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| bigred |
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Discussion will be open Thursday evening. Questions: 1)"In small pots, when in doubt fold" Elaborate on what the author means and the benefits of this motto. 2) Do you make your commitment decision preflop? If not, when do you make your decision? How does this affect your game? How can you use preflop commitment decisions and conditional commitments to improve your game? 3) What does "out of position out of action" mean? How can not following this motto get you into trouble? What advantages do bluffs have when in position? 4) List any hands from the Fundamentals in Practice section that you would like to discuss and why. 5) Would you like the thread to be opened once discussion questions are posted? |
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LOL OPERATIONS
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Play for FREE and practice your game at...Join the FTR Poker Forum to disable these banners and start posting! | ||||
| Xianti |
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| May I suggest unlocking these as soon as you post the discussion questions? | |||
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| bigred |
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| I would like the readers to take a little time to reflect before responding but I'll leave it up to them. Question 5 added for this week. | |||
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LOL OPERATIONS
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| OhBollocks |
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Ill get on to the rest laterz. |
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| Jason |
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1) I'm having trouble remembering this quote off the top of my head. I guess the line of reasoning is that small pots have a way of escalating quick in no limit and when the pot is big, it should be tougher to get you out. So, if you aren't committed to your hand and the plan, it's probably wiser to get out of the way now than lose a little or a lot of money later. For example, with JJ, you raise 8x and get a caller. The flop has a Queen with two hearts. You put out a pot size bet to chase out his draws. He calls. Turn is a rag and you put out a 1/2 pot bet again for value and to punish his draw. He calls. River is a rag, but he's called you ever street and the pot has 97.5 big blinds out there. The pot is so big, you really don't want to put any more money out there. You check and he puts in a 1/2 pot bet. It's hard to fold. It's hard to call. It's hard to raise. All of the doubt you have NOW would have been better served checking or folding earlier in the hand. 2) I like to see flops and out play people, so I typically don't make my commitment decisions pre-flop - especially if I'm deep. My stack size or my villain's stack size will be the main factor that can make committed pre-flop OR if I have a really loose/aggressive/aggressive maniac, I could do so pre-flop. After the flop is when I'm most likely to be committed, but also, as they suggest, cards can come on the turn or river that make me uncommitted. 3) I took this to mean quite simply that you don't want to play hardly AT ALL out of position and know that when you do, you're getting the worst of it. I loved the first sentence in this section about how even if you think you're aware of position, you're probably underestimating it. I remember when I first started playing poker, I thought, "Who cares about position? If I have pocket Aces in first position or last position and flop an Ace, I'm good." But the more you play, the more you realize not only that it IS important, but how important it is and the more I play, the more important it seems. Obviously, not following the advice and playing out of position can get you into a lot of trouble because you'll lose more money with the same hand than if you did have position. You give information away first. If you have a great hand and bet, villain can fold. If you have a great hand and check, villain may check behind. If you try to bluff, villain can legitimately raise you with a good hand or bluff your bluff. Bad position also helped contribute to the pot getting out of control the example I posed in #1. 4) I just got the book Tuesday, skipped the basics and am on "Hand Reading", so I'll reconvene and talk about this question then. 5) I don't really mind either way. It's probably fine just to let us post right after you do because we presumably should have already taken the week to read the material and think of real hands, situations, and questions and answers to discuss. |
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- Jason
 
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| bjsaust |
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1)"In small pots, when in doubt fold" Elaborate on what the author means and the benefits of this motto. I paraphrase this a lot talking about hands. Basically, its sometimes better to make a small mistake by folding the best hand early, than making a big mistake later when you're behind. A lot of it has to do with your equity in the pot. ISF goes into it in one of his strategy articles, but if your hand is unlikely to improve (TP hands are the classic examples) and it looks early in the hand like we could end up playing in a big pot, then if if you're only facing a small raise on an early street we can make a fold rather than facing bigger bets later. 2) Do you make your commitment decision preflop? If not, when do you make your decision? How does this affect your game? How can you use preflop commitment decisions and conditional commitments to improve your game? Rarely. Throughout the book the authors sometimes make unrealistic expectations of our ability to manipulate our potsize on the flop. Obviously if we get into 3-bet/4-bet situations it becomes easier to commit, and stuff like PPs we can definately make a commitment decision on (set or forget), although as he mentions we can always change that decision later. I'm more likely to make commitment decisions on the flop than preflop, however the hands I play are influenced by potential commitment decisions (e.g., against a shorter stack I may not play a SC I would play v's a larger stack). 3) What does "out of position out of action" mean? How can not following this motto get you into trouble? What advantages do bluffs have when in position? Position is king! Being OOP gives all the power to the other play. We lose all our ability to control the pot. The main advantage that bluffs have IP is that we've already seen our opponents check so they're more likely to give up on the hand, whereas if we're OOP we've got no indication at all whether they like the hand. 5) Would you like the thread to be opened once discussion questions are posted? Doesnt really bother me either way. |
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Just playing to improve.
