But this is not want we want to do which comes back to vigorous debate and a little bit of fun.

Also, I believe this forum is far more important than it appears based on the number of participants. That's because it's my opinion that for the long term health of the poker economy, no-limit hold 'em played as a cash game is not a good game. But due to a much better balance of luck and skill, it's my opinion that limit hold 'em is a good game for a vibrant poker economy. In fact, and this is just based on the games at The Bellagio, I do believe that there's now some growth in limit hold 'em, and to accompany this growth having a positive tone in this forum is important not only to this website, but to poker itself.

And there's another interesting aspect of limit hold 'em. When you bet, the pot can be any size, from small to extremely large. In no-limit hold 'em, assuming you have enough chips, you can size your bet to keep the pot at the right size (relative to yur bet).

Again in my opinion, this distinction can add a great deal of richness to limit hold 'em, and it makes it a much more complex game than many no-limit players think it is. And it can also make for great strategy discussions whether you agree with me or not.

Mason

Hi Captain:

I'm with you. And to give a silly example, if you wanted to call folding on the end when you hold the nuts "terrible/awful/horrible" I'm with you all the way. But that's not what I see happening in these threads.

Best wishes,
Mason

Agree that calling rob an insufferable troll was not nice even if it was accurate for his behavior at the time. The rest of the posts you cite, I️ consider somewhere between harsh (not nasty) and totally benign.


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Hi OnTheRail15:

Okay. I can accept this, and let's move on from here.

Best wishes,
Mason

This thread would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

A few of the greatest LHE minds are pointing out to Mason where and why he is wrong. Mason deflects, bans and disregards all advice, instead banging his drum for weird, suboptimal lines that might work out once in a blue moon when the fish and stars align.

Check this flop is stupid. Don't do it.

Mason, if readers never got past the point that I think checking JJ is terrible then I would be doing them a service because it is in fact terrible. I frequently use terrible interchangeably with not the best line. This doesn't mean I think its the worst lie ever or on par with folding the nuts on the river, but I think its clearly an inferior line, and as such I would consider taking an inferior line to be terrible. I make terrible plays as well, it happens. If somebody were to tell me I did something awful, I'd say thanks then go home and run some sims etc....and see if they were right. Then if they were I'd tell them thanks for the advice and buy them a drink. I guess that approach isn't for anyone but it works for me, thought it may be helpful to others as well.

Its only a disservice if I am wrong and I am all for anybody trying to prove that I am. I just feel that stating the pot is large and we should increase our chances of winning it is an insufficient proof.
Also, I have always posted like this, its not a personal attack on you or anybody else. You can find countless threads where I have posted nothing other than this is awful or this is terrible and I have also had countless people tell me how much they appreciate the advice (and at least 1 tell me the opposite). I've always been under the impression that people that think this is advise is valuable are welcome to read it and those that think its worthless are welcome to ignore it.

Further, I can't consider the specific answer to all of my points because you didn't address them properly. For example, regarding us having JJ as a blocker I was speaking about combinatrix (I thought this was pretty clear). The point isn't that we block JJ from coming (which is true and a bonus) but that we block our opponents from having hands like JT and JQ which are the two primary hands we are trying to fold out with your line.

Further when I state the problems with raising the cutoff and give his exact range your specific answer is "Poker is a game based on probability, and probability means that there are no sure things. The purpose of these plays is to increase your probability of winning a large pot. It doesn't guarantee that the probability of winning is now 100 percent."

That doesn't address anything, execept ignore the issue at hand which is when he bets the turn, his range is largely comprised of QQ-AA



Also yes, when we cap pre-flop bet the flop and bet the turn on the 9832 board I think A8 folds

I'm not going to comment on this post, at least at this time. So for now, I'll let others address the specific issues you raise and the points you make.

But I do want to ask you this. Why couldn't you post like this all along? That is no dead..money attacks and no twisting up the words I wrote. I think you'll agree that this is a much better approach.

Mason

A8 doesn't fold to one bet on the turn. Pot's already at least 14bb at that point. It would be a bad fold.

I want to clear a few things up. I created the dead money account for two purposes (1) mainly because I lose my password and (2) I thought I would get different feedback for posting hands on an anonymous account than this one (which is likely true). There was no evil intentions. I picked the username because I thought it would be funny and made a few heads up challenges because I thought it would be funny. Despite what Rob may think there was no evil plan to trick people into playing me for huge stakes (like anyone would be dumb enough to play 200-400 vs a guy thats often posting about 20-40 being massive stakes anyways)

Now on to the thread(s) at questions. Yes I disagree with some of your viewpoints and think they are wrong. I fully admit its possible that my position is wrong and yours is correct but I don't think so. However, just to be sure I wanted to example these positons more fully and decided to use my account. Lets be serious, what responses would I get if I posted what do we do with QQ 8 ways pre on this account?

I wanted to try an engage in "vigourous debate" over these topics depsite people thinking the opposite but you made that difficult with some exchanges. Let me provice an example:

Refusing to admit even the possibility that your idea could be wrong, is the antithesis of vigorous debate

or when I ask an honest question (same one I asked and was not answered in this thread) about why no good players do this your reply does not encourage debate once again refusing to admit to the possibility that other people may be correct on this topic.

A little less than ten years ago, it seemed like every other time I posted about a hand, MitchL would call my advice terrible (or, worse, "terribad.") I am extremely grateful to him, because he would then explain why, and I am a better player for it.

