I recently wrote up a post about math and poker - basically voicing a frustration about continually getting my money in with the best hand and losing a great amount of the time. Bruno made a comment in that post reminding me what seperates good players from bad ones.
Bad players have to make decisions based on small mathematical margins - eg. if they have aces they move all-in, they will take every AK vs AQ spot they can find, and they will put all their money in with top pair.
Good players avoid ever getting their money ALL-IN without a huge mathematical edge - eg. if they have a set, flush, straight, or full house (Spots where they generally stand to win more than 90% of the time).
Along with Bruno's comments, I was reading through the book Pressure Poker and the author mentions that even if you get your money ALL-IN as a huge favorite twice, against the right hand by your opponent you will likley be eliminated. His example was you have AsAd the flop comes Ac5h6h. Your opponent moves ALL-IN with 7h8h. You will win the hand once about 2/3 of the time, but if you run into two of these types of situations you will win both only about 1/3 of the time. His point is simply that tournaments take luck to win because you will face these types of situations sometimes and even though you have an advantage you can easily lose.
Taking this concept I started to consider that getting ALL-IN with aces against an underpair. You start out as about an 82% favorite, but twice you are only about 67% to win, three times and you will win all three only about 55% of the time.
Basically, basing any sort of strategic situation on trying to get all the money in where you have an overpair to your opponent's overpair means that by the 3rd time you are about 50/50 to have lost one of the three 82% favorite races. This really is not a great spot to get your money in (when you have less chips than your opponent).
Now change the situation slightly. Lets say you raise 3-5X the BB. Your opponent calls. The flop comes T82. This is where being a good player can pay off. If you can figure out when you are beat with these flops, than you saved yourself from losing a big pot when you got unlucky. Similarly, if you are ahead and can get it ALL-IN at this point you are about 90% to win from here (a much better place to try to win the most chips possible).
Being a good player is less about winning big pots - and more about picking up small pots 95% of the time. Occassionally you will hit a big enough hand to warrant getting ALL-IN, but I think this should always be the exception not the rule.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I understand what you are talking about in terms of the AA example. There should never be a spot you should not want to raise or reraise with AA. That is not what I'm saying.
What I was trying to suggest in this post was that some of the time you will get unlucky - in fact a lot of the time. The key is that if you are a good player you recognize that fact and adjust to it. Good players can fold hands that bad players cannot. Similarly, good players will not get as committed to hands as bad players.
What my initial post said was that if you have AA, KK, or AKs - pushing ALL-IN is a relatively good play because it gives you a chance to get a lot of chips with good odds to do so. I used poker stove to demonstrate that against your opponents' range of hands you are a pretty large favorite the majority of the time.
The big thing in tournaments is that your goal is not to make money in the long run - its to make decisions that give you the best chance to survive to the final table.
So lets say you get all your money in with pocket 6s against AK. Yes you are a favorite, but if you have 100 BBs this would be a completely awful play. Simply because 45% you will be knocked out of the tournament. The math behind this is basically that the 100BBs you lose if you lose are much more valuable than the 100BBs you win. In other words, if you win 100BBs, you will move up to 200BBs, but that will not be as significant as losing the 100BBs you have because that means you are out of the tournament. The value of the chips means that you need a much higher chance to win the hand to get all your money in. AA vs XX is a pretty good spot to do that - one that I think is the only one you should look to do preflop.
I don't think its wrong to try to get the money in when you are a favorite - even a small favorite. But this is only when either: 1) you have little choice (shortstacked) or 2) when you have a lot of extra chips and can afford to gamble (here the value of the chips is nearly equal, that is why its a smart mathematical play).
When you are average stack the correct strategy is to look for locks and get the money in when the math places your opportunity cost above the value of your chips - much higher than 51% chance to win...
You can't expect to win much more than 2/3 of the time.
Post a Comment