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| Erpel |
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FYI, I’m going to be late submitting my comments next week as I’ll be off skiing in Austria and it’s family time. Once again I find a well-written introduction with something absolutely crucial to how we need to think about poker. I fear that knowledgeable players who re-read the book will skim or skip introductions such as these and therefore miss out on what may be the most valuable to them. It’s one of those things that you grok deeper and which makes more and more sense the more you know about the particulars: Playing poker well is managing risk well. In that sense, we need to be like the bank – or the casino if you will. We need to lay and accept odds that are favourable to us every time. We need to accurately assess both risk and reward. This builds a lot on the general principle of estimation that I got long winded about when talking about the first section of the book. Starting on the Risk vs Reward section I know a few things about where it wants to go, and I want to comment on where it doesn’t go, and why I think it doesn’t go there. It says you have your immediate risks and rewards (current bet, current pot) and your potential risks and rewards (future bets won or lost – implied and reverse implied odds). What it doesn’t go into is metagame. The reason I want to mention this is that metagame is often mentioned in a similar way to how potential risk and reward is mentioned here – ok I play a marginal hand here so next time I play a nut hand here the same way I am more likely to be paid off. I think this is one more principle that is often overvalued by beginners. By overvalued I actually more mean: Used as an excuse for making bad plays. You first need a solid game, then you need to be able to accurately assess, quantify and qualify the value of that type of play against the particular opponents you are playing – then you should start playing with it. You shouldn’t start with it just because you can comprehend the basic principle on a higher level – you need to understand exactly how it applies in this exact situation. It’s yet again something I think is likely to lead a rank beginner astray more than help, and there’s nothing wrong in deliberately ignoring metagame to work on basic, fundamental skills. I think the book here deliberately does not introduce it because we’re better off not letting it confuse our thought processes here. So if you think about metagame while reading this section, I suggest you don’t. I think you could say the same about balancing. It seems to me that this section of the book is about playing to maximise equity for a single hand – the current one. When you’re a beginner it’s dizzying to think that you are required to have a plan for each of 47 possible cards that can come on the turn and each of 46 possible cards that can come on the river. That’s like 2162 plans I need to have in my head at the same time! Get used to it. Don’t shy away from it just because it seems inhuman and dizzying. Start small and work your way up. If it seems hard, it’s probably worth learning really well, because most people you play against won’t have bothered and then you have an advantage over them. There are shortcuts, obviously, but working hard, repetition and truly grokking concepts is more important. Shortcuts only help when you know the way, otherwise they might just lead you astray. The talk about big pots vs small pots and calling vs folding being correct is something that’s possible to understand on a deep and intuitive level in a way that can inform a lot of decisions. Or it’s something that can be understood on a high and superficial level. There’s an example with a hand that’s correct to fold when stacks are big and correct to call when stacks are short. When you’re not playing very well or paying attention you often end up in situations on a late street where the pot is big, you are facing a bet and it’s a mistake to fold – but at the same time you think you’re probably behind. The error here typically occurs earlier in the hand when you’ve decided to invest money in this hand and play a big pot with it. So basically, the fact that the dynamics of a big pot and a small pot are different means we need to be particularly careful when we decide (bet) or agree to (call) play a big pot. So not only do we need to understand how action changes the ranges that we are playing and playing against, we also need to understand how the change in pot sizes changes what hands it is correct to continue with on the next streets. Right, I said it, now I go on to read basically the same thing. I let it stand. On the pot control example with the set of kings, it’s always tempting to think like the idiot (he got there anyway and by betting bigger we just ensured that we had to pay him off no?). I still have that impulse sometimes. I know it’s wrong, which is why every time I come across an example like this I go over it a couple of times to improve my intuitive understanding and make the correct thinking intuitive. It’s better this way because the 35 times he pays the steep price and misses the heart on the river we make so much money that it easily outweighs the 9 times that he hits a heart and we pay him off. What’s important is that at the time we make our decisions