Ya, I take JL's criticisms as criticisms. We're not all rays of sunshine with optimism, and care for the health of limit poker, etc. etc. It's important to be respectful, but not that important. At the end of the day criticisms are what matter, not the tone. So, there's a line where people misrepresent other people's criticisms (even with good intentions), and I think that's important. But, not anything beyond that. The ecosystem of the forum would be much worse otherwise, IMO. And, I agree with JL's criticisms overall. I question how viable "thin the field" is, and would caution anyone not to do it without thinking it through, and all the things that might go wrong, which seem to almost always outweigh what can go right. The strategy is too contrived for the chaos in limit hold'em, imho. There may be some very rare spots where I'd use it, but so far it doesn't seem like very many. And I will still try to read-up on the topic. I'll be the last person to caution someone from reading. There is, of course, a difference between being critical, and just being an ass, which others are. But, I take JL as 100% sincere, which is what I value in a poster on 2p2.

(and dead..money was kind've funny)

Is this another example of your twisting of language? What do you think the term "two-edged sword" means? And I've used this term a number of times in these threads and it's used in our book, which you claim to have never read, with more detailed explanation.

MM

Mason, he asked if it was possible you were wrong and the first word in your responding post was no. Can you see how this could be interpreted as a refusal to admit that you could be wrong about this concept? And while you say this play is a “two-edged sword” (the correct idiom is double-edged afaia) that’s not exactly an admission that the concept in question could be wrong.


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Again, and I've posted this in other places in these threads, here is a short excerpt from the "Playing in Loose Games" section of HPFAP, and this same excerpt also appeared in the "Hand to Talk About" article that was in our monthly online Two Plus Two Magazine.

Please notice the last three sentences that I just bolded. There's the answer as to whether these plays can ever be wrong, and this answer has been there right from the beginning of these discussions.

Mason

+1. I can credit a great deal of my improvement as a poker player to ZOMG_Rigged rudely but hilariously telling me why my thought process was and is terrible.

Hi Paul:

If that's true in your case then that's fine with me. However, you need to understand that 2+2 is a business and having people be civil to one another as opposed to being rude is something we would like to see. Also, it's still possible to tell someone that their thought process needs to be improved in a civil way.

Best wishes,
Mason

I’m curious MM and whoever thinks checking the flop is a good idea. What are you doing with AK on the flop when it’s checked to you?

i believe it was johnnie cochran who once said "if 8 see the flop, your betting must stop"

Hi Captain:

This is a much different hand. With the pair of jacks, there's a good chance your hand is best on the flop, but with the ace-king there's a good chance it's not best on the flop. But the pot is till quite large and in very large pots you want to maximize your chances of winning it.

So the question is can you play your hand in such a way that the probability it wins the pot goes up? If most everyone calls your flop bet, I doubt it. Furthermore, with just ace-king high are you collecting positive expectation from your opponents by betting? I don't think that's the case either.

But what about betting for a free river card if you don't catch an ace or a king on the turn? That might work and it's certainly a reason to bet. However, if you're against players who would be quick to check-raise, that might be a reason to check.

Best wishes,
Mason

Checking flop will cost you money immediately and sometimes lead to you getting outdrawn by a hand that would have folded the flop. Hands like bad AX, KX, QX might fold flop, and other hands that may have folded might turn a 4-8 outer and proceed to river the best hand. These things all seem quite unlikely, but technically you're giving 5 opponents infinite odds here. If you check someone into the winner here, thats easily a 40 hour mistake.

This is from our book that addresses some of what you bring up.

If you think that hands like bad Ax, Kx, or Qx might fold to a flop bet when getting over 20-to-1 odds on a call, then that's a reason to bet. But against bad players in loose games when the pot has become very large I doubt this.

However, in this specific example (where how well the opponents play is not specifed), I agree that the player in the straddle could have anything. But it seems doubtful to me that that any of the other players who initially put in two and three bets would have a bad Ax, Kx, or Qx. Now perhaps in the games you play in that's not the case, but I don't see people, with the exception of the straddle, playing hands like king-five offsuit in a straddled pot.

Mason

that seems bad. bet bc you have a nice equity advantage and in a multiway pot, where even though the individual players may be correct to chase 4-6 outs, you are getting x:1 on your bet. x being however many players call. like, betting and getting called by 3 players in 3:1 on your bet and that is a nice return in a hand where you probably have around 40-50% equity. (use pokerstove to figure out for sure.)

also someone may checkraise and knock out other players.

also raising any turn card seems pretty bad too. no way would I raise a, k, or q, 7 or t.

I think of all the pot manipulation hands that have been floating around this board lately, not betting this flop is by far the worst mistake.

Mason, that was the point of my entire post that nobody else addressed and why you can't view this specific situation as the pot is large, lets do X.

Look at the combinatrix. When we have JJ there are only so many combos of Jx hands our opponents can have. This will heavily weight their range to bad Ax (lots of Ax suited combos) KQ/KT type, and underpairs.

Will they fold the flop if we bet? NO. Will they fold the turn after we bet the flop? MOST LIKEL. Yes they are getting a huge price, but people still fold KQ on a 9832 board facing a good player that has cold 4 bet pre and bet every street. Even if they don't put us on overpair they will put us on AK an no they likely have 3 outs at best, not to mention they are most likely sharing outs with other players.

One point that I don’t think has been mentioned yet is that if we bet the flop, the opponents to our left will be getting effective odds that are not as good as they seem. This is because there is a real chance of a raise coming behind them. This issue would be most severe for BB and would decrease going clockwise until you get to CO, who would be last to act. So BB, for example, really is not getting 20:1 on a call and should have to fold a bunch of hands like KT (or mistakenly call them) since he is not closing the action.