Reasons Analysis

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Silver_nz New Zealand. Jun 03 2010 22:04. Posts 5647

Reasons Analysis
What is the most EV+ way to think at the poker table?

Running though a hand; instead of listing ranges on each street like in previous blog, listing specific reasons for acting on each street:

The decision to sit in the game should be weighted several times more heavily than any other decision. The Cardrunners motto: what's your edge? the thought about this is where the professional makes money.

This game is NL200 deep. reasons for playing:
-I have a good understanding of how to use position and suited cards deep
-I can read hands better than they can
-I'm not afraid to run big bluffs
-It's shorthanded with FR nits: they will be out of their comfort zone while I am in my speciality
-Want to challenge myself to work out some complex spots
-Pressure to play in any game cause of my goal

Going Further
Once we have reasons pinned down like this we can look at them and see if they are any good. Its time consuming, but picking one or 2 reasons to look at more in depth could lead to a new insights, or at least, a more concrete feel for the game. If I take the turn "should hit my percived range" then I can work out what that range is, something like [flushdraws: 9Tcc, AQcc, sets: JJ, 77, 22, airball: AKo, QThh, maybe a pair turned into a bluff, 55 ] and also look at what I know about him to confirm if he even thinks about ranges.

Of the reasons we list, we could also give them weight: say how important they are in terms of what made us make the decision. This has a couple of nice effects: it forces the brain to look at which reasons it is actually using, not allowing weak but pretty looking reasons to dominate the thought process. We can stick to core reasons like EV+, pot odds, hand ranges, balanced strategy.

Another way to go further is to try to extend this to guessing why HE is doing the action he is doing. Why did he 3bet pre. Why did he flat call on the flop. What was his dominant thought? This will be more complicated becasue there will be many possible actions that could be going on. he could be bluffing, or valuebetting, or protecting. unlike looking at our hand where we know what we are doing. We have to weight all the reasons that he could have and put them together into a best overall play for us - thus his reasons become a reason for us to do an action

Mental real estate
Some of these reasons for acting are terrible. And there are others that are even worse, such as
"He raised, DAMM IT. No one, anywhere, ever is an unlucky as me" - whining
"this guy won that last 2 pots off me and now he's going for it again? rghgghh fuck him" - revenge
Alot of them constitute mental clutter. Thoughts should be precious, afterall the quality of thinking is connected to how much money we win. so every time we let in a thought that isn't going to positively effect the EV of the play we are thinking about, we lose a little. It's a waste of good thought-space.
In a way we have to thought-police ourselves: there's only space for a certain number of types of reasons - and often even they have to folded into even more efficient framework, only to be unfolded when a complicated decision needs to me made. Point is, if thoughts about runbad, or revenge are entering your mind during a hand, they are killing your winrate.

Reasonable?

0 votes

GoTuNk Chile. Jun 03 2010 22:28. Posts 2860

nice post, too bad he didn't fold lol.

Arirang Canada. Jun 03 2010 23:52. Posts 1673

That is a beastly call from the villain. Is that shit standard in NL200? O_O

egood United States. Jun 04 2010 01:00. Posts 1883

you got fucking raped.

Silver_nz New Zealand. Jun 04 2010 02:15. Posts 5647

Of course his call is not standard, I expect more FR nits to be folding overpairs and sets. But it does tell us a few thing about how he thinks about poker: means he can separate my range into nuts or bluff, And that he is willing to make huge hero calls - likely has an ego issue.
These things are much more interesting that some boring results. actually, that's another huge waste of mental realestate: worrying about results, thinking over and over about what happened in a hand instead of thinking about how one can play better in the hands they are in, or play better as an overall game plan.

Silver_nz New Zealand. Jun 04 2010 04:08. Posts 5647