Improve your thinking, Improve your game

#1 28th October 2008, 12:39 AM

One thing I love about poker is the mental aspect of the game. It's not all math, numbers, and odds-even though they do play a key roll in the game. Poker is not black and white where there is only one right way/one wrong way to play, there are so many variables to take into consideration for every situation. And for every situation, a player's approach will differ from another's play but both plays can be equally right based on how each person play. Poker is not a one-dimensional game but I think some players, especially newer ones, view it as such.

If you would, imagine a flat piece of paper with a square drawn on it. It's pretty one-dimensional, you can't see anything but the square. This is how I imagine some players view of poker, they only see one variable; they're tunnel-visoned basically. Now, imagine you have a 3-D cube in your hand. How is this different from the square on a piece of paper? You are not just limited to seeing what is in the front but also the back, the top, the sides, the bottom. You can take every variable into consideration, not just one. In way, this is how I view poker. Every situation I'm in, I see, or read about, I'm not just looking on what is front but every everything from every angel..

A simple example:

You have AA UTG with a stack of 4000. The blinds are 100/200 with 5 players at the table. You raise it to 600, it's folded the BB who goes all in for 1200 total (including BB). You call, BB flips over A8s and he makes a flush to double up off you.

Now, many beginner level thinkers will see this as a huge loss. All they really focus on is they had AA preflop and they lost to (a donk shoving) A8s. They usually do not look any further than that other than-they lost to a suckout. It's a flat, 1-D square that they see-they had the best hand and the opponent got lucky, end of story.

However, if you take look at it from every different angle as you would a cube, you can consider many more variables. Such as:

-Stack size: Your opponent is a short stack with 6 BB's left. He is also the blind which means he has 16% of his stack invested in the pot already.
-# of opponents: Its short handed and opponent is short stacked, so he has to make a play soon or hey'll get blinded out. A8s is probably the best hand he'll see in a while.

You should take these two factors into consideration because its likely this is what your opponent is doing the same. Another thing to consider is that A8 that is not that bad of a hand if you had anything less than AA. 99-KK and you're only a 70/30. KX and you're 40/60 to win, 20/80 if you share an 8, and its a coinflip vs under pairs. You aren't always going to have AA here.

-Best Hand: You got it in preflop as a huge favorite to win the hand. Thats what you want to happen. You're about a 90% favorite PF to win this hand.
-This is +EV: Even if your opponent had a 10K stack, you want to get your money in everytime because you will win a lot more often than not.

You should take these into consideration because poker is not a game of current results. 10 losses in a row does not make you a bad player just like 10 wins doesn't make you a good player. Poker is a game based on decisions and if you make the best decisions more often than you do bad ones, then you will win more than you lose.

These are just some of the things to look for, think about, and focus on. While it is still a loss, no matter how you disected it, the fact is don't focus on the one time you lost but keep in mind of the 9 times you'll win in the long run. It's a very simple example, but it shows that by viewing each angle of the cube, it's not as bad as it seems on the surface.

#2 28th October 2008, 2:50 AM

I can agree with what you saying. Because last night I was in a freeroll when this hand came up. The blinds were at 200/400 with a 25 chip ante. I was the small blind the player next to me was shot stack of the table in the BB. I had around 4500 in chips and the SS had around 2500 in chips. Well as the hand progressed everyone in front of us limped in I called with K,10os to see the flop. When the BB goes allin and everyone folds to me. We were 150 places from the money. With pot at about 6000 I figure that was as good a time as any to call, I had been card dead for while and the blinds were eating my stack. Flip over the cards he shows pocket QQs I hit a King on the turn and he could not understand why I made the call. I know he had to have something, but the pot was just to large with alot of dead money in it and I was headsup against him so I made the call and got lucky. He was not mad or nasty but he needed to look at the whole picture to understand it.

#3 28th October 2008, 3:39 AM

Except:

1. picking A-rag/weak to rr w no fold equity is fairly horrible, as you are crushed here by a huge amount of hands that call you. 98s is better than A8s in this situation.

2. when your stack is extremely low relative to the blinds (say, 2xbb) you actually want to be the one calling a raise, since you will be taking advantage of the probably dead money folded by the sb and bb

3. with a stack size of about 6xbb you want to be the one shoving (NOT 3betting w no fold equity) vs. either a very tight big stack (who can afford to call) or a similar or slightly larger stack (who will be very hurt/crippled by your 6xbb stack).

I understand that this isn't really the point of the thread (it's that you should look at the hand from your opponents viewpoint), but...

#4 28th October 2008, 9:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by philthy

One thing I love about poker is the mental aspect of the game. It's not all math, numbers, and odds-even though they do play a key roll in the game. Poker is not black and white where there is only one right way/one wrong way to play, there are so many variables to take into consideration for every situation. And for every situation, a player's approach will differ from another's play but both plays can be equally right based on how each person play. Poker is not a one-dimensional game but I think some players, especially newer ones, view it as such.

If you would, imagine a flat piece of paper with a square drawn on it. It's pretty one-dimensional, you can't see anything but the square. This is how I imagine some players view of poker, they only see one variable; they're tunnel-visoned basically. Now, imagine you have a 3-D cube in your hand. How is this different from the square on a piece of paper? You are not just limited to seeing what is in the front but also the back, the top, the sides, the bottom. You can take every variable into consideration, not just one. In way, this is how I view poker. Every situation I'm in, I see, or read about, I'm not just looking on what is front but every everything from every angel..

A simple example:

You have AA UTG with a stack of 4000. The blinds are 100/200 with 5 players at the table. You raise it to 600, it's folded the BB who goes all in for 1200 total (including BB). You call, BB flips over A8s and he makes a flush to double up off you.

Now, many beginner level thinkers will see this as a huge loss. All they really focus on is they had AA preflop and they lost to (a donk shoving) A8s. They usually do not look any further than that other than-they lost to a suckout. It's a flat, 1-D square that they see-they had the best hand and the opponent got lucky, end of story.

However, if you take look at it from every different angle as you would a cube, you can consider many more variables. Such as:

-Stack size: Your opponent is a short stack with 6 BB's left. He is also the blind which means he has 16% of his stack invested in the pot already.
-# of opponents: Its short handed and opponent is short stacked, so he has to make a play soon or hey'll get blinded out. A8s is probably the best hand he'll see in a while.

You should take these two factors into consideration because its likely this is what your opponent is doing the same. Another thing to consider is that A8 that is not that bad of a hand if you had anything less than AA. 99-KK and you're only a 70/30. KX and you're 40/60 to win, 20/80 if you share an 8, and its a coinflip vs under pairs. You aren't always going to have AA here.

-Best Hand: You got it in preflop as a huge favorite to win the hand. Thats what you want to happen. You're about a 90% favorite PF to win this hand.
-This is +EV: Even if your opponent had a 10K stack, you want to get your money in everytime because you will win a lot more often than not.

You should take these into consideration because poker is not a game of current results. 10 losses in a row does not make you a bad player just like 10 wins doesn't make you a good player. Poker is a game based on decisions and if you make the best decisions more often than you do bad ones, then you will win more than you lose.

These are just some of the things to look for, think about, and focus on. While it is still a loss, no matter how you disected it, the fact is don't focus on the one time you lost but keep in mind of the 9 times you'll win in the long run. It's a very simple example, but it shows that by viewing each angle of the cube, it's not as bad as it seems on the surface.

i like this post.. i'm more of a thinker as well and i can very much relate to this post.. its nice to see it written like this and makes ya think a little more..

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