. except for him.

And just to make an obvious point, let’s say that clone actually could make money by playing half as many hands as you. What would the game-theoretical response to that be? Well, the other clones should start playing 7.5%, 3.75%, and so on, until all clones play 0 hands, and you can just go home.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for giving me such an example. The problem in what you say is that you dont consider the other clones' hands, but only mines. It is faulty to say that if I miss occasions to make +EV play, that means I am gonna be a fish. If there were no blinds, I could wait for AA ds and only play them, this would not be the most profitable play, but that does not mean at all I would have become a fish, and people now all win money just because I am more selective...

Anyway, if the table is full of clones (so no one is a better player), and if we consider there is no dead money in the pot, then when the pot is 4-handed, in the long run my probability of winning the hand has to be more than 25%, or else I would lose money. Remember I cannot make more money than the other players can when I have a hand, since we are all clones. But my probability to win the pot postflop when we are 4 is of course related with my probability to win the pot preflop when there are ten players, at least in the long run. The reason of this is obvious : in order to calculate the probability of a hand to win the pot, you must deal a great number of flops, and count each time this hand wins. That is what twodimes do, for example.

So, lets get back to the problem : each hand has p(i) chances to win the pot, i being the rank of the hand if we compare the probabilities ( ie : p(i-1)<p(i)<p(i+1) ). If the game is 10-handed, you should only play your p(1) hands, cause now you will be a favorite on every hand.

Notice two things : 1) that it is only true in the long run, and for a particular hand the p1 hand wont always be a favorite post flop. But if you play a great number of flops, it will be.
2) Since all players are clones, in the long run you cannot count on implied odds etc, because the other players will gain the same implied odds when they will be in your situation. So if we consider there is no dead money, 4 handed post flop, every hand that has more than 25% to win is a winner, and every hand that has less is a loser. Now you can tell there is money in the pot from preflop bets. That is true, and when I will calculate the "good" proportion of hands to play, I will try to take it into account, but here I just want to explain my point theoretically.

So you want to play your p1 hands only if you want to be a favorite each hand you play, or any hand that has more than 25% odds to win the pot if you want to take every opportunity to make a +EV play. Now sometimes, only 1 hand will have for than 1 to 3 odds, sometimes 3, but most of the times two hands will have odds sufficient enough, and 2 wont. If everybody does good hand selection, only p1, p2, p3 and p4 hands will be played each time ; so in the long run, p1 and p2 hands will show a profit, and p3 and p4 hands will lose money. So do maximize your winnings, you should only play 20% of your hands, if it is 4 handed post flop on average.

It is the same for every number of players : if it is 6 handed, you have to get 1-to-5 odds preflop to show a profit. In the long run, 3 hands will have more than these odds postflop, and in the long run again, it will be p1, p2 and p3 hands, so you should play 30% of your hands. etc etc etc.
That is what I meant when I said you should play half hands the other does ; I should have said you should play half the number of players in the pot, but of course it is the same thing. Now maybe it will not seem intuitive multiway, but it is obvious heads up : if there was no dead money and if you had the same level than your opponents, obviously the best strategy is to play only the hands that beat him, ie that has more than 50% odds to win the pot.

Now you see that all we said was true for every form of game. But since there are the blinds, and players bet money preflop, you are not forced to have more than 25% odds to win the pot if it is 4 handed post flop to make money, even if all the players are equal. It depends on the average pot size, and it can be easily calculated, I ll do that in a next post. So for example we can imagine if it is 4 handed post flop on average, you just have to have 20% (and not 25%) odds to win to make it profitable. The type of game (HE, stud, Omaha) determines the distribution of probabilities to win, so it now affects how many hands are above the 20% line. For example, p(i)-p(i-1) is usally really superior at hold em than at omaha, so there is a good chance that in the long run more hands at omaha can have a probability to win superior to 20% post flop when 4 handed. So you should play more hands at omaha than at HE. But notice that it only comes from the fact that there is money in the pot when flop betting round begins. And I guess it wont make an enormous difference, but once again, it is easy to calculate, and I will try to do it.

So the good proportion of hands to play should theoretically be slighty superior (5-10% max, I guess) to half the average number of players per flop, all other conditions being equal.

Now pete made a good point : if everyone knows that, they should reduce the numer of hands they play until 0, and there will be no game. It is totally true. It is the same at NLHE : theoretically, if there was no dead money, everyone should wait for AA, as long as everyone else does it ; to put it differently, if 9 players only play AA, and one player plays AA and KK, if there is no dead money this player will be a big loser in the long run.

So why are there games ?
1) Well, in the games I know, there are some blinds to fight for.
2) Players dont make the proper adjustment.
3) Hands you evaluate as p1 are always playable if they really are the best hands. That is 10% of hands. But since you cannot know for sure which is the best hand, you will play more or less hands.
4) There is a virtuous circle : if 2 players enter the pot, you can play at least your 15% best hands, so the player after you can play his 20% best hands, etc. That is one of the reasons you can play more hands when you have position, i.e. more informations on the future conditions of the hand played.
5) Most players think they are on average able to make money when they win, more than the addition of all the money they lose when they lose their hands. Most of them are wrong, but this is that bad evaluation that makes them play. Otherwise, there will be no poker games.

