Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Inducing Tilt

I was trying to avoid using another "Re:" in the title. Looks like I'm failing left and right these days.

I did say let's agree to disagree, even though there were several things I wanted to say in reply to your last article. But yes, I felt that our friendship was more important than bickering over single a back-in-the-day session of poker. I'm glad to find out that you agree with me on that, at least. So I was willing to let you have the last word. Thus I will do as you request, and not respond to that other post. But now your latest post has raised some issues on which I cannot be silent.

Your memory of the table setup is close enough to my own for me to co-sign your description.

I would like to mention that you may have misinterpreted what I meant when I told you to "read a book." I wasn't criticizing your play at all, did not mean to imply that you had some things to learn. I was just assuming that you would be unable to play online poker, but would presumably have a fair amount of time to read poker books. I just thought of it as a way for you to stay connected to poker while being away from the game; might as well take the time to brush up. That's what I would have done. I meant no offense by that.

I made the statement that you placed too much emphasis on short-term results. Now, I know you are aware that you should to focus on long-term results in order to determine if a strategy is successful, due to variance. We have discussed this, so I would not pretend to think you don't know this. But if that's the case, then your criticism seems inconsistent with your knowledge, for you made the following statement in your initial post: "He claimed that it wasn’t tilt. Instead it was his strategy to work on the guy so he could get a big payoff later. One that didn’t come I might add. " Later on, you added: "One of these strategies worked out well and one didn’t work well. That’s not saying you should never perform the one that didn’t work." My contention was that you determined that my strategy "didn't work" based on a single session. You recognize that this was only based on a limited sample. But I respond that -- if you recognize that, then how can you come to a conclusion on the success of the strategy? I'm mystified. You mention here that your "overall sample size is much larger and while it doesn’t include playing poker in casinos other than this one example, it incorporates what poker writers who have been playing for years think, my own experiences playing online, and my own experiences playing blackjack in casinos." But were any of those players that that berated their opponents me? Were they better than me? And the most important question -- were they criticizing opponents as a part of a strategy, or simply fuming?

Another idea that your posts hinge upon is the notion that I should be able to easily beat this player. And yes, obviously the guy was fairly passive and willing to call large bets when behind. At the same time, he was impervious to bluffs and semi-bluffs on later streets. So for instance, I could raise preflop with big cards and get called all the way to the river. If on the river, a fourth flush card hit the board and I made a believable bluff, the guy would still call with top pair and nothing more. Wouldn't even try to read me or think about the incredible likelihood that I held at least one card in the suit to give me the flush. So where I had lost my money that night (up to that point) was by flopping large draws like nut flush and open-ended straight draws, betting them and having them not pan out. On the river, I could either try to buy the pot (always unsuccessfully) or fold when another player at the table bet. So it hadn't been so easy for me to beat the guy.

An even larger issue keeping me from handling this opponent was the inability to isolate him in pots. I would bet and bet, and get called by two to three guys all the way down. Then when I get check-raised on the river by a random guy that had been check-calling the whole way, my top pair doesn't look so strong.

So that's why I think the premise of me being able to easily beat the guy is flawed. I wasn't playing against just him but against an entire table full of opponents.

You say that my strategy made the game less enjoyable for others. That, I do not question. In fact, the whole idea is to take the entire table out of its comfort zone. And when you and I are sitting at the same table, that unfortunately includes you as well. Poker is war, my friend. And when we're sitting at the same table, I am going to use every weapon in my arsenal to felt you. It's nothing personal. But your enjoyment of the game (or your ending the night a winner) is not my primary concern when we go to the casino together. It's nice if it happens. But it's not my primary motivator. If that fact causes you to dislike me, perhaps it would be best for our friendship if we did not play poker at the same table. However, I would like to ask you a question. When you and our mutual friend played one another heads up, and said friend employed a strategy of verbal digs in order to disrupt your play, did that diminish your enjoyment factor? Did it make you uncomfortable at all? Was the game still as much fun when you started losing to him based on the success of his strategy? I would contend that like me, our friend was concerned less with you enjoying the game than with winning your chips.

I think that blackjack is a game where the table should tacitly cooperate in order to improve the expected value of the group. In poker cash games, this type of cooperation does not create the same returns and is expressly forbidden.

You ask me "why engage in a strategy where you risk losing the few [novices] that do play at your table?" I agree that there is the risk that players will not enjoy themselves and leave the game. But I feel that this risk is quite small. Players that love poker enough are not going to let one "ugly" experience keep them from playing poker again. If that were the case, I would have quit a long time ago. Especially the newer players that see poker just as another form of gambling. We have another ex-home game player that seems to love blackjack -- I think you know who I mean. No matter how many times he busts at that game, an occasional win is more than enough to bring him back to it time after time.

Another reason I think the risk of losing novice players is low is related to the first one. These players tend to see poker as just another form of gambling. So like other games, they tend to have a predetermined amount of money they are willing to lose. Their exit from the game typically is the result of one of three scenarios. One, they feel they have won enough money from the game and decide to walk out a winner (fairly unlikely). Two, they have time constraints on their session, either predetermined or because a friend busts out or whatever (probably the most common). Three, they have reached the boundary of acceptable losses (faily common). The way I see it, my actions are not going to make a player get up from his game. It's more likely to be his own internal decision.

The player I was berating was doing really well (thanks largely in part to me). You may have noticed that he played and endured quite a bit of my abuse. Do you remember when he got up to leave? It wasn't until after he started to give back much of the stack that he had built up. The odds began to catch up to him, as I like to say. So after he took a few well deserved beats, and a few bad ones, after he started to see his winnings dwindle, he left. I'm not claiming that I didn't play a role. But I believe my actions weren't the primary factor.

