Poker strategies for my specific opponents

[Turble]

Varlos, please read my tone as exasperation, not as arrogance. I was sincere in saying that I did not mean my statement to be offensive. I understand that saying “I know something you don’t know” on an internet forum is likely to make one come off as a jerk … but sometimes it’s just a fact. I not only read the books, I earned my living for years playing in games with the guys who wrote the books.

You wouldn’t know me by name unless you were a Las Vegas insider, but if you were a professional gambler at any game in Vegas from the 1970s through the 1990s, we have at least nodded to each other in mutual acknowledgement. I say this not to brag (I’m too old and too well-respected in the industry to bother with that crap), but to hopefully lend some credibility to my posts in the hope that someone will take it to heart and realize that there is enough information available to earn that graduate level degree in gambling theory … if he is willing to learn.

The concept that poker begins as a struggle for the antes is a given; it is not open for debate. It is necessary to grasp so one can truly understand the implications of the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Also a given is that if there is no pot, there are no pot odds … implied odds is a different animal.

I’m not saying a person can’t win money without knowing these things, but I am saying that a person who understands them will be able to win more money by making fewer mistakes and by playing higher limits. You won’t find many people who understand this stuff at the $3/$6 tables; conversely, you won’t find many at the $75/$150 tables who don’t understand it.

And yes, RickJay, I did work in the industry off and on for a long time as everything from dealer to pit boss to Surveillance Supervisor to Director of Table Games to Gaming Consultant. Most of the time while I had a job I was also playing part-time, so there is a great deal of overlap. I also started running a Craps game in the boys bathroom in 8th grade, continued running them in college and in the Army barracks on paydays. I played backgammon for a living for four years, blackjack full-time for about two years and then part-time once I began to become too well known, played Pai Gow and Pai Gow poker for a while, and video poker and other beatable slot machines for a couple of years, and some other oddball games that popped up in Vegas but didn’t last (mainly they didn’t last because I kept in contact with the Gaming Commission and whenever a new game was about to open up for trials in a casino I analyzed the game (using software I wrote myself) and if it was beatable, I was there on opening day pounding it until they realized they had made a mistake and gave up.) I ran some quasi-legal blackjack games in several bars in Arizona for a couple of years through a loophole in their “social gambling” law. And then, and then … I started to learn poker. I played part time from 1992 until the Sands closed in 1996 (the picture in the papers of the guy in the suit turning the key to lock the last table is me.) I then played poker full time for a year ($10/$20 and $20/$40 Hold 'em and Omaha 8 or better, mostly at the Mirage … then worked for a year at the Aladdin at the request of a friend (most of my jobs were that way, I didn’t seek them, I was asked to take them) … then back to the Mirage and the Bellagio when it opened, again playing sitting at the tables with poker writers David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth among others, and since 1998 I have been playing only poker, almost exclusively online for the past eight or nine years.

Does this mean I am not qualified in your book to offer advice on gambling? Cuz in my book, it means “Holy shit, Batman. This old fart has spent his whole life around gambling and he paid cash for his car and his house and put his kids through school and he still has money in the bank. Maybe we could learn something useful from him.” Actually, I suspect I know the answer to that question.

I’m officially on tilt now. Good luck, guys. Some of you are going to need more of it than others. That is a fact.

[VarlosZ]

@Turble

The concept that poker begins as a struggle for the antes is a given; it is not open for debate.

And no one here is contesting the notion, but it’s not a dogma that dictates a particular action independent of all context. Yes, in a game with no blinds or antes, a table of rational players would quickly gravitate towards an equilibrium in which only the best possible starting hands are willing to put money into an empty pot – but in a game in which several players are making elementary mistakes and playing far too loose, knowing the game-theoretic equilibrium isn’t a great help, because the game that’s actually going to be played is simply not going to approach that state of affairs, and playing “perfectly” is going to cost you money.

