Quote:
Originally Posted by gobbledygeek
You're totally missing a large amount of the point that others have already brought up above: in that, on top of our superior hand selection as well as our more mindfulness of position, we also play better (hopefully?) than our opponents postflop. Mike's "cooler" thread is a pretty good example of that.
Although I'll totally agree that our advantage over our typical opponent isn't nearly what it once was, but this doesn't mean seeing a limped pot with a bunch of others won't be able to outrun the rake (nor does it mean we can't do better by doing something else).
GcluelessNLnoobG
I think that you and the others are missing a large amount of my point, which is weird because you pretty much state my point explicitly in the bolded. Yet grasping it and implementing it seems to elude most of this thread.
I'm really not missing the point that's being made about how skilled post-flop play can generate +EV even in multi-way situations. I'm not denying that. Though I do believe emphatically that most such situations are marginal at best. And, as you've eloquently put it, we could be in better situations.
So I see your point. Now I'm challenging you (collective "you", not just GG), to follow your point through to it's logical conclusion.
Yes, fine, we can use a skill advantage to enhance our winnings when we spike a big hand.
Q: When can we do that?
A: When the amount potential money that can be won is high
Q: Be more specific, how does your skill advantage allow you to make more of that money
A: By making better decisions than our opponents.
Ok, so let's stop there for a minute and unpack that. We make better decisions than our opponents. That's what leads to profitability right? Ok, so if a certain hand required more decisions....then your advantage would be even larger. Following me now? I'll repeat that. More decisions = More +EV.
It also helps if we make our opponent's decisions harder. That makes them more likely to make a bad decision. Easy decisions come when stacks are committed, hands are made, and odds are easy to calculate. Harder decisions come when future betting is uncertain and more complex.
See where I'm going with this?? We gotta be DEEEEEEEP. Our skill advantage is worthless if our villains aren't required to think street-by-street, and find themselves in simple situations more often than not.
If you want to leverage a skill advantage, then you have to force your villains to make as many decisions as possible. And you need to make every decision complex and uncertain increasing the likelihood of making a mistake.
A simple tool for evaluating how well you'll be able to force multiple complex decisions on your opponent, is the SPR. And really, that's just a fancy way to read stack-size. The point is....for our skill advantage to be useful....we need lots of money behind.
And now we get to my point.....if you're playing a hand deep stacked.....why are you playing it multi-way??? ****ing raise dude!!
Look, I get it. It's not a perfect world. Sometimes you raise AQs from up front and somehow get 5 callers. F'ing variance. But if that happens to you three times in two hours....you're doing something wrong.
It's easy to just say "I shoulda known these fish would all call. they're all dumb" and then curse them for not giving you 'respect'. But my advice to anyone still reading this is that you fight off that thinking and think critically about your own play. It's actually not that hard. The answer is generally "raise more pre". Sometimes the answer is "maybe limp/rr isn't just for aces" But I digress....
So the logic goes like this....
Multi-way hands are good when we have holdings that flop-well and we have sufficiently deep stacks. --------> But if we have sufficiently deep stacks, we should raise larger, or 3-bet to generate a narrower field -------> But if we're not deep enough to do that, then we're not deep enough to leverage any kind of skill advantage.
It's two limps to Hero im MP. He has 87s and over-limps with a stack of 100BB's. The next player raises to 5BB's. HJ calls, BB Calls, one limper calls. There is 21.5BB's in the pot, and its 4BB's to call.
Your skill advantage is worthless here.
The SPR is going to be 4. Money is going in soon. Very few decisions are going to be made post-flop. It's difficult for your opponents to make a mistake. Bluffing will be extremely difficult because of the SPR and number of players. There's just nothing good about this situation, but I know that 3/4 of the posters here read that hand and think "ZOMG, 5 to 1 pot oddz baby! And we're closing the god damn action!! "
So this is my point. I don't think the above is a profitable situation. I don't think that's a situation to showcase our post flop talents. I don't think that the average 1/2 fish is going to make a catastrophic mistake in that hand.
So I'm not calling the raise.
So again....the logic here goes like this....
We want to play hands where we can leverage our skill advantage to win bigger pots. We win the biggest pots when we're deep stacked. if we're deep stacked, the most +EV line is aggression. If we're not deep enough to be aggressive, then we're not deep enough to leverage our skill advantage.
Without our skills we are powerless. Such status forces us to fall into a loose-passive shell that is nearly identical to what everyone else is doing. Hence we are just trading mistakes with our opponents, and paying rake.