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Decision and inference making

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Mr. Pannus

04-07-2005, 07:48 PM Post subject: Decision and inference making

#1 (permalink)

Join Date: Apr 2005

Location: Toronto, Canada

Posts: 3

Hi,

I've been playing NL for a little while, and after some initial success, I've noticed that the Newbie Circle of death is calling my name. I'm pretty resilient, though, and I THINK that I've managed to find a few major leaks. Most notably, I'm simply making incorrect inferences about other players (either due to limited or inaccurate notes), overvaluing hands, and playing WAY too deep into hands when the flop/turn don't go my way. In an attempt to play tight/aggressive, I'm usually playing tight/weak or loose/aggressive instead, and it's costing me.

So here's the real question: How do you get better at decision making about your opponents? I simply haven't played enough hands to really find patterns, and at the lower limits, the play is so variable that it makes this even harder. If I note that a player will play any ace, chases, or is a maniac, how well does this hold up over the whole game? I'm starting to lose trust of my own judgement, which may or may not be a good thing, and was hoping for some help.

Do people have specific insights that they could impart about players at the lower limit classes (e.g. $5 SnG's at pokerstars)). For example, players who start chasing early will USUALLY continue to do so most of the game. Or that weak players generally stay weak the whole game, and are only emboldened with cards higher than a certain threshold (e.g. TPTK). I know this is a difficult question to answer (as there are so many variables to consider), but I could really use the help. Thanks

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aokrongly

04-07-2005, 08:16 PM

#2 (permalink)

Full House

Join Date: Jan 2005

Posts: 863

Others may disagree, but here's my 2 cents for you in particular. My advice is based on the fact that you say you had early success and you haven't been playing long.

1. "Reads" give you maybe a 10% edge. Advanced players can use reads and situational play to great advantage, but you don't have the experience for that. So, in any situation rate your "read" as a 10% variation. That means if you're in a marginal call situation - for instance - but feel you have a good read, then you might call. However, if you're valueing your read at 100% and making moves with junk, supposedly "knowing" he has junk too, then you're way over-valuing your reads.

2. I'm guess your early success was from playing "cards" not "poker". Playing cards meaning you're playing your cards, position, pot odd, etc. and not playing "reads" at all. There's nothing wrong with this in most circumstances. Playing poker is when you re-raise huge from late position based on strong reads and get people to lay down strong hands to your junk, etc. In that situation - which is critical with very large blinds in late tourney play - you're playing straight poker and not cards.

3. Finally, reads come from repetition from watching the same person act over many hands. SnG's aren't long enough to get strong reads on anyone. There are however reads you can get if you're looking for them. Here are the "reads" I look for in SnG's.

- Limp/fold to raise. If someone does this repeatedly preflop, then you can use this to your advantage. The key is that they do it consistently.

- Slowplayers. If someone limps, check and calls through a hand then raises big on the river and takes the pot with a monster preflop hand, then mark them as a slowplayer. This is valuable in a few ways. First, you want to be careful that they don't trap you. Second, if you're heads up with them and are drawing to a nut hand (like a A flush or nut str8) then you can dictate the bet and they'll just call. So you can define your own pot odds. Third, you can slowplay the slowplayer if you flop a monster - trips, etc. Slowplaying is a Chronic disorder. If they do it once, then you can bet they'll do it again.

- Weak postflop betters. These are people who will throw out min or 2xBB bets post flop with TPTK regardless of situation or pot size. I may stick around on a drawing hand a little longer with someone like this because they don't know how to bet post flop and I'll get good pot odds to draw with. The other side of this is people who Always bet 3/4-pot sized bets with TPTK. I never want to play a drawing hand with them. Even if I get 4 to the flush or str8 on the flop, I'm going to have to make a bad call if I want to go fishing.

- People who simply won't defend the blinds. Not raising them every time is a crime against the poker gods. You know they're going to fold and if they don't then they have a very strong hand.

Finally, note that players do change as the blinds get big and the table gets small. Tight players loosen up. Loose players tighten up. There's less drawing hands, etc. But you already know this I'm sure.

So, there you go. Have certain things that you're looking for. Make sure you see it happen repeatedly. And even then let it affect your play only in a marginal way until you get many thousands of hands under your belt. I consider myself a successful player and I rarely play "poker" outside of MTT's. I play cards and make limited and rare moves based on "reads" alone. But, I have alot of respect for those players who have strong reading ability and use it to their advantage.

Mr. Pannus

04-07-2005, 08:59 PM

#3 (permalink)

Join Date: Apr 2005

Location: Toronto, Canada

Posts: 3

Thanks aokrongly,

I think the most difficult thing at this stage for me is determining whether or not I made the correct play. I've almost always gone along with what I thought was the correct play at the time (only got curious once, and it bit me in the ass), but how well do you really know that you're playing? Overconfidence/underconfidence are both very costly at this point. But I made two changes that REALLY helped me (just won my last SnG)

1. NOT calling those all in hands, especially preflop, even with great cards (folded AKs with great difficulty, worried that I might miss my 6 outs for TPTK, or those rarer flush/straight draws).

