What does he think you have?
There's threee ways to think about the number of outs a player has --
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.
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.
- 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.
posted by Gary Carson at 10:16 AM
1 Comments:
In the post I linked to the original post that had all that information.
I didn't think it mattered, and I still don't.
The point was that it can be helpful to try to look at things through the eyes of the other player, whether you think he's rational or deserving or justified or not.
Human beings are not fully rational beings, although we like to pretend we are. Assuming that people are something you know they aren't, and judging them when they don't match that assumption isn't really going to get you very far.
I am going to be in Edmund at a meeting in the am for sure on either the 23rd or 30th, I'll have to look it up. I'm not sure about sooner than that, I will call you though.
I recently read a definition of bad beat that I thought was interesting. He used the term Black Swan. A Black Swan is an outcome that was both unexpected and with an impact significant enough to change your win rate estimates.
In that sense a lot of what poker players call bad beats just aren't. I'm going to talk about that more eventually at http://www.mathandpoker.com
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