And you would know this if you’d done the required reading. Kidding, kidding . . . but seriously, have you gotten around to reading Sklansky’s No Limit Hold 'Em: Theory and Practice? It deals with this pretty explicitly in the “Swapping Mistakes” section. The title is self-explanatory: the best players (defined as the ones with the highest win rates) aren’t the best because they play perfectly; they’re the best because they know how to make mistakes which allow them to take advantage of their opponents’ more costly mistakes. If they played “perfectly,” they’d make less money.

My point is that a person who really understands the game would not put that first bet out there without AA, but he would gladly take chances with lesser hands if others are foolish enough to do so. I’m not saying AA is the only hand he will play, just that it is the only hand with which he will be first to put money in the pot. See? Once there is money in the pot, pot odds become a factor; when there is no money in the pot, you are simply hoping.

You’re not hoping, you’re gambling, and if you’ve correctly assessed your opponents as being likely to play against you (ineptly) with a too-wide array of hands, you’re taking the best of it. Just because there’s no money in the pot doesn’t mean the situation has zero equity for you.

Anyway, this is relevant to the OP: with the relatively small blinds he should tighten up, but if he has an advantage after the flop and has a good idea of how to exploit it, then his range for starting hands, ideally, shouldn’t be too much better than his opponents’ ranges. On the other hand, if he’s not so sure about that post-flop advantage, then much tighter is certainly better.
As for the rest of it: your poker resume is impressive, but I think you may be overestimating the extent to which it entitles you to appeal to your own authority. As I’m sure you’re aware, the learning curve in poker has accelerated at an exponential rate in recent years. Between a bounty of high-quality, widely read strategy books and (especially) the ability to play hundred of hands an hour from home, what was once arcane knowledge even among poker enthusiasts is now commonplace. Obviously what you’ve written in this thread has almost entirely been good advice, but you’ve presented some of this knowledge in a frankly pedantic manner, and your responses to being challenged have been unjustifiably haughty. This is a little grating to others because these things you’re holding forth about aren’t the great mysteries you seem to think they are. That, and you’ve made a couple of dubious statements, which no one would care about if your tone were different.

[RickJay]

@VarlosZ

And no one here is contesting the notion, but it’s not a dogma that dictates a particular action independent of all context. Yes, in a game with no blinds or antes, a table of rational players would quickly gravitate towards an equilibrium in which only the best possible starting hands are willing to put money into an empty pot – but in a game in which several players are making elementary mistakes and playing far too loose, knowing the game-theoretic equilibrium isn’t a great help, because the game that’s actually going to be played is simply not going to approach that state of affairs, and playing “perfectly” is going to cost you money.

It can’t be explained any better than this. I thought I had, but this sums it up better than I did.

The title is self-explanatory: the best players (defined as the ones with the highest win rates) aren’t the best because they play perfectly; they’re the best because they know how to make mistakes which allow them to take advantage of their opponents’ more costly mistakes. If they played “perfectly,” they’d make less money.

It’s been years since I read Sklansky and I honestly don’t remember what examples he used, but the obvious case to bring up is here the Brunson approach of playing low suited connectors in middle and late position. (I don’t know if Doyle Brunson was the first poker player to realize this, but he popularized it, so I’ll give him the credit.) The reason Brunson showed that 6-7 suited is a better hand to play than, say, A-Q offsuit is not that 6-7s is a better hand heads up, because it’s not, but because 6-7s offers the opponent a chance to make terrible errors that will result in you taking all their money. Playing suited connectors in late position works because so many players, if they flop a huge set, will get tunnel vision for at least a round and maybe all the way to the river, so if you do happen to hit a straight or a flush, they often won’t notice and you can haul in a huge pot.

[Chessic_Sense]

@RickJay

@VarlosZ

And no one here is contesting the notion, but it’s not a dogma that dictates a particular action independent of all context. Yes, in a game with no blinds or antes, a table of rational players would quickly gravitate towards an equilibrium in which only the best possible starting hands are willing to put money into an empty pot – but in a game in which several players are making elementary mistakes and playing far too loose, knowing the game-theoretic equilibrium isn’t a great help, because the game that’s actually going to be played is simply not going to approach that state of affairs, and playing “perfectly” is going to cost you money.

It can’t be explained any better than this. I thought I had, but this sums it up better than I did.

