Andees seemed to think if you post on this forum your goal needs to be becoming the greatest poker player of all time. My stance is that doesn't need to be the case.

You make a little more and add a lot of volatility. You don't understand economics so it's difficult for you to understand. Someone who doesn't forego really thin value spots takes that extra amount of money and it's his money. Something comes with it, more variance. The guy who foregoes those thin spots, it's not that the money coming from those river bets doesn't exist to him, he just never sees the money. The money is out there and instead of taking it tied to the extra variance, he's buying less variance with that money. You can't take the money w/o the variance. You're allowed to sacrifice a tiny bit off your winrate in order to have a much less volatile month/year/etc.

I don't know why you think someone hero called my river massive overshove bluff with TP5K. I used to do that for value, then guys fell in love with folding, now I don't do it anymore. Maybe you're remembering a hand you played? You're the guy who lives to make razor thin value bets. Your thin value bets can get so thin that you cross the line from thin value betting to bluffing.

I honestly have no idea what eldiesel just posted.

Players don't understand that mastering "thin" spots actually lowers variance, not the other way around.

There are a lot more "thin" opportunities than there are "fat" ones. That's the reason why nits spend more time complaining about quality of the game and bad beats than having fun and not caring about losing hands.

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

There is also a major misconception that going after thin spots means shoving $1000 to win $1 EV.

Thin value is betting instead of checking on the river with TPNK.

Ok, you're *clearly* missing the sample size joke, so here we go.

If the discussion is useless, why the hell are you here? Go somewhere else.

We know that higher variance and higher winrates go hand in hand, and that larger standard deviations require larger samples. Just because you're not good at "a style" doesn't mean that the right answer is to tone it down. Maybe, maybe not.


Yea, and?

So ... play poker. This has nothing to do with "style". Not tilting, or making other bonehead plays has nothing to do with how aggressive you are or should be.

Define "extended period of time".

6 months or a year may not be anywhere near long enough if your volume isn't high. But we can get a pretty good guess at hands from the number of hours, as in maybe about 30 hand/hr on average.

When analyzing an online database, people tell you you need *at least* 10,000 hands to draw a conclusion. So if your "extended period of time" is only 200 hours ... that's barely half what you'd need for a small sample.

So yes, telling people that their 85 hour sample isn't meaningful is completely fine and accurate ... it's not that "we can't accept the fact that other people are better".

There are a good number of larger samples around here, and most of the time those agree with the "that small sample is a heater" conclusions.

Finally, you claim that there are no live tracking methods (or is it that you just don't trust them?), but that I should just take some random poster's word that he's crushing a game? Sorry, but why should I do that again?

Always a thrill when you go for a thin value bet and Villain tanks, starts mumbling about hands and you realize that you've read him completely wrong and that you've actually just made a bluff. Full range of poker emotions all in 3 minutes.

He is applying economic theory that by taking on additional levels of risk (std dev I assume) one should be rewarded with a commensurate level of return (presumably win rate).

As you argue learning to thinly bet increases your win rate considerably. Whether that increased wine rate is commensurate with the increased "risk" of more wagering is the issue.

I don't think he makes his case as articulately or as simply as he could but I believe that is what he is saying.

Ok, what about beer rate?

Anyhow, guy who uses bigger words usually wins. I concede.

Well he seems to think the additional win rate is small but the additional risk is somehow huge. Seems like he has convinced himself of this but just not sure how.

Beer rate<wine rate IMO

I was talking about ways to track OTHER peoples live winnings like you could do online with poker tracker. Since you can't track other people's winnings, you really only know your own win rate and what other people claim their win rate is. Poker players lie so their is virtually no way to know how you are doing compared to anyone else.

Unless there is some method to track other people live results that Ive never heard of in which case, nevermind.

My main point was that one persons 100 hr sample might be fairly accurate to their long term results depending on their playing style. Another person may need 1000 hrs to have any idea what their win rate is. So telling someone with 100 hrs that they have no idea what their win rate is yet when you have no idea how they play isnt necessarily correct.

PS...why are so many people here so grouchy?

That part I caught.

Thanks for the breakdown, bruh.

If I don't know I am bluffing, then they can't know either.

That strat brought to you courtesy of drunkbigskippoker.com.

But to get the full range though you'd need to both win and lose the hand, and I don't think Schrodinger did much work after he was finished with that ****ing cat.

Yeah, I guess he's gotta make the call and then slowroll.

Diesel, you are completely confused. I think it's because you don't understand economics so it's difficult for you to understand this.

This largely goes back to your olive example which was deemed so stupid that it had to be deleted. Unfortunately you keep bringing it up in other ways, so I'm just going to go ahead and refer to it. What you don't understand is that you buy the olive with your winnings. You've already won, so any money spent afterwards is no longer related to the poker money. Losing a dollar at the table instead of spending a dollar on an olive is COMPLETELY different.

look at this graph:



As you can see, as the rake increases, winnings quickly plummet to 0 (and eventually negative although it's not shown). So enough -$1s in rake would leave you with 0 dollars to buy your olives. See the difference?

