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| Poker Hand Essay | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 28 2007, 02:17 PM (328 Views) | |
| The_Immortal_DJINN | Nov 28 2007, 02:17 PM Post #1 |
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Lords of the 17th Chamber of Maggots
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Yes, I was STONE bored today. So, I wrote up a little poker essay to help myself understand if a couple of specific hands I played were played very well...or very poorly. If you have time, give it a read, and feel free to chime in with your own thoughts. As a preface, most of you already know what "EV" is, but if you don't, it's an abbreviation for "expected value.” If you have +EV, it would mean a positive, or profitable, expected value. Now....we travel back to a hand of LIVE No Limit Hold Em' on Saturday Oct 10th (blinds .50/$1) - I have about $87 in front of me and we're 8 handed. A pot is raised from late position by Rutter up to $5, and after 3 callers, I join in the call from the cutoff with Jc-9c. Everyone else folds, and we're five way, I have position. The flop come Jh-9h-5c. I'm feeling pretty good about my position and my top 2 pair with a backdoor flush draw. First to act checks, and Allen from middle position makes it $20. Everyone, including Rutt, folds and it gets to me. After watching Allen play, I've learned several things. He makes a lot of costly and bad decisions, but his aggressive play keeps him in lunch money most of the time (for example, if I had KJ here I may have laid it down, hence, he would have taken the pot right there with such a stout bet). He also bets extremely strong with draws. Yes, it's possible that he has a set. But to come out and make a massive pot sized bet right there, I make him for hearts. The only thing I can do is make him pay to draw against my made hand. I call his $20 and raise the remaining $62 I have. He says, "aw shit, this is a horrible call, but fuck it I'm playing bad anyway, I call." And sure enough, he called me with no pair, and not even a draw to the nuts. He had Kh4h. And no waiting, he turned a low heart and I did not pair up on the river. Punished again for an exceptional read and great play. He went on apologizing to me and so on and so on (I wish people would stop that shit and stand by their shitty play instead of apologizing for it). Truth be told it was barely a shitty call. I gave him 2-1 odds on his 2-1 draw with two cards coming against me, I just don't think there was anything more I could do in this hand. One week later we move on to Hand #2 on Oct 17th this last Saturday - We see the game get down to 4 players at like 4:30am, and I am playing with Paige in the box. I'm also playing exceptional and aggressive in this short handed scenario. I turned around $80 into around $170 in a small amount of time. Now the players are myself, Kenny (who is playing very good, but I'm finding he's second guessing himself when there is a substantial re-raise making him a bit too easy to bluff), a guy named Matt (this guy played really well on the 10th, but for some reason played completely awful this time around and was stuck $200 with his last $70 in front of him), and of course Allen (who hasn't changed his play from the previous time I've played him...still agressive, and still making bad and borderline decisions). Kenny has about $140 in front of him, Matt has $70-ish, Allen has about $200-ish, and I have about $160-ish. I'm dealt 9c9d UTG. I make it $5 to go. Kenny and Matt fold, and Allen calls. Flop comes Jc-9h-3s. I bet $5 into him hoping that this small-ish half pot bet will inspire him to make a raise. Sure as shit he does, but it's a min-raise of $5 more. Now here are my options coming back---I could re-raise here and make it $20 more. That is probably the best play here, but I believe it might be bordering on scaring him out of the pot and not getting the most out of my strong hand. Then again, he didn't back down from his flush draw the week before, so I raising here he could possibly re-raise me again and I could beat him into the pot. I could go all-in, but then I'm really not getting the value out of my strong hand if he lays it down. Right now I am 500% positive I have the best hand as he's not the trapping type and I just KNOW he doesn't have JJ (he would have re-raised me pre-flop). This raise COULD mean he has top pair. My guess is any combination of AJ, KJ, QJ, JT, even J9. Also, his min raise made me think that it's VERY possible he called my pre-flop bet with pocket 33 and I'm in a dreamland set over set situation (rare, but online the min raise is so indicative of a strong hand that I think that 33 is a REAL possibility here). So here's what I do---I just call his raise. I want him to bury himself on his set or pair and let him continue to believe he has the best hand. The turn is the 8d. No flush possibility. He comes out and bets $10. This was about what I thought he would bet regardless of what the turn was. I'm pretty sure I have him. I call the $10, and raise him $30. He looks at the board and looks at me within about 7-8 seconds and says "I'm all-in". Well. That's a lot of money. And it's a big pot. But I have a big hand, so it's not like I'm holding AJ and getting into a big pot with a small hand. No it's