I mean you keep repeating this like a sort of catechism, and it is all very well, but you put far too much emphasis on it. I say this as someone who has a tendency to err on the side of under-gambling myself.

Folding a hand that is +0.05 bb EV is just a big a mistake as playing one that's -0.05 bb (ignoring variance). When all your mistakes are one side of the line, you never learn where that line is. You don't need to absolutely crush the game before you start taking off the training wheels. You probably never will even begin to crush without having taken off the training wheels long before and going criss-cross over the line back and forth figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Everyone's just posting in his thread without reading the previous posts.

Everyone's just posting in his thread without reading the previous posts.

7-handed 20/40 with 1/2 kill. Mix of tight and loose passives. Must be $150 in the pot to kill (and post $30).

Hero has a leg up UTG+2.

2 folds. Hero has AJss

Hero?


One more:

3-handed vs TAG and loose passive

lp raises OTB, tag folds

Hero (leg up - same structure) has K6hh in BB

Fold?

What would you do if there was no kill?

Raises like it isn't particularly close.

AJs in the hijack? lol

Raise obv

Would be the question.

Now imagine the kill is black.

I recently took lawdude off my ignore list, and now I'm really glad I did.

Everyone's just posting in his thread without reading the previous posts.

Let's say the correct amount of alcohol you should drink for health purposes is one glass of wine per day.

However, very few humans can hold themselves to exactly that. And for every human being who destructively passes up 1 glass of wine a day, there are numerous humans who destructively consume more than 1 glass a wine per day. Because addiction, fun, etc.

Now, it would be correct to say that what you should do is train yourself to drink exactly one glass of wine per day. The issue is which risk should you be more concerned with in trying to get there-- the risk of over-drinking or the risk of under-drinking.

I don't think most people attracted to poker need to be that worried about the dangers of over-nitting. They are there, but they are not the problem for most players.

In contrast, I think most people attracted to poker need to be extremely worried about the dangers of over-gambling.

You should always, in any activity that involves your psychological makeup, worry more about the wrong actions that your brain wants to do than the ones your brain generally is pretty good at avoiding anyway. That isn't to say that you shouldn't worry about the second category at all-- just that it should be considered a secondary risk.

By the way, I'm raising the AJ.

This all sounds so good in the abstract. You know that you're talking to and audience that consists of people who have many hundreds of thousands of hands to maybe several millions of hands online, right? We can just open our DB and look at BTN open % first in or BTN 3 bet % vs single raise. The whole creeping argument of live-guy feel player is fun and all, but fuzzy stuff aside, you're arguing "fold AA" or whatever because you assume that the degen is strong. You're assuming motive. Maybe the motive is profit - the people you're talking to understand positional value and relative $/hand by position pretty well, and they actually think the hand is profitable. It could be that's why they play each and every hand the way they do.

Sure the side argument is that anyone who plays more hands than you do must be chasing some psychological dark place, and have mental leaks of the horribad LAG. The evidence of that would be that the hands they want to play are clearly unprofitable (or they post one way and play way more hands). Thus, the sweeping argument of gambling psych101 wouldn't be needed. We could prove it one step at a time, showing the hands they're playing due to sickness.

yeah what doug said, When I post strategy posts on 2p2 my intended audience are not degens but rational thoughtful people who are interested in analyzing arguments for and against certain strategic ideas and contributing productively to the discussion. If they need hand-holding to overcome whatever pyschological demons and compulsions they have, they should go seek a therapist or GA.
You've made your point about over-gambling in multiple threads, I dont think it's useful anymore.

I think online is wonderful because it does train us to think long term and assess risk rationally.

But kill pots are a short term live poker phenomenon. And I believe from playing against them and talking to them that a lot of ostensibly good live players get sucked into short term thinking and the gambling mentality, because they don't have the database to tell them it is wrong.

And I see posts on 2 plus 2 that confirm the mentality. "Raising is more fun than folding." "My table image is tight so I decided to 3 bet my Q9 off". Etc.

I would suggest that especially on an issue such as kill pots, where we are completely removed from online databases, the gambling psych stuff is crucial, even for many 2 plus 2'ers. But YMMV.

Lawdude, nobody has a huge database of kill pot hands, so it's possible any or all of us could be off in our ranges. However, I really don't see otherwise decent midstakes players who have the patience to read upto post 113 in this thread, suddenly lose their head and go crazy in kill pots cause gamboool. Note that when the kill is on, it becomes correct for other players in the hand to play more looser and aggressive cause of the extra dead money.

To the extent that people might be playing too loose when they have a leg up, folding AA on the BTN is a far bigger mistake. I think you need to reflect more on the thought process that lead you to that conclusion than worry about the rest of us and our gambling tendencies.

So we start with everyone being a closet degen and I say "here's evidence why they wouldn't be". Now you redefine the argument to it only being kill pots? So, people who have great preflop skill suddenly give in to chasing excitement because of inner degeneracy, but only in kill pots? It just sounds like we're redefining the argument so that evidence doesn't apply. Again, we have people talking about ranges of hands. You say everyone else must be wrong (the ones who don't want to adjust as much as you) because they are thrill seeking degens, but only in kill situations?

This is the MSLHE forum, not the Self Improvement forum.

There are some people that just shouldn't gamble. Some do anyway. Some post on this forum.

Even the people who don't fall into the "shouldn't gamble" category are self-delusional and self-destructive.

As much as you paint "raising is more fun than folding" as a reason to NOT gamble, it's precisely those people that are the more adjusted to the realities of (recreational) gambling than people who fold AA with a leg up.

4-handed w/ a leg up. Button opens, folded A8o in SB.

What's the worst Axo you think is profitable in that spot? That's always the question. Now how bad do you think it is to post a kill 4h OTB? That tells you how much to adjust.

I think this analogy is fine if you add one thing: our job is master sommelier