Playing unexploitably

Hectorjelly

good post here that sums up the problems with the tactics ozpoker suggested in a recent thread

With my American freelance on holiday, I'm kind of stuck to the keyboard for a fortnight. Even the trips to the gym are nigh-on impossible. All energy is sapped. I dread to think what the scales will say when I have the courage to stand on them.

I've ordered Professional No Limit Hold'em. Winning In Tough Hold'Em Games, Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book and the Snyder Tournament Formula Book, so that's a little light reading for me.

I'm not sure why I buy these tournament books. It's not as if I can keep up with the improvements taking place in the games that I do play, let alone in ones that I don't. I have the "Kill Phil" Book and the three Harrington Books, and I doubt that I've read more than 20 pages of all of them.

Most of the useful things that I learn only come to me from playing, anyway, although the occasional snippet in a text-book is worth the expenditure. Many of the things that I am doing in NL at the moment are horribly exploitable, and I continue to scratch my head at the fact that only about 1 player in a hundred has the wit to exploit it. When more players exploit me, I'll change my style of play.

The Sklansky-Miller line rightly criticises the "big bet with a bluff, smaller bet with a strong hand" tactic, but then faults it for the wrong reason (well, the wrong reason in most no limit games, which are full of flawed players) -- that such a play is exploitable. Ferguson, too, seems to come up with the line (when justifying certain strategies) that "this is right because it doesn't matter what your opponent does in repsonse".

One thing that I learnt when quoting spreads on sports games was, if you knew that your counterpart was a buyer, you didn't quote the "correct" spread -- you upped it by a point or two. Your counterpart could exploit this by going short, but you knew that he was already far too short for comfort, so that just wasn't going to happen.

The "unexploitable" play is rarely the profit-maximising play in the limits that I am sitting down in.

+++++++++++++++

Yesterday, I'd just sat down in a game on a site that I don't play that often, and I picked up Aces second hand in. My "standard" raise in the cut-off is, if it is passed round to me, 4.5 or 5 times the big blind, with around 35% to 45% of my hands. If I know that the Big Blind is weak-tight, my hand strength gets to the looser end of the range and the amount I raise gets to the lower end of the range (because the raise has more of a semi-bluff element to it). If the Big Blind is a calling machine, my hand strength tightens to the narrower end, and the amount I raise goes up (because the bet has more of a value-raise element). Other changes occur, depending on my image at the table.

Anyhoo, it's correctly stated that you shouldn't adjust the amount you raise dependent on the strength of your hand. Even though for many players it's tempting to raise less than you normally would when you pick up Aces, it gives too much away in terms of information. But then I thought to myself. "Hold on. These guys don't know me from Adam. They have no previous plays from me to work with".

So I chucked in a 3.5 x the Big Blind raise.


I guess that my general point here is that No Limit games play very differently from site to site and from time of day to time of night. You could guarantee a profit in all of these games by playing unexploitably, but you can win more by playing in a way that a good player could exploit, if you were playing against a good player in this particular hand, but you aren't. Bad players lean towards consistent errors (i.e., they make the same kind of mistake again and again). The trick is to see what kind of mistakes they make, and to adjust your play accordingly. Don't assume that your opponent will play perfectly and act from there. Assume that he will make the same kind of mistake that bad players usually make at this level/on this site/at this time of day, and act accordingly. Sometimes you will be wrong, and he will turn out to make a different kind of mistake, or, horror-of-horrors, to be a good player. But that doesn't make your initial standpoint wrong

http://peterbirks.livejournal.com/

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

ozpoker

Thanks for bringing this subject up again, HJ. I guess I just have a few comments about this:

1) Proponents of optimal play recognized that it will not necessarily maximize profit against an exploitable strategy. Optimal strategy is not "break even" strategy; it's only "break even" against another optimal player. It's still highly profitable against exploitable strategies, none the less.

2) Proponents of exploitation seem (to me) to universally underestimate their opponent's abilities to exploit them. Everyone that sits at the table is practicing some sort of exploitation, regardless of how transparent or ineffective it might be. I also contend there is some fraction of opponents that you may categorized as exploitable that are, in reality, exploiting you; you simply don't understand what they are up to.

3) Given the incomplete information of our pastime, we rarely have enough data to completely model our opponents to really know what exploitive actions will work. What looks like exploitable play may simply be due to some strange statistical variation. And exploitive plays that "work" may be due to something else entirely, not our own genius.

