Maybe folding in and of itself is not a useful tool, but I think we all mean being able to properly evaluate villain ranges and to correctly asses our relative hand strength.

I admittedly didn't read the posts ITT throughly... but I'm not exactly sure how you are translating this concept to poker if not just taking some numbers from one thing that is based on actual concepts and economic occurrences and then slapping the words poker knowledge on the end.

80%/20% wealth -> 80%/20% poker knowledge?

It seems to me that you are suggesting that having good poker fundamentals will result in more profits, which I agree with. I don't see how you are getting from "percentage of wealth" to "percent of poker knowledge". It seems more logical to me to be translating "wealth" to "poker wealth".

I also watched a documentary on netflix recently... I think it was called "The Flaw" or something. It was suggesting that "top down" economics, or rather stated very broadly, that when the top X% (usually less than 20) is doing well the wealth will trickle down to the middle and lower classes, is actually the reason (or contributed greatly to) the economy crashed in both the 1930's and in 2008.

It suggesting that since our economy is based on consumption***, when the top 1% of acquires their 10 billion dollars or whatever, they can't/won't possibly spend as much as if that same 10 billion was distributed among us common folk because one person only needs so many pairs of jeans etc... So the money actually just sit's and collects more value in hedge funds and the stock market and never get's redistributed. Sales go down, jobs get cut to account for the lower profits, common folk lose their jobs and either spend less or acquire massive debt to maintain their living style. Eventually the debt bubble burst and the economy crashes. The American economy is analogous to a boiling pot of water where once the water particles (people) acquire enough energy (money), they boil off the top (their wealth sky rockets).

Anyway... The documentary was basically suggesting that we need to make changes so that it's the 80% that is responsible for the 20%, not the other way around.

*** It also seems absolutely mind blowing to me that we have a economy based on consumption. Is there really anyone out there that really thinks this can continue on for the next 100-500 years (a blink of an eye as far as the evolution of this planet is concerned)? Look what we have done to the planet in the past 200 years... We already suffer from huge food/water shortages in parts of the world. What happens when the population increases by 50%? Okay... so I'm basically done ranting... but it just seems to me that the human race is on a freight train speeding towards a brick wall with which it will collide with in the next 200 years, resulting in wide spread pain and suffering.

Sorry to derail, heh.

Almost all human endeavor is 80/20. There are few stagggering genius at anything. Good fundamentals get you there almost every time. In fact, great talent can lead some people to feel that they can ignore the basics, and ultimately they get burned. In almost all endeavors, give me the plodder.

Poker is a really simple game on its face. Figure out what the other guys have and create a line that best exploits their holding. Come as close to humanly possible as you can to playing with marked cards or GodMode. The better you get at that the more money you win, period.

Methinks you vastly underestimate the impact on your win rate (and tilt control) that correctly folding has.

IMO, at least 1/3 and possibly as much as 1/2 of my profit comes from correctly folding.

At least 3/4 of my tilt control is derived from making peace with the God of Fold.

How many POWs does it take to offset multiple +EV calls in other hands (win or lose) ... 1 ...

POW?

Most of it's been nailed already. Position, aggression, emotional (tilt) control. Good post.

What about the opposite?

What do you guys think aspiring live poker players waste TOO much time on when learning the game? (i.e. Balancing)

If you play against regular opponents is very important to balance because you otherwise become too easy to read. Here's a good example:

400bbs effective stacks. Hero is SB with AA. Button straddles for 2BB. Hero calls(OMG!!!!??!), BB calls, HJ calls, CO calls, Button checks. Flop:

A94

HJ has 99. Obviously he is pretty much getting stacked here no matter what. But the fact that you didn't raise PF with AA could make him think he has the nuts (because you'd never flat with AA). You don't want to do anything 100% of the time with any hand because then when you don't do that, your opponents can know with absolute certainly that you don't have that hand.