not the nuts either. Yes, he could have Q-T but probably not 10-7, but he HAS to have Q-T, 10-7, or JJ to beat me......and I'm 99.9% positive he doesn't have JJ or 10-7. No, I do not think that he thinks that I have a set, as he's the type that thinks only of his hand and not of others. The all-in move is also a move that I'm sure he would do if he had a set. And if he has a set of 33 like I think he has, I am getting all of the money. I recalled the first hand I was in with him last week and just his overall "bad and bold" play. I spent about 25 seconds thinking about it, and then I make the call. "I have the nuts" and turns over QT. My heart sank in my chest, but not too far. The nightmare showdown would have been JJ and I would have only had 1 out, the case 9, to save me. Here I have 10 outs with the three remaining J's, 8's, 3's, and the one 9. The six of hearts rolls off and he takes it all. On the way home I did my best to re-piece the hand and compiled all of my thoughts in an attempt to justify my course of action. I mean, I felt bad because I lost, but it's difficult to feel too bad about it. There was a couple of things I guess I could have done that I didn't do. I could have shown him my hand to get a read on him; just some kind of response prior to calling the all-in. This is the kind of guy that really might have said "Lay it down man, I got that beat" and honestly I would have believed him. I could have shown him my hand and had he clammed up or did something ANYTHING unusual it would have cemented my decision to call him. But in the end, all I did was try to put it all together based on present and prior information and knowledge. I got home and did a deep dive on each hand, and this is what I came up with---- On the first hand with Allen: Allen was facing a call of $62 to win a $127 pot. Let's just take out a a nice tip of $3 and call it a straight up $124:$62 or 2:1 decision. Let's do the math. Allen will lose 62 dollars 64.65% of the time and win 124 dollars 35.35% of the time. EV(Allen) = -$62(0.6465) + $124 (0.3535) = -$40.08 + $43.83 = +$3.75 Allen's call was +EV. It was close... damn close. But still +EV. Allen was about 4:1 to catch his flush with *one* card to come, but 2:1 to catch his flush by the river with 2 cards to come. It's easy to get pissed off about this, but it's critical to look at the math objectively. A lot of times I'm ready to throw my laptop out of the window when someone catches a draw on me, but in calm reflection some time later, it's important to look at these hands and give our opponents credit where credit is due even when they don't know when they're making the right play. Now. When making a decision based on a read, your goal isn't to read the exact hand your opponent has (although at times that may be easy, such as if you have a mental note in your head that goes, "Will only go all in with the stone cold nuts"); your goal is to make the best decision possible based on the range of likely hands your opponent has, and make the most +EV move based on that range. Let's take a very basic example. You're facing a $100 call vs. an opponent you know pretty well who just raised all-in. You gather all the data, and you say to yourself, "9 times out of 10, this guy will make this move with a draw, but yeah, 10% of the time he'll try to make me think he has a draw and just go all-in with the almonds, and I'll be drawing dead." Do you call? Of course you call. You have a 90% chance to be in a very good situation to win $100. If he turns over the nuts, did you make a bad call or a bad read? NO. You accounted for the fact that 1 out of 10 times, he'll have the nuts. Now if you get in situations like this over and over again, and you find that he has the nuts 2 out of 10 times, or 4 out of 10 times, or 7 out of 10 times, then yeah, you're making bad reads and you have to adjust. But just because a single result, even a BIG single result leads in him having the hand you don't want to see, that doesn't mean you made a bad move, and saying that you did is the equivalent of saying that you made a bad move when you got your money in the middle vs. a two outer and the two outer hit on the river. The one single result has nothing to do with whether or not you made the correct decision. So now the question is, what could I have done differently? The answer? Virtually nothing. I could have had more money in front of me, but that's always tricky in cap buy-in games. I made the best move possible to reduce my opponent's EV as much as possible, and if we were to throw in some numbers for folding equity -- even a folding equity as low as 5% or 10% -- and the odds shift in my favor. However, in cases like these, all you can really do is play the game like limit -- even if they are +EV to call, that's better than getting infinite odds by not raising or betting with the better hand. Losing a big hand like this can be hard to stomach. But hands exactly like this are actually kinda your bread and butter in these capped NL games, and you just have to roll with the punches. Remember the opening of Rounders: "Some players, pros even, won't play no limit -- they can't handle the swings." Now to the second hand---- Paige questioned my read on the all-in call with my set of nines. "Did you even consider the guy for Q-T at all?" Well