we're saying folding AA pf is -EV because it's implied that when you're playing the game of poker that the whole point is to find +EV spots. those +EV spots like getting shipped on when you have AA happen to everyone, and even extremely old men call with aces pf. if you're not picking up the (in the one given example) +$33 in EV by calling with aces, how do you wager your expectation is against your opponents? you're certainly playing worse than them, and spots this good don't come up very often.

i'm basically saying that not taking advantage of cooler situations (folding AA pf) is putting you at an overall disadvantage in the game you're playing, which is -EV

I can't believe how many people seem to assume AA is ******ed and also fail to see the importance of this.

It is not important because knowing the correct terminology somehow makes you feel superior but because in hand analysis we use this terminology to argue our cases for the lines we suggest. If the term is applied differently by different people then all debates are rendered pointless.

Comments like this

"we're saying folding AA pf is -EV because it's implied that when you're playing the game of poker that the whole point is to find +EV spots"

are pretty dumb because what our intentions are have no influence on the mathematical construction.

I'm not really adding anything new here, just emphasising because it seems lots of people disagree with AA, and IMO (read know) he is right.

If you get 2-1 on a coin flip your EV is +.50

you win 2 half the time and lose 1 half the time.
After 2 trials you can expect to be winning 1 unit. Avg profit 0.5 unit.
Obviously you could be winning 4 (25%), winning 1 (50%)or losing 2 (25%)

Taking the coinflip is +EV (0.5) easch and every trial
If you do it a million times you will make very close to 500,000 units.

Villain will lose close to 500,00 units. For him the flip has a -EV (0.5)


If you turn down the trail, no money will exchange hands and the trial is 0EV for both parties.




Some people are implying that by turning down a +EV opportunity, we automatically make a -EV one. This is basically a form of double counting. We are losing EV, we are not losing money. EV measures the expected win/loss of money.

We cannot use EV to measure the expected win/loss of EV, as using something to measure itself is ******ed.

I'm by no means a mathematician so this presentation is not pretty. Sorry.

Fish.

word. i was trying to explain my point of view that folding AA to a shove preflop negatively effects your expectation in a game of holdem.

i mentioned that a single hand in a vacuum acts the way you're saying (no risk/no gain), but that has no real application. i wanted to give the play actual context instead of arguing semantics on a complete non-situation.

I don't see how passing on a hugely +EV spot on a hand has a neutral effect on your winrate (or, expected value of sitting at a poker table to play a game of holdem). EV is a means by which we can quantify how profitable/unprofitable we're playing. There exists expected value not just in single decisions like the AA pf call, but there's an expected value to playing a game with a bunch of fish for 500 hands, or however long you're sat there. surely from that perspective passing on AA negatively effects your expectation?

I never said passing on a hugely +EV spot is a good idea. But EV is a mathematical and technical term, and not a term used to describe "good idea" or "bad idea". EV is used to calculate the expected value, and if you do not know how to quantify the value of a decision, you cannot accurately gauge how much better or worse a decision is. For instance, folding AA vs KK after raising to 999 and getting shoved on, is missing out on 1600~ dollars of EV because calling is +1600~ in EV.

IF on the other hand, someone makes a mistake and says that folding AA is -1600 in EV, and then add that to the fact that calling is +1600 in EV using the weird logic some of the people are spouting, suddenly you have a curious number of folding AA being $3200 worse in expectation than calling, when the pot is only $2000. It is like dividing by zero. Expect heads to asplode.

i never said you were insinuating that it was a good or bad idea to fold AA, i was saying there's a difference between your EV in a single hand and your longterm EV.

by not taking advantage of +EV situations (that you're aware of) you're cutting your own expected winrate in the game you're playing. the value you expect to gain will be lower than it would be had you called. it has a -EV effect on your session/night/lifetime winrate.

EV is expected value of a single decision. Winrate is bb/100 or bb/hour and so on, being the actual, whereas EVbb/100 would be the expected winrate.

I am not talking about evbb/100 I am talking about $ev.

