Picking on Brother Ed, part CVIII

Okay, I'll admit it, I don't really like Ed Miller. The reason is that he's just a bad neighbor. An unfriendly member of the poker blog community.

To me that just makes him a jerk.

He has a policy of simply not recognizing that he's a member of a community. He never links to other blogs and never gives any sign of recognition when other's link to him. That makes him a bad neighbor, makes him a jerk.

The only thing I can figure is that he learned his neighborly skills from his ultimate mentor, Mason Malmuth. He certianly didn't learn it from his wife, who is actually a pretty good internet neighbor.

Ed has partially parted ways with Mason, primarily because Mason couldn't understand why Ed couldn't (Mason doesn't understand that maybe Ed just didn't want to) control his wife. But for some reason known only to Ed it is still important to Ed that he please Mason.

Part of pleasing Mason means to not recognize other internet sites. It's kind of sad.

But none of that is why I'm making this post. I'm making this post to point out a recent example of Ed missing the point.

Ed gets a question from a loyal reader

Recently a reader of my website, John, asked about the $1-$2 blind game at his local cardroom. Here’s what he had to say about his game:

The players there are very loose and pretty terrible, and they call everything pre-flop.

For example, I’ll be under the gun with A-K, raise to $20 preflop, and I’ll get four callers consistently!

That means the pot is already at $100 when the flop comes, and I usually start the hand with only $300.

A-K is a good hand and is meant to flop top pair, best kicker (1 out of 3 times), but as we all know, flopping one pair is only a ‘good’ hand and not a ‘great’ hand. So when I do flop top pair it puts me in a sticky situation. The pot is already too big!

I have gotten to the point where I think I may do one of the following things:

1. Don’t play as deep, so when I do hit my flop I don’t have to worry about reverse implied odds. (Loose play collusion is a killer there with people hitting two pair with junk.)

or

2. Simply limp in with hands like A-K, K-Q, A-Q, and so forth, in an effort to keep the pot small if I do hit it.

Ed responds

While John has identified an interesting issue, I think he’s overestimating the frequency of bad outcomes and underestimating the frequency of good ones.

I actually agree with that. AK (even if it's not suited) is actually going to hit a good flop about half the time. It will flop top pair about a third of the time, but other flops put it in pretty good shape (JTx as an example).

But reading Ed's next paragraph leaves me unsure that he and I agree on the above as much as it might seem superficially.

He says,

First off, if you raise to $20 with A-K and a $300 stack and four people call (and it isn’t a fluke), you’re in a fantastic situation. It’s such a good situation that you could probably push all-in every time it’s checked to you on the flop and still turn a profit. If you do something smarter than that (and it’s not hard to get smarter than that) then you’ll be solidly in the black.

No, Ed, you aren't in a fantastic situation in early position with AcKh and a flop of Kd 9s8s with a $100 pot and four people behind you. In fact that's a terrible situation.

Sure, you probably have the best hand. But you aren't real likely to make any money with it. You might, however, lose a hefty slice.

Ed seems to think that the frequency various outcomes is what matters. He says,

Before I continue, I want to disagree with something John said: “Loose play collusion is a killer there with people hitting two pair with junk.” That’s an example of overestimating the frequency of bad outcomes. It’s not the mathematical reality. Even four opponents are a significant underdog to flop two pair among them. For instance, an unsuited connector such as 8-7 has a 4.8 percent chance to flop two pair or better. A pocket pair obviously has a better chance to flop a set, but on average I’d guess one of your four opponents will flop two pair or better no more than 25 percent of the time.

When in early position against a large field you're not going to be able to maximize your win in hands you're ahead in, and you're not going to be able to minimize your lose in hands you're behind in.

The solution is to never make the pot big to begin with when you're out of position. If you hit a perfect pot then fine. If you don't then just let it go.

In a really lose game save those preflop raises for late position.

More on overplaying a pair revisited.

Someone on rgp made a comment about an old post from here about my overplaying JJ when it flopped 3 smaller cards.

In that post I raised after this

The flop is 742, all black, my jacks are red. My caller bets into me, bets $10.

and concluded afterwards that it was a mistake based on my read that the guy likely had either a flush draw or a set or two pair, with some possibilty he had a straight draw.

Here's the relevant part of the rgp comment (it's from one of the rgp posters who often misses the point)

> when you think it's a mistake to get a whole bunch of money in with the
> 2:1 best of it. I think you need to re-read theory of poker and
> understand what a mistake is, because that ain't it. You've got a
> ridiculous case of playing results rather than expectations if you think
> that was a bad play.