2. Stealing blinds effectively and reraising weak players out of their comfort limits. I doubled my chip count from 6000 to 12000 on that alone in the last game with two loose/weak players on my left.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Zangief

04-07-2005, 10:31 PM

#4 (permalink)

Flush

Join Date: Dec 2004

Location: Massachusetts, USA

Posts: 370

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Pannus

1. NOT calling those all in hands, especially preflop, even with great cards (folded AKs with great difficulty, worried that I might miss my 6 outs for TPTK, or those rarer flush/straight draws).

What were the blinds, the stack of the player pushing, your stack, and the stacks of those left to act after you?

I would have trouble laying AKs down anytime unless I knew they had AA or KK. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Can someone with more experience please comment?

JeffreyGB

04-07-2005, 10:40 PM

#5 (permalink)

4-of-a-Kind

Join Date: Dec 2004

Location: Jenks, OK

Posts: 3,477

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zangief

I'll pretend to be qualified to answer that

AKs is way behind only 2 hands - AA and KK. To everything else, it's a coinflop. I typically wouldn't call all-in preflop with it, but if I very well might if I had reason to believe the pusher didn't have to have AA/KK to push...especially if they could make that play with non-pocket pair cards. Basically, that comes from seeing how they've played previously.

A bit of it is also comes from how much is in the pot relative to how much I have...that is, I'll fold if someone pushed, but if I reraised and then they push...then it comes down to the above.

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Mr. Pannus

04-08-2005, 03:09 AM

#6 (permalink)

Join Date: Apr 2005

Location: Toronto, Canada

Posts: 3

The situation was that we were the two big stacks, and it was early in the SnG. I had about 2800 chips, and the other guy had 2900. I was the BB, and he was LB, and raised it immediately all in. So if I lost, I'd be out. There were a couple of things I was considering:

1. This occurred at the end of the 1st orbit, and I didn't have a good read on him (or likely anybody at this stage in my play)

2. The rest of the table consisted of almost all weak players (1 maniac already eliminated, another likely to follow).

3. I figured he had a high pair, JJ or TT

4. Most importantly, even though I was almost sure that I had domination, I couldn't take the chance that I didn't get at least 1 other A or K (a significant risk), which I figured at around 40% (can't be bothered to do the formal calculation now). So even though I'm the odds on favourite to win, it's not worth the risk this early in my mind, as I think that I'd be better off trying to outplay the guy later (which I did)

I've been burned repeatedly by calling all-ins from maniacs with better pre-flop hands (but not pairs), and they catch their pair more than I do mine. I know in the long run this would pay off as a good call, but as an all-in decision, I'd rather play tight-weak early on and live to see more cards. In a game against better players, I might have to take this call more often, but I'm not there yet.

JeffreyGB

04-08-2005, 03:35 AM

#7 (permalink)

4-of-a-Kind

Join Date: Dec 2004

Location: Jenks, OK

Posts: 3,477

Actually, if he had a pocket pair for sure, then he was ahead of you. Depending on how high it was, he may have been as little as +2% or as much as +10% (again, assuming he didn't have AA or KK). If you put him on that, you made the right call. No need to do a coinflip early on.

I run a training site...

Check out strategy videos at GrinderSchool.com, from $10 / month.

Greedo017

04-08-2005, 05:35 PM

#8 (permalink)

Full House

Join Date: Jan 2005

Location: wearing the honors of honor and whatnot

Posts: 1,461

i agree with folding there. the only way i'd be pushing that is if it was late in it and i thought there was a good chance he was pushing without a pocket pair and i might have his ax dominated, or if i had him covered significantly and a loss wouldn't cripple me.

Chicago_Kid

05-31-2005, 11:18 PM

#9 (permalink)

Full House

Join Date: Aug 2004

Location: People let me tell you about my best friends...

Posts: 1,132

Quote:

Originally Posted by aokrongly

Others may disagree, but here's my 2 cents

I think Aokrongly covered some really good, actionable points to work on here--nice job.

More generally on reads, you need to watch players to pick up reads, which takes some time. Putting them in the TAG, TAP, LAG, LAP categories will do wonders for your understanding of their moves.

But, you also have to learn to act on these reads in ways that generate the highest profitability. There are lots of players that have pretty good instincts, categorize people well, and seem to know what players might do with a certain holding, but they never seem to get any value out of all that observation (this used to be me). This is because they are using them the hard way!

For example, I don't get as much of a kick out of CALLING a huge bluff on a read, than I do of RUNNING a huge bluff---and you shouldn't either. The reason is because the former is MUCH harder than the latter...and good poker players don't call, they bet and raise. In fact, players that raise more often make far fewer mistakes in the long run than those who raise less. This because:
- Sometimes the best hand will fold to you
- You can scare off drawers who can beat you
- You extract more value from bad players
- Your can "flush" out bigger hands to avoid getting trapped

You get none of these benefits by making huge CALLS based on reads, you get them by making huge BETS and RAISES!

Now clearly, reads are good for calling down maniacs that you know you have beat, too, but the "easier" profit from reads is realized through aggression and initiative. So, my opinion here is that reads are less valueable for catching thieves....than they are for being a thief yourself.

"Been gone so long, forgot how to poker"

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