I wont comment the rest of pete's post. It is interesting, but not appropriate. Every example in it supposes there is blind money, and/or that he is better than the other players. For example, he says he should not reduce the number of hands he plays when they are only rocks at the table, but on the contrary raise this number. Major mistake, cause he can play as many hands he wants, if the other players just play the best 10% of their hands, then pete will be an outdog everytime he is paid preflop. To make money, he has to steal the blinds, or play better than his opponents post flop. If in addition to playing only their best hands, the rocks play them heavily and with great agressivity, both pre and post flop, pete will lost incredible amounts of money very quickly.

I hope this post was interesting, and not too boring. I ll try to mathematically apply that toughts to omaha, but only if my reasonig is good, so I will wait a little for that. Please, comment and criticize what I wrote.

See you

sahaguje

[pete fabrizio]

The gross misunderstanding of simple poker theory in this post is surprising, coming from someone who posts so authoritatively ("How much?", "Where to Play", etc). I would explain why, exactly, but you've already shown a mysterious contempt for reason.

On the bright side, your bad logic may inadvertantly lead you to play well for a lot of games.

Just one tiny bit of guidance: Your dismissal of the blinds in your analysis is alarming. I'm sure you've heard this before, but all poker is fundamentally a struggle for the dead money that is in the pot (blind or otherwise). No-blind-no-ante games reduce quickly to the absurd, and have little to do with poker as we know it.

[Iceman]

[ QUOTE ]
Sagah has suggested in multiple posts now that a PLO player would optimally play around 20% of hands. I find this hard to believe. Personally, I have been known to play upwards of 40-45% of hands when I'm a monster stack trying to run over the table, and I play around 35% on average. Now, I shouldn't be used as an example, since I DEFINITELY play "too many" hands, but what I've found is that there's not THAT much room to trim: Even when I've tried playing super-tight, I can't get my %age much below 30.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you were in a limit game where the betting structure is 1-10-100-1000, wouldn't you play a lot of hands preflop? Deep money pot-limit isn't quite that extreme, but you get the idea. When the stacks are very deep compared to the blinds, there's no real penalty on playing somewhat loose preflop because the potential win when you do hit your hand is so large and because it makes you harder to read. I've seen winning players who play most of the hands they're dealt in PLO. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that, but as long as you don't call big raises with trash hands and you know when to not get involved with a mediocre made hand or weak draw on the flop, you can certainly make money on more than 20% of your hands if you can outplay your opposition postflop.

[sahaguje]

[ QUOTE ]
The gross misunderstanding of simple poker theory in this post is surprising, coming from someone who posts so authoritatively ("How much?", "Where to Play", etc). I would explain why, exactly, but you've already shown a mysterious contempt for reason.

On the bright side, your bad logic may inadvertantly lead you to play well for a lot of games.

Just one tiny bit of guidance: Your dismissal of the blinds in your analysis is alarming. I'm sure you've heard this before, but all poker is fundamentally a struggle for the dead money that is in the pot (blind or otherwise). No-blind-no-ante games reduce quickly to the absurd, and have little to do with poker as we know it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, you dont have to be that agressive and unfriendly. It was just some thoughts, I havent said I had the truth. About my tone and the subjects of my previous posts, I just wanted to start general discussions in order to help this brand new forum about my favorite game live. Maybe it sounds a little authoritarian, but really I dont want my posts to be taken that way... I am not familiar with the subtleties of English, mea culpa.
Concerning the blinds, I adressed that in my post ; I agree without blinds there would be no game, I just say it is not really relevant as hand selection in concerned. Anyway, maybe my post is not interting at all. Sorry then for the time wasted.

...

But I still think it is not totally uninteresting [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

See you

Sahaguje

[sherbert]

[ QUOTE ]
Just one tiny bit of guidance: Your dismissal of the blinds in your analysis is alarming. I'm sure you've heard this before, but all poker is fundamentally a struggle for the dead money that is in the pot (blind or otherwise). No-blind-no-ante games reduce quickly to the absurd, and have little to do with poker as we know it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh. One thing for sure, is that PLO as played online is NOT a struggle for the antes. Most of the players are crazy gamblers which is why they play it. The antes, to them, are irrelevant as to why they play the game. And I can guarantee that with the right line up - a lot of the online PLO players would qualify for this accolade - a no ante game would offer them few obstacles in the way of contriving situations where they were "all in".

JMO

[tubbyspencer]

For Hold' Em, KK v K2 is much preferable to AA v A2. In fact, you'd rather have AA v A6 than AA v A2.

[Erdnase]

Hi all,

very interesting thread so far. I'd like to join. My PLO experience is limited, although I used to play it for some time a few years back. So take the comments with a grain of salt...

IMO, when you play too loose, you will end up in a lot of situations where you have a playable hand, that is far behind. Thus, you will lose a lot of money. Ex. would be playing any 3 broadway cards, ending up with a slightly lesser hand than the tighter player, eg same two pair, no straight draw and no bigger two pair draw.
Why not wait for the situations where you are on the better end??
I can vividly remember the times when my opponent had middle trips and a straight when all the money went in and he was drawing to 1 out.

Question: why would playing tight INCREASE your swings? Could someone elaborate?

Thx, Erd.