I have came to a realization

Off Topic
1

I have came to realize replaypoker is more than a competitive place to play poker. This is a place where people can help each other, share good times and develop actual friendship. I came here from pokerstar, there nobody is nobody’s friend, very competitive. For example at pokerstar if someone you are playing against asks," did I make a good fold? or should I foldeded my KQ there?" you either don’t answer or give them the wrong answer." That is how it is on there. The great Doyle Brunson once said being a professional pokerplayer is a very lonely experience, what he means is you can never share your knowledge to anyone, under any circumstance. For example, you know why that man is loosing, you see him lose everyday, his going broke, you look in his eyes, he needs help, but he is a fish, and the thing professional do to fish? MILK all the meat off of it!

I have decided to change how I talk and behave on here. From now on I will be polite but reserved humor with everyone, this is also due to the fact that most of the people on here are actually older than me, unlike pokerstar more young folks. I will give good poker advice, not false. And make friends along the way.

GOOD LUCK ON THE POKER TABLES

7 Likes
2

hey cat, check your friend requests. I sent you on and would like to pm with you on several things if you’re interested.
ironsides

3

That was very true in his day. In the digital internet age, it’s anything but true. We have computers in our pockets that can easily tell us the odds of things. We have an internet to share analysis and strategy, and if even some people are doing it, what they can learn through talking to each other will make them better players than the people who hoard their secret knowledge very quickly.

It’s analogous to the difference between cryptography prior to WWII and after. These days, the strongest cryptographic algorithms are public, open source, and vetted by the world. Well, unless there’s stronger secret ones that we don’t know about because they’re secret. What do I know.

1 Like
4

there is always stronger ones top player keep to themselves. I had looked on the forums, to be honest most of it is really basic, nothing a brainy person can’t figure out on his own… What people including professional want are esoteric knowledge.

1 Like
5

You could be right, and you certainly seem to be more experienced at poker than I am, so I should trust you.

My sense of it, though, is that fundamentals take you a long, long way in this game. Most people just have a problem playing good fundamental poker. You can explain the math to people, but getting them to apply it in pressure situations isn’t as easy.

The strongest players (by which, I mean professional poker players, not the top players on Replay, necessarily) are playing a deeper game, but their advanced play is predicated more on knowing their opponents than it is playing secret math. They probably also have much better focus, memory, and emotional control (certain notable exceptions notwithtanding).

3 Likes
6

^^THIS^^

7

Fake chips, real people. It’s not hard to figure out which should be more important.

4 Likes
8

a lot of truth to what you just said… I personally like the challenge!

9

I once saw a really interesting interview of Daniel “Jungleman” Cates by Doug Polk in which he explains how he’s able to still make sound poker decisions while visibly tilted (key part starts around 42 minutes in). My favorite quote is this: “Eight plus eight isn’t going to equal twenty just because I’m mad. That’s not how math works.”

The math isn’t really secret - hell, we’ve talked through a fair bit of it publicly on these forums - and even knowing your opponents isn’t nearly as much a help as you’d think. Particularly as you move up in stakes, your opponents will have fewer holes in their games and be playing closer to a GTO (Game Theory Optimal) style. Deviating from GTO yourself to exploit their weaknesses may increase your winrate against those particular opponents, but it will also expose you to potentially larger losses if you’re playing multi-way against other, GTO-type opponents.

What separates the pros from most of RP’s denizens is knowledge of this math. The vast majority of people sitting at the Replay Poker tables aren’t even aware of the statistics. If you have a backdoor flush draw and an outside straight draw, facing a half-pot bet, do you have the odds to hit your draws? How does your calculus change if your opponent often does or does not continue on the turn? Can you work that out with a calculator, a piece of paper, and a couple of minutes? Most of the people on this site can’t, which is why they lose chips chasing draws or folding to minbets.

What separates the pros at the highest level from those grinding their way through microstakes is the internalization of this math. If they can calculate these odds across their full range of hands, comparing them to the odds for their opponents’ full range of hands, then they can figure out optimal bet sizing to gain maximum value from their competitors. However, they need to do this quickly, since most time banks are not unlimited.

There’s no gnosticism in statistics.

10

you are absolutely correct. most players here are not doing well because they are unable to grasp the fundamentals. You see the fundamentals of poker is hard and not hard at the same time! For example, we all know the saying," a man either gets it when it comes to women, or they don’t!"… And I think it’s like that with poker.

1 Like
11

Yeah, sure u will :slight_smile:

12

Great post.

As a professional Poker Instuctor, (yes, you can actually receive a free lesson in the bigger casinos in Vegas) I often want to tell somebody who is screaming about “donks who catch on the river,” and that part of it is counting your odds pretty quickly. Just how many cards will you need to hit. I find those people who are shouting and whining are really not so great at taking advice. Yesterday, a woman kept yelling “that’s a bluff” and “Show Your Cards.”

I took her out with a higher straight because I had equity in the pot and a really high percentage of hitting a card that I needed. One-card away from a flush with an open-ended high straight draw. She told me that I was a joke.

Ahhhkay.

Poker players are notorious for not wanting advice, or think that they surely don’t need it.
We all do.