Exactly. It’s not that we’re disputing whether poker is a struggle for the blinds or whether or not you should play KK in Hold’Em with no blinds. It’s that we’re disputing the practical application of that “theoretical razzle-dazzle”. We’re saying it doesn’t apply very well in this scenario.

Can you show how it does?

[SenorBeef]

@Chessic_Sense

You’re giving me poker 101 here. I’m looking for graduate-level courses.

Considering earlier you said

Well the hand selection is part of my problem here. In a normal, “smart” game, if I have AA1010, single suited, I’d want to bet a lot on the flop so that I can chase out any gutshot straight draw hands. But if I lose the power to do that (because they call everything) then I should probably limp in.

You actually do need some poker 101. This displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the game. You’re not concerned with “chasing out” bad draws so much as inducing a mistake on their part to call. You want these bad players to call, but only if you offer them improper odds to do so. If your attitude becomes “well I can’t chase them out, so I may as well play passively” that’s a very fundamental mistake - you are actually increasing their pot odds and lessening or eliminating the mistake they’re making by going for those bad draws.

@Turble

No no no, I fully understand that people will play with poor hands even if there is no money in the pot. My point is that they are theoretically incorrect to do so; I’m talking about the pure basic fundamental aspect of what poker is about, not about irrational human behavior.

You’re essentially saying that you need to use game theory optimal play to offset the game theory optimal play of others, and in a no ante game, that means only opening with AA. This is correct. However, this is a distorted theoretical view of the situation that rarely actually occurs in the real world. If your opponents are playing game theory optimal poker, you need to get the hell out of there. Your real world opponents will make all sorts of stupid mistakes like playing a wide range of hands in a no ante game. If you treated this bad player as if he were playing optimal poker, you are losing out on the opportunities to capitalize on his mistakes.

To turn this into a very simple question - if you have an opponent that calls with the upper 50% of hands even in a no-ante game, is it still optimal to only wait for AA? And by optimal I mean by a practical measure, the most obvious of which would be EV per hand or EV per hour.

For the most part you’re correct, but I think you’re trying to demonstrate a theoretical point beyond its practical limits here.

[Turble]

Hush my mouth and call me sheepish. Man, do I wish I hadn’t gone on that rant. Ah, well.

Anyway, my point wasn’t that this theoretical idea applies to real-life games; I was simply laying the groundwork for further, deeper discussion. The request was for the graduate school course and that’s where I was heading before things got tangled in minutiae and went so horribly awry.

I guess I was going too deep. I haven’t only read them, I have literally worn the covers off multiple copies of books like The Theory of Poker, Gambling Theory and Other Topics, Hold 'em for Advanced Players, etc., as well as hundreds of other books on gambling. When the OP asked for the graduate level course, I was headed toward exactly that … ready to start discussing advanced concepts and such stuff as acadamic papers and treatises presented at the International Conference on Gaming in Reno. Pedantic indeed. You are absolutely right and I agree 100%.

Since there are some knowledgable players contributing now, hopefully the thread can get back on track at an appropriate level.

I could go on for hours, weeks even, but for now I’ll just quote Mike Caro on another fundamental concept of poker and say

In the beginning, everything was even money.

[Chessic_Sense]

Welcome back, Turble. Now that we’re on the same page, I’d like to answer whoever it was that asked about what my best game is.

It’s definitely Hold’Em. But thing is, that’s almost everyone’s best game. So the question isn’t really what I’m best at, but what I have the greatest advantage in. That’s unknown, not because I don’t know myself, but because I don’t know these guys well enough yet.

So what can anyone tell me about winning those stud hands? It’s usually Limit $10 or $15. I have a good memory and can do fuzzy math in my head, and I have a basic idea of strategy. How can we modify it for this set of people?

[Saint_Cad]

I would think Omaha is the game of choice for you playing with people who like to chase. Many beginners don’t realize the best looking hands are not the best hands. The big key in the game is when to dump your hand and knowing a little more than the others will make you lots of money.

I would also argue that you don’t know your best game if you don’t know which one you have the most advantage in. Your best game is the one that you DO hav an advantage over who you’re playing.