overplay. common pitfall.

to overplay any hand that is not the nuts is always a risk, especially at the higher limits. whats seperates the great players from the good players is the ability to distiguish exactly how much to push, without pushing too hard, and without pushing into a fire pit. This is why poker takes a lifetime to master. these small edges. realizing when one is beat and having to ability to withdraw when one realizes it. all these factors put together makes a winning player. but how much one wins also depends on these factors.
two pair into a set. tpbk into two pair. st8 into flush. these circumstances are how players lose money. without these circumstances money would not be transfered (among obove average players at least). the great players are able to exploit these cirumstances. they are able to fold their two pair against the set but get the most value against the tptk. the pros are able to get the most and lose the least in these situations. may sound obvious to many but to many people on this site this realization of the basic theory on becoming a winning player may help a lot.
discuss?

Deleted for political correctness

Actually it doesn't really help me much to know what a winning player can do. I wanna know HOW he does it!

Originally Posted by Murd0c

Umm I don't mean to sound like a dick but why are you handing out bad, typo ridden advice like your god of poker when you have all of 25 posts to your account?

Some people have actually been known to play poker before they've joined this site...

I over-play my hands all the time. I might stop if the stupid fish would quit calling me down with worse hands quite so often.

jack if i knew how to do it all the time i would never lose. but knowing one of the biggest leaks in poker is one of the first steps towards becoming a better player.

Originally Posted by bigboy5540

knowing one of the biggest leaks in poker

Tilt, strippers, booze and stupidity in no particular order.

I over-play my hands all the time. I might stop if the stupid fish would quit calling me down with worse hands quite so often.

Isnt the idea to find those who suck worse than you and play with them
Thus above.

Top two pair is usually sitting real pretty in my games...

My biggest leaks don't have to do with huge hands vs other huge hands. I don't think most players would say they do.

My biggest leaks are cashing out and nine-tabling.

My biggest leak is bluffing at the 25NL tables. And yet I still don't stop!

Wait, are you saying that we should avoid spending lots of money on hands that aren't as good as other hands? I may need to rethink my basic strategy...

Originally Posted by samsonite2100

Wait, are you saying that we should avoid spending lots of money on hands that aren't as good as other hands? I may need to rethink my basic strategy...

So that's what I've been doing wrong...

<<edit>>
Eh, maybe got a little self-righteous defending OP's signal against some of the noise. Probably not called for. Just keep in mind that a post doesn't have to rock your world for it to be important - thinking out loud or whatever - to the OP.

Originally Posted by Miffed22001

I over-play my hands all the time. I might stop if the stupid fish would quit calling me down with worse hands quite so often.

Isnt the idea to find those who suck worse than you and play with them
Thus above.

Assume for the posters sake that you are at such a high level, loose games are not an option. Such as Phil Ivey for instance.

Here's my take. An advanced player makes big time reads. He knows how much, how little, or what kind of action another player is willing to give with a specific range of hands. He knows player A will always smooth call when he's way ahead, but always raises draws or weaker hands he feels are ahead in position. He knows what the board is telling him. He knows what the player is telling him against the board.

At the highest level, the megalodons are the hyper aware class of players. They think on so many levels that if you heard them think as you were playing them, it would scare the shit out of you, and make you want to leave and never return. You would feel defeated, owned, outmatched. Whatever way you want to put it, it's that, unless you were thinking on those same terms.

The reason great players hate playing new bad players is because great players have adapted their thought process to deal with the everchanging strategy of a great opponent. Great players can tend to over think situations against bad players.

Here's my take:

No offense, Rondavu, but I wonder if sometimes you don't overestimate the thought processes of world-class players, quote-unquote. Put Phil Ivey at a $25 Party table and, yes, I would expect him to be +EV, but he'd also stand a fair chance of getting stacked. I'm sure when you pit a table of pros who know each others' games against each other the levels of analytic thinking can be tremendous, but we're still not talking about grandmaster-level chess here.

In my opinion what makes pros pro is: patience, bankroll, fearlessness, math ability, patience, and patience, in that order.

Originally Posted by samsonite2100

In my opinion what makes pros pro is: patience, bankroll, fearlessness, math ability, patience, and patience, in that order.

You don't think they're making incredibly textured reads most are incapable of intellectually, or too lazy to manufacture? Fair enough. I think so.

Originally Posted by samsonite2100

we're still not talking about grandmaster-level chess here.

Aren't we?

You don't think they're making incredibly textured reads most are incapable of intellectually, or too lazy to manufacture? Fair enough. I think so.

Of course I think they're making consistently good, occasionally great reads. I don't think, for the most part, they're reads you and I couldn't make. Although, I agree with you that most people (myself, too often) are too lazy to do so. I should've put "an insane level of focus" on my list of pro attributes.

