My losing streaks are due to variance!

dont worry all those crazy idiots who raise AQo in this spot will get whats coming to them soon enough

If you always raise preflop with your premium holdings, your opponents are making a mistake of paying 2+ bets with a trash hand, a mistake they will make dozens of times per session. Any mistake they make this often adds up to being a huge leak.

so when they limp 93s utg youd rather let them off cheap?

heres a question. 4 people limp with shyt. you have AK. would you rather have one person make a mistake on the flop, or all four people play double for their mistake preflop?

with AK, sure, raise. with ATo, no.

So how exactly is this a "problem"?

Here's a simple question for you. You're HU on the turn against one villain. You've got top pair, villain only has a clean gutshot (4-outer) to beat you. You bet and there is now 6 BB in the pot, so villain obviously doesn't have the correct immediate and implied odds to call. What do you want the villain to do; call or fold?

Hmmm. You sure? Part of the HPFAP reasoning was that some of the villains might have strong hands. If we give the villains total garbage 94s kinds of hands, how different is AK from AT?

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Against 4 junk hands, AT is a tiny bit worse than AK. They have about 2x their fair share of equity.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

7,213,583 games 12.187 secs 591,908 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 31.447% 30.28% 01.17% 2184261 84320.72 { ATo }
Hand 1-5: 17.105% 15.90% 01.20% 1147114 86836.80 { A7s-A2s, K9s-K2s, Q9s-Q2s, J9s-J2s, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, A9o-A2o, KTo-K2o, QTo-Q2o, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }



---

6,938,698 games 11.875 secs 584,311 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 34.954% 34.44% 00.51% 2389998 35539.20 { AKo }
Hand 1-5: 16.261% 15.28% 00.98% 1060100 68300.82 { A7s-A2s, K9s-K2s, Q9s-Q2s, J9s-J2s, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, A9o-A2o, KTo-K2o, QTo-Q2o, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }

Even if you just pull the dominating hands out, ATo is the bomb.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

4,668,926 games 7.891 secs 591,677 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 29.648% 28.02% 01.63% 1308345 76038.37 { ATo }
Hand 1: 17.562% 16.36% 01.20% 763948 56109.45 { 99-22, ATs-A2s, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, ATo-A2o, K2o+, Q2o+, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }
Hand 2: 17.580% 16.38% 01.20% 764693 56212.53 { 99-22, ATs-A2s, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, ATo-A2o, K2o+, Q2o+, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }
Hand 3: 17.614% 16.41% 01.21% 766256 56266.37 { 99-22, ATs-A2s, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, ATo-A2o, K2o+, Q2o+, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }
Hand 4: 17.595% 16.39% 01.21% 765239 56394.78 { 99-22, ATs-A2s, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 92s+, 82s+, 72s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, ATo-A2o, K2o+, Q2o+, J2o+, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }

DougL I your trick questions. I want them to call and miss most of the time - they have to hit sometime in order to repeat it.

"I like making mistakes preflop so that my opponents will make bigger mistakes postflop. If I'm lucky, they'll all fold to my flop raise since the pot is so tiny."
vs.
"I like raising for value preflop, which means that my opponents will have better odds to draw against me - but they will still have lower equity than me, so I'm still making more money than them on every bet that goes into the pot. So I don't much care if they're making a mistake."

This is what I was saying.

Jay, I just reread my last post and I think I sounded like more of a dick than I meant to, sorry 'bout that.

gobbledygeek: In most of the live $2/$4 Limit games that I've played in, one is seldom HU with another player, even on the river. HU wouldn't be a problem. It's the "schooling" effect identified by Morton's Theorem that is the problem. With 4 players seeing the Turn and/or River, the players who should have long ago folded now have many collective outs against a TAG player...so many that one of them seems to inevitably hit.

I think that's implicit collusion. Schooling is when the last guys(s) to call your flop and turn bets aren't making that big of an error because money was added to the pot by other players who called before them.

Implicit collusion = aggravation and pain.
Schooling = aggravation and pain.

But without bad players the games wouldn't be profitable.

That's the conundrum.

Time, patience, study, and listening to others with wisdom will help you overcome the pain and aggravation.

You still didn't answer my original question. In the HU example, do you want the villain to call you or not?

You can then extend that to the multi-player example, such as, "I have a hand that is sucking up 38% of the pot equity on the flop, do I want 5 villains to school together and call my flop bet"? Of course your great hand is going to go down in flames 62% by the river, and that can be frustrating in the short term. But you just have to look at the big long term picture and realize you were putting in 1/5 of the money on the flop in a pot that you are going to win better than 1/3 of the time, and you're probably doing something similar preflop too. EZ money long term.

