Mea Culpa, short term and small +ev spots - Live Low-stakes No Limit Poker Forum

Two Plus Two Forums Poker Strategy Live No-Limit Hold’em Cash

Mea Culpa, short term and small +ev spots

Post Reply Subscribe

...

02-18-2014 , 01:35 AM

Lapidator

LLSNL Frequent Flyer

Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 13,762

Having put a few hours into drilling into the rest of 2+2 for some education as to what "short term" and "long term" were for the live poker player, I found this "Protecting Your Bankroll" which I can honestly say I had not read before.

Herein, I find:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cry Me A River

For example, take one hand of his 20/80 situation.

If we fold, we lose $something.

If we call, there are two possible outcomes:

We lose, this is significantly worse than folding.
We win, this is significantly better than folding.

Given 20% equity in the pot our chances of these two events are:

0/1 80%
1/1 20%

So 80% of the time the guy who folds gets to 50NL ahead of us.

Now, let's take that to the OP's two hands in a stretch of 20,000 hands.

If we fold both times, we lose $something.

If we call, there are three possible outcomes:

We lose both. This is significantly worse than folding.
We win once. This is better than folding.
We win twice. This is significantly better than folding.

Given 20% equity in the pot our chances of these three events are:

0/2 64% (80)(80)/(100)(100)
1/2 28%
2/2 8% (20)(20)/(100)(100)

So now, 64% of the time the guy who folds gets to 50NL ahead of us.

But what happens if we encounter this situation four times?

If we fold all four times, we lose a static $something.

Now there are five possible outcomes when we call.

We lose all four hands. This is significantly worse than folding.
We win one hand. This is better than folding*.
We win two hands. This is significantly better than folding*.
We win three hands. This is very significantly better than folding*.
We win all four hands. This is very significantly better than folding*.

Given 20% equity in the pot our chances of losing all 4 hands is 40.96%. I'm not going to solve for all the other individual results because it's not important.

Now the whole thing has turned. 40.96% of the time he guy who folds gets to 50NL faster than the guy who calls. The guy who calls gets there faster 59.04% of the time.

*I've skipped determining how much better winning is than folding because that's based on our edge (EV) which is unknown and assumed it's enough to so that 1 win is better than 4 folds. It's possible that our edge is not that high, but all that means is that we need to encounter this situation 5 or 6 or 7 times.

And then in the same post, in conclusion:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cry Me A River

When we have something like 39% or even 30% equity then the "long term" is two hands!!!!

An elegant explanation.

Indeed, the short term becomes the long term much quicker then I had considered.

Thus, Mea Culpa.

Quote

02-18-2014 , 05:06 AM

HappyLuckBox

old hand

Join Date: Feb 2013 Posts: 1,491

I couldnt really understand what the quoted text was, since im reading out of context. I did read the linked threads first few pages though.

Glad you understand now. In reality the short term = long term. This guy explains it pretty well:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cry Me A River

I used your own example.

So, what now your example is not good enough?

Feel free to come up with another example if you like and I'll prove you wrong.

again.

So what? The long run is the same as the short run. Unless you have some way of predicting the future, you do not know if you will run good, run bad, or run to expectation.

The only way you're assumptions work is if you know you will run bad.

If you run good, your assumption is wrong. You make more money than our buddy playing it safe.

If you run average, your assumption is wrong. You make more money than your buddy playing it safe.

If you run bad, then yes, your buddy makes more than you.

Well, except those times when you don't run bad enough and you still make more money than your buddy even while running below expectation.

In the example given, we can run as bad as winning only 36 times and losing 64 and we still come out about the same as the buddy (a difference of $2.40 in his favour).

However, the point still remains, you ran bad.

You cannot come up with a situation where passing these edges is correct except when you run bad. Unfortunately, none of us knows ahead of time when we will run bad.

Unless you can come up with a way to predict when you will and will not run bad, passing an edge like this is simply bad poker.

A good poker player has a mindset where he approaches every new situation by making a decision that maximizes his profit, as if he were faced by that same decision an infinite amount of times.

Ex:
If ive got the nut flush draw
A5ss

Flop K 7 3 ss
$100 flop
Villian shoves $100 all in.

Im always calling. I dont even need to think about it. I can expect to profit each time i call. We start building our long term graph the correct way by making all the correct short term decisions.

You should be doing the +ev decision no matter what your equity is. Whether its 33/66 or 8/92 where you only have a 8% chance of winning.

Ex:
We have 66
We know our opponent has AA (for examples sake)
Flop K T 2 rainbow
Pot $100
Our opponent bets $5 all in

Call

Last edited by HappyLuckBox; 02-18-2014 at 05:22 AM.

Quote

Post Reply Subscribe

...