Apologies in advance if this is not allowed

It’s Tourney Time! No not that NCAA crap. It’s the NBC’s 2010 National Heads-Up Poker Championship. The Heads Up event is structured just like its NCAA tourney (64 entrants in a single elimination bracketed format). The entry fee is $10 USD. And the winner takes all.

Here is a spreadsheet with the brackets.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/276449/2010NBCHeadsUp.xls

Turnaround time is crucial here as play begins and your picks AND money* are due today at 3pm central time (6.5 hrs from this post). No money no arrangements - No Entry
transfers accecpted at
PokerStars – SpookyBugs
FullTilt-JFBM

Scoring – If you correctly pick the winner of the match in the first round you will receive 2 points. You get 3 points for picking the winner of the 2nd round, 5pts for the 3rd, 8 pts for the 4th, 13 pts for the 5th, and 21 pts for picking the winner! In the event of a tie all tied players will split the prize.

2-3-5-8-13-21

Daleroxxu was our winner last year


Hit me on AIM or Skype if u have questions. My ID is Michaelooch1

Right, I mean my main point was that there are likely innumerable GTO strategies, rather than one "solution".

Sorry, remind me again why gambling degenerates are good targets for chat abuse?

Right.

HUHU LHE has not been solved. That is a fact.

Whether or not there are poker bots out there that can compete with the best players is arguable. They will probably continue to get better and eventually be better than every human in the world. This however doesn't mean that the game has been solved.

This is exactly the state of chess today. You can run a bot on your laptop that will beat the best player in the world. Chess is nowhere near being mathematically solved.

But what most people mean is that once bots are better than everyone and common enough, people will stop playing poker on the internet. This will obviously destroy internet poker, and might even have a backlash of destroying the live game. At least that is what happened with backgammon.

Btw, backgammon is a solved game in the sense that they have figured out the optimal play in every possible situation.

Same story, albeit different methods, for connect 4, checkers, and even tick-tack-toe, although it's trivial to solve that game.

Chat abuse? How about just a few observations?

Lets see.

Last time i played neverwin it was at 5/T.
Now he sat at 3/6.

Observation #1.

"Wow. Its 3/6 now. Nice going."

After losing to a 2outer and then to a 3outer and winning nicely catching a bluff I made observation #2.

"Tell me, why fish like me does not need to get lucky to win and shark like you does?"

After losing to another 2outer I made observation #3.

"I guess thats the reason you are here"

Meaning the reason you are here playing 3/6 after playing nosebleeds is that you need 2 outers to win a bit too often.

It is my firm believe, btw, that its not a great idea to put yourself in a position to need to be lucky to win. Aint gonna work to well.

So that about it.
Is there a little bit of an agenda in my observations?
Probably. And what's wrong with that?

To call it chat abuse...
You guys are a bit to touchy for the ruthless predators you are.

I would also recommend you to read some old nevewins blogs from times he was top HULHE dog.
I'm sure you'll find a lot of reasons to say "He is helluva guy"

And thats without even getting involved into unpaid dept story.

Peace out.

wolfram: You sure on backgammon? From my understanding Snowie/GNU/et al are not close to making optimal choices. They can compete at world class level but even at 3-ply they can misjudge situations. The game tree seems way too vast for pure optimal calculation. You not confusing that with checkers? (which itself was recently 'solved')

copoka: I wasn't replying to you. Read who I quoted. I didn't see what you typed and i'm not interested.

Please, accept my apologies for misquoting and getting you involved in something you are not interested being a part of.

I will do my best to make sure it will never happen again.

I'm pretty sure you are both right. The last time I checked gammon was solved excluding doubling, but is unsolved for games with the cube.

could you link to any details on this? I'm drawing a search-blank.

RaiseOnce and Stickman sitting at 1k2k right now

You played both these hands worse than he did.

Would you care to comment a bit more?

your river call is probably not good in hand one. Other than that I think he played the hand fine as a float.