literally, and take a minute to think about what literally means here, any card can come. The outcome is still unknown. We have two possible outcomes, each with a chance of occurring and each with a financial impact for us. We make our decision based on that and if we make that same decision a million times in the same spot – if our decisions are better than those of our opponents we profit, greatly. It’s mentioned specifically that if you’re headsup on a dry board and looking to pot control it can be good to check the flop through. I mention this mostly to myself. When I want to pot control and/or build a medium pot I always struggle to decide where I want to slow down. I tend to have a problem identifying the flop as a street that is good to play slowly or for pot control, so whenever I come across a good example of a reason to play the flop slowly I try to take note of it. Ok, so headsup and on a dry flop. Makes sense, because headsup there are fewer cards that come that improve someone’s hand. And dry flop for pretty much the same reason. The drawing hand / wet flop situation is always more tricky. I can see an argument for checking through a wet flop and then only continuing with my mediocre hands if the turn is unlikely to have hit any draws. While protecting your hand and pricing out draws is a sound principle, I may be holding a hand I don’t want to build a big pot with, and trying to protect my hand or price out draws may cause a big pot. And while it’s a mistake to give free cards to draws it may be a bigger mistake to build a big pot on a weak holding. It also means that if I check through and a card comes that seems to complete draws and the opponent bets at it, I need to be prepared to fold my marginal holding. The problem of course is that if I know my villain here has played A9s, there are two to a suit on the flop and the third to that suit come on the turn – he only has a flush a fourth of the time. If he knows I fold 100% of the time to a bet on a card that completes a flush it’s so easy to bluff me out. So I need a plan that makes me less exploitable in that kind of situation. Because flops still have two cards to come I guess I think mathematically flops are favourable to bet / call bets with for drawing hands and turns are favourable to bet / call bets with for made hands. Just brainstorming. Anyway, my kid brother’s visiting and my mother always harps on how good he is at baking buns, so I figured I’d snag his recipe – and here it is! Dissolve yeast in half a cup (125 ml or so) of lukewarm water (35-40 degrees celsius). Add a generous spoonful of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. Add 300 ml of milk, and 150g of melted butter. Add 1 egg. Add flour (about 700g – just keep going until you get the right consistency) and knead the dough well for 5ish minutes until you have a nice smooth consistency. Leave the dough covered by a tea towel or similar for 20 minutes or so in a cozy/warm place. Roll the dough into a cylinder, part it into 20-24 equally sized lumps and shape each lump into a bun and put them on an oiled pan or baking paper as you prefer. Cover again and leave to rise for another 10-20 minutes. Mix up an egg in a small bowl (yolk and white, don’t whisk though) and apply egg to the top of the buns with a brush (for the right crust) before putting them in the a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees celsius for about 20 minutes. Cut them through horisontally apply butter and eat. Good stuff. When in doubt, fold. This advice cuts directly to the bone in the area of minimising your losses. Basically it does a lot of things at the same time. Every poker decision is a test of our estimation and our risk management skills, and when you are in doubt you have failed to put your opponent on a range of hands or make a plan against that hand range. These times we should not shrug and gamble it up, but rather take the literally zero equity fold. It’s a rule that is going to help reduce the cost of our learning. You could rephrase it to ask if we are sure we are in a hand we want to play a big pot with – and if not we should fold. Mistakes in small pots cost less than mistakes in big pots, and it’s better to make a mistake in a small pot (by folding) than it is to make a mistake in a big pot (by having to call because you are now priced in). I think the main point here though is that it’s an escape clause. When you’re in doubt – you have failed as a poker player in this hand and it’s time to own up to it and minimise your losses in this hand and pay better attention to the next one. Don’t put money in on an investment unless you’re sure it’s a good one. That way lies madness, surely. Commitment decisions preflop. Every time I choose to play a hand preflop I try to consider the likely villains, the stacks involved and what kind of flop I’m likely to commit on. If I can’t see a profitable outcome clearly I tend to just fold preflop rather than play to see what happens. Out of position, out of the action. This quote brings back memories of the position chapter in this book which is very good and explains the huge difference in pot sizes that are out of your control when you are out of position. Basically it means that you can only play hands OOP that make nut hands because your options to control the pot are often non-existent. This doesn’t mean that you can only play strong hands – what it means is that you can only play hands (where the stack sizes are right for it) that when they hit, hit so strongly that you can commit with them. Hands for comment. I read them and I think they’re discussed well enough in the book. Threads and discussions. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if the discussion is open as soon as the questions get posted. We can all read ahead to cover other parts of the book if we feel like it, and if we’re really interested in getting something out of this exercise we should know to clear our minds and try to answer the questions on our own. If we read other peoples replies before coming up with our own two things can happen: 1) we learn something from other peoples replies that cause us to be more productive and complete in coming up with our own answers 2) we limit our answer to consider only the aspects of the question that were answered by the earlier respondent. We can’t babysit – every person needs to be responsible for his own learning and need to approach the study section in their own way. If people are looking for cheat-sheet aides they’re not going to learn anything anyway and we can’t help them. I think we have to trust that those who really want to learn something will take other peoples responses into account in a responsible way. At the same time, we also want to encourage people who read, study and submit notes, comments and replies to read the posts of other people and comment on where other people are seeing something they haven't seen or not seeing something that should be obvious. By delaying the start of the discussion I think we are reducing the chance of interaction between book club members. I’m well aware some of my replies are utter crap in this post – it’s been a crazy week, I haven’t played much poker, likely won’t play any tomorrow and from Saturday to Saturday I’m gone for a week. I may revisit this thread and come up with more comprehensive replies for the actual study questions, but I did enjoy going through the fundamentals section of the book once more. I’ll be bringing the book for my trip and probably skim/read some sections of it over the course of the next week and/or on flights etc. |
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| dranger7070 |
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1)"In small pots, when in doubt fold" Elaborate on what the author means and the benefits of this motto. - I think what he is trying to say is if you have a marginal hand in a small pot, and villain bets into you, and you're not sure where you stand in the hand, just fold. Pretty much rule #1 imo, "small hands build small pots, big hands build big pots." You don't want to get attached to a pot with a hand that has little/no showdown value. 2) Do you make your commitment decision preflop? If not, when do you make your decision? How does this affect your game? How can you use preflop commitment decisions and conditional commitments to improve your game? - Before I read this section of the book I never even CONSIDERED thinking about committing to a hand, until my chips were in the middle. Obviously this = losing strategy. Lately, I've been trying to think about how far I want to go with a hand when I get them PF, what kind of flop/board will change my opinion of that. - I think a lot of newer players (like myself) could use preflop commitment and conditional commitment to improve their game just by PLANNING the hand before it happens. Think about what kind of board will be good/bad for your hand. Think about how you will get the money in, etc. It's all about the plan for the hand. The more I practice this the better I will get (just like everything else). I used to kind of play a hand just however the hell I wanted to. Now I think about how the best way to get all the money in with AA or KK, or some other random hand. 3) What does "out of position out of action" mean? How can not following this motto get you into trouble? What advantages do bluffs have when in position? - This literally means what it says to me. If you are out of position (i.e. in early position) you shouldn't be getting involved unless you have: a.) a big hand or b.) the correct pot/implied odds to do so. You don't want to play marginal hands OOP against an opponent. It doesn't (completely) matter who that opponent is. In position=AA, OOP=72o. 4) List any hands from the Fundamentals in Practice section that you would like to discuss and why. - Eh... getting read to go to class, I'll look through either afterwards tonight or tomorrow and post some if I find any. 5) Would you like the thread to be opened once discussion questions are posted? - Either way is fine imo. Opening it a few days later IS probably better because it gives ppl a chance to organize their thoughts before posting, instead of just ZOMG I GOTTA HURRY AND READ SO I CAN POST SOMETHING FIRST. |
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| bigred |
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I don't have a lot of time so I'm going to respond to your post quickly and formulate my own stuff later. Quote:
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LOL OPERATIONS
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| bjsaust |
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Just playing to improve.
