There is nothing about a Nash equilibrium strategy that would limit it to only pushing or folding.

We are talking about concrete "Nash equilibrium" related to poker, being more specific - to charts presented in original post, which are so called Nash push/fold charts for a reason:

A fictional poker subgame they try to solve is limited to 2 possible actions, solution to such game is useless because this game doesn't exist.

What are you talking about I dunno, as usual though. Have you ever played poker btw?

In case you didn't know, other "nash equilibrium" strategies for poker including all possible actions simply do not exist as of 2011, due to complexity, which makes it possible for game to exist.

I think this chart is more appropriate when your 6bb deep (especially at microstakes where they call loose). With 10bb deep I would start shoving with 8% hands UTG up to 30% on sblind. And ofcourse don't shove with a wide range vs bigger stacks when someone is about to bust soon.

chart is a decent starting point but not a bible

as an aside, I would grind less tables to begin with to see how these things are currently playing - you want to tighten/loosen up ranges depending on what others are doing... make some notes about regs, etc.

if you find, for example bb is auto calling your sb shove w/Q hi 100% of the time or something with certain effective stacks then perhaps ATC shove, as indicated by a chart or otherwise, is sub-optimal

I think I recall Jorj commenting before that his ranges had to be frequently adjusted

I don't play these right now so not sure how they are playing but you probably need every little edge you can find to get your 3% ROI (or whatever) while mass multitabling

As for Nash push/fold being unexploitable.

1) Push/fold Nash iterates until it finds an equilibrium, a balance between pushers range and callers where noone can further modify his range to get an advantage. So if they are both presented such situation for BB and SB and they both follow Nash strategy they will have ~0 EV expectation from this 2 hands.

I have to remind poker players that we aren't interested in 0 EV strategies.

2) As for nash being unexploitable, again let me show how to exploit a player who follows "nash equilibrium push fold strategy" at ten bb effective stacks. To blowup this strategy all we have to do is - limp from sb.

That very moment all those charts etc go out of window, since Nash no longer has an idea about our push range for sb and our limp range. It cannot build an answer to sb strategy anymore, and no iterations are possible. Notice that sb can also minraise, or raise to different amounts, if we are deeper.

This very fact, makes it possible to make money at poker. It also shows that if you limit your moves to push/fold you are making lifes of your opponent much more easier than if you had more moves in your arsenal, even if they would happen rather rarely, it would still dramatically increase difficulty for opponents to react to such strategy.

And when we realize that we could be limping 20% of the time and push 80% of the time with hands we plan to play from sb, but both ranges aren't fixed, and are probable ranges instead ( say we push AA 10% of the time and limp it 90% of the time for example, and various distributions for other hands) Nash again fails here quickly.

In the end face a poker situation, when someone pushes, its usually not a nash push range, but a specially crafted range of hands that he decided are best to be played as a push, not as a limp or a raise , in this particular moment of game, maybe because opponent is tilted, maybe because its a part of fixed mixed strategy he always follows, maybe any other reason that makes poker such a difficult game.

"Nash equilibrium strategy" is not interchangeable with "push/fold strategy from holdemresources.net".

They are not even close to the same thing and when they get equated in threads like these its really confusing/misleading.

^it's not? So what is it then? óÒ

Its a solution to a game that no one is actually playing.

There are several very important details that separate what holdemresrouces comes up with vs what a real Nash strategy for poker would be...
* It only considers pre-flop actions
* It only considers push-fold strategies
* It limits the players in a pot to 3
* It doesnt consider future rounds of play (moving blinds)
* It calculates chip equity using the Malmuth-Harville formula ( which itself doesnt consider position, or moving blinds, etc... and is not actually based on any kind objective reality).

... and probably some other things I'm not thinking of.

Now, clearly, depending on the exact game we're playing, some of those differences are going to be more or less important. But for sure, there's almost always going to be a few off that list that are really really important for a real Nash strategy to need to consider. Several of these points are actually mentioned on the holdemresources webpage(!).

And then it comes up, time and time again, on these forums how some range calculated from the webpage seems weird and everyone will chime in that "yeah, thats messed up, its wrong" and then some people get confused by the conclusion. They come away thinking that because the "Nash calculator" gave a bad strategy, that therefore the same criticism applies to Nash strategies in general. Before you know it, the forums are full of posts making bizarre claims like "Nash doesnt always work", "Nash only works if everyone plays the same", or "Nash can be exploited sometimes".. etc.


Now dont get me wrong, I think holdemresources is a great tool. Its super interesting and has tons of educational value, but its just not some kind of Nash-o-matic for any game that we're talking about on this forum... and I really think the constant interchange between "Nash strategy" and "holdemresource strategy" only serves to misinform.

^so it is a push/fold strategy... glad to hear that.
Your other post was kinda confusing.

Wait.. now I'm confused. What do you mean by "it"? Nash or holdemresources?

Holdemresources.net strategies are push/fold.

Nash equilibrium strategies need not be limited to push/fold.

Uhh to me it sounds way harder to use memory than head when mass tabling. When you're using your head and understand the game, only close spots need actual thinking. The rest, like 90% of the hands, are very standard decisions you don't really need to think for, you understand how the game works and can make the correct decision instantly. If you're going to base yourself on memory you're going to spend much more time thinking and you're going to make way more mistakes. Fwiw I 11-14 table the HTs on Stars without Ninja while watching a show or browsing the webz, and can do quite comfortably.


I suggest you start playing lower stakes and learn the actual game and don't rely too much on charts. If it was possible to make money from just using a chart and nothing else, it wouldn't be possible anymore .

Nash equilibrium is a game theory mathematical solution concept http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

There are no nash equilbrium strategies avaiable for no limit poker, because game is too difficult and complex for current machines.