Of course the mistake he's making is exactly the estimation mistake I talked about earlier today at mathandpoker.com. I wrote that post a few hours before the rgp comment.

He's thinking of himself as a 2-1 favorite with the overpair when that's not his edge, that's the best edge he might have, not the expected edge. But he uses that as if it's an expected value.

Strippers do the same thing when they tell you they make $1,100 a night. That's not their average earnings, that's how much they made on the best night they ever had.

In the follow up on that rgp thread I suggested the commenter was being results oriented, because he made the 2-1 comment after learning what the guy actually had. But, even that's not right, because the evil opponent actually had a pair, a back door straight draw, and a flush draw. The way the cards actually lay I was a 48/52 dog, not a 2/1 favorite.

If the guy actually had the range of hands I put him on then I was ahead, but not as much as the commentator thinks. I'm not going to bother trying to compute my actual odds because they aren't important.

The point of that post is that in nolimit probably being ahead isn't good enough to raise. That's because when you make the pot bigger you're creating a situation where those times you're behind the pot is likely to get a lot bigger, something you don't really want.

In that hand in my previous post, if the guy had moved allin after my raise I'd have the worst of it, even though I was right to call on the flop even being behind because I wasn't so far behind that I wasn't getting pot odds for a call.

In no-limit, when you're probably ahead on the flop, but if you're not ahead you're in real bad shape, it's not a good idea to get too busy. I'll close with the observation that if I'd had Jc then with the cards he had I'm ahead 52/48 against his pair and flush draw rather than being behind 48/52. Having that club both takes away one of his outs plus gives me a re-draw, tipping the balance.

But I didn't have Jc and I overplayed that pocket pair, costing me more money than it should have.

A sample chapter

Here's a chapter from an upcoming book on nolimit holdem poker

The chapter is on twoplustwo magazine, and they only keep their stuff up for about 3 months, so download it or print it now if you think you might want to refer back to it.

I'm not impressed so far. The chapter starts out with

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If we had to summarize no-limit strategy in a single sentence, it would be this:

Plan Your Hands

What the hell does that have to do with no-limit? Are they suggesting you don't need to plan your hands in limit? In limit I think a plan is probably more important. Plans are important in no-limit but they are also much more fluid and really don't need to be that complete, they just need to be re-evaulated at every step.

In The Complete Book Of Hold 'Em Poker: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Winning I pretty much say that the most important concept in no-limit hold'em (actually in no-limit poker) is simply

Don't Call

I still think that's true most of the time. Against some opponents it's not true, against some opponents you're better off check calling than you are betting, but it's still the basic idea.

Then, after talking about planning, they jump right away to the idea of finding a balance between risk and reward, and use a really bad example to do so.

They have two read aces on the big blind, the small blind limps, they raise, he calls, the flop is a 3 card straight in spades, the small blind goes all in, the stacks are very deep.

What do you do?

They talk about risk/reward tradeoff only in terms of the amount of money, they never, not once, bring up the players.

Against some players I'm calling here every damn time. Against some players I know for sure he has a naked flush draw, he doesn't even have as much as a pair and a flush draw. Against some players I know for sure they don't have more than 9 outs because with a hand better than that they're checking to let me bet.

They don't even talk about that. So what the hell do they mean by risk? They mean how much money is involved.

The next example is almost comical. They give a of having KK in mid-position and opening for 15, getting two callers, one behind you, one in the blinds.

Then they go through an analyze a particular flop where you bet and the player behind you calls, and you get in an iffy situation on the turn where you're probably best but don't want to commit all of your deep stack.

Then they re-look it and decided that you made a mistake with the raise to $15, you should have raised to $30 and gotten two callers, then on the turn the pot would have been large enough to be pot committed.

All I can say to that is

What?

Big hands and pot sizes in poker games

Here's the lede on an Ed Miller post.

Big hands deserve big pots. It’s a fundamental no-limit concept.

What nonsense. It's not only not a poker concept (it's a bumper sticker phrase) it's not even true.

Inanimate objects don't deserve anything. And you don't deserve anything at the poker table by virtue of having some particular combination of inanimate objects in your hand.

When you have a hand that has a very high probability of winning (which is actually not what many players mean by big hand) then you want to get as much other people's money in the pot as you can.

I guess that's what he means. And if he was selling bumper stickers instead of giving poker advice then the phrase he uses would be okay. Maybe that't it. Maybe he is selling bumper stickers. Bumper stickers probably have a pretty big market.

I guess I'm just being mean this morning.