Try to look at the long term picture to help deal with the short term frustration that can be experienced at these small stakes live games. It also might help to think of what the alternative might be ("gee, I wish I only played against people who played good hands and played 100% correctly after the flop") and think about whether you would win in money in that game.

GgoodluckatthetablesG

OK, let's take another example. You have AK. The board is A84/J. Your opponents have AT, 76, K9 with a flush draw, and A3. All of them are drawing live against you. Would you rather get a bet in against 1, 2, 3, or 4 of these opponents? Why?

I'll admit, I get confused on this stuff sometimes. Doesn't the answer to this question depend on the pot size? If there's one brazillion dollars in the pot, I'd want everyone to fold, which I think makes sense because the villains would all be making a mistake in this case (and when villains make mistakes, we profit). In a normal size pot, my guess is that I'd want everyone to call except the flush draw because I believe that would be the case where every villain would be making a mistake; even though our pot equity is smaller with everyone calling, I *believe* we make up for that in the turn bets. Obviously we make money from the flush draw turn call, but I think we'd rather he make a mistake and fold, thus we'd make more money due to him forfeiting his rather large chunk of pot equity. Is this correct?

GtryingtotakenothingforgrantedG

I've not been around here much lately, but I have to say I'm surprised that this post has generated so much discussion.

WHAT'S GOING ON??????

mntndrew's theory of the low hanging fruit -- easy to answer questions will generate a lot of responses. A lot of people start off with this kind of thinking, and it's not hard to dispel it!

Well the pot at this point is probably 2*5 SB for when you raised preflop and 2*5 SB when one of the aces inevitably donked into you and you raised.
So the pot is 5BB. We have 60% equity against these 4 players - they each have 10% equity on average (of course it's actually 6/6/8/20 but whatever).

So on average we will win:
5BB*(1 - .1*numcallers) + 1BB*numcallers*(1 - .1*numcallers) =
5 - .5N + N - .1N^2 =
- .1N^2 + .5N + 5


If we get no callers we win 5 BB. With 1 caller, 5.4, with 2 or 3, 5.6, and with 4, 5.4.

So I'd rather have 2 or 3 callers.
But it's still a silly question because it ignores pot size. If instead of a 5 BB pot it's a 10BB pot, then it's best if we get no callers.

Or the other night, I had JJ in a 7 way pot on a 9763ss board. How many callers do I want? I would rather they just all give up on the turn and ship me the pot because I'm dodging well over half of the cards in the deck.

I think the answer is:

If they are getting the proper pot/implied odds to continue, then I want them to fold. If they are getting the wrong odds, I want them to call.

Basically, I want them to make a FTOP mistake.

You said that a lot easier than I did.

Right, of course the pot size is going to make a difference. Maybe this was a bad example, but my point was simply that the more opponents you have, the less frequently you're going to win, but the more money you'll win.

If your equity is 60% against 4 opponents, then you expect to win on average 60% of the 5 bets that go in on the turn (plus the current pot size), or 3 BB. If your equity is 80% heads up against the guy with the flush draw, you'll have a better chance at winning the pot, but the expectation of the turn play (in isolation, which as others have pointed out is a limited way of looking at this), then you expect to win 80% of 2 bets (plus the current pot size), or 1.6 BB.

The other posters have made excellent and more precise points than the one I was intending to make, but I'd maintain the gist of it is still true -- having a lot of players drawing live but thin against you is not a bad thing.

This isn't necessarily true in MW pots.

Also, the ones that are drawing near dead are the only ones who ever fold. Thus "protecting your hand" often results in getting 2 or 3 ways with the other equity hogging hand.

Welcome back to 2001, imo.

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Also, this is all cool game theory but has nothing to do with why people who have read a couple books can't beat loose games. Think about AQo, a hand which is played pretty horribly.

AQ

flop is 872. How do you feel in a 5 way pot?

flop is QT8. Again, how is this hand is a 6 way pot? How about if you bet, get two calls, a raise, and a re-raise back to you?

These are the spots that kill wanna-be TAGs. You play only big cards, and you hit either overcards on a bad board (where your ace is reverse dominated) or TP on a board of death. This leads to spew, desperation, and brokeness. Then you have CaptainR who is overlimping 93s OTB after 5 limpers, and the TAG looks over and says, "that guy is lucky; he'll go broke soon".

This isn't even mathematically correct; realize that no matter how big the pot is, your equity remains the same unless someone folds. That is, you can change how much you can get paid off on a win, but you can't change the win percentage.

Would you rather have 85% equity in a 4 bet pot, such that your opponent is making a mistake by calling, or 85% equity in an 8 bet pot, such that your opponent is correctly calling? Even if your opponent is correctly calling, you can earn more in multiway pots because you're both gaining from the mistakes of the other people in the hand.

At some point, the present value of the pot overwhealms the future earn. Even getting a 1 outer to fold is a big win if there is enough money in the pot.