Sun Tzu's "Art of War" +ev?

[laja]

"So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak"
= table selection, one of the most underated aspects of poker: profit = your skill - their skill, maybe instead of increasing your skill, decrease theirs by choosing fishy tables.


"A whole army may be robbed of its spirit; a commander-in-chief may be robbed of his presence of mind"
= don't lose heart and become a scared player, also do not lose your head and tilt

"Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes"
= hack into top players' computers to steal their poker tracker notes files and then change the notes they have on you tovpip of 72 and pfr of 26 [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

have you guys ever applied any?

[spiritmagic]

Table selection is key

[memphis57]

Absolutely. I would strongly recommend Art of War and any other military strategy book. But to use these types of sources, you have to be able to think for yourself, and to think in analogies.

I'm new to poker but I've played a lot of chess in the past. Art of War was very popular among chess players, as were other military strategists.

But there is a huge difference between chess and poker, and it may be that a military analogy best describes that difference. To me, chess is like commanding the main armies in a way, while poker is more like the guerilla/partisan struggles up in the hills.

The main difference is that in chess, all your forces are exposed. All your resources are on the battlefield and you must marshall them for a concerted attack to settle things once and for all. In poker, though, the outcome is decided through a series of small engagements (hands), in each of which each side is able to decide how large a force (how much money) to commit. And victory is decided not by the number of wins but by the cumulative size of those wins. In poker, you don't HAVE to risk anything on a given hand except 3/4 of a BB (both blinds divided by 10), while in chess you do have to risk your entire force at all times. (Any chess players here? Wouldn't it be nice to have a "fold" option in chess, where if you got in a bad position you could "fold", pick up all your remaining pieces and set them up again on a different chess board?)Thus, in poker, you can lose 10 times in a small way and win once big, and still come out ahead. And the same is true of your opponent.

So, offensively, your objective in poker is to feel out the enemy in each engagement to judge his strength. When he is weaker than you are, you want to commit as many resources as possible so that the size of your victory is large. When he is stronger, you want to limit your exposure. Since he is doing the same thing, you generally want him to overrate you when you're weak and underrate you when you're strong, and that's why deception is so important.

This is all very pie-in-the-sky, especially coming from a poker newbie like me, but here's a practical example. I'm still trying to learn what everyone else considers the "right" way to play before I start branching out on my own, but it has already become apparent to me that perhaps aggression is overrated, at least in micro-limits online or any other game with a large fish percentage. People are so hung up on improving their PT statistics for PFR that they raise AA and AK in early positions even against a bunch of loose-passive players. As a result, everybody folds and they collect 1-3/4 BB or something. While if you wait and slow-play it, yeah somebody will suck out once or twice out of 10 times, but the other 8-9 times you make 8-10-15 BB. I think if Sun Tzu were playing Party 0.50/1.00 today, he would say that more slow-play is +EV.

[Boltsfan1992]

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This is all very pie-in-the-sky, especially coming from a poker newbie like me, but here's a practical example. I'm still trying to learn what everyone else considers the "right" way to play before I start branching out on my own, but it has already become apparent to me that perhaps aggression is overrated, at least in micro-limits online or any other game with a large fish percentage. People are so hung up on improving their PT statistics for PFR that they raise AA and AK in early positions even against a bunch of loose-passive players. As a result, everybody folds and they collect 1-3/4 BB or something. While if you wait and slow-play it, yeah somebody will suck out once or twice out of 10 times, but the other 8-9 times you make 8-10-15 BB. I think if Sun Tzu were playing Party 0.50/1.00 today, he would say that more slow-play is +EV.

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If everyone folds to a pre-flop raise, the table is not loose but very tight. It would be a loose table if the other players cold-called the raise. If a player limps in with a premium hand, allowing the better players to also limp in, the better players may stay in the hand longer allowing the premium hand to get beat on the turn and the river because of the lack of aggression pre-flop. The weak players may not recognize this at all, but there is usually another person sitting with you that pays attention to what is going on at all times.

At Party Poker, I have seen many players cold call a pre-flop raise and stay in too long without improving. Many times the premium hands (AA in particular) are high precentage winners (over 60%...others around here have the hand higher). I do struggle with the notion that Sun Tzu would be less aggressive at Party Poker. In fact, I wonder that if he knew weaker opponents were against him, would he be MORE aggressive instead of less. It HAS been quite some time that I have read the book (high school), but the weak players cold-calling a raise with a weak hand is a mistake that you can profit from and exploit. Would Sun Tzu do the same? I would think so. Limping in reduces the overall money you could make with premium hands.

