The answer to this question is no, by definition. That said, it helps to determine what “EV” to which you’re referring.
In the context of a tournament, you can make a play that is +EV when looking at chips, but -EV when looking at payouts. A typical example of this would be going all-in while on the bubble of a tournament. You might win tournament chips on average, but at the risk of getting busted out of the tournament which could have a strongly -EV consequence when ICM is taken into consideration.
In the examples you highlighted, though, you’re talking about playing poorly in the short run in order to convince competitors to over-adjust in the future. The problems with this are multifold:
Usually, these bad plays are made with numerous competitors sitting at the table. Because of this, it decreases the frequency with which you’re going to be involved in a pot with any one competitor that overcompensates to adjust for your perceived suboptimal style. In other words, you’re going to make bad plays far more often, usually, than you’ll get the opportunity to reap the “rewards” of making those bad plays.
When are you going to stop playing poorly in order to start reaping the benefits of your opponents’ adjustments? The temptation will always be there to make a crazy play to get them to continue skewing, which would end up costing you more in the long run than if you just stick to a solid gameplan.
At the end of the day, as the adage goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Don’t play stupid games.
None of this really matters. I assume that everyone at the table will make some kind of adjustment. After all, they are all watching, right?
You should only have to do it once for any given table. Most of the time, at most of the tables, the conditions won’t be right, so you don’t bother to do it at all. It’s not something you would do a lot.
Anyone taking a multi-strategy approach to a given situation already knowingly makes the occasional sub-optimal play for the longer-term benefit. When call, raise, or fold are all valid options, one of these is bound to be more +EV in the short term, but we can’t take that path every single time, can we? Well we can,. but we shouldn’t.
While this is a tightly focused psychological exploit against a very specific player type(s), the whole table is watching. So it can have benefits beyond any one player, and I am convinced that these benefits can persist for many hands.
How do you know you are making a bad call in advance? What is your definition of “bad call” and “sucking out”?
I get that manipulating opponents into making worse decisions than they normally do creates opportunities. I don’t see how you are setting this up intentionally with this example.
Adjusting off a GTO-based strategy to take advantage of suboptimal play does not invalidate or even weaken the “optimal” part of the concept. Without a baseline (even if not 100% perfect), much of exploitative play is pure conjecture and guesswork. With players making gross errors, this is fine as there is margin for error. As that margin decreases, finding the maximally EV+ adjustment becomes more important.
This has been solved and there is an easy and implementable way to play optimally - sit down with opponents who are worse than you are and exploit the hell out of them
I was mostly thinking about chasing straight and flush draws where you aren’t getting the right price to call and can mostly discount implied odds. I am simply defining “sucking out” as making the winning hand.
This was sort of my point. If we can force someone to make adjustments, most of the players I encounter make sub-optimal adjustments that can be further exploited. Moreover, these adjustments themselves can be influenced towards a direction that best suits us.
Well yeah. I think that table selection is one of the more important skills in poker. If I find myself playing with a whole table of strong players playing optimally, I’ll go find a softer table. I’m not here to prove myself to anyone, including myself, I’m here to have fun and meet hot poker chicks for casual flirtation. It’s a well known fact that the highest stakes are full of goofy-looking men with buck teeth. Sorry, but that’s just not my scene.
Well yeah, a fella like me would never be satisfied with just flirtationing one woman.
Of course, I have found it best to only actually live with one at a time, not counting the domestics, of course. I mean, the domestics are women and they do count, but it’s a bad idea to fraternize with one’s underlings, so they don’t count in the context of this specific situation.
@SunPowerGuru, I thought you might appreciate something I heard from a really good pro the other day. The discussion was about whether poker was more math or more psychology. His answer was the best I’ve heard on the subject. He said that the outputs are purely mathematical but that the inputs were mostly psychological. If you didn’t understand the psychology of your opponents, then your inputs would be all wrong. If you don’t understand the math, then you can’t get the proper outputs. The really great players understand both sides.
I have been playing with a concept i call “range distortion” for some time now. This is the smarter cousin of range balancing, but includes a a collection of other techniques designed to totally destroy the input side of the equation.
One example involves the strategic showing or not showing of your hole cards. Let’s say you have 63o on the BB with 2 or 3 limpers and you end up with a boat or straight at the river. You bet, and they all fold. If you show, what does this say?
