Quote:
Originally Posted by Carroters
differentiate reasons to bet today (bluff, value and protection are now the main three)
Is there any real difference between the last two though? It's nice if the opponent folds out his equity in the pot, whether his hand has 0%-50% or 50.01%-100%, but why do all experienced players talk as if there an iron curtain at 50%?
Personally, I just think in terms of the one reason to bet, which is the same as the one reason to do anything: It leads to the most +EV part of the game tree - your hands run through the tree like rats through a maze taking the turns that lead to the best parts of the maze. Or imagine the maze is a railway station, when we check TPNK on the flop we are going to the part of the station where there are mostly village trains and when it gets to its village it will be the big fish in a small pond - whereas the trains to the big city e.g. c/r flop are best for the most talented people and also the blaggers - sets and bluffs.
I'm not sure a mixed tree/maze/station metaphor like that would really work in coaching / authorship
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carroters
Let's say I make it to the river with top pair weak kicker in some situation the details of which are not important. I think that I have around 45% equity when called and I think that should I check and call a bet I'll have 30% equity vs villain's betting range. If villain is likely to bet 2/3rds pot with most of his range then should I check, I'll usually face a bet, and should I face that bet, calling it will be +EV.
Ignoring blocker effects, even if his value betting range is identical to the part of his calling range that beats your hand, he can still only get that much extra equity if he's betting only 78.57% as much as he's calling, so he has to be calling almost all the time, whereas the "classical" percentage would be about 60%. (you don't mention your own bet size so I am assuming its the same).
The basic principle is that, that above a certain hand strength you get to play against more of his worse hands if you bet rather than check-call.
Imagine he has 77 combos that beat you (this is high but chosen so the other numbers are whole numbers). If his calling range contains another 63 combos, you have 45% equity. If his betting range would be the same 77 combos, and an additional 33 bluffs (or maybe worse "value" hands if he's unbalanced, aka "merging"), then you would have 30% equity.
The reason you bet is exactly because he's not betting with those extra 30 hands which you want to play against. That's why its the best branch of the game tree for your hand to go down.
As a fellow English teacher (LektorAJ means "The English Teacher") and learning poker player, I would say that Carroters has good teaching technique in his podcasts. I think the point he made about the importance of "how" the material is taught is important and I would expect this book to be very strong in this area.
IMHO he is head and shoulders in terms of teaching above the other coaches on the GS podcasts and I've listened to all except 2013-2014 now - also better in terms of correctness than most of them. Sorry to disagree with him in our first interaction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth
But the bottom line here is that if you want to criticize Harrington, you need to find errors in his suggestions.
I think to be fair, Carroters didn't come to this thread in order to criticize Harrington.