I started reading Alan Schoonmaker’s The Psychology of Poker recently. The first Stud example already has me wondering. Though maybe he’s right on target, I’m curious what the 2+2 regulars have to say.

p. 55

Alright, I’m not an expert stud strategist, but is Alan for real?

Am I really to assume that starting with two straight blockers, and catching a third, that I am STILL to believe that she would just happen to have the CASE ten AND a nine exactly in the hole to go with it?

And I’m so sure of this, that we are expected to call to 7’th ONLY BECAUSE OF POT ODDS, but fold 7’th if we don’t improve?!

There’s a few other issues in this hand description that I don’t quite make sense of. Since this player is loose, surely (Q8) could be in the hole, why wouldn’t queens-over feel obligated to raise here? And technically, if she started rolled up, then a tens-full isn’t a sure win (but it’s close).

I suppose, an argument can be made that the (Q8)8 hypothesis doesn’t work either because that means she would have caught the case Q on fifth.

What about the 10% rule of (opponent does something stupid to surprise you), misclick, trying to make a play at you, feeler raise, etc…

Who here thinks check-folding Trip tens on 7’th is the proper EV move?



P.S. Now that I think about it, this book is 2+2, so if he’s wrong I guess David Sklansky would have edited it. .

There's a lot of crap in 2+2 books, and I highly doubt Sklansky have edited the hand or would have edited pretty much any hand.

Also, I don't think Schoonmaker actually is any more than a dabbler in poker and isn't mentionably good. So I wouldn't take anything he says seriously.

I haven't bothered with the book in question, but it does seem to be pretty horrible, not just in its execution, but in the entire premise of the book. If I remember correctly he thinks that everything about players can be summarized by looseness and aggressiveness, which is just a really bad idea. He also seems to think that you can just observe players and really quickly derive their strategy with very high precision, and that's just wrong.

So basically I think it's ******ed to fold trip tens.

Of course, his premise is that the other guy has the straight and if you agree with that there's no point thinking about the hand. But that's a [censored] description since normally you just have an imprecise estimate of how aggressive people are on various streets. And the later the street, the more imprecise that estimate is going to be.

And a large part of the time you're not going to have any reasonable estimate at all.

I don't really believe that rule. If that's the case, then there is no such thing as a rock or a nit. I'd like to see you play omaha/8 using that rule.

You are showing open tens with a ten in the door after raising on third. Some players will assume that you either have a ten or a big pocket pair in the hole. Arguably queens up is not a good raising hand if they assign you that range and some players will only raise you if they can beat trip tens. Some players just won't raise you unless they have you board-locked (or if they have a full house...some players overplay full houses even when the betting tells them their opponent is very likely to hold a higher full house).

The wrong mindset is to just count the possible combinations that beat your hand. That's low level thinking that only takes into account the strength of your hand. A better mindset is to see how your hand does against the possible combinations that opponent will raise with on fifth street, taking into account your hand's relative strength against your opponent's range which has been significantly narrowed by a fifth street raise.

Should you fold trip tens against every loose passive player? No. Is it possible to know a particular loose passive player's game well enough to be able to fold unimproved on the end? Yes.

This is a moronic example on many levels. First of all, how did 9 BBs get into the pot by fifth and you're head up? Second, if you call to the river and she bets you'd be getting 13-1 on a call. There are very few players who I'd be sure weren't either overplaying a queens up or semibluffing a hand like pair + straight draw, or just flat bluffing that I could fold here. In general, Schoonmaker's stuff is pretty poor from a poker point of view. His basic point here, that you can read a passive player as having the straight often enough to make three betting with trips wrong is reasonable. But the idea that you'll be able to lock that read down so tight that you can fold getting 13-1 is a step too far in most cases.

Passive players don't R paired door cards on 5th, unless they, of course, have the goods

They always check Qs up on the river to paired door card, but always bet the ST8

The book is discussing how to play against a loose-passive player. I think that the point he trying to get across is that if a player, who is loose-passive, will usually check-call with most hands but suddenly makes an out of character move (here that would be raising on 5th when catching a seemly useless card) then ( to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes) no matter how improbable the original holding may be, when they make a bizare move, then they will typically be holding the improbable hand they are representing.

Haven't all of us seen strange moves and said to ourselves "the only hand that could make that bet would be X, and no one in their right mind would have played those cards on that board"? Then they flip over the exact cards you thought they couldn't possibly have.

Not a single person in this thread would fold the river here. (Except the people who hate money.)
It would take exceptional circumstances for me fold the river here.

Agreed. So the question is: do you want to gamble on getting the FH because you will get paid off? It's only going to be two more bets for you.

"exceptional circumstances"

an example please

Prax

Its TWO moves out of character, 5th and 7th. EZ call on 5th and the thing Prose said, "every" and "a particular". Prose always has good stuff.

I think that MRBAA has the essence of it--I'd be convinced enough not to three-bet fifth, but not convinced enough to fold the river for one more bet in a big pot.

I like Dr. Al, but he'd be the first to tell you that he's a lot stronger on psychology than he is on poker.