Imo the 20% is (in order):

1) hand rankings
2) game / seat selection
3) bet / folding
4) the importance of position

I've taught my gf these and she's a winning player. I taught her hand rankings and how to bet/fold in the car on the way to the casino (1 hour). She did very well her first night.

I list in that order because in my early days I was winning with just 1 & 2. 3 & 4 is when you start printing money.

80% (in order)

4) tilt control
5) sizing
6) ranging
7) bluffing / fold equity
8) implied odds
9) game flow / dynamics
10) lol live reads

There is a lot more than six items here. For example there are entire books on ranging. So this is the bulk of deep poker knowledge but still not necessary to have to be a winning player at 1/2 - 2/5.

Tells
Cooler spots
Tricks with their chips

Read all the answers and will stick with my first thought. Hand Reading, or I guess "ranging" as modern players call it, trumps every other skill. It influences every part of your game, from pre flop hand values to playing position properly. The deeper you get, the more important it is.

When I was a teenager i used to sweat a real tough 5/10 Pot limit game. The biggest winner was an old school southern bookie. I remember asking why he always called raises with 53suited type hands in position against UTG raises from the tightest player at the table. His answer was "cause I was pretty sure he had Aces, son". Totally blew my 18 year old mind. Didn't realize then he was giving me the secret to deep stack NL.

Note ... ^^ quoted reply is my answer to what live players spend TOO much time thinking about, not what they should be focusing on.

Pay Off Wizard

i know ducy, i am just bad at highlighting

This topic could be considered interesting for the fun of it, but I see no true relevance.

How you play top pair is primary in the 20%. But then, so what. You still want to know how to play your 80%er hands just as well even though they only add the final 20% possibly. And this would be only if you truly believe that the break down is 20/80.

Fun thread maybe.

ANL, as a coach, you certainly know that some topics/situations/etc are MUCH more important to focus on perfecting than others. Using an example: it is MUCH more important to know how to play TPTK on a wet board IP than it is to know how to play an underboat to a river 3bet from a tight/passive player.
Sure, both are important, and in theory you'd want to make the correct decisions on both all of the time, but as a coach, I'm sure you're going to spend much more time on the former than the latter.

I think partially it is dependent on what one can actually process. I have friends that can all but recite Theory of Poker and Mathematics of Poker but in a game confuse themselves trying to confuse their opponent and make weak plays or just awful calls in bad spots.

I like the concept, but when I first read this, I immediately thought of the application being:

"80% of your profits come from 20% of your opponents"

Since in an average game you should immediately be able to spot AT LEAST one mark (otherwise you're the mark) but usually I can spot 2 or 3. Everyone else may have some exploitable tendencies but presuming we all have a basic understanding of the game, my edge (and thus profit margin) against these opponents will be much smaller.

By focusing my attention on the 1-3 soft spots at the table by playing more pots against them, isolating, seat changing, etc. we are maximizing our chances of being on the receiving end of their reliably frequent large mistakes.

This is why you hear about games at the higher levels being so political, because the reg grinders NEED those marks to create most of their profit margins. Sure they can adjust against other regs and earn a modest winrate presuming the other regs can't adjust back to them, but when they all report their winrates, they will undoubtedly be skewed to the upside by the numerous times that fish have stacked off in true fishy fashion.

So while I don't disagree with your knowledge-tiering application of the rule, I just thought this other application is more universally important (although it assumes you already have enough knowledge to be able to properly exploit your "customers" mistakes once they make them which may not be the case for beginners).

tl;dr: 20% of opponents provide 80% of profits, so most important skills are observation/ID of fish and table/game selection

I agree with this a lot.

I think this application of 80/20 shows how tried and true the concept can be.

If you are in a small player pool most of your yearly earnings will be at the expense of maybe 20% of the players.

You can even break this down further as you have already done and say in an average winning session 80% of your profits will be from maybe 2-3 opponents.

Another application I did not think of, furthering the importance to ID spots.



Sent from my DROID RAZR using 2+2 Forums