I originally thought about posting this is the Poker Theory section, but I think that given the specificity of the games we play it may be better suited for a discussion in LLSNL.

Recently I've been unable to play due to some family commitments and I've been doing quite a bit of studying and looking at the way we approach the game and thought about if we can apply Pareto's principle or the "80/20 rule" to poker.

For those unfamiliar: In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s. After Pareto made his observation and created his formula, many others observed similar phenomena in their own areas of expertise. Quality Management pioneer, Dr. Joseph Juran, working in the US in the 1930s and 40s recognized a universal principle he called the "vital few and trivial many" and reduced it to writing. In an early work, a lack of precision on Juran's part made it appear that he was applying Pareto's observations about economics to a broader body of work. The name Pareto's Principle stuck, probably because it sounded better than Juran's Principle. As a result, Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many", the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule.


tl;dr: 20% of effort will get you 80% of your results(profit). the remaining 80% of effort will get you the final 20% of results.

How does this apply to poker?

For someone new to poker, learning the game today can be incredibly intimidating between the vast sea of material, army of poker authorities and seemingly inexhaustible list of concepts.

Those learning poker have a BIG problem with ALOT of components. It seems almost a fools errands to list all of the skills and abilities required to become a fully optimized poker crushing machine. The need to aggregate is clear and perhaps Pareto can help with this!

What exactly is the 20% in LLSNL? If we were to build a poker playing robot but could only upload 20% of the collective poker knowledge what would we chose?

Should we add basic odds/equity?

Should we add value betting?

Should we add bluffing?

Should we add tilt control? (Robots don't tilt!)

What concepts and theorems would we teach it?

Could we break these sub-categories down even further?

What is the 20% of effort that has lead to the 80% of your results?

Play tight pre-flop
Play pots in position
Play aggressive
Value bet/fold relentlessly
Rarely bluff

Table selection (i.e. when offered a choice, sit at the best table).

Seat selection (i.e. when offered a choice, sit in the best seat).

Big hand, big pot. Small hand, small pot.

Plan your hand.

After about a minute of thought, I *think* that's the 20% of my effort that gets me 80% of my results.

GIthink?G

I hope this is not locked... Maybe at least move it to Beginners?

Anyway this is another form of "diminishing returns".

You see it in politics where < 30% of the population carries almost all of the political power.


IMO the short list is:

1) starting hand selection, avoiding dominated hands

2) position, position, position

3) spr, commitment, depth, implied odds

4) folding when faced with aggression

5) tilt management

The purpose of this post was sort of to give us an informal "Guideline" and say that its okay to make mistakes as long as you follow these key few things and get them right you will be okay.

I think one key thing that is incredibly undervalued is learning how to fold hands.

I can attribute a large chunk of my results as simply knowing how to fold hands while my opponents don't. This work reciprocally as I can value bet my opponents to death when I know they will fold and then when the shoe is on the other foot, I refuse to pay them off. and they have something of a 2x -$net during those situations.

In the 80% part... In no particular order...

1) relentless value betting

2) understanding what lines villains take with what types of hands

3) quickly figuring out player types and tendencies for each individual villain.

4) taking frequent breaks from the table

5) did I mention folding?

6) applying aggression correctly and with the right amount of violence/escalation.

Responses have pretty much already nailed it, but LLSNL can beat relatively easily and these are probably most important for humans (not robots):

1) Game selection
2) Emotional Control (various forms of tilt, etc.)
3) Position
4) Tight Preflop (especially in capped games)
5) Value Betting Relentlessly
6) Folding to passive players who get active
7) Be aggressive

Any advice or a concept of the month floating around on b/f? I think not being able to b/f at times is probably my biggest leak currently. Sometimes I am really proud of my play and discipline in a session but one bad failure to b/f properly can ruin a session.

JB.

I there there was one done already in the past. Check best of lssnl>cotm

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imo, the 20% in order would be:

1) starting hand chart vs position (including preflop raises, 3-bets, and 4-bets)
2) Understanding the importance of, and how to apply, direct and implied odds to your situation.
--- Call if you have the odds, fold if you don't, deny your villains proper odds
3) Big hand big pot, small hand small pot
4) C-betting
5) Value betting and bet/folding
6) Recognizing and identifying player types: ABC, nits, LAGs, TAGs, Maniacs, aggros, passives, etc
7) Basic responses/maxims to raises and common situations
---don't slow play big hands, just bet for value
---when tight or passive players raise, fold unless you are near nutted
---when loose or aggro players raise you, call if you have TPGK or better
---when obvious draws hit or board texture gets scary (ie. FD + multiple SDs hit), fold

Should this not be fluid concerning game conditions? Or is this from the perspective of someone looking to baseline win?