Your flop ck raise is a small but clear mistake in hand two. I think he played it fine.

I think otr15 is way too smart and thinks that in hand 1, b/f A2 > b/f 88.

And I wish wookie's tourney had a better time, but if I'm somehow still awake in 4 hours I'll try to get the wolfram title.

TY.

My thoughts.

Hand 1.

Giving the no flopc/r, FD is highly discounted and thus 3 on the river looks like a prett nice brick.
So if anything my river bet could be a suspect (what is there to call and lose? + callecting from bluffs), but once I bet not calling river, which I see as a good brick but opponent may concider as great scare card (flush + trips) and bluff raise, is out of question in my mind.
I'm getting 8 to 1 on that call.
Bluff raise will come from that type of an ooponent much more often than that.
I hope you are not folding to river raises getting 8 to 1 too often.

Hand 2.

Check raising flop is a clear mistake.
How clear it is really?
I'm there with a hand that needs a lot of help.
Help in this game ususally comes from agression.
There is nothing new in c/r A hi flops, A53 is not a worse board to agress at and flop is the cheapest street to start.

I know we play vs ranges, but if you'd know his hand, what line would you choose to extract the max value?

My thoughts

Imo Hand 1 - pretty bad river card for you. Flush draw obv, also stuff like K3. I mean what do you hope you beat? Just a rando floated hand or K high that checkraise bluffs the river? Turning 4x in to a bluff? Saying things like "I hope you don't fold on the river getting 8 to 1 too often" trivialises the situation.

Hand 2 - Not sure what you mean with "I'm there with a hand", i mean Q7 is pretty much got absolutely nothing going for it here, if you check-raise this what hands are you checkfolding?

Hand 1.

Again, FD is very far from obvious. How often do you NOT C/R flush draw on a flop?
Answer to that question should tell you why its far from obviose.

What do I hope to beat?
As i said, if you would ask from what do I hope to collect by betting, i would agree much more.
But what do Ihope to beat calling?
List can be long enough. How about small pair that decided to try to fold an Ace using flush +trips scare card?

Getting 8 to 1 I'll just let him, as Bryce puts it, to surprise me.

Hand 2.

If 2oc to a second pair with Q is nothing, I have to ask you what do you continiue with?
So foldingis out of question,

Now, my remaining options.
Do I call or raise?
Ahi flop, A53 board. Looks like a good balancing raising opporunity for me.

What would i fold?

Q6 is like Q7.
Q4 and Q2 would give me a GS.

Yep, i'd fold nothing.

TY for your comments, Hood

When my hand is good 1 time in 20 I usually (sometimes?) fold getting 8-1... I don't understand how you think your hand is good 1 in 8. You don't beat any of his value range and you don't beat any hands he might be bluffing other than random stuff w/ sd value that he's turning into a bluff.

Re: How clear is it?

A: Very very clear.


Hand two I'd probably just c/c c/f but wouldn't really blame you for c/f right away. If I knew his hand of course I'd c/r to induce bluffs, but you don't know his hand. You have Q high. You are targeting an incredibly narrow range of hands (bad K highs, better Q highs) when you have poor equity against his range and you're oop. You're also going to have to fire multiple bullets to make him fold any of the hands that you're targeting... So he'll be able to own you pretty well on the turn pretty often.

Not sure what you mean checktheriver but I hope you're saying that 88 and A2 are exactly the same hand there. If that's what you mean, after NW raises the river that's an excellent and true point.

So in hand 2 I dont know his hand, but in hand 1 you know you are 20 to 1 dog and thus getting 8 to 1 is not enough
Convenient.

I'm targeting a 100% openning range + 100% flop cbet, aka random hand.

My actions are subject to reevaluation.
As far as owning me...
Thats where balancing come in play.
He will have to get owned when i do the same with top2.

nice.
I like to say "i love you" over and over when they berate me.
Guy says I hope your family dies in a fire, my response:
Me too, they are the worst. high five!