There is a nash equilbrium strategy for a fictional subgame of poker available at holdemresources.net which has very limited application to real nl poker because

1) it guarantees 0 ev for both players making it useless (all games will have -% roi equal to rake and noone will be playing)
2) poker isn't played by push/fold rules, and if it was it wouldn't be popular at all (because producing an unexploitable nash strategy for such easy game is already possible)

I hope its clearer for everyone.
Ill stress it again: you don't need a nash strategy. You need an exploitable exploitive and adaptive strategy to your exact opponent/opponents. You are playing against people and not machines (in the year of 2011) for the most part on higher stakes. Once any sort of Nash strategy will be available it will be used to produce million bots and games will be instantly killed.

If games are alive, it means there are no nash strategies yet.

@Q..
Thank you for explaining all that stuff about Nash Equilibrium. It was really useful. And I totally agree with you. Your last phrase actually says it all "If games are alive, it means there are no nash strategies yet."

@bbfg
I believe I am a good player at cash games, understanding most (if not all) of the game's concepts. In normal and turbo SnG's I couldn't say the same except for the HU. In Hyper Turbo SnG's I am a complete beginner so I would like any advice you have for me, as you are playing and beating these games according to what you say.

@everyone else who posted here
You convised me that I can't play the Hyper Turbos with charts and I have to use my head like all the other forms of poker. I am totally dropping this chart thing. Now I could have some advice from players who have been successful in these games. I already know I should start with the lowest stakes and just 4 tables. How do I continue?

If I got that right you are a beginner in STTs, so I would advice NOT to play hyper turbos. I'd recommend you start with regular speeds. Easier to learn for a beginner imo.

The is simple. You start off shoving ATC, then your opponent calls with range X. Now you adjust to his range X with Y. He now adjusts to you range Y with W. Now you respond to W with X, ETC. The point at which this stops is push/fold or nash equilibrium pushes become unexploitable for the stack sizes.

Don't mix your symbols
(those two X are not the same in general)

Fwiw I play the regular HT 7$ 6max, they have a different structure but it comes down to basicly the same thing. I wouldn't call myself an expert in them (if there are any other regs from there in this forum they'll prolly flame me ) but I'm decent. I think the ones you play start at t50 with a 5 ante?

Those hyperturbos are probably the most easy to learn the basic game out there since most (key) spots come down to shove or fold, you can do some fancy stuff if situation warrants it like raise to 3BB instead of shoving your 3.5BB but it comes down to the same thing essentially.

The key thing in the early game is maintaining your FE, if you take a hand where you're not sure what to do (not an obvious shove not an obvious fold), think how much equity and future fold equity you lose by folding this particular spot and what you know about players left to act and their stacks.

Once you get to the bubble the game becomes more of a unique situation each game, sometimes it's ok to allow your FE to take significant hits, sometimes you need to shove ATC from the BTN to maintain it. Player tendencies play a much bigger role on the bubble imo, to give a simple example I come across a lot in these.

Blinds 60/120 ante t12
BTN (hero) 500
SB 2000
BB 500

SB is a total tard that has been playing like a nit since got the bigstack since he doesn't want to risk losing on the bubble. So you know if you fold SB is likely to fold and suddenly BB has 524 after the blinds hit you next hand and you have 368. That is a really ****ty hand for you to play so you probably want to shove really wide this hand so we don't get into that situation.

If you play some games just taking hand by hand treating each hand as a 'problem' and look for the optimal solution combined with studying afterwards to fix mistakes you'll probably learn the dynamics fast if you've learned other poker games before.

Anyone smart enough to come up with a chart that could beat the hypers wouldn't be stupid enough to post it. /thread.

fyp

People tend to think that hypers are pushbot games only. Like other people are saying, you cannot follow a chart to make profit. You have to know your opponents as well as in any form of poker (grain of salt of course). You have to adjust to ranges all the time to make the most profit. Throw the chart away and learn by playing and analyzing.

And do not forget to get a bankroll before you enter this world of variance! I've seen many great players lose their whole bankroll to those games (200-400 buyins downswings!).

@bbfg
Thank you for all the info and the advice.

@Disorienter
How many buy ins do I need?

Can you move down? If you can move down I'd say 150 and move down on 80. If you can't I'd say 250 minimum, just so you can keep your sanity .

The variance is similar to big field mid stakes MTT's. And since you need 250+ buyins for those MTT's, I think bbfg's advice is solid. I would recommend even more, but hey, we all take shots right . To make a comparison, MTT's are of course better value if you can put in the volume and time. Most of your winnings will come from rakeback in the hypers (edge is that small), if you're not one of the top players, whilst the rakeback in MTT's are close to irrelevant. The point is, the higher ROI you have in MTT's the smaller the swings are. The same goes for hypers, however you cannot achieve a two digit ROI long term in todays games. That is why you must be prepared mentally for enormous roller coasters.

Sure, the ones on stars have a little more play than others but don't think your chart isn't the #1 most important thing in almost every type of super/hyper turbo out though.

Problem is most people don't have the patience to create and memorize a chart that is as extensive as required.

The idea many are throwing around that you can beat these by "thinking" while you play them is absurd.

You adjust for players, but those are deviations from your charts and guess what those deviations themselves come from other charts you should have made!

You can't do ICM calculations in your head, but people who've memorized enough different situations can extrapolate for situations they may or may not have seen before.

Also, whoever suggested nash bots aren't running around because they wouldn't be profitable is nuts.

You adjust to the players and the situation. I'm no expert in the HTs (do play them though ) but chip distribution on the table matters a great deal in the decision making process imo, your chart will never be more than a guideline, never something that can be of practical use, imo.