The PokerTracker stats crew are not re-raising to help their stats. The better players look at their results at the end of the session to determine what happened at that session. They are not raising pre-flop just to do it. They are raising because it is the correct play.

I would pick up Ed Miller's Small Stakes Hold 'Em as soon as possible.

PB

[partygirluk]

[quote}
"Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes"
= hack into top players' computers to steal their poker tracker notes files and then change the notes they have on you tovpip of 72 and pfr of 26 [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]



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Having the top players mark you as a fish is definitely -EV

[dtbog]

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The PokerTracker stats crew are not re-raising to help their stats.

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Amen!

Keeping stats for the purpose of manipulating them is useless.

-DB

[memphis57]

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I would pick up Ed Miller's Small Stakes Hold 'Em as soon as possible.

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Yes I have SSHE. On the advice of this board I bought it and read it before I started playing, as well as PokerTracker. But I don't claim to have it mastered so I appreciate you discussing this topic with me.

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If everyone folds to a pre-flop raise, the table is not loose but very tight.

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Okay, help me out here. I'm a newbie and I'm not ashamed of it, I'm here to learn. I may be using the terms wrong. I thought "loose" referred to card selection, i.e., people who play ace-rag and king-rag and 48s, while "passive" meant they didn't raise much themselves and frequently folded to the aggression of others. Maybe this type of player is best described as "loose-passive-easily-scared," to distinguish them from those who don't raise themselves but do call the raises of others, i.e. "loose-passive-calling-station."

Whatever you call them, they are all over Party. In fact, you might say they are made by Party, being initially "loose-passive-calling-stations" until they encounter a few people from 2+2 and lose half their stake. Often they change during a session and display this attitude only to certain opponents who they perceive as being strong after losing several big hands to them.

I've been thinking about this for a while and collecting hands - I need to pull some together and post on the micro forum. The problem is that just one hand in isolation is not a sufficient picture, you kind of need to see the series of hands on that table that lead up to it, so it's a lot of work putting it together. I agree, by default, aggression is the better course. But situations develop where aggression is severely pot-limiting, and in these situations I think most of you guys would agree (as would Ed Miller), but I still see otherwise good TAG players being too aggressive and costing themselves money.

In other words, all I'm saying is that there are exceptions to the aggression rule which most of you good players already follow, but which we newbies need to learn.

Here's an example, although maybe a too-simplistic one. But I see this happen a lot. Typical skittish table, prone to fold to signs of strength, lots of small pots. But you finally get a hand where hero and 3 others think they have hands. Everybody seems committed, nobody waivers or looks indecisive about betting on the flop, but nobody raises either. Hero has an A-high flush draw and is in position behind the person who led the betting on the flop, and there is also a straight draw on the board. Hero makes his flush on the turn, betting leader bets. Hero raises, the other two fold, lead bettor calls.

Here it seems better to call, (as long as you think that the mere presence of a 3-flush on the board without a raise won't cause both of the followers to change their course and fold). By raising you only get one more BB added to the pot this round while risking 2 of yours, but if you call you're likely to get 2 bets added after yours from the other 2 callers, at risk of only one on your part, plus a-whole-nother round of betting, so net you're giving up like 3 BBs by raising. True, once in a while someone will make a full house on the river, but that risk is far smaller than 3 BBs per hand.

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I do struggle with the notion that Sun Tzu would be less aggressive at Party Poker. In fact, I wonder that if he knew weaker opponents were against him, would he be MORE aggressive instead of less. It HAS been quite some time that I have read the book (high school), but the weak players cold-calling a raise with a weak hand is a mistake that you can profit from and exploit. Would Sun Tzu do the same? I would think so.

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It's been a long for me, too, but I always regarded Tzu as the trickster type. He wouldn't just want to know that his opponents were weaker, but HOW are they weaker, in what ways? And he would try to devise some trick that causes them to fall into his hands precisely because of the type of weakness they have. True, he would take advantage of a cold-calling weakness by aggression. But the scenario I'm describing specifically rules that out - these are cases where you have a read that says they are likely to fold to a raise, not cold-call it. I don't think Tzu would raise in that case if he had a strong hand.

