Oh yeah my bad Vernon, I completely forgot about that one. Been a while since I went through the archives.

Reasons for betting

I am not volunteering to write it up, but would be happy to review / edit / give suggestions

I suppose I could write "reasons for betting" if there is enough demand. (I feel bad for messing up in the OP of my "protection" thread.)

Lotsa good ideas, but no scheduled COTM for March yet, much less further down the road. Beuller? Remember, you don't have to answer everything in the OP (even though Vernon usually tries ) and you don't have to be an expert. What you do have to do is choose a meaty subject and give at least a good intro to it that can generate discussion.

Accepting volunteers!

I have a thing about properly exploiting maniacs, would that do? I'll PM it to you if you like.

I would like reading one on this. My general approach is to actually get more passive and try to let them hang themselves. But you have to be willing to call down lighter. Occasionally I fall into the trap of trying to fight fire with fire but that never seems to work out well.

Sounds great! Please PM. Others are welcome. We have a lot of month to fill up yet, and I'd hate to see our good run of COTMs peter out.

Sent. Had no idea it was so long

Like I said, I can do "reasons for betting" if there's call for it. Let me know if you want it and when I should prepare it for (although once you tell me you want it I'll probably write it up and just leave it waiting).

Nice hand. March is now reserved. Anyone want to start working up one for April?

Edit. CMV offered "reasons for betting" while I was reading DKBarrel's draft. Sounds like a good subject. You want April? If so, anyone want May?

I'll get started on it soon.

I'm actually doing this very thing right now. Not sure how practical it is for a COTM though. See my PG&C for comic relief.

Phrasing. Boom!

If anyone wants to volunteer writing one on the mythical concept of Fold Equity, how to spot opportunities to exploit it and whether it actually exists at 1/2 ... well I would love to read it since I think I routinely overestimate my FE.

A COTM on check/raising could be really interesting I think.

Times to use it, times NOT to use it.
What we are hoping to gain from it. What we lose.
How image plays a part. Blah blah.

sub

I like this a lot

I have an idea for one about non-traditional lines. I feel like too many threads end up with an overly agreed upon "standard" line. You can definitely win by always doing the "standard" thing but you forego a lot by never going outside of that.

For all of you guys who are diehard UNC fans, diehard Ohio fans, or just have a good memory, there was a Sweet 16 game in 2012, surprise surprise, 1 UNC vs 13 Ohio. I was watching it in an airport and with the shot clock off, the game was tied and UNC had the ball, waiting for the last shot. And I said to no one in particular but pretty loud "Why isn't Ohio fouling?" And a lot of people looked at me like I instead had just said "Geno Smith's a great quarterback" and told me you don't foul when it's tied. I told them it wasn't conventional but by not fouling the worse case scenario for Ohio was losing in regulation and the best case was forcing OT and losing in OT; OT favors the better team on paper, it doesn't matter who had the lead or who lost the lead late, it's a new game and Goliath is the favorite in a new game. However, if you foul, best case scenario is you're down 2, UNC is never fouling you, and you get a shot from 3 for the win. The best case scenario is UNC hits 0 or 1 FTs and you can get any shot you want or even drive and win the game at the foul line. I'd much prefer my worse case scenario being a 3 for the win than my best case scenario being losing in OT. Ohio actually got a steal on that last possession of regulation and a half court shot hit the rim, which was funny. But they lost OT 10-2 and never had a chance, which is what I told everyone before, during, and after it happened. I didn't realize until the 30 for 30, but Jimmy V did this foul-when-tied in the first weekend of that NC State title run, but I didn't know that at the time.

Anyway, my point is, often enough there are times that something that's rarely done is the optimal play. In poker, it takes, in increasing order of importance, hand-reading, knowing how V thinks, and a plan from preflop to 6th street.

A crude outline is:
Talking about: not taking everything you hear as written in stone, thinking creatively, evaluating everything, hand-reading, playing the player like most people only dream about, and having a plan that comes to fruition exactly.

