Quote:
Originally Posted by IntheFold
Why wouldn't you make up hands though. Hypothetical habds If your studying come to mind alot. I think it's a good idea.
It would be a good idea if we weren't all playing at least hundreds if not thousands of hands a day and genuinely interesting spots come up for real all the time.
We should also take into account how frequent a spot is. OP+NFD against possible 2p+oesd or similar is a very frequent spot. Getting raised on the river when you have the nut flush but a straight flush is possible is fairly rare. When we make up hands, it feels like it would be kinda hard to gauge exactly how frequent that spot or similar will be, so it could easily be of limited value; either that, or we've faced similar spots enough times that we kinda have a good take on what to do.
In short: reality is complicated enough, we don't need to add fiction, as it doesn't really come with any specific benefits when we have a deep well of hands played to use already that are far more likely to be repeated by virtue of them having happened in the first place.
In the same way as Marxism / Socialism have a fundamental tenet that all analysis of economic or political systems must be firmly rooted in material reality, i.e. that which is purely fictional must be discarded from academic study, poker analysis should be firmly rooted in reality. Real reads, real opponents, real stack depths, real runouts. The moment we leave the world of the real, we leave the land of the 'most useful' and risk wasting our time.
What we can do is take real hands and modify them by asking 'what if' questions. What if everything else the same but twice the stack depth? What if different turn and river runouts? What if opponent is a nit rather than a lagtard? What if our image were different from how it is? Now there we have a rich seam of limited diversion from reality, which should prepare us well for likely eventualities. But making hands up entirely.... maybe take a creative writing course ;-)
