So I've been experimenting with raising any two in late position and seeing what happens. Mostly, good things. But not always, because you cannot underestimate how dumb the fish can be on PokerRoom.
So at t200 I raise to 500, and a fish in the big blind calls. I have Qc3c so I don't feel ultraconfident, but of course I know that most players miss most flops. The flop comes fairly uncoordinated, jack high with two clubs. The fish bets out 500. I figure he has nothing much and puts me on a stealraise. I shove over him. I have a flush draw and an overcard, so even if he calls, I like my chances.
Unbelievably he does call. I say unbelievably because his hand is so poor. He has Td2d and paired his 2. Thing is, maybe he puts me on a flush draw trying to push him off his hand, but even if he did, I'm still a favourite. So wtf? I mean, obviously, wtf at calling the raise in the first place. His hand is suited but you are rarely going to hit your flush, and I don't offer the implied odds for it. He has no reason to believe I would stack off if he did hit his flush. And hitting his 2 is no good for him because he cannot be confident that he's ahead. Maybe pairing the T is okay.
So let's say that he had actually thought about it, put me on a steal, called with the notion of betting any flop and taking it away. That would be okay. But when I shove over, he has an easy fold. I had 3K more chips, and even though he had me covered, it wasn't by much. My hand is most likely a flush draw, but given that I raised preflop, you can't count out AJ-QJ or a mid pair. And as I note, I'm going to be a favourite with most flush draws.
The gods of poker favoured the retard, as they do, and he turned a T and rivered the 2c, which gave me a flush that was second best. I felt good about my play though. I'd like to receive the rewards some of the time for creative and aggressive play, but so long as I'm playing okay, why worry?
Last night, I played a small tourney and was going quite well when some guy limped in middle position. I'd noticed a couple of hands earlier that he'd minraised on the button to steal the blinds. This marks him down as a weak player, particularly coupled with his playing quite loosely. I woke up with QJs in the BB. With antes, the pot was quite decent, so I shoved, expecting him to fold. I mean, what does he limp with? His range is very much small pairs and crap hands like small suited aces and weaker kings (K9 maybe, K8s), QT, that kind of thing, and even those he might have raised. So he probably folds to the push and even if he doesn't, well, I'm a favourite against the small pairs and I'm not crushed by the crap hands.
So he calls, and shows A9. This kind of play by the fish is so awesomely wrong that it truly mystifies me. You have a hand that you don't consider good enough for a raise but you'll risk your whole tourney with it? Does he think, well, he's in the big blind so he's probably bluffing? I mean, he's right if he thinks that, in this instance, but generally he will be miles behind. When he calls, I'm just astonished (I never learn!). Okay, with the table dynamics, I can see playing the hand. You put in a raise and take down the blinds. We were in the money but not deep, with the blinds quite high, so they were worth stealing, but not so high that players would not fold their blind.
I was left wondering whether he was "trapping", feeling that his hand was strong enough to limp and play against action (no, really, he might; you see fish all the time call pushes with raggy aces, so you know that they overvalue them, especially if they're soooted); whether he figured that I was likely to be on a steal or at least was unlikely to have a hand that had him crushed (you or I would of course fold in this spot, because we are not beating the range that pushes, even if it does include hands that we fare well against); or whether, and I think this is most likely, he limped it because he felt it was playable but didn't want to put the chips in with it, and then when faced with a push thought, I wanted to play it so I'll play it. This is a type of player that the poker books don't discuss. The play I made was decent, and should work against most players with a clue, but against this kind of guy, it's probably too risky. The problem with online tourneys is that you don't know you're up against the guy who thinks bottom pair will beat a PF raiser who shoves over your bet or the guy who thinks that if he's in, he's in, until you've made the play. You can, of course, avoid making plays. But then you find yourself shortstacked and miserable. You can't assume that most limpers will call in that spot, because most actually won't. Generally, they'll often call if they hold 66/55, and probably also KJ if they limped that, but fold if they limped Kxs or something truly crap like that. They'll agonise some over KT but for the huge overpush, probably fold that too.
Sigh. Learning slowly, I guess.
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3 comments:
boots sez:
"I mean, he's right if he thinks that, in this instance, but generally he will be miles behind."
"This instance" is the only one that ever counts.
that kind of thinking is why the fish go busto.
boots sez:
"that kind of thinking is why the fish go busto."
The thing here is not that I disagree with you on this Zen, which I do (fish go busto for a different reason entirely), but rather how to explain it so that you can "get it", so that it will be useful to you.
The long run is nothing but the summation of all the short runs, and each short run is nothing but the summation of the "this instance" occurrences. You might argue against that, though I'm not sure how you could justify saying that it's incorrect; it's just a summary of what things are, a description in perhaps slightly different terms than you're used to.
You know that I disagree with probability theory, but perhaps you don't understand why. Probability theory works out fine as a justification for past occurrences, but is useless for dealing with future occurrences unless you are willing to accept a summary justification delivered long after any of the occurrences involved.
And summary justifications long after the fact will not win a single hand for you because hands need to be won in the present.
Probability theory averages, and that makes it predictively useless for single events.
Let me try an example, there's at least a chance that it might help you see that the crucial boundary lies between the single-occurrence and the short-run, just as it lies between the short-run and the long-run.
Two people are involved in this example.
Person A sits in a room alone. He tosses a coin 3 times and it comes up heads every time.
Person B comes into the room, he believes that the probability of a "head" is 1/2 because that's the probability of getting a head on any *single* toss.
Person A knows it has come up heads 3 times in a row so that the chances of it coming up heads next time is the probability of 4 heads in a row. He knows the history, he views it as a 4-event set. He see the probability thus as 1/8. Nevermind for now that he is stupidly "wrong".
Now Zen, as Person B, you "know" that the probability of getting a head on *any* *single* toss is 1/2 so that's how you'll play things.
Person A "knows" that it's a 4-event set so perhaps he'll play it that way.
If it comes up heads, you say okay, what the hell, the probability of that was 1/2 so why should I be surprised?
If it comes up heads, Person A will say okay, what the hell, there was a probability of 1/8 that it would come up heads, that's a little over 12% so why should I be surprised?
Now the flipside.
It comes up tails and you say the same thing, the probability was 1/2 so why be surprised?
Person A on the other hand will say, Aha! See, the probability of a tail that time was 7/8, I knew it!
Okay. You're both wrong, but you are less wrong than he is. At least you haven't begun deluding yourself into thinking that probability has any relationship whatsoever to future occurrence.
Or maybe you have, fucksake I dunno.
Here's the thing. Both you and Person A are looking at the wrong aspects of occurrence, you both have a view of things that prevents success.
Now, I'm about to set forth in one sentence the actual reason that fish go busto. You can potentially gain from it, or you can blow it off as horseshit. But please do accept that I am not simply talking out of my ass here, I am reporting the findings of many years of experimentation.
Fish go busto because the outcome if they did not go busto would be unacceptable.
That's it, that's why fish go busto. Now the question is, unacceptable to whom, and why.
This blogging medium is too slow and insufficiently interactive to say more here. If you would like, we can play a Socratic game that might (no guarantees) help you to view things from a different perspective; if you are interested in attempting that just email me and answer this question: Who buys your food. We'll go from there.
I've been reading you for several years Zen. I believe that although I do not "understand" your views on life, I do at least comprehend them. All I can tell you is that your wishes are true and your perceptions are false, but seeing how that can be the case will be most difficult for you.
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