Now you can replace "rake" with "leak" or "foregoing thin value." (Which is really the exact same as a leak)




Also when you say "variance" it is completely incorrect, but whatever I'll just go with your definition. By foregoing thin spots you are actually increasing your "variance" (once again going by your definition) and not decreasing it. The reason is that you are cutting down on your +ev spots and increasing your -ev spots which is going to lead you to more losses in the long run. Variance (no quotes) really serves little purpose when looked at on a small scale. You are so concerned with your "variance" that you are unwilling to risk what would look like a large downwing in the shortterm, even if it would make your overall profits go much higher.

Olives?

Now I want to know about the damn olives...

Stupid minds think alike.

Fat and thin are subjective. Without units it's difficult to categorize spots under each label. But what you're saying is what I'm saying. I go as thin as I can while still maintaining an expertise of what's going on. Most guys on here don't understand the mastery part of what you said. They're talking about betting rivers and getting called by worse 51% of the time. They add, theoretically, a nickel an hour but have much swingier sessions. Once you leave mastery level, you can add an extra few cents and a lot of variance, or you can forego both.

You cant value bet thin to the exact point of your expertise (unless im misinterpreting). The only way to keep getting better at it ("mastering") is to keep on pushing the boundary where you will occasionally value-own yourself.

Imo i also agree that valuebet thinly reduces your variance based on the leak argument presented, but also it is inherently built into the structure of the game that betting more frequently, which invariably involves betting thinly, is superior to checking more frequently (thats my theory anyway).

In my experience i have never felt the sessions where im betting especially more thinly generated swingier sessions.

I wasn't going to have much respect for you anyway but an awful, original comeback would have gotten you more.

Besides you typing olives a lot this has nothing to do with what I was saying.

This is my point exactly. Guys are so concerned with mastering every spot starting on day 1. When you were 5 and played baseball for the first time did you try mastering every aspect of it? Or did you take years to get good at the basics, then in middle school added things to your arsenal, and in HS got even better, etc. For plenty of rec players a big downswing means not playing for months until they save. Those people are allowed to avoid thin or difficult spots, still beat the game, and maintain a bankroll. What I see is guys doing things week 1 that they probably won't have a good handle on until year 2, and things go bad and I never see them again.

I think you get it, it just seems like your stance is "If you're not rich enough to be able to withstand all the variance in the world in the short term and long term, why are you wasting my time asking questions on 2p2? Because all my opinions are directed to the rich." Even the non-millionaires are allowed to have discussions, although you do a really good job of turning them off from here.

But the biggest problem is the definition of everyone's "thin." Some people mean small value bets that work a big % of the time and some people mean bets that work often enough but barely often enough. Absolute vs relative.

I don't get your contention.

Do you agree or disagree that thin spots create higher variance?

I believe this is how he avoids admitting he is wrong. Constantly changing what he said (fwiw Diesel, everything you typed is still in the thread, I and everyone else can still see what you said) and making huge assumptions out of nowhere for example Andees thinks everyone needs to try to be a top pro, and I only think millionaires should play poker.

Kind of funny, but more juvenile and annoying really.

So if people lie all the time on the internet about their winrates, why the flying **** should I believe them when they make ridiculous claims?

Claiming that a 100 hour sample is representative of anything is completely ******ed. Bip! has posted some of the maths behind how the sample size effects the accuracy of an estimation as a function of variance and winrate. Sure, I suppose if you folded every single hand we wouldn't need many hands to see that you were losing 1.5BB/round, but for any realistic player we need more than 100 hours.

Grouchy? You come in here without any prior contribution to the community and are talking out of your ass. What kind of response did you expect?

Ya, now I feel that he's just dancing around the topic and changing the definition.

In other words, fat could mean thin to you and thin could mean fat to me?

LOL, this ain't one of BigSkip's backyard beauty pageants.

The people on here who love talking about thin value spots, I doubt they always correctly identify those spots, and when they do, I doubt they perfectly maximize EV like they love saying.

But, if you play them correctly they lower variance.

Feel free to copy and paste where I contradicted myself instead of making stuff up.

When I said the opposite he had a sarcastic, condescending comment. Tell us if you're the expert, what did he mean?

When you only offer suggestions never factoring in the risk someone wants to take on, that's what you're saying. It's not my fault if you're too stupid to know what you're saying.

They're very dependent on the player pool. If guys wanted to post a HH of what's thin in their game and what's fat that'd help a lot. I've played in game where TPTK+nfd is a hand to beat V into the pot if he raises you. And there have been games where you're just calculating odds to hit the flush because only bottom set+ raises you.