Yes, that's a factor, but it still doesn't add up to a total loss.

Do you have anything to add to the thread, or are you just here to call everybody idiots?

the latter. i already contributed too much in my first post tho. the kill is one of the few great things left in limit holdem and i'd probably rather not contribute to its downfall. but apparently even the self-appointed experts recommend not playing in kill games (because all that money from people playing horribly goes into some void?)

Someone somewhere is always wrong on the internet Even you can't do much about that.

What do you think of our assumptions and estimates?

Did anyone actually say kill games are bad? Among all the stuff that seemed clearly wrong, I don't remember anyone saying that you don't want kill games. Could have missed it.

Your numbers seem pretty reasonable. Basically, you should tighten up some, but in position it isn't a huge deal? OK, that seems reasonable. You might add in some hand waving arguments from Ed Miller in there, about wanting to play in pots where people are playing their worst.

We've all played in games where people play terrible in kills, right? I've sat games here where the 30/60 hands are playing decently, except that the worst players are "defending" their leg up. Decent enough game, but not amazing. Finally, the action player hits 2 in a row and the game goes 50/100. 6+ ways to the flop for $200 with the killer cold calling a 3 bet to defend the red button. Let's say 1/6 of the pots are killed, but the game goes from meh 30/60 to amazing 50/100. How could you root against it? Every 6th hand people lose their minds? Other kill games, people become loose/limpy. Hard to predict how, but it makes the game better for people with brains.

Saying that while not chasing a kill, probably not folding AA OTB to avoid the spot.

from lawdude's classic exegesis

I was completely wrong, and you showed me how.

Fun hand from today's session. I post kill in cutoff. Folds to blinds, they both and we move on to the next hand (with no kill or even a leg up).

The expectation of posting that kill in position was certainly not $-60 or anywhere close to it where folding AA is even reasonable.

Maybe they folded to avoid getting the leg up

In a lot of rooms if you get a walk in the kill you have to kill it again though (including my current local room). As you said earlier, a lot depends on the differences in kill requirements between rooms.

If it's so bad to have a leg up maybe we should jut avoid winning pots in the first place so we never have a leg up.

Thoretically you actually should play a little tighter in a game with a kill, even without the leg up.

I'm exhausted and in need of my afternoon nap, so forgive me if this is a logic/reading comprehension fail, but you can't actually lose more, because that single half kill "blind" is a set sunk cost independent of the number of sequential times you have to post it. e.g. in a 20/40 half kill game, at some point you will lose the 30$ kill you post, but you can only lose that kill once in a sequence of "won" hands. If you won 0 kill pots in a row you lose the 30$ kill blind, if you win 50 kill pots in a row, you lose the last 30 kill blind you post, and only that kill blind. If you lose 40% of the value of your kill in posting the kill, that's across all posted kill hands, and would already factor in sequential kill posting as a function of that, non?

ILR, maybe you didn't understand what I meant in that post. I didn't mean you would lose more than $30 total, I meant you would lose more of the posted kill (in percentage terms) than you would of your big blind.

You do realize your EV for posting the second kill includes the money you won in the first kill pot? I think your hypothesis is almost certainly wrong. I'd be quite shocked, for example, if you lose money posting the kill otb. You probably don't win as much as you would otherwise, but that's a different question.

I don't favor kill games because I think the tendency of many players is to loosen up and get their gamble on, and the proper strategy in such games actually involves tightening up (in certain instances) and slowly benefitting from the mistakes of others.

But I assure you, don't worry, they aren't going away. In particular, 8/16 with a kill seems ubiquitous.

Correct. A point that is completely being ignored by those who are bashing on my position on kill games.

Rules are EVERYTHING here. Your strategic adjustments should be a lot different (and milder) in Hustler 8/16, where you need to win 20 chips to post a half-kill, than in San Manuel 20/40, where you post a full-kill if you even CHOP with the leg up.

Wait so you don't like kill games because people play worse in them? Wut?

Lawdude do you dislike must straddle games too?

When everyone else straddles, I do straddle.

But I think the correct strategy in must straddle games is a lot different than the correct strategy in kill games, because there's no such thing as a leg up.

And having said that, I can't say I really "like" must straddle games, because in my experience, they tend to make the game tighter and more aggressive. Yes, your opponents will be making mistakes, but you also see a lot more pots heads-up between a 3-bettor and the straddler. Not really either the most fun or the most profitable form of poker.

My ideal poker game is one where it's me and 8 players who limp 100 percent of their hands. My second ideal poker game is one where it's me and 8 players who raise-cap 100 percent of their hands. I tend to think these sorts of structures move the game away from those ideals, although the effect on specific players can vary.

Yeah, every single one of them the bad players play worse when they have the leg up and even worse yet when it's a kill. The play is so bad in kill pots, that posting the kill is hardly a consideration in my opinion.

If there was a nit-fest kill game where most players actually tightened up, then yeah, maybe the kill is bad for the game. I haven't seen this ever.

If you can't tell already, I love kill games. Gamblers gonna gamble.

Why play poker at all?

Great question. Probably deserves a different thread.

But the short answer is, for me, (1) to play well and get better over time in a fun hobby that I am pretty good at.

For a select few, (2) to make their living.

And for most, (3) to gamble.

The thing is, purposes 2 and 3 are not only often at odds, but the tendency is for people to think they are serving purpose 2 when they are in fact serving purpose 3.

I am a gambling skeptic. I think that the desire to gamble is what kills winrates, destroys bankrolls, fosters tilt, and otherwise impedes profitability in the game. And the reason it does that is because we human beings are basically programmed to take and enjoy the thrill of risks. So if you are in it for purposes 1 and/or 2, you should, I think, resist any temptation to engage in 3, and, indeed, actively make conscious attempts to err on the side of under-gambling rather than over-gambling.

Or at least players should do this until they absolutely crush the game and they can truly tell the difference between +EV gambles and -EV ones that we want to do anyway.

I think

a. this thread is the same argument being repeated 25 times by different people who come in and start reading the last 5 posts before replying.

b. lawdude is a closet degen filled with self-loathing at his gambling addiction just like a fudmentalist preacher who's secretly gay but thundering at everybody else that it is a sin for man to lay with man or whatever....

Most people are risk averse by nature. This is a law in finance.

A successful gambler has to re-train himself or herself to seek out the most +EV play despite increasing the variance, at least to the degree that his or her bankroll will allow.

I think fear holds people back more than anything else in poker. The two predominant fears that I think negatively affect people's results at the poker table are the fear of variance and fear of social disapproval. The second one applies more in lower stakes games and is a whole different topic.