Aren't we?

I don't think so. If I played Phil Ivey heads up 10 times (online, that is--he would scare me too much live), I might take one or two off him, and not just b/c of lucky cards. If I played Garry Kasparov ten times, or 1000 times, he would hand me my ass every single time.

Originally Posted by samsonite2100

I don't think so. If I played Phil Ivey heads up 10 times (online, that is--he would scare me too much live), I might take one or two off him, and not just b/c of lucky cards. If I played Garry Kasparov ten times, or 1000 times, he would hand me my ass every single time.

Thats just because of the nature of the game. Chess doesnt have a luck factor. He can get you allin with TT against his AA 1000 times and you will win some of them. You still got your ass handed to you.

Reread my post.

It's not just the luck factor. Chess is a perfectly analytical game. Poker is a game of imperfect information, inferences, and guesswork. Yes, I think top poker players are very good analytical thinkers. No, I don't think they're on the same level as chess grandmasters, nor do they need to be.

Originally Posted by samsonite2100

Reread my post.

It's not just the luck factor. Chess is a perfectly analytical game. Poker is a game of imperfect information, inferences, and guesswork. Yes, I think top poker players are very good analytical thinkers. No, I don't think they're on the same level as chess grandmasters, nor do they need to be.

But once you get good at the game you can make some pretty accurate guesses. Once you get onto the third or forth or whatever crazy level of thinking these guys can do these days its some pretty hardcore strategising.

Let's put it this way. Comparison of the differences between chess and poker is moot. Are there people who know poker as well as Kasparov knows Chess? That's really the meat of the argument here.

I'm not going to pretend I know the answer to that, but I do believe there are some master level poker players.

I agree with you there, but IMO master level poker play has less to do with genius-level analytic thinking than master-level chess. Like, you wouldn't be able to understand past three positions of a Kasparov/Karpov match, if they sat down and tried to explain why they made the moves they did.

On the other hand, I don't think the final table play of the most analytically in depth poker pro--let's say Chris Ferguson in the 2000 WSOP--would be that hard to understand, if he sat down and explained all his decisions for you. It would mostly have to do with pot odds and player reads, would be my guess.

I think the best poker player in the world has all kinds of edges on average players, but the most significant ones are in the realm of personal control and focus.

Of course, this is all total speculation. I could be completely wrong.

Instinctively I think Samsonite is probably correct, but their will be people who, through a natural ability and a vast amount of experience and study, will have got about as "good" at Poker as it's possible to get. The problem is that at the highest margins, luck is still just as much of a leveller as at the lowest, whereas in chess it simply isn't.

And it's a good thing it isn't.

People don't gamble on chess because if you can't win, you can't win. It's like pool. A big action pool game might be $20 a game for most local non-pro players. They'll lay down ten times that on a poker table.

Thank God for the luck factor.

People don't gamble on chess because if you can't win, you can't win.

Take a walk around Washington Square Park in NYC some time.
But yeah, your point holds--there's no billion dollar online chess industry.

Btw, I'm not trying to denigrate the ability of great poker players. Their inhuman focus, fearlessness, and stamina notwithstanding, they can absolutely make great reads that I'm personally incapable of at present. But I do hope to be on that level of analytic ability, or thereabouts, someday. Whereas, as much as I like playing chess, I have no illusions that I could ever be within 1000 miles of grandmaster level, let alone the Fischer/Kasparov level where you can beat supercomputers.

I don't think so. If I played Phil Ivey heads up 10 times (online, that is--he would scare me too much live), I might take one or two off him, and not just b/c of lucky cards. If I played Garry Kasparov ten times, or 1000 times, he would hand me my ass every single time.

Your strategy could be to push all-in preflop with every hand and you would win more then this. Not gonna argue with the second example.

Was chess champion of Belgium in the open series some ten odd years ago, so I know a thing or two about chess.. and poker is so totally different.

Chess has perfect information, poker has imperfect information. There is some 'human factor' in chess, but that is really neglegible when compared to poker. The purely 'analytical' complexity of poker is really not that high when compared to chess.. the complexity in poker comes from advanced reads and such.

Ofcourse I'll need more poker experience to make more definite comparisons, but playing "analytically correct" poker isn't that hard.. controlling your emotions however (staying cool, because getting annoyed is poker suicide), and seeing patterns in the game of your adversaries, even when faced with imperfect information (ie if you drop to his raise, you won't see his cards so you don't know if he was bluffing or not), is the real skill..

Hey Jack I love chess! I'm better than anyone I've played against that hasn't studied the game, but from what it sounds like no where near your level.

Do I have to memorize openings in chess to be truly good at it?