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| cardplayer52 |
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1) In small pots, when in doubt fold" Elaborate on what the author means and the benefits of this motto. I think this is simple if you don't have a big hand and it's a small pot fold if the pot starts to get big. In the eg. in the book you have Qd7d in the BB the flop comes QhTs3h you bet 2/3 the pot($10 into a $15 pot) and there's a raise to $40 which is more than a pot sized bet. You easy could be beaten here by 2 pair a set or they may even have AhTh. So you have an easy fold. In a tourney w/this hand I may check to see what happens. The pot is small and a check may help keep it that way. There are way to many scare cards that may come on the turn. Also by checking here you may induce weaker hands to call your turn bet. 2) Do you make your commitment decision preflop? If not, when do you make your decision? How does this affect your game? How can you use preflop commitment decisions and conditional commitments to improve your game? Yes I try to make my decisions pre flop. I may say i'm not committed if I call here. My stack is a big factor if i'm committing pre flop. I may have a deep stack raise my QQ just to see a reraise all in and a call. Do I like my QQ now? Maybe not. Do i like my QQ now if a have a short stack I'll tell you after the river(cuz my chips are already in). I do like the eg. you got KsKd on a KhJs4h board and by betting pot sized bets(I favor pot sized bets here w/ draws and 2 players) by the time the river heart comes your decision was already made. You had most of your money in by the river because you bet to protect your hand on every street. 3) What does "out of position out of action" mean? How can not following this motto get you into trouble? What advantages do bluffs have when in position? Position is key in this game. OOP fold. Being in the blinds and calling a raise w/ a drawing hand can be trouble. Even playing a strong hand such as AK OOP can be trouble as you miss the flop 2/3rds of the time. You cbet and it's called the turn is a blank then what? Do you fire another bullet and build a big pot with a small hand? Although I don't mind calling an UTG raiser from the blinds w/ a deep stack and a pocket pair. I'll even call w/suited connectors if there's are other callers as i'll have relative position after the flop. Bluffs much easier in position too. eg. The AK OOP. Just think of all those times someone OOP bluffed all in into you when you had the nutz. Being in position you can also float the flop to take it away on the turn. You get to see all the actions in front of you before you act. Even with trash if the flop and turn are checked to me and i'm on the button i'll fire one in there it's a freebe right? 4) List any hands from the Fundamentals in Practice section that you would like to discuss and why. The one on page 57. The QsQc on the Jh9d7h board. If the villian has JJ,99 or 77 you just made there calling your preflop raise correct by committing all in on the flop here. They invested $50 to win $585(and more if the other guy calls) which is 11.7 to 1(they only needed 7.5 to 1 here). Although they proabably don't have a set as they most likely bet right out given the board. I agree your committed here. I would have been tempted in the past to bet 1/2 to 2/3 the pot as both players checked. But after reading this book and considering the size of the current pot in relation to my stack already I agree w/the pot sized bet here. And i'm not really sure what you can do here to protect against the set(except rivering the Queen). I was just wondering how you would protect against the set here? 5) Would you like the thread to be opened once discussion questions are posted? Whatever is easier for you. |
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| cardplayer52 |
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| Jason |
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| The specifics of the example I used are secondary to the main point that things can get out of control fast in no limit. The authors specifically mention that with a side by side example of limit versus no limit. Early bets in a small pot can quickly turn into tough decisions in a big pot. | |||
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- Jason
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| OhBollocks |
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I have to admit to being guilty of skimming your posts Erpel. My apologies 
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| bigred |
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| Best poker post ever, amirite? | |||
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LOL OPERATIONS
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| Jason |
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| Are we going to start talking about Week 3 anytime soon? | |||
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- Jason
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| Latest Poker News | |
| KoRnholio |
05-26-2012, 03:08 PM Australia Legalized Online Poker coming up in next 6 to 12 Months
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| According to an email sent out by Mark Bryan, a gaming analyst at Merrill Lynch, the Australian government plans to legalize online poker sometime in the next six to 12 months. This move will coincide ... | |
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