What does he think you have?

There's threee ways to think about the number of outs a player has --

• how many he actually has -- from the point ot view of an external viewer who knows both his hand and your hand.


• how many he has from your point of view, knowing your hand and only knowing a possible range of his hand, and
  


• how many he has from his point of view, knowing his hand and only knowing a possible range of your hand

He is going to make his playing decisions based on the third of those -- based on what he knows at the time of his choice.

So many times we see players make judgements about another player based on number one above, on after the fact knowledge that the player didn't have at the time he made the decision.

Maybe he should have known you had AA. But he didn't. And you should know he didn't know that.

This came up on a post on another blog..

In a tournament, our hero was the short stack at the table. The anti hero didn't have a big stack either, but his stack was twice the stack of the hero.
Blinds are 25/50 and our hero makes it 200 after an UTG limper. That's not a big raise, it's actually a pretty small raise. Our hero called it a 4x big blind raise. It's not. It's a 3x big blind raise. The raise is 150, the bet is 200. Not only that, using the big blind as a proxy measure for pot size isn't going to be right after a limper. The pot contains 4bb (counting the sb as one bb and counting your call, as per convention). So a standard pot size raise would be making it 250, not making it 200.

In any event, our anti hero calls with J7s and everybody else folds. The anti-hero flops a gutshot, an overcard, and a backdoor flush draw. The hero goes allin, betting not quite twice the pot. Antihero calls. Antihero hits the gutshot and wins.

The hero then posts a bad bead whine on his blog. But the hero completely misconstrued what happened, not even noticing the backdoor flush of the antihero and looking at everything through his own point of view.

Here's my comment on the hero's blog post.

Actually he had a gutshot, overcard and a backdoor flush draw. Against AKo (which is what players will always put you on in this kind of situation) he has 11 outs.

Whether he’s right to think of things in this way or not, that’s the way he’s going to think of them and it’s rather pointless for you to get angry just because you didn’t figure that out.

Where you ahead? Yes, of course. And, by a lot more than he thought you were. But, he thought you were only slightly ahead and knew that if he was wrong that he wasn’t drawing dead.

You had an opponent who’s misreading the situation (fails to incorporate the chance you have a big pair into his thinking) and probably does so habitually. Would you prefer that he stop making that mistake? Do you think that would improve your results overall?

Our antihero made some big mistakes in this hand, and he got lucky. Our hero played it okay, it's always okay when you're ahead with AA and get the money in, but seems to have completely missed the point about what happened.

I was playing in a small tournament online.

One player has 6600 chips, another has 650. The 650 goes all in with KJ, the 6600 calls with AA. The KJ makes two pair.

The AA comments about how much that sucks.

But does it really? I mean, how are things different after the hand than they had been before the hand. The AA lost less than 10 percent of his stack, the KJ doubled up but 2 times a small number is still a small number.

So what really happened? Nothing.

An opportunity to bust a player wasn't realized but we weren't close to the bubble, so that probably had little to no effect either.

It's not a big deal, but it's just a small example of people focusing on the cards instead of the situation. He got his AA drawn out on. But it meant nothing, it had no effect. If he'd have won the benefit to him would have been very small.

Some things really just don't matter. AA or not.

How should I play AT?

That was a question on rgp a while back. I didn't comment on the question because I've taken a vow to become a nice person and the only good answer to the question would be the observation that it's a stupid question.

Why is it a stupid question? Becuse it has the wrong focus.

It has a focus on your hand, which about 3rd or 4th on the list of what's important when making playing decisions.

Before you even consider your hand you need to think about what your position is, what action has already occured, about what players behind you might do (and how many of them and who and how big their stacks are), and how big your stack is relative to both the players behind you and the ones who've already become active in front of you. And probably some other things too.

One of the reasons that the difference between suited and unsuited connectors is larger than is commonly thought is that a flopped straight without something extra can be a problamatic hand.

It's certianly not a hand you're going to want to give up, but if you're getting much action is probabaly vulnarable.

I'm much more comfortable with a hand like 8s 7s than 8s 7c on a flop like 9s 6h 5h if I'm getting a lot of action. That backdoor flush doesn't really add all that much equity directly but it sure makes me feel better.

Of course I'm probably getting all my money in with either one of those hands.

There was a question asked a bunch of players at the WSOP in Bluff Magazine recently. What mistake is most often made by bad players?

The predictable answer was always "plays too many hands".

That might be the most frequent mistake, but I don't think it's the biggest mistake. By itself playing too many hands doesn't really cost you much money, it's what happens after the decision to play that costs you the money.

There are two really expensive mistakes that I think are much worse than playing too many hands --- calling to many raises, and too much of a focus on trying to win the pot.

For many hands a raise by another player indicates a high probability of being dominated. That's a really, really bad situation to get yourself in. Don't call those raises unless you have either a very strong hand (after considering the hand he probably has to raise with) or are sure you aren't dominated and the remaining money is still deep.

The excessive focus on trying to win the pot tends to cause players to get much, much deeper into a pot than their hand or the situation warrents. Especially early in the betting rounds, when the pot is still small, a focus on gathering information, observation, and carefullness is much more important than trying to win the pot. Even later in the hand, when the pot is big, too much focus on trying to win just often gets you in trouble.
Best at the table.