Clausewicz is probably more who you're thinking of, he was all about getting in position with the right material and then letting loose everything at once, although I think in the carefully limited circumstances I've described even he would see the point of slow-playing these hands.

IMHO, the real military hero of the currently accepted best style of playing Holdem should be Nathan Bedford Forrest, the civil war cavalry general. Talk about wise use of aggression. He frequently had forces surrender to him where the prisoners outnumbered his total force. Of course, since he so rarely lost, some could argue he was simply a LAG or a maniac on a hot streak. But I would counter that he always prepared very well before going into battle and wasn't ashamed to decline battle and ride away, the equivalent of a low VPIP in my mind. Yet even he was not above pretending to be weak to draw the enemy into a trap.

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The PokerTracker stats crew are not re-raising to help their stats. The better players look at their results at the end of the session to determine what happened at that session. They are not raising pre-flop just to do it. They are raising because it is the correct play.

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Okay, I take this back, even though I would question your blanket assertion that nobody focuses too much on their stats. But you're right, they shouldn't do this, and I have no proof why people make these pot-limiting raises. Maybe they're not 2+2ers and never heard of SSHE and just get carried away with having the best hand. But there's a post somewhere around here now, where someone questioned if the guy was slow-playing AA too much. He came back and said he had NEVER slow-played AA pre-flop, that he had ALWAYS raised pre-flop, even in early positions. And this was over 60K hands. So has there never been a single case where he could read that the table would fold round to him if he did this? This seems to me an expensive means of blind-stealing.

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Limping in reduces the overall money you could make with premium hands.

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This is the exact kind of blanket statement I'm objecting to. If you add the words "in most cases" I will agree with that, but not always, not on every hand. I have cases in my history where, on a given table, I played several hands the "right" way and several slow-played. Let me try to find a few of those examples, on the same table, and try to construct a sequence to show you what I mean. In certain circumstances, slow-play is MUCH more profitable, so much that it pays for making a few (but not too many) mistakes of overdoing it to the slow-play side.


In sum, if I had to make a rule for a book like SSHE, it would be this: while aggression is normally the best course, if you're on a table that folds round repeatedly to signs of strength, try to estimate the won-pot-size consequences of a slow-play alternative (being sure to factor in the odds of opponents making more draws to weaker hands).

[Boltsfan1992]

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If everyone folds to a pre-flop raise, the table is not loose but very tight.

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Okay, help me out here. I'm a newbie and I'm not ashamed of it, I'm here to learn. I may be using the terms wrong. I thought "loose" referred to card selection, i.e., people who play ace-rag and king-rag and 48s, while "passive" meant they didn't raise much themselves and frequently folded to the aggression of others. Maybe this type of player is best described as "loose-passive-easily-scared," to distinguish them from those who don't raise themselves but do call the raises of others, i.e. "loose-passive-calling-station."

Whatever you call them, they are all over Party. In fact, you might say they are made by Party, being initially "loose-passive-calling-stations" until they encounter a few people from 2+2 and lose half their stake. Often they change during a session and display this attitude only to certain opponents who they perceive as being strong after losing several big hands to them.

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My definition of loose passive are those players who play more hands preflop and will not raise, instead they call with almost anything - even cold-call raises with nothing. They stay in hands longer through the flop-turn-river, and sometimes win by catching their long-shot, but eventually, the longshots catch up with them and they lose. They do not fold to a raise because any two cards can win. If one raises with a premium hand most often, more money is won because their hands do not catch up.

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I do struggle with the notion that Sun Tzu would be less aggressive at Party Poker. In fact, I wonder that if he knew weaker opponents were against him, would he be MORE aggressive instead of less. It HAS been quite some time that I have read the book (high school), but the weak players cold-calling a raise with a weak hand is a mistake that you can profit from and exploit. Would Sun Tzu do the same? I would think so.

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It's been a long for me, too, but I always regarded Tzu as the trickster type. He wouldn't just want to know that his opponents were weaker, but HOW are they weaker, in what ways? And he would try to devise some trick that causes them to fall into his hands precisely because of the type of weakness they have. True, he would take advantage of a cold-calling weakness by aggression. But the scenario I'm describing specifically rules that out - these are cases where you have a read that says they are likely to fold to a raise, not cold-call it. I don't think Tzu would raise in that case if he had a strong hand.

Clausewicz is probably more who you're thinking of, he was all about getting in position with the right material and then letting loose everything at once, although I think in the carefully limited circumstances I've described even he would see the point of slow-playing these hands.