let's talk about that read. It is probably safe to rule out T7 or JJ -- he would have most likely folded T7 pre-flop and reraised JJ pre-flop. For our purposes, we can lump the slim chance he has this hand in with any of our guesses that he has QT. The other range of hands -- top pair, two pair with the J9, set of 33s, set of 88s, or top pair with a straight redraw (JT) -- are very reasonable. Let's say he has QT -- I have a 23% chance of winning the hand.... EV (QT) = 0.77(-$105) + 0.23($215) = -$80.85 + 49.45 = -$31.40 My hand vs. 33.... EV(33) = 0.02(-$105) + 0.98($215) = -$2.10 + $210.70 = +$208.60 vs. QJ.... EV(QJ ) = 0.09(-$105) + 0.91($215) = -$9.45 + $195.65 = +$186.20 vs. J9.... EV(J9) = 0.045(-$105) + 0.955($215) = -$4.72 + $205.33 = +$200.61 Versus AJ and KJ he's drawing dead, so your EV would be +$215 Hell, try to think of it this way -- let's say he exposed QT and I called anyway because I'm feeling scrappy and I like to gamble... I'm not losing $105 on my call here, I'm losing $31.40. Yeah, when you have $105 less in your wallet at the end of the night it doesn't feel like you just lost thirty bucks, but that's really all I'm losing there. I make decisions like this ALL the time...I'll say to myself, "Wow, there's a really good chance he's got me beat here, but even if he does, I've got plenty of outs." Those outs are all the difference between +EV and a -EV, and therefore the difference between being a long term winner and a long term loser. Also calls like this are great for my image because players like Allen and such will then start to think that I'm much more loose than I really am. Back to the hand-----For simplicity sake, this is a classic situation where I'm either WAY ahead or behind but not WAY behind -- a great position to be in. We could get into the nitty-gritty of the likelihood of each hand, but I'm going to lump together all the hands where I'm way ahead. Let's just say that the likelihood of him having the following hands is even for each hand: 33, QJ, J9, AJ, KJ. So the average of all these EV's is... EV(average of winning hands ) = ($208.60 + $186.20 + $200.61 + $215 + $215)/5 = +$205.08 So I'm just going to call the EV of my winning range $205.08. Ok, so let's just throw out some percentages listing various levels of confidence, and run the EV numbers -- (keep in mind, you wouldn't do these precise calculations at the table, but the exercise is very helpful to our overall thinking with situations like this...) So basically we think he either has QT (the nuts) or a hand I'm WAY ahead of. Let's say I think that 1 out of 3 times in this case, I think he has QT: EV = 0.33(-$31.40) + 0.77($205.08) = -$10.36 + $157.91 = +$147.55 Let's say I think it's coin flip between QT and the range of hands I'm way ahead of... EV = 0.5(-$31.40) + 0.5($205.08) = -$15.7 + $102.9 = +$87.20 Let's say I'm 86% certain he has QT... EV = 0.86(-$31.40) + 0.14($205.08) = -$27.00 + $28.71 = +$1.71 Which is basically my break even point. Conclusion -- I would have to be more than 86% sure that he has QT before I would find myself into a long term losing situation. And unless he plays pure predictable poker, exposed a card, or I had x-ray glasses, that's almost impossible to be THAT certain. At the table, the important thing to remember is this -- if you find yourself in a situation where you're either WAY ahead or somewhat behind -- but behind with good outs (in this case, I was AT WORST a 3:1 dog unless he had JJ, which I ruled out), you need to be EXTRAORDINARILY confident that you're facing the hand that has you beat to not make a call like this. I didn't just make a good call - I made a GREAT call. Winning poker is NOT about making the great read and the great laydown. Winning poker is NOT about individual results, no matter how shitty they may be. Winning poker is about putting yourself into profitable situations over and over again by making great decisions. Remember my example from before -- if you think there's a 10% chance you're way behind, and you have good reason to believe that read, just because they turn over the hand that has you beat DOESN'T mean you made a bad read. It just means that you reached that 1 out of 10 scenario. In the end, I have concluded that I personally have enough talent at this game to make these kind of reads -- not the sort of read where I know the EXACT two cards someone has because nobody has that kind of skill (although Negraneu comes pretty damn close), but the kind of reads where I can make good, solid, reasonable ranges of hands. And if I act correctly versus those ranges, I'll bring home the bacon. In these last couple of weeks, it's true---this was a shitty loss. But I say it again without malice -- if you can't handle swings like this, NL is not the game for you. If you play within your bankroll and get yourself into good +EV situations like this over and over, you will make money. And that's all there is to it. If you let the math wrap around you like a warm blanket and play within your bankroll, you'll bust them up. DJINN |
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| pierce | Nov 29 2007, 10:12 PM Post #2 |
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Lords of the 5th Chamber of Oil Cauldrons