Winning the pot isn't everything



Ed Miller wrote an interesting article on what he calls "Macro and Micro Poker".

He defines macro as a set of winning principles.

He defines micro as a process of optimization within the framework defined by the macro principles.

Then he goes about explain that it's more important to think in macro terms than in micro terms.

Well, duh?

Of course it is. The macro terms is what defines the micro process. In his definition the macro is the model that the micro is going to optimize. Should you know what the model is before you try to optimize that model? Well, I guess so.

These aren't two seperate approaches that are to be contrasted. They're one in the same. The way he defines it the macro is the overall model and the micro is the computational details of getting an exact solution to the model. I recently wrote a couple of posts in my mathandpoker blog on the contrast between general mathematical ideas and computational math. Although not exactly the same as Miller's Micro and Macro distinction, it's similar.

And it's got the same kind of "duh" to it. Of course formulating the overall mathematical model is more important than finding an exact solution.

Interestingly enough though a lot of people don't agree with Miller and I about that. A lot of people think it's better to formulate a model that's easy to solve because it's important to be able to have that exact solution. I happen to think it's more important to formulate a model which captures the essence of the situation than it is to be able to solve it.

This is starting to get more philisophical on the topic of math modeling than I intended for this blog. I'd started out this post intending to go in an entirely different direction. Maybe I'll pick up on that other direction some other day.

But this whole idea of macro versus micro or the approximate solution to a full model versus an exact solution to a baby model is really what strategic thinking is all about. The idea of strategic thinking is what I'm trying to organize my no limit book around, and it's really the fundemental part of everything I've ever written about poker.

How you think about things is much more important than what particular decision you might make given some particulars. As long as you're thinking about the right things, and thinking about them in the right ways, you'll get it right often enough to come out ahead.

PLO hand

I was playing some short handed PLO the other day and this hand came up. It is quarter/quarter blinds. I think $25 max buyin. I was the table short stack.






Button mykkanen ($54.80 in chips)
Small blind aivovaurio ($96.85 in chips)
Big blind petehak ($18.40 in chips)
UTG Luonto ($19.10 in chips)
Mid Position gary1949 ($15.55 in chips)


I have JH,AH,JC,QH

UTG limps, I make it $1.25, both blinds call, limper folds.


3H,2S,7H

Flush draw and an overpair.

They check, I bet $4, they both call.

When they both call I'm pretty sure I'm beat.

aivovaurio checks, petehak checks, gary1949 bets $4, aivovaurio calls $4, petehak calls $4.

Turn brings Kd. Scratch my overpair. First player checks. Next one goes all in for $13. I only have $10 left. I figure I have 9 outs at least and might have 11 outs (if he didn't turn a set of kings). The pot is pretty big, I'm getting about 3-1 on my call. Not really enough. But, the first player calls behind me, probably bringing the price up enough.

I make the flush, with a 5h on the river.


RIVER [board cards 3H,2S,7H,KD,5H ]


SHOWDOWN
petehak (allin on the turn) shows [ 10C,2C,9H,8D ]
aivovaurio shows [ 5C,6H,6D,4S ]
aivovaurio wins $5.70, gary1949 wins $46.40.

The point of this is that my JJ was actually good on the turn.

Sometimes what you think is probably a bad call isn't so bad after all.

I still think my call on the turn was a marginal call at best. But, part of why I called was that his allin bet just made no sense to me.


Anybody have any insight on this hand? Or any obserations about what an idiot I am for having made that call?

PLO hand

I was playing some short handed PLO the other day and this hand came up. It is quarter/quarter blinds. I think $25 max buyin. I was the table short stack.






Button mykkanen ($54.80 in chips)
Small blind aivovaurio ($96.85 in chips)
Big blind petehak ($18.40 in chips)
UTG Luonto ($19.10 in chips)
Mid Position gary1949 ($15.55 in chips)


I have JH,AH,JC,QH

UTG limps, I make it $1.25, both blinds call, limper folds.


3H,2S,7H

Flush draw and an overpair.

They check, I bet $4, they both call.

When they both call I'm pretty sure I'm beat.

aivovaurio checks, petehak checks, gary1949 bets $4, aivovaurio calls $4, petehak calls $4.

Turn brings Kd. Scratch my overpair. First player checks. Next one goes all in for $13. I only have $10 left. I figure I have 9 outs at least and might have 11 outs (if he didn't turn a set of kings). The pot is pretty big, I'm getting about 3-1 on my call. Not really enough. But, the first player calls behind me, probably bringing the price up enough.

I make the flush, with a 5h on the river.


RIVER [board cards 3H,2S,7H,KD,5H ]


SHOWDOWN
petehak (allin on the turn) shows [ 10C,2C,9H,8D ]
aivovaurio shows [ 5C,6H,6D,4S ]
aivovaurio wins $5.70, gary1949 wins $46.40.

The point of this is that my JJ was actually good on the turn.

Sometimes what you think is probably a bad call isn't so bad after all.

I still think my call on the turn was a marginal call at best. But, part of why I called was that his allin bet just made no sense to me.


Anybody have any insight on this hand? Or any obserations about what an idiot I am for having made that call?