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Interesting we're using military strategists to discuss poker strategy. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Very appropriate and you may be right about my typecasting. I will have to think about this some...

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Okay, I take this back, even though I would question your blanket assertion that nobody focuses too much on their stats. But you're right, they shouldn't do this, and I have no proof why people make these pot-limiting raises. Maybe they're not 2+2ers and never heard of SSHE and just get carried away with having the best hand. But there's a post somewhere around here now, where someone questioned if the guy was slow-playing AA too much. He came back and said he had NEVER slow-played AA pre-flop, that he had ALWAYS raised pre-flop, even in early positions. And this was over 60K hands. So has there never been a single case where he could read that the table would fold round to him if he did this? This seems to me an expensive means of blind-stealing.

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That is assuming that if you had AA and you raised, but what if I had another premium hand and I re-raised you? You wouldn't really know what I had, but hopefully, you would put me on a range of hands. There are a range of hands that would play back at you correctly by re-raising. Blind stealing certainly happens when the preflop raise gets too much respect, and quite possibly the player has to change gears to get action, but in the few months I've played on Party, it only has happened once. Most players just cold call the raise. Those players that re-raise me when I have the premium hand have my complete attention.

And sure, there are some around here who are results oriented and look at Pokertracker stats as a means to an end, but the majority of us do not. Stats are stats...but one CAN have a losing session by being the tight aggressive player illustrated by PT, just like the Tampa Bay Lightning can play great hockey via their stats but lose 1-0. It happens. I don't think the majority of the players here use Pokertracker to pump their stats to prove that they are a winning player. Your perceptions could be different, however.


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Limping in reduces the overall money you could make with premium hands.

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This is the exact kind of blanket statement I'm objecting to. If you add the words "in most cases" I will agree with that, but not always, not on every hand. I have cases in my history where, on a given table, I played several hands the "right" way and several slow-played. Let me try to find a few of those examples, on the same table, and try to construct a sequence to show you what I mean. In certain circumstances, slow-play is MUCH more profitable, so much that it pays for making a few (but not too many) mistakes of overdoing it to the slow-play side.

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Okay..if it helps with semantics then I'll change it...in most cases. I know that there is variance in strategy in poker and situations will dictate to you when the correct play is needed. However, I still maintain that raising this hand preflop is still the correct play.

There was a contentious thread about playing AA with a poll and everything, but the original poster was a contentious person who would not listen to varying viewpoints, which is why I think he ran into trouble. There is a line in Hold 'Em poker by Sklansky that reads "Two Aces are the best hand period. They are a little stronger with few callers, but no hand will more money no matter how many people are in the pot."

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In sum, if I had to make a rule for a book like SSHE, it would be this: while aggression is normally the best course, if you're on a table that folds round repeatedly to signs of strength, try to estimate the won-pot-size consequences of a slow-play...

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Knowing your odds (both implied and pot) and making the plays based on the odds and the players you are against will have you winning the most over the long run. There's another book, when you get the time, called The Theory of Poker. There's some good information there too.

The Sun-Tzu reference just piqued my interest...

PB

[K C]

Really good discussion. I just want to throw in something here with regard to loose/tight/passive/aggressive.

The distinction between loose and tight is obviously the amount of hands that one plays, both pre and post flop.

Passiveness and aggressiveness refer to taking the initiative - i.e. betting and raising (and by degree in NL/PL) as opposed to checking and calling.

So let's look at each of these. You can be too loose by entering and staying in hands when you are at a disadvantage (-EV). You can be too tight if you pass up on some situations where you do have the advantage (-EV). Naturally, most players tend to be on the loose side, which is a good thing [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Being too passive would be not betting or raising when doing so would represent an advantage. Being too aggressive would be betting or raising when doing so represents a disadvantage.

Now, often we aspire to be both tight and aggressive. In playing "tight" though, there's still a tendancy to not play tight enough in regard to restricting our action to when we have the best of it. And we can easily be too aggressive as well, losing extra money in instances where our value (strength of hand plus fold equity) does not justify it.

Personally, I prefer the term "prudent" over such things as tight/aggressive or whatever. It's prudent to fold when we don't have the best of it, and prudent to pursue our advantages when we do.

KC
http://kingcobrapoker.com

[laja]

deception is most important versus high level players o_O O_o