It is fluid, but that's the whole point of Pareto's Law: you get 80% of the mileage out of 20% of the work. Best to spend your time learning the 80% basics first, and then upon mastering that you can look at the 20% deviations based on game conditions. IMO anyway.

I'll keep this open, but I actually disagree with the entire premise on a couple of grounds.

First of all, there is not a fixed amount of knowledge that turns you from a losing player to a winning player. Table conditions vary considerably. The level of knowledge you need to have if you are playing at a table with Ivey, Galfond Durrrr, etc. is far higher than you need playing 1/2. It depends on the game. In a loose limit game, knowledge of IO is far less important than in NL.

Even if you know 80% of what the best player knows at the table, it is insufficient. On a very gross scale, it means that you're making multiple mistakes. I don't think anyone is going to argue that making the right decision 80% of the time is going to be winning poker.

Finally, knowledge is important, but playing your A game is more important to winning. It doesn't matter what you know if you can't apply it. How many players have you seen that were playing OK, got a bad beat and blew off their stack in a couple of hands because they went on tilt?

Venice:

Although OP might be worded awkwardly, I don't think you're accurately representing what the 80/20 law actually means. It doesn't mean that you are fine if you have 80% of the knowledge of the best player at the table and it certainly doesn't mean that you're aiming to make 80% of your decisions correctly.

However, what it DOES mean (and certainly does apply to poker) is that 80% of your output will be generated from 20% of your input. Here's how that might apply to 2+2 strat threads:
Most people want to talk about (ie. spend time/energy talking/thinking about) hands that come up once per 6 months when you contemplate folding an underboat on the river with a single-paired board. What they don't want to think about is completing from the small blind. However, long term, it is MUCH more valuable to fix a small blind completing range than happens multiple times per session, than one weird spot.
How is this Pareto's law? Well, it says that you should spend most of your time/energy fixing these standard (but frequent) spots and only a small portion of your time focusing on the rare situations.


A comparison in another field: Pareto's Law doesn't say that a DA is good if she wins 80% of her cases (that would actually be very poor in most areas). Pareto's Law does say that she should expend most of her energy on the 20% of laws/etc that come up over and over again and only a little portion of her energy on the 80% of issues that rarely come up.

+1

P.S. Can you guys help me out with this spot where I flopped bottom set 400 big blinds deep against a LAG regular in my game? Can I find a hero fold at some point? It has been bothering the bejeesus out of me for the last 3 weeks

Fold pre.

Play GTO.

Street poker?

Pareto's Principle also applies to this: 80% of our winnings come from 20% of our winning hands (the big hands/big pots mentioned by other posters).

If we can avoid being dominated in big pots (play tight pre flop as mentioned, and realize from the get-go when we have what looks like might turn into a big hand but is actually a potentially dominated hand and not stack off with it) we improve our "80% of our winnings that come from 20% of our winning hands".

This is good!

I overlooked this!


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fwiw my aha moment was learning to construct and assign ranges and understanding FE

Table/game selection is also pretty vital

Soul reads
Getting there
Running ossum


That's all you need to haz to win.

On a side note, I did enjoy the post starting on post 14, but only because post 14 explained post 1 in a way I could understand a little better. Good read.

The bet/fold is one of the most important things we can learn to master as winning LLSNL players. BELIEVE THAT

That's easy then. Well over 80% of your winnings comes from playing AA and having the button. Everything else is meta-game and by the definition of the question, unimportant.

I see a lot of people mentioning folding as one of the lowest-cost ways to improve your winrate. While I agree to an extent, we must be careful about emphasizing folding without caveats.

I always remember Bart Hanson saying that it doesn't take skill to fold. Sure enough, when I first started playing, I knew how important folding was and that it separated the winning players from the losing players, so I overdid it and folded way too much. Yes, you should fold more than you instinctively feel you should, but not so much that you take no risks. Risk-taking is an essential part of winning poker, coupled with accurately evaluating the risk vs. reward.

For me personally, the way I learned to fold CORRECTLY was by playing hands too far and occasionally getting badly burned. This was the clearest way for me to learn on a subconscious, intuitive level what situations "feel" dangerous and I should strongly consider folding.

But folding in and of itself is not a virtue. If you always fold when you're unsure if you have the best hand, you're going to lose money. You can't win a single hand that you fold.

Unfortunately, there's no easy tips or tricks to know when to fold correctly, it takes tons of hands and experience. Practice makes perfect. The premise of laying out some 20% of ideas that will get you 80% of your results is oversimplifying. All of your knowledge should constantly be iterating and reevaluating. However, I do agree that you should attempt to identify low hanging fruit and not overly focus on trivial minutiae.

Depends on your definition of "win."