I'm reminded of
this backgammon article.
The backgammon details don't really matter, but basically at any point you can offer your opponent to double the stakes of the current game and they can either accept or forfeit the current score. So it's common to see expert backgammon players, when playing against weaker competition, avoiding games with huge doubling cube values because the only way the weaker player can win in the long run (e.g., in a match to 15) is to get a huge cube (the equivalent of a huge pot in poker) and get lucky and win.
Quote:
An expert sits down to play a long match (say 15 points) against weaker competition. He says to himself: "I am virtually sure to win this match if I can keep the cube low and grind out 1-point victories. The only way I could lose would be to lose a couple of large games. Consequently, I will only double when my opponent has a clear pass, and I will never take a double if it is remotely close. In this way the cube will almost never get above the 1-level, and I am sure to win because we will play so many games."
Now, at poker ideally we'd all be way overrolled and have 100 buyins at our current cash game stake and not be fazed by losing a few hundred BB so we can take every edge. But I do find myself having similar thoughts -- if I think I have a big edge on the rest of the table, should I consider the risk of getting stacked and not playing my best afterwards? Is it worth getting it in on basically a coinflip pre when there are probably better spots? I think yes, this shouldn't be a reason to not 3bet, scared money is bad, we should be overrolled for the stakes we're playing, etc., but something to think about.
Last edited by sdfsgf; 04-12-2021 at 10:42 AM.