Hello it is DK again and I have some more words to write.
Today week 2 I would like to talk about
Profiling
As you know profiling is when you do not know a player and you haven't seen him play many hands yet so you decide he probably plays a certain way due to being old or asian or woman. It sounds like a really horrible thing in this day and age but many poker players do it because those assumptions are right a little more often than they are wrong so it is a little more useful than assuming nothing at all.
Well what if I told you there is a better way?
Now don't throw profiling in the trash just yet. There are two aspects of it that are still useful.
1.
Profiling is still useful for game selection. When you are looking around the room for a table to play at you don't have the luxury of watching a few hands to see how people play so physical appearance is all you get and usually you can just sort of tell if a player is not a grinder at least. There are two kinds of people who will play poker with $1000: people who win at poker and people who have $1000 to blow. Okay and I guess degens are a third group. Point is you should be able to tell them apart just looking at them. The reason this is only useful for game selection is that you don't just automatically win a bad player's money for sitting next to them. You do have to know how to exploit them. Sitting at their table is just the start.
2.
Old people really are nits. Like that one is just almost always true. You should absolutely use that stereotype.
Okay so now what do we do instead? Duh.
Assume random poker players play like random poker players.
Think about what that really means. What are the characteristics of the average random player?
- Probably calls too loose preflop
- Probably too passive in general
- Probably doesn't value bet nearly as often or as large as they should
- Probably afraid of having big hands cracked
Note that we know nothing about bluff frequency. Believe it or not this is just fine. Every player bluffs. Yes even the 96 year old who is tighter than a cat's bunghole. Maybe he only bluffs once a year but it happens. But if we have a bead on his
value bet frequency, then whatever remains is his bluff frequency.
Here is an example. You just sat down at a 1/2 game, $300 effective. UTG+1 raises $12. HJ calls. You call on the button with 99.
Flop ($36) J
8
4
UTG+1 bets $20, HJ folds, you call
Turn ($76) 8
UTG+1 bets $50, you call
River ($176) 2
UTG+1 bets $150
Knowing nothing about UTG+1 I would call. I expect a random player to bet more with Jx or an overpair on a drawy flop to protect his hand. I expect a random player to be afraid of the 8x holding one pair. I don't expect a random player to raise UTG+1 holding 8x. I don't expect a random player to make such a large value bet attempting to get called by worse than one pair and I don't expect a random player to make his stack vulnerable holding just one pair, fearing a river raise. I expect his value range is {JJ} or 8x if he can have it preflop which I find unlikely. If we discount 8x to say 4 combos that makes six total. Meaning for us to call river he needs 3 combos of bluffs. Not very hard to find, how about KQhh, AQhh+? Every additional combo he may have is profit.
We're bluffcatching a random player we know nothing about, making a lot of unfounded assumptions along the way, without having any idea whatsoever about his bluffing frequency, for over 100bb, and I feel pretty good doing it. Because all these assumptions are habits exhibited by 90% of players. It's not at all unreasonable to assume they apply to everyone until proven otherwise. And I think it makes a lot more sense than calling because he's black.
Anyway, if you're scared of lighting your money on fire, try this fun exercise: Go to LLSNL, click on a hand history thread, and skip past the part with the reads. Come up with a decision for the hand and why and
then go back and look at the reads and see if that changes your answer. Probably it will for a few hands but probably it won't for a lot of them as well, and that's the point: Making a reasonable assumption until you have something better.