4) And finally, I fail to see how the cited essay proves anything. How exactly is making a 3.5xBB raise exploitive with unknown players when the hero would usually make a 4.5xBB raise? Exploitation and optimal play ideas take place in the overall context, not the first hand you play against unknown players! If the players are really unknown, how does the hero know that a 10xBB raise isn't the truly exploitive play?


-Oz-

Killme00

ozpoker wrote:

If the players are really unknown, how does the hero know that a 10xBB raise isn't the truly exploitive play?

You answered this one yourself when you said long term. No villain no matter how incompetent will continually pay off you 10BB raise but your 3.5 – 4.5 raise will more likely be called in the long term

Where can i read more about this?

ozpoker

Killme00 wrote:

You answered this one yourself when you said long term. No villain no matter how incompetent will continually pay off you 10BB raise but your 3.5 – 4.5 raise will more likely be called in the long term

Success of a play isn't measured by a higher likelihood of being called, but by how positive the EV is. A simplified way to model this decision would be that if there is a 80% chance someone will call a 3x raise (EV = 3 * .8 = 2.4) and only a 40% chance that someone will call a 10x raise (EV = 10 * .3 = 3), the correct play is to make the 10x raise since 3 > 2.4, even though there is a lower chance of it being successful.

Now since these are unknown players, there's no way we can make these sort of quantifications unless we have some generic "unknown bad player" model. Our experience tells us that generally, a 3xBB raise with AA is going to have a higher expectation than a 10xBB raise. But I guarantee there's no way to know that reducing your "normal" raise in this situation from a 4.5 to 3.5 BB raise is somehow "exploiting" them.

Killme00 wrote:

Where can i read more about this?

Not too much out there yet. Chris Ferguson's writings allude to the results of his research into this area. Other than that, Chen and Ankenman's The Mathematics of Poker is the best source right now.

-Oz-

BigCityBanker

ozpoker wrote:

Chen and Ankenman's The Mathematics of Poker is the best source right now.

Do we have a first name for this Chen dude? Is his background as a finance academic?

Killme00

Bill Chen as far as i know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Chen

The Snapper

BigCityBanker wrote:

Do we have a first name for this Chen dude? Is his background as a finance academic?

Bill Chen & Jerrod Ankenman.

Fabulous book but heavy going for Maths dinosaurs like myself.

Chen has a PhD in Mathematics and won two WSOP events in 2006. Ankenman is a poker pro with a second place finish and various cashes.

The_Daddy_H

ozpoker wrote:

Thanks for bringing this subject up again, HJ. I guess I just have a few comments about this:

1) Proponents of optimal play recognized that it will not necessarily maximize profit against an exploitable strategy. Optimal strategy is not "break even" strategy; it's only "break even" against another optimal player. It's still highly profitable against exploitable strategies, none the less.

2) Proponents of exploitation seem (to me) to universally underestimate their opponent's abilities to exploit them. Everyone that sits at the table is practicing some sort of exploitation, regardless of how transparent or ineffective it might be. I also contend there is some fraction of opponents that you may categorized as exploitable that are, in reality, exploiting you; you simply don't understand what they are up to.

3) Given the incomplete information of our pastime, we rarely have enough data to completely model our opponents to really know what exploitive actions will work. What looks like exploitable play may simply be due to some strange statistical variation. And exploitive plays that "work" may be due to something else entirely, not our own genius.

4) And finally, I fail to see how the cited essay proves anything. How exactly is making a 3.5xBB raise exploitive with unknown players when the hero would usually make a 4.5xBB raise? Exploitation and optimal play ideas take place in the overall context, not the first hand you play against unknown players! If the players are really unknown, how does the hero know that a 10xBB raise isn't the truly exploitive play?


-Oz-

On 2) The probably is encountering players like this is probably small enough that we dont normally have to worry about it, I'd imagine?

3) Most bad players are usually making at least one glaringly obvious mistake like playing too loose or tight which can easily be exploited by playing in some exploitative fashion right? How is this different from adjusting your play to the player?

DeVore

My standard raise in Vegas was 10x bb from just about anywhere. It generally got 1-2 callers. Occasionally 6!
This was not seen as unusual (at 1/2nlh)

In Dublin it is unfortunately pot limit which constrains the mistakes you can ask them to make.
Nice article though!

DeV.