Nosebleed Cross post from 2p2

con_leche

This is a cross post on strategy/metagame, and thought process, also alluding to game theory, from Magicninja on 2p2.


Durr: durr is probably the most interesting poker player alive. he plays in a way that is hard to quantify as good or bad using standard 'hand by hand' analysis; he makes many plays that are exploitable if you understood them but they seem to be 'once off' plays; when he makes a play like this, it is impossible to exploit it since you can't quantify his real range (i realise that a game theoretically perfect strategy might 'accidentally' exploit these plays; shutup nit); also, since durr is constantly thinking about durrs game 100% of the time he is playing, he will know how his opponents react to his moves better than his opponents know how to react to his moves.

Another explanation of the same concept would be that in a levelling war, durr has already thought of what level his enemy will be on before he even makes his play; his enemy must sit there with his time bank ticking away, and not only analyse this specific hand, but how durr wants him to react to his play; this is pretty tough. furthermore, most nosebleeds players will not resort to game theory in such situations since they are arrogant (their skill is what has made them nosebleed players!). this is in durrs favour obviously.

Some examples; durr might limp K8o in the sb; this is clearly an exploitable play but his thought process might go like so:

Durr thinking: "well, when someone limps sb v bb, the standard play is to raise with a hand like K9o or 45s; probably about 40% of starting hands; however, my enemy undoubtedly knows i know this since i am playing nosebleeds; thus he probably figures there's a reasonable chance i am trapping (probably with A8s which isn't really a trapping hand but is still 'trapping' a raise from 45o) and might check one of these hands about 50% of the time; thus he is raising less than an optimal range against my limping range making a limping range profitable".. it wouldn't surprise me if durr noticed things like players that had autocheck blinds on as well; not a significant thing to notice even at hsnl, but at nosebleeds, people are obsessed with super thin fps based value.

Then durr won't limp again until he has a new reason vs that particular player. maybe he will limp Q9o now; the thinking being something like 'well my perceived range is now weaker, however my opponent knows this and probably figures this time i will limp call and make a play or slowplay; thus he will not raise an optimal amount. obviously if he didn't think his opponent would think this, he would muck this hand. obviously durr considers himself very good at working at where his enemies are at in these kind of levelling battles, and this is probably a self fulfilling prophecy as he is exposed to these situations constantly.

Another example might be the hand where he donked it off with 97o against trex in a 400 bb pot preflop. durrr obviously thought he had some sick read on trex that he was 5 balling as a bluff but the reality is trex is too good to make a mistake preflop that was exploitable with a 5 bet shove with 97o for 200 bb (this hand just has 0 equity vs any calling range, durrr would need huge folding eq pre). however, now everyone stops rring durr so much preflop (mistake. rring preflop in position is good). now durrr makes more money. whether or not this is by decision is pretty unimportant when it gets down to it; everyone just thinks durrr has a huge c0ck and will f4ck anyone that makes a move on him.

A lot of people think durrr is a donkey because they see hands that are played in a terrible way, and for some reason assume he is a bad player. it is tempting to agree with them (often myself i'm like durr holy sh1t what the f4ck are you doing) but that is a pretty shallow analysis of his game, one that doesn't consider often underlooked factors such as metagame (which is obviously infinitely complex when playing against human opponents).

Here is my personal summation of durrs game:
1. the only real measure of skill is the amount of money won playing poker; durr has won a lot.
2. like many nosebleed players, the strength of his game is playing 100% like himself; he has gotten way better than most good players by 'thinktanking' against other pros, all the way up to .5/1k. this complete disregard for game selection has lead to him being very good. this strategy is terrible for most people, i unsuccessfully employed it myself until i was basically broke. he has obviously never sought to emulate anyone elses game; the flipside of this is that durr would probably be a bit better if he could tone himself down sometimes. i mean, come on, really, you've established that your willing to put it in light in any possible situation. you don't have to call all in with k7s.
3. at some point, it would not surprised me at all if durrr went broke playing ivey.

Ivey: to sum up iveys game, i will talk about a few things in passing. the first of these, is that math can hurt a player, and that playing 100% like yourself is a terrible way to get pretty good but a great way to play nosebleeds (see durrr, above). often when i'm playing, even though i resist the urge, i hear these retard 2+2 voices in the back of my head, and they're like 'no way can you fold this hand here'. f4ck that. you don't beat .5/1k playing the same as joe rrKJoarentiawesome. you beat those stakes by making these plays that you only really understand fully. all the super highstakes players i've met have been prepared to make the nonstandard play when it comes up. here's how it goes, in my experience:

Magicninja: can't fold here.
knownhighstakesplayerwhoisworshipped: well i'm going to.

BOOM. holy sh1t. and then you try to implement those folds in your own game. maybe that's what i've been missing! but you don't get it. the highstakes/nosebleeder has picked up something very subtly different in this specific hand to other hands u think are similar.

Here's an example:
i raise KsQh otb and the sb reraises. bb folds i call. flop is Ts9s3d. enemy cbets 2/3 pot. hsnler shoves. bb folds (lol like you'd read this hand in a harrington book). then you're like; ok the lesson learnt here is that a gutshot and bdfd is prob good to shove over a cont bet in a rr pot. and then you do it every time. and maybe you make more maybe you lose more but you don't FULLY understand the play. most nosebleeders seem to do this sort of sh1t like it's art. picking out the right moments but mucking in others. for everyone else, you could just fold preflop and get back to watching rocco invades ibiza.

Ok so what does all this have to do with ivey? since ivey hasn't grown from a culture of pokerstove and d1ck measuring contests, his entire game has presumably been built from self analysis. this means he can make sicker reads than anyone. he plays in a completely exploitable way heads up but owns souls because he is more aware of the game flow than any other player on earth. also, although he probably has never opened stove and thought about game theory overbet shoving like durrr probably has, he has undoubtedly learned about these moves by playing with the best players in poker, basically forever.

Summary: ivey is awesome. he has more nontangible skills than anyone on earth. where durrr probably thinks about his own game a lot and how he can work out a way to make raising 47s utg profitable, ivey is like buddha and just lives in the moment, owning souls, dominating his enemies like xerxes or another powerful warrior. here is a harsh reality; the fact that i am trying to mimic someone elses game through analysis, immediately separates me from those i am mimicking.[/SIZE][/SIZE]

El Stuntman

I'd like to see what this fool made of Mother Teresa

Grafter

Cliffsnotes = Good players don't play predictable ABC poker.

TommyGunne

I got about 2 paragraphs in. Huge load of waffle.

ocallagh

I haven't had a look at the 2p2 thread (I assume a lot of durr worship mongers agree with the above) but hopefully someone will take the entire post apart.

Summary: A mixture of ridiculous assumptions with some plain obvious points and some 2p2 phrases

colquhom

i kinda think that a lot of what he's saying is waffle with some pretty obvious stuff thrown in (i mean we get that durrr and ivey have a sick grasp of game flow, soul read constantly etc) but he seems to fundamentally misunderstand some of the concepts hes talking about. I mean all this levelling crap about he's doing this coz i did this etc is pretty much false when u get down to the bare bones of it, a fundamentally game theoretically sound strategy doesn't depend on durrs ability to out-level people.

The only thing i would say is that MagicNinja is a brilliant poster and plays as high as 200/400 on stars so he obviously knows more than us, so i suppose try to take something from it.

AdMMM

Grafter wrote: »

Cliffsnotes = Good players don't play predictable ABC poker.

.

FeetMagic

Grafter wrote: »

Cliffsnotes = Good players don't play predictable ABC poker.

Wish I read the comments before I read that pile of rubbish