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so this is what being married is like. all the time you spend prowling and partying when you're single is used for ridiculous shit! |
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| The_Immortal_DJINN | Nov 30 2007, 01:50 PM Post #3 |
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Lords of the 17th Chamber of Maggots
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I tell you what man, being married is actually pretty fantastic. Some of the guys on here may be able to testify to this too. When you've found someone that you feel you can't live without, and she feels the same towards you, it's an awesome thing. Don't pretend or assume that you know what marriage is all about until you've actually experienced it. Granted, there were little things about being single that I miss, for sure. But I wouldn't go back to that bullshit three ring circus for all the tea in china. I know that it might be difficult for you to comprehend (especially for a 21 year old who's been set free on the world) but there will come a point in your life where you will gladly trade in all the games, all the burning hoops of crap that you had to jump through, and all of those silly half-brain club girls who can't figure out what they want.......for someone who you can just plain talk to and confide in. Someone to figure things out with. Someone who is more than just a one-night booty call. Someone who is done with the games too and just wants to be with you. I might bitch about getting "unlucky" in Magic or poker, but the honest truth is I'm one lucky motherfucker to have a fantastic wife who makes me a better person. Yep, going back to that singles lifestyle for me would be like getting kicked out of a five star limo just to be given a pair of clunky roller skates to get around on. Still not sure how all of this relates to the poker essay, but I'll take it as it comes I guess. DJINN |
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| Necro47 | Nov 30 2007, 03:01 PM Post #4 |
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Unregistered
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Being married fucking SUCKS. You can have it, here take my share as well
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| The_Immortal_DJINN | Nov 30 2007, 03:40 PM Post #5 |
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Lords of the 17th Chamber of Maggots
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Well, being married to the wrong person would suck. I never said it was roses for people who get married only to find that they really aren't meant for one another. I feel for you, because that's probably a worse situation than being single and dealing with the games..... |
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| pierce | Dec 2 2007, 02:34 AM Post #6 |
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Lords of the 5th Chamber of Oil Cauldrons
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man, just asume from now on that 99% of whatever I type would be the same as if I said it to you in person--barely serious, either with a laugh or a huge grin.
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| Cyrrix_chipset | Dec 2 2007, 08:55 AM Post #7 |
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Master of the 52 card deck
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WoW very well said Djinn!! As a matter of fact Nov 29th I just enjoyed my 5th marriage anny and it's been awesome. Not all peaches and creams but even the bads are better then the withouts could ever be |
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For call of duty black ops hardcore gameplay videos check me out at My YouTube channel Please do that whole like and subscribe thing too! | |
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| Febiv | Dec 3 2007, 08:22 AM Post #8 |
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Overlords of the Di Yu
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Although I completely agree with Djinn's statements about marraige, as I have been in both extremes, lets get this thread back on track. I agree with your assessments on both hands. They were not yours to fold. If you continue to put yourself in those positions, the odds are you will eventually make more money than you lose. And thats all we can do as poker players. Put ourselves in the right positions over and over again, and make more money than we lose. Would I have been heated about those hands...HELL YES I would have. Would I reflect later and see that I made the right moves, I hope so. Would I do it again, I hope so. |
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| Cyrrix_chipset | Dec 4 2007, 09:59 AM Post #9 |
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Master of the 52 card deck
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I believe you would do it again. Heck I would do a lot of things I have done wrong just because I stuck with my read and felt I had the advantage. I figure if I learn to trust my reads and stick to my guns I will end up ahead. IF IF IF I am reading correctly a good % of the time. |
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For call of duty black ops hardcore gameplay videos check me out at My YouTube channel Please do that whole like and subscribe thing too! | |
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