The Decisions that Matter

I was going to blog this, but felt that

a) I don't post enough in the forums, and
b) it's not coherent enough and since it's Monday I don't have the energy to fix it. Better then to leave room for discussion.

A Swedish financial columnist published a piece on Friday called, translated, "Focus on the right choice." The gist of the article was that for some reason people, commonly, are really interested and active when it comes to choosing their electricity supplier (since the market became deregulated) but only a third as many put in any effort at all when it comes to their pensions. He points out that focusing on the electricity bill - where the potential savings are probably less than $100 a year - doesn't make sense if you're then ignoring how to invest your pension funds when that can make a difference of $1,000 a month.

In poker, some decisions are much more important than others. Can you tell an important decision and an insignificant one apart?

Importance of a decision tends to be proportional to the size of the bet. In no-limit, therefore, it's generally speaking the case that a good player can afford to splash around some preflop and on the flop, as long as he doesn't make big mistakes later on in the hand.

Some decisions matter a lot and occur rarely. And some decisions matter a little and occur often. Some decisions matter little and occur rarely. It's the last ones you shouldn't be worried about. Like "I flopped quads with my AA - how should I play it?" You can't go wrong, so it's really just a matter of hoping that your opponent caught something, too, and this situation is going to happen maybe once in your poker career. It's a decision that doesn't matter.

The systematic mistake of "never folding the flop", while small in itself, is something that occurs often. The sum of the total lifetime mistakes is going to be huge.

Knowing an important decision from an unimportant one is essential. Learning which parameters are the pivotal ones in any given situation is how to get there. Like how almost any tournament situation is completely dependent on the relevant stack sizes. Or how limit hold 'em revolves around the pot size.

Identifying the core of a situation, differentiating it into fundamentals and then making the decision, is at the heart of any analytical skill. Poker is no different. This is what should be practised in any strategy discussion, and in the hand analysis forum, etc, not how to play a specific hand. The specific hands are unlikely to ever occur again. The fundamentals of the situation, however, will.

if there were a knife somewhere that showed how much i love you i would stab you repeatedly with it

I wub u 2, sugarlumps.

You guys make me sick. Get a room sugarlumps, and stab one more for me, while you're at it.

Nice article Freddy,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,b uck

Liked the article, little concerned about the relationship between you and joose however. That knife thing is a little creepy.