Another thing is like, my entire time in SNGs since Jan 1st 2012, I never was sure I could be the best player (or even good enough to beat HS); I was just waiting for me to plateau, plus every reg thought I suck, or I "try too hard" on the felt (whatever that means.) I had a goal of SNE and thats it.
For the longest time I would respect my opponents greatly, even bad regs, and respect their ability to adjust. I think that was the final thing that turned me into the best player, and only something that started recently.. playing every player individually. (Yes I think I am the best overall player in 6m hypers
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I think that I am one of the rare people that respect their opponent too much, I think players overall respect their opponent too little. Like I respect my opponent a 10 or 9.5 when I really should respect them about 8 (diff depending on the player) and most people respect their opponent around 5-7 and would never put any opponent above themselves. I know this seems abstract so I will elaborate what I mean with three different approaches to the game. (Edit: this mostly applies for reg on reg play, the games I play are generally 5 reg games so almost all of my play is vs regs. Obviously if you are playing non-regs it is different.)
Blind approach: Your opponent plays the pot and its your turn. If you play exactly what you think is nash, you are respecting them 10 -- basically its implied you think that no additional advantage can be gained long term and you just want the value of the game now. This is also suited for mass tabling and also requires less effort in some way. (You still need a lot of effort off the table to know what the nash is... not necessarily pushfold)
Dynamic approach: I exploit but always at the boundary and always in a GTO approach. It respects their ability to adjust but as long as they do not fix the underlying problem I show an advantage. Maybe to give a small example, if someone is say, opening utg 100% (dont want to give a real example sorry), then depending on how they play I can call more, 3b small more, jam more, cr flop more, donk more, etc. -- many ways to show an advantage, some of them more subtle. I don't just exploit in one vector. It's a bayesian type of approach where I am moving the boundary of my play in many different vectors and I don't know how they will readjust so I have protected myself already. If for example I think 3betting small shows the most profit in a vacuum with a ton of hands and I only do that, it could be very losing if they play back.
Exploitative approach: I think most good and even some great players just try to win the most $EV in a vacuum on that exact hand. This is obviously a good strategy (try to win the most money hurr durr) but some players are better at it than others. I know for some players I play with, it's mindblowing how little respect they show me (or I guess anyone). For me, I would always try to think, "why is a player playing this strategy." "What advantage can be gained from this strategy." But I think for most of my opponents they don't think like that. Any time someone plays a hand different from how they would, its automatically bad.
When I was a reg coming up I would always strongly consider if I was wrong about a situation. I see many of these "stubborn" regs (mostly at lower stakes, rare to find at highest stakes) make the same mistake over and over even in the face of strong adjustments. I was respecting their ability to not make a mistake over and over. But it gave them too much credit for studying the game, maybe I studied the game 100x as much as they did and so things seem easier and more obvious than they actually are. I attribute this idea of learning what my opponents do well as the main reason how I was learning the game so fast.
Last edited by Alex Wice; 03-04-2013 at 11:18 AM.