Making the Most of It
One of the blogs I read, Sound of a Suckout, had a post a few days ago about how you could sacrifice some profit to try to minimize your variance. The author, ScurvyDog, is a winning player at $15/$30 limit hold em, and I highly recommend his blog.
Here's an excerpt from that post, titled Pioneering Days.
"... there's no law etched in stone that you must subscribe to the cult of hyper aggressive, in an attempt to maximize BB/100. I'm not talking about nut peddling, far from it, but more about situations like playing 88 from MP, A10s UTG+1, etc. Open-raising with it if everyone folds to you is +EV, especially if you back it up by playing hard and fast, even when the flop misses you, but it's also going to increase your overall variance and likely not greatly increase your BB/100. ...
There's nothing wrong with simply folding that pair of eights, despite the fact that raising with it is slightly EV in the long run, if folding it serves a larger purpose as far as your goals."
It's an interesting idea. Perhaps it could work if you could identify the most marginal situations and sacrifice tiny percentages of expected value.
But I disagree.
I believe there's only one way to play poker: tight and aggressive. You need to ram and jam; you need to play every hand to the fullest. You need to bet and raise, not call and fold.
Additionally, I don't know how possible it is to only sacrifice a small percentage of expected value by folding those pocket eights preflop. Profits often come from making the most of marginal hands. By playing them aggressively, one of a few things will happen:
1. You will win the pot by betting hard with what you believe is the best hand.
2. You will win the hand by flopping a set or a draw that pans out on the turn or river.
3. You will win the hand by bluffing.
4. You will get into a heads-up battle where you have to spend some money to see a showdown.
5. You will bet the flop and fold to a raise.
Overall, you will make money by playing those eights. Why would you sacrifice any of your potential earnings by folding a possible winning hand?
If you're afraid of the variance, you should step down to lower limits.
Poker is about making the most out of every situation through thoughtful and aggressive plays. Anything less leads down a weak and tight road, and that's a road you don't want to travel.
posted by Gnome @ 1:29 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
By and large, I completely agree with you. Especially as far as most of your profits coming from correctly playing difficult, marginal situations.
That said, I do think you can be selective about the marginal situations you willfully engage yourself in. Just because a hand can be marginally profitable doesn't mean that we therefore want to seek out every marginally profitable situation.
That's all I was really getting with with the 88 example. While I can observe the fact that aggressive players can raise with that hand from early/mid position and be successful doing so, I personally don't feel comfortable making that same play 100% of the time. I'll make it sometimes, but I don't feel obligated to always raise in that situation, even if I theoretically see the very marginal profitability in always raising with it.
And while in many cases your course of action is clear, in some cases it's not so clear. What if you get four callers and the flop comes 8h Jc Qc? So you need to add:
6) You will lose the hand after flopping a set and pumping tons of money into the pot in an unsuccessful attempt to drive out straight/flush draws.
The normal course of play dictates that you face all sorts of difficult, marginal situations, often against your will, so I'm still not convinced that you necessarily need to seek more out in what are, at best, marginally profitable situations. Sort of loops back to the idea espoused by assorted poker authors that in lots of tough spots there's little difference EV wise between folding and raising, with calling being only the true losing play.
As far as minimizing variance, well, we may just have to disagree on that one. I don't think you can necessarily equate the desire to minimize variance with playing over one's head, limit-wise. Let's say you were offered the following options:
1) You guaranteed to win $3,100 playing poker for the month, but you'll encounter swings of $6,000 in both directions (reaching a high of $9,100 at some point but also dipping as far as -$2,900).
2) You're guaranteed to win $3,000 playing poker but will encounter swings of $2,000 in both directions (reaching a high of $5,000 but also dipping as low as $1,000).
I'll take option number #2, every single time. But that's totally my personal choice, and largely due to the other issues I pointed out in my original post, as far as my monthly goals and general life situations and the role potential poker profits play in it.
Thanks for the response! Both the original post and the reply are well thought-out.
The only thing that's difficult to deal with is that it's hard to know exactly how much you're winning and losing by giving up expected value in marginal situations. I worry that if you start folding some hands like this preflop, it's a slippery slope until you're folding way too much. It doesn't take much to be giving up more than just a few dollars.
Have fun on your Coushatta trip.
Post a Comment
<< Home