That would be followed by some hands I've played street for street with my thinking included. I'd say 5 of my 6 biggest hands have been non-traditional the entire way through. 3 of them I was never behind, I won, and were ~$600 pots at 1-2. 1 I got allin as a 65% favorite in a $1,200 1-2 pot. And 1 I got allin as an 80% favorite in a $1,400 1-2 pot.

This sounds like a concept that could generate a lot of discussion, ideas from.others, etc. OP probably wouldn't need.more than a few alternate lines and examples of when to consider them.in order to generate a great thread.

One of the problems with outlining non-standard lines in this forum is that most threads at their core revolve around not knowing the villain well enough to even figure out the standard line. What would potentially work is to take a thread from the forum where there is consensus (admittedly, that's difficult to achieve) and then look at the factors that would change so there were alternatives that would work better.

The difficulty is that the other line would have to be non-obvious or it would be the standard line. The model for such a thread would be the discussion years ago on 2+2 where Galfond was talking about a group of them at the WSOP going over a hand where people were debating whether to fold or call a certain villain and durrrrr said, "why don't we raise?"

Remove the bracketed and I agree. A way to help the thread-makers who say "Only been here 1 orbit, no reads yet" is to start a discussion that mandates knowing an opponent's thinking and tendencies. I don't think guys will necessarily be able to make the jump from observing nothing in the first 10 minutes to showing up with a hand V would never expect in a million years. But seeing the possibilities and being able to ask questions would help not hurt.



If it helps, maybe I haven't been clear, they're not crazy-Durrr-on-HSP-lines. For the most part, they're not taking the lead in a hand with a big holding against a V who's so aggressive, that when he has the lead he has tunnel-vision and doesn't really think about much. So playing passive and always being the caller made for the biggest pots possible. 3 of the 5 were like that, if you want I'll only include those 3.

If no one likes that idea, I have a different one. It's about what types of opponents you'd rather play against. I'm not talking about nits, but when it comes to big, consistent losers, there are 2 types I've seen. T

here is an actuarial concept, of frequency and severity. People who drive Fords in rural areas might get into small accidents, and there's a lot of these types of drivers. These are high frequency, low severity customers. A lot of them exist but it's never too big of a claim they file. And then there are guys in LA who have Maserati's. There aren't a lot of Maserati's but when one gets totaled it's going to cost a lot to fix it. Those are low frequency, high severity.

And in poker, the stations who limp/call and check/call too much are the high freq/low sev. And I've seen a lot of guys have way different styles when they sit when $100 compared to when they chip up to $500. Some go from loose to tight, the ones who go from tight to loose and still chase T-high fd's on paired boards are the low feq/high sev players. They love massive RIO spots and the opportunity is there to double through them as deep as 300-400BBs.

There are certain conditions that make me want to play against one of these types of Vs rather than the other: seat, stack depth, how V has been running, Hero's image, etc.

I think this sounds really interesting. It might also be controversial, but discussion is good. Also, I really don't want to go a month without a COTM, as we've been on a real roll lately.

Please write it up.

^ It'll be done sometime tomorrow. PM it to you for editing/review?

Sounds great. Thank you!

How is the schedule on concept on the month looking now Garlick?

I dont know if i am approved good enough to be writing a concept of the month, but i like to write and have several topics that i feel strongly about. If its wanted by you and the mods i could defintely see myself put something up.

Some of my babies and pet peeves,topics that i feel strongly about:

-How to create a friendly gambooly game that make people player looser and generally raise the EV of the game for yourself. From years as a regular in homegames and underground clubs i believe i have valuable experience with this one.

-Playerprofiling. Good and accurate playerprofiling= a very valuable tool to be able to put your villains on more accurate ranges in tough spots,especially when you have decisions for your whole stack. Several posters on this forum such as DGI Harris have this as their baby, but i dont know if this have been done as concept of the month article before.

-Adjusting to table dynamics: how to be like water, and fit in everywhere.