A lot of people will forget that you checked your option from the BB, they will only remember that you were in there betting with crapola. Many people will over-adjust to stuff like this, opening huge holes in their games,
Anyway, it’s something I like to fiddle with. Your post about inputs and outputs was spot on, thanks for sharing it!
Almost sounds like an analogy for a math word problem.
The psychology input of the opponent is akin to sett’n up the problem correctly.
The Math output then is akin to solving your equations correctly.
Thats just part of my active range balancing. If I don’t show you my limp AND bet range is AA-23o, then how can you give me credit for any 2 cards at any time ?? Showing a hand when its not necessary, is a great way to demonstrate what my range is, or is as far as you know… when applicapable. Its call’d disinformation.
How can you get credit for a 3 street bluff with 23o, if everyone folds to your river bet… if you don’t show your cards there ?? or even limp’n AA , flop’n an A, and checking till the river then betting. If everyone folds , again you wanna show that play of limp’n/check’n a monster, to reinforce your limp range.
Sassy
A range can be broken down into 3 sections; top of range (TOR), middle of range (MOR), and bottom of range (BOR). In every suggested range I have seen, there is a smooth, unbroken transition from one to the other… they form a continuum.
TOR hands are fairly easy to play and realize their equity well.
BOM hands are fairly easy to play and can over-realize their actual preflop equity. For example, it’s easy to set mine with smaller pairs and either play “fit or quit” or use the non-pair hands as bluffs.
MOR hands can be tricky to play. If you connect with the flop, you will often be dominated, and if you don’t you will usually be looking at one or more overcards. Even if you flop a good draw, you will rarely be drawing to the nuts. Let’s say that hands in this group have less raw equity and tend to under-realize the equity they do have.
Have any of you played with the idea of just eliminating the MOR holdings and playing a “broken range” consisting only of TOR and BOR hands? If charted, such a range would show a clear break between the two groups.
In practice, we would have to add a few hands to out TOR and enough hands to our BOR to make up the difference. The BOR hands added would be those that are easiest to play postflop and/or over-realize the most.
We would end up with better board coverage and it should be easier to find enough bluffs to fill whatever “optimal” bluff frequencies we think are, well… optimal, whatever that means to you. I suspect this might also reduce the volatility that is the bane of all poker players.
Has anyone tried such a thing? Let me know what you think.
It is maybe not rational, but I often prefer to play with MOR hands like T8 suited or QJ suited, because it is easier to make decisions on the flop and turn. For example you flop second pair, plus backdoor flush and straight draws, then the turn clarifies or eliminates possibilities, and then the river brings the final decision.
With AK or AQ, on the other hand, I feel I am always betting scared, and 2 times out of 3 the flop is missed, leaving very awkward decisions against pocket pairs who will often suspect that they are beating AK and AQ and refuse to fold. In small stack poker tournaments getting overcommitted to hands like AK and AQ can often lead to tournament death. They may lead at the flop, but they have a hard time improving on later streets. AA KK QQ likewise are royal pairs that need to take the pot down by the flop, so that they are not hung, drawn, and quartered by the peasantry in post flop play.
BOR hands tend to be overplayed in RP. Most players will not fold a small pair from any position preflop. As you say, they may be useful as bluffs if the flop does not favor the range of a raiser, and if the set does appears on the turn or river, then there is tremendous surprise value.
It looks like I’m winning twice as many hands without a showdown as hands that make it to showdown.
I can think of four possible explanations:
I’m betting miserable hands, and so if I get to showdown, things aren’t looking so good
I’m playing more aggressively than others that have posted here, and so I’m shaking callers more often without getting to showdown
I’m folding more often myself, and so not getting to showdown as often
at higher levels, players in general get to showdown less frequently
I think there is likely some degree of truth to all of these, but I suspect the last bullet is the most significant factor. I think lower elite stakes, where I do most of my playing, has a lot of very cautious players.
Considering @Yorunoames bullet points, I think that my stats are most properly explained by aggressive post-flop play.
With a fold rate of 74% and a showdown win rate at 32%, I strongly suspect that my opening ranges are a bit too tight. Given how rarely I’ve been playing these last few months, I don’t think that’s a problem but something to be aware of when I start playing more regularly.
… Input, I need input…