Also the play does not lose you money in terms of EV, it is merely that a good chunk of a player's winnings statistically comes from AA and KK and that by not making enough money from AA and KK, a player will lose too much from 25o 28o 39o that the winrate will be negative. So instead of having a negative impact on your winrate, the correct way to phrase it, it does not have a sufficiently +EV impact on your winrate.

gfy

arguing semantics is the worst thing ever. thank god robots don't exist yet... arguments like this would be running rampant.


Let's just say this.. folding AA in this spot means we are missing out on a good opportunity to win money.

As I have already stated, when we are discussing strategy and theory semantics are absolutely essential for a meaningful exchange of ideas. Having said that, the semantics wouldn't be the only thing stopping that with many people in this thread.

Hahaha, I know I said I wouldn't post in this thread again, but I just came back to read it and I guess it looks like AA is talking about the absolute Ev of a decision. Not the relative Ev of 1 decision to the other. I'm sorry I didn't see that earlier, but I just didn't see/understand that's what he was saying because it's absolutely idiotic to think about poker that way... imo. I ALWAYS consider decisions relative to other plays and it's so ingrained in me that I didn't see what Art was trying to say.

It's not relevant to this hand, but it's important to use correct terminology for the sake of more precise wording and communication in somewhat more math heavy theory discussions. When people use double negatives, says "could of..." or phrases like "could care less" when they mean "couldn't care less" so on, everybody knows what they are saying, but it is not a good habit and it sounds silly. It also shows that they aren't thinking about the terminology or words they are using properly, so I think it's good to point it out in case some people don't realize it's not actually correct.

That's ok, I'm just going to keep on thinking about Ev in terms of it's relativity to the alternatives. You can have your precision it just doesn't make sense to me to think about it differently.

But if we look at the absolute EV of one decision and compare it to the absolute EV of another we can see the relative EV. That is what it is used for, to make things as clear as possible. It is no way idiotic.

It is a way of saying "in this exact situation, what can I expect to gain/or lose on average of I make decision X" This is basically what you are doing in every decision in a poker hand, because regardless of what has happened in the past, you cannot alter those decisions now.

To consider decision X, relative to decision Y, compare the two.

THIS IS WHY FOLDING IS ZERO

Take my coin flip example. No game 0EV
1 game 0.5EV
5 games 2.5EV

Playing 5 games will make you on average 2.5 units more than playing none. If you start making not playing -EV YOU WILL GET THE WRONG ****IN ANSWER.

SO IT IS IMPORTANT.

Seriously, give me a maths example of "relative EV" or stop saying this is stupid just cause you don't/didn't understand it.

As Art said, you are a good strat poster IMO but here you seem determined to argue that black is white, and well if not that then black and white are stupid, we should all be seeing in shades.

This is not really something where we argue how we feel about terminology, or measuring things, this is about clarifying the definition of a commonly used mathematical tool on these forums and how it works. If you have somehow been using is in another way until now, you are sadly WRONG.

I know i sound like a wanker, I'm just frustrated. Much as an adult would be when he tells his young child (while pointing at a tree) "son this is a tree" and the son says, "well in my eyes it is more of a sofa, let's not argue about terminology" Less kind fathers than myself would just say, **** YOU then, you go through life trying to buy trees in IKEA ans see if i care.

If you'll look at the math that I included in my post you'll see that is how I came up with the relative Ev of calling >>>> folding by $33. It just didn't even occur to me that Art was talking about something that I factor in automatically.

I didn't read the rest of your post because it's long and I assume we'd just be talking past each other.

OK, I've re-read that. You say folding has a -EV of 33. What is the EV of calling?

I know you understand that there is a $33 difference between calling and folding but from an accuracy point of view, saying folding is -33ev and calling +33ev is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Just because you can understand what you have written wrongly, doesn't mean others will. My Spanish students all understand each otherthe just have a cold when they say they are constipated because they all make the same mistake. It won't stop people laughing at them when they go to the UK.

Folding has an Ev of -33 relative to the Ev of calling. I understand that the Ev of folding is 0, that's implicit in the math otherwise you couldn't get the relative value. Like I was saying it would just never occur to me to to say that "folding is neutral ev", because it's clearly the worst play. We were just talking past each other, and he kept on repeating a detail that I considered implicit to the problem. And I failed to see that is what he was talking about, for that I'm sorry.

Coolio :-)

The EV of this thread has now reached 0.