Poker: Strategy Update

I’ve been hearing the same chorus of criticisms from the couple readers who care about my poker outings. So I reread all my poker posts and comments.

Observations:
1) More bad beats in there than I expected. I really don’t think I forget about my good beats – I was surprised to see how many times I went in with the best hand and lost.
2) I’m getting better at bluffing but it is still against my personality.
3) A lot of big hands that I write about could have turned out different if I had bet very aggressively on them.
4) I am an early chip leader a lot.
5) I don’t use a big chip stack to bully people, I use it to wait opponents out.

Conclusions:
1) I’m not that bad. Poker has a lot of luck in it. When you play a hand right, go in big with the better hand, but the other guy catches better cards – what can you do? And it’s happened to me more than it has to the other guy. As a statistics guy I know this is often a justification used by losers who aren’t observant and honest enough to remember what really happened. I don’t think I’m that way. When I’ve won due to good luck I’ve been upfront about it.
2) I need to bluff more. I’ve always known that.
3) I am not going to particularly concentrate on betting more aggressively within the big hand. The critics are right to see how some of my hands could have gone better with bigger betting. However, that is still a “could go better” not “would go better”. The harder question is how much better I did by not always being aggressive in hands. I’ve saved lots of money with well-read folds. Sometimes you bet aggressively and you end up losing it all. For the most part I’ve managed to avoid the “big mistake” hands. In addition you don’t want other players piegon-holing you as an always-raising player, you want to keep them confused. I don’t think any of them can read me or my bets and that’s how I like it. But the main reason is that I am instead going to concentrate on:
4) Bullying. Master Men, you’ve got me there. I need to use my big stack to intimidate other players, pick up cheap pots, keep them from ever being in hands against me. Don’t let them limp in. Keep them afraid of playing against me, keep them playing against each other and knocking each other out while I take a “big stack tax”.

That’s my resolve. When I’m ahead, act like it. Instead of playing for a seemingly-certain 3rd or better finish, I’ll use my stack continuously to keep getting richer.

I’ll keep you posted on results.

5 thoughts on “Poker: Strategy Update”

  1. I have been thinking about your conundrum in trying to come up with some methodology to calculate whether you have been on the winning end of bad beats, overall, and I think that the goal here is to actually NOT be on the winning end. Bear with me. If you are an expert winning player, most likely your style is the accepted standard of expert players: tight-aggressive (TAG). That is, playing tight (aka folding or betting small) when you have what looks to be a losing hand, and betting aggressively when you know you have the winning hand. Of course, the caveat here is that you mix up your playing so no one really knows what you have, but overall, that is how you play. It seems to me that if you are playing TAG, then you will often have lesser players than you (“calling stations”) calling your bets to the river to try to draw to their flush/straight/set, even when there is very little chance they’ll hit it. In the long run, you’ll win these hands: even though you may lose one big one, you’ll win 4 or 5 of them. Clearly the point of betting aggressively is to persuade the other guy NOT to keep calling you, and just to take the pot right there. This way, you will win more like 10 of 10 smaller pots vs 7 of 10 larger pots if called to the river. So if you are aggressive, and you are playing poker with worse players than you and they are calling you to the river (the donkeys!), then you can expect to get beat a fair amount of the time. On the flip side, being a better player, you will often fold when you see them betting big and you have a less-than-nuts hand (i.e. play tight). In this case, you will only be on the winning end of bad beats once in a blue moon, when you call to the river because you had a set and catch a full house/quads or something like that…or you just misread the other guy and get lucky. So yeah, being a better player, I think you’ll get a lot more bad beats on you, then you’ll dish out to the other guy…but that’s okay, because that means that you’re playing the way you should be, and you’ll definitely win over the long run. Sound right? (lol)

  2. Good conclusions Muttrox. As I know you know, calculating odds and the math part of poker is only 1/3 the game. Your math and reasoning skills may make you above avg. for your home games, but moving to the next level requires all the other stuff…

    Lil Bro, why you picking on poker? Where’s your blog?

  3. Maybe I’m comparing the wrong two things. I’ve been thinking about the bad beats that happen both ways, and there is no doubt that I’ve suffered more bad beats than I have given other people. I think that’s good — if you are giving bad beats it means you’re going in with the worse hand. My point is that when I go in big, I usually have the best hand, that’s a good thing.

    But I suppose the right comparison is the number of bad beats I’ve gotten compared to the times where I could have been bad beated, but wasn’t. I don’t know how to quantify that. Nor do I know what the correct ratio is. You’d have to take the expected percentage outcome of each hand and average it all. Weight it by the money at stake or percentage of stacks involved or something. Do I come out ahead there? I suppose I don’t know.

    But what can you do about it? In your example, if you play more aggresively and bet bigger with the Kings then
    * My opponent probably never goes in with the 10-9 in the first place.
    * I can build a reputation for having Kings, allowing me to bluff more with nothing.

    That seems to be what commenters think I should do. But on the other hand, if I bet the Kings bigger…
    * Pots are smaller, I can’t get as much profit (because they fold earlier)
    * If I do get beat, I lose more money (because I’ve bet more)
    * It’s easier to peg my reads (because I’m always being aggressive and never slowplaying)

    I honestly don’t know where the line is. How should I measure this? What’s the optimum play/strategy, and how do I know if I’m doing bad or good? (I am not going to be Gus Hansen and tape record every hand.)

    I don’t talk about the K-K beating the 10-9. But I also don’t talk about how I kept the 10-9 in the hand in the first place, allowing me to take a big pot instead of a small one. Because that’s a hand I should be in on. Getting big money in when you’re ahead in the hand is the name of the game, right?

  4. You don’t really believe that you have more bad beats than expected, do you? I mean, you’ve played an awful lot of poker hands — enough to avoid some statistical aberrations from a small sample size.

    Without ever seeing any of your hands, I’m guessing that since you know the odds, you take your routine wins as givens, and you tend to only remember the bad beats. Example — your opponent goes all in and you are a prohibitive favorite. You win. If this happens, it likely gets no mention in Muttroxia. It not only would not make for good reading, but it probably doesn’t really even register in your brain. “And my K-K won over my opponent’s 10-9, and he busted in 4th place…” That scenario never comes up in your recounts. Instead, you remember when that 10-9 hits the straight on the river, and you lose half your stack. And then it gets mentioned in Muttroxia.

    Think of a golfer who hits a good shot. It hits the green and ends up 12 feet from the cup. He hit it well, and it had a good result. He thinks nothing of it. However, if he hits a good shot and the wind takes it and blows it into the bunker, then he remembers it. Damn stinking luck! Similar scenario. It happens to everyone, but he remembers it more when it happens to him.

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