I'm still on the same page as OTR. although I open xf the flop in the 2nd hand without much thought, sure xf > xc >>>>> xr though.

Against me, I have K high and Q high flush draws. Against an unknown, we can largely widen this (whether at this point of the hand you assumed him to take 'standard' lines or not is unclear).

Value bet is super standard. You beat like loads of worse hands.

Number of times I've seen a weak made hand turn it in to a river xr bluff: 4
number of times I see a flush here or trips: a mirrion

surprise!

Hand 2.

2oc to 2nd pair with some backdoor. K high for more SDV would be nice. Megaton of draws get checkraised here. As I said above I can understand the checkcall to continue with your 2 overs + SDV (i fold it), but xr is a no-go for me because we're just targetting a few hand combos that are significantly worse that ours.

What's your fold to c-bet OOP? I think this may be a leak. Your check-raising range could be unbalanced if you fold 0 hand combos 0% of the time on boards like this.

Now this is getting a bit silly. He is estimating in hand 1 he is good like 1 time in 20 vs. his range. This is far from what the pot is offering.

In hand 2, he made the point that we don't know his exact hand (and there's only a few hands that xr-ing the flop would be the profitable line).

It's not about convenience at all.

OTR's point is that you are targeting hands to fold, and very few will. And these are hands you beat anyway. You obviously aren't "targeting" a top pair or set with your checkraise bluff here. So you aren't targetting "aka random hand" at all.

copoka last month you said you knew many players are better than you. I would nominate OTR as one of them. I would really suggest you read his advice carefully, he has taken time out to hlpe you here and it should lead to serious improvements in your game.

It's kinda scary every time a recreational player uses the term 'superuser', something (i assume) coined from the UB/AP scandal. I wonder how it adversely effected the games, the story has clearly filtered it's way down through the 2+2 crowd to common parlance with all rec. poker players.

And yet the cereus network seems to be doing just fine.

How many of you guys sit tables there?

I'm not sure if you're leveling copoka, but this is one of the most hilarious and wrong headed things I've ever seen on this forum.

Of course you don't know what hand he has when he c-bets the flop and yet you can still estimate how often your hand is good on the river in hand 1. Obviously these are two different situations.

I know that he doesn't have any true bluffs in his range because I have eyes and can see how the hand played out. I know the only hands that he played this way that make any sense at all are small pairs he decided to turn into a bluff or K high he decided to turn into a bluff to make you fold top pair.

Since NW doesn't think you're ever folding top pair I can assume that he isn't doing this very often at all. Almost certainly not one time in 8. My estimation is 1 time in 20.


So you want him to fold J high....???? Do you see why this thought process is problematic.

What you're basically saying is "I want to win the pot"

Maybe there's a reason beside variance that you went on a 9 month be stretch?

I agree with OTR that C/R A53 with Q7 or K4 (similar situation imo) is a loosing play and I don't like too.

Becouse when you c/r this flop you have a lot of bluff/semibluffs and your opponents know that.


I prefer a C/R bluff on a KQ4 flop with 97 for example. People bet/fold more on this flop, but con a A53 flop people bet/call about 200% of their flop betting range: if they catch one pair on the turn they have the best hand very often and they can re-bluff you on the turn (or bet/3bet flop IP)

Thats what I Love about disscusing limit holdem hands by pros.

As long as convincing and smart looking phrase is chosen nothing else matters much.
Even if I'll back my play with tons of identically played hands from boatload of vids played by number of respected players, and opposite argument can be constructed.

As long as it looks smart, its good.

This is completely false since I'm targeting random hand (100% opening + 100% cbet).

But it looks so smart and comes from such a high authority its just has to be right.

And none of those worse hands will ever decide to bluff raise???
Like none of them? Ever? Not even misclick?

And i will check all my vids I have and report back with number of FD that did not C/R flop.