(Very few tourists take the lesson -because they are already awesome -and then not know what a straddle is or how math is clearly involved, when they hit the tables)

=)

1 Like
13

I won’t play in Vegas because I think the deals are rigged. My proof? Well, this one time, my blah blah blah was beat by a yadda yadda yadda. The odds of that are like 20 million to 1, I guess!

1 Like
14

I won’t play in Vegas because of the resort fees and the issue isn’t whether I can afford them.

15

Yes, but anyone who is serious about wanting to play poker better has to learn a bit of the math of the game. Couniting outs does not require very advanced mathematics, and if you are playing on RP, you certainly have to make a decision in a few seconds or fold, so you are going to have to deal in approximations.

A big difference in top level tournaments is that the players have relatively lots more time to think about the odds, replay the opponents actions in their mind, and observe the demeanor of the opponent while they are pretending to think about a decision they have already made.

Here is a hand from the WSOP that got some attention and analysis on YouTube as if it was immensely complicated, and yet the hand was totally commonplace to anyone who plays on RP.

Here is the scenario in brief. Chip leader raises with TT and BB (with the second largest stack reraises with AQ unsuited. Chip (let’s call him that) calls.

Flop comes T 7 Q giving Chip a set and BB top pair top kicker. They go back and forth, no cards of interest appear on the turn and river, and BB ends up calling a raise to his value bet on the river, and loses a huge pot and a large chunk of his stack.

Now this hand obviously involved a lot of prize money, and there were some subtleties regarding the sizing of the bets that I have glossed over, but this is the kind of hand we play every day on RP.

Personally I would have folded AQ in this position against the big stack and looked for better opportunities to pick on smaller stacks, or else I would have called and tried to play smallball, and checked my top pair back to opponent, but I guess that is a matter of taste. The commentator on the video says that it is is mandatory reraise with AQ.

I would defininitely have folded the reraise on the river.

Basically from then on, the main question for BB is whether Chip has a pair of Tens or not. Or a pair of 7s.

For Chip it is a question of figuring out if BB has a pair of Queens or not.

16

Actually, the second 7 on the turn and the 6 on the river are scary cards for AQ here. Now there is the possibility of not only a straight, but also a full house or even quads. I wouldn’t bet top pair on the river, unless I thought I had a good read on my opponent, and I would’ve folded to any raise.

17

I thought it was interesting that Ensan “hadn’t played a hand in awhile” and was clearly “preserving his stack.” When such a player decides to mix it up with the other big stack, he’s not doing it with just any 2 xards.

I think Polk was wrong when he said AQ is a mandatory raise there. All of the reasons he gave were pretty weak. Because they were so close to the final table, the BB wasn’t coming along with anything less than a premium hand, and if he was gonna play, the raise was likely to induce a jam. Ensan was playing a tight stack preservation game, so he wasn’t folding to the raise in position. The raise did nothing other than make it harder to get away from the hand later.

Given the situation, I wouldn’t say AQo had Ensan’s range crushed, not by a long shot.

Ensan’s call on the flop should have been a red flag. After that, I would try to get to showdown as cheaply as possible. I liked the check-check on the turn, but think Su should have checked the river. Check-call a small bet, check fold to a big bet. Ensan doesn’t have many bluffs there, it’s just not worth dumping half your stack to find out.

18

It seems that we are all on the same page about this, which illustrates my point that poker at the highest level is not that much smarter than what we do in our little play money games. It is just that there is a lot more money at stake.

Incidentally, I have watched a number of Polk’s videos recently and he brings up a lot of interesting stuff. It is a unfortunate that he has a really annoying voice and diction, is totally without charm, and is suffers from extreme verbosity and makes the same point over and over again, which renders his videos really hard to watch. Which is a pity, because sometimes his analysis can be interesting.

Given the situation, I wouldn’t say AQo had Ensan’s range crushed, not by a long shot.

That is the trouble with using sloppy cliched terms like “crushed”. He does not have any pocket pair crushed, and he does not have AK crushed. Those are the most probable hands that Ensan is playing against the second stack, unless he is bluffing, which is unlikely here.

19

Polk is really good at the math, but tournament poker is more nuanced than straight math might imply. I have alkso watched a lot of his videos, and he knows his stuff, but he also brings a cash game mentality to tournament poker where it doesn’t always apply.

I don’t hate the preflop re-raise, but it was pointless. They were 2 eliminations from the final table, the BB isn’t going to enter the hand, sandwiched between the 2 big stacks, with a marginal hand anyway. The button wasn’t entering the hand with a midling pair, so probably wasn’t folding anyway, all the raise did was give him the chance to re-raise again, and with a range you are mostly behind.

If the Btn was playing stack preservation, just trying to coast to the final table with a meaningful stack, he might even not re-raise AA or KK. Aces get cracked all the time, you might take the cautious approach and see the flop before you commit. So the raise did nothing to narrow his range. His range was narrow to begin with.

The only hand the Btn feared was pocket queens, and the check on the turn from that player pretty much ruled that out.

I think the call on the river was horrendous. What did he think he was beating? A busted draw with KJ maybe, maybe KQ, but KQ has enough showdown value to just call, and someone playing few hands and looking to coast to the final table doesn’t donk off half their stack against a player who is likely to call or come over the top of you. None of it adds up to anything but a fold there.

I make stupid plays all the time, but at least I know they are stupid, often as I am doing them. Free poker does that to a fella sometimes. :slight_smile:

20

Yay for us!