Think about it, B. Think back to when you were just starting out going to casinos. If you won a few huge pots because of luck, and an ostensibly solid player began tearing into you, would you get up and leave a profitable game as long as you were winning? I think you would have endured it and raked in the chips, and then told your friends a nice horror story later at home. I think most new players that win playing poker are like that. They think to themselves, "That a-hole thought he was so smart, but I got the better of him." We naturally tend to think we're the best players in the world when we are winning (and usually when we're losing, too). So if we're winning and getting slammed for it, this just reinforces the belief that we are better than our opponents give us credit for.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to drive an opponent from a game. I just think that the risk is not all that high. Again, put yourself in the shoes of the novice. If you're a new player and you have a time constraint, then you're going to leave the game. Simple as that. Nothing I can say or do will make you leave or stay.

Now, say you're losing and you don't have a time constraint. Assume also that you have not reached your limit of acceptable losses. You still have two buy-ins in your pocket ready to go, so you're in it for the long haul. If you have the time, that money's going on the table. I think most players take on the mentality of, "You think you're so good? I'll show you!" You know what I'm talking about. It's called chasing your losses, and it's the common element to all forms of gambling. Once you're in the mindset that the money in your wallet or in your bank account or on your credit card is "gambling money," you're willing to play until it hurts too bad to play anymore. Being berated often only fuels this desire to keep playing. At least that's the experience that I've had.

Enough on that topic -- I think I've just about beat it to death.

What else ...

I feel I was forced to conclude that your definition of correct play is narrow. I'm not saying that you're a by-the-book player. However, I do think that sometimes you respect the opinion of so-called experts a bit too much. (One notable exception is your response to the Schoonmaker article; I applaud you for that.) I cannot produce any specific examples of times where this narrow definition has been made explicit. But in general, we have had conversations in which you have said the correct play would be to do A as opposed to B which I did. And while I could not argue that A was a better move in relation to B, it is my belief that you (and other poker pundts) fail to adequately prove that A is better than all other stragegies (C through Z). That is, a poker book can suggest a strategy that is likely to succeed over most others, but rarely can they invent a strategy that is the best. The best Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky can do is prove out in mathematical terms what the best play would be for a given hand under a given (read: simplified) set of circumstances in a limit game. But poker contains too many variables, especially pot- and no-limit games. There are too many unaccounted-for details to truly define THE correct play. One can conjecture on a play that would have been more likely to succeed. But then, one can never go back in time to prove their theory, can they?

I believe that there is a range of plays that can be successful, and at a real-world poker table, one can only know the result of one of them. This is not to say that players should not evaluate their play and come to judgment on whether the play was appropriate. I just think that the poker world in general has a lot of stiff, pre-conceived notions about what is correct, and that players ought to be more open to new ways of looking at things.

I want to clarify something else. I did not say that the strategies suggested by poker books do not work. I would be ignoring the facts if I did. My point there was that you can win money by playing by the book, but that's not all there is to poker. Players with more experience eat book-taught players alive on a daily basis. How many books on poker do you think Phil Ivey has read? I would be willing to bet large sums of money that I've read more than he has. And then I'd borrow more money and bet that. Books on poker contain formulas that do work for certain stakes, there's no question on that. But I can't tell you how easy it is for me to spot a book player in a casino. The hot chick next to me that you described was one such player. I could read her hands with incredible ease based on her betting patterns. But she was able to win a little from the game by playing by the book. She had obviously learned a system, but had failed to develop the other poker skills that you won't find in most books. Books are not without value. I'm just saying they're not the be-all and end-all.

A perfect example of my last two points. A poker book will teach you to raise a standard amount before the flop in order to, as you so eloquently put it, "prevent others from picking up tells based on the size of your bet." This works, I won't deny that. But as I said above, I think that a range of actions can be the best strategy before the flop. Personally, I like to randomize my preflop raises. I randomize both the cards that I raise with, as well as the size of my raises. I think this does an even better job of not telegraphing my holdings than raising 3-4x the big blind. As this example demonstrates, both plays do the job of eliminating players and disguising hand strength. But one is an intermediate concept you'll find in a typical poker book, and the other is a little more advanced. Watch High Stakes Poker. I doubt the players are all making the same-sized preflop raises. They may average to 3-4x the big blind. But I feel fairly certain there's some decent variation in there.

The randomizing I described is the strategy that best fits my style. I have won large sums of money (mostly from Absolute) by cultivating that crazy table image. Not always by berating players. But by doing the unexpected. Once the players don't know what to expect from me, I can revert to a more conventional style and get paid off. This style results in a higher variance for me, without question. The short-term losses can be pretty huge, indeed. But the wins more than make up for those losses over the long-term. I'm comfortable with having larger swings. It suits me.

The suggestion of a raise to 3-4x the big blind is just that -- a suggestion. I think too often, players read these things too literally. At the table that night, for instance, such a small raise would not have eliminated very many players from the pot. The game was too loose; so a higher standard raise would have been necessary to thin out the field. I would suggest that a raise of 5-6x the big blind for that game would be the equivalent of a 3-4x raise in a "normal" game (whatever that is). I think you have to agree with me on that; a raise to $6 that night would still have 5 players or so seeing the flop. $30 might have been a little high :-P but the point is that one has to adapt the guidelines to suit the game he's playing in. I know you know that. And this isn't to harp on the preflop raise issue, but more generally to point out that poker advice (just like any other advice) must be subjected to the current-scenario-relevance test.

So where does all this back-and-forth leave us? Probably no different from where we began. You still think I let a single hand get to my head and shot myself (and other) in the foot. I think I manipulated my table image as an investment for future payoffs (that admittedly never came). We have conceded some points each way. But at the end of the day, neither of us has moved very much.

Oh well. That's poker.