Anyone play a lot of deep 5/10 live?

Been playing some 5/10 live FR lately...  Mostly loose passives, even when pretty deep. Stacks $1500-10K.

Hand reading needs adjusting, since they slowplay in such weird spots: Hero cbets a likely big hand on a drawy board, villain just calls; villain minraises the turn when the board pairs... the turn minraise on paired board is very often a boat at this table, but I am wondering how it got there since a flopped set or two pair has every reason to raise the flop: mega deep, flush and wheel draws on board, their opponent is likely to have a hand given the play, etc. Well, villain had aces up on flop, then boated the turn, minraised, hero tanks and folds, villain shows. lol, shows.

They all slowplay sets on the flop, regardless of texture... it is hilarious.  But then, they are so passive that maybe they think they are slowplaying to "balance"

And and that table, flop raises get everyone's "Set alarms" on, which is odd since everyone slowplays their sets. 

Concepts that you find don't work well vs work well?

For example, they don't valuebet thin on the river a lot, so river check-raising is much more dangerous then at a more aggro game. 

Their "pot control" stategies are not very good.

They put a target on LAGs which can end up being self-destructive.

They are starting to 3bet more this year, but 4bets are always AA or KK, and their 3 bet ranges are still surprisingly strong. 

Preflop bet sizing totally messes with them.

Recent research from a buddy of mine at Caltech suggests that people make the most mistakes (in this case, folding too much in a stripped down version of a card game) against a trusting, happy face.  So, perhaps your poker face should look something like this  rather than this ...

See the link.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011663

 I have only just skimmed the abstract... One issue is that it seems to conflate making a mistake with folding (my inner monkey often does this too and has a disdain for folding ).  I wonder if smiling induces bad calls and bad raises?  Perhaps smiling just says "trust me" and his message goes best with a bet, "trust me I have it."   

Enough people have been encouraging here that I have decided to look into launching the magazine-article series "Irrational Poker" ... the plan is to approach a magazine to see if they want me to to pen a small series of psychology articles, partnering with a different poker pro each time. If any of the BFP pros are interested, I'd be honored to discuss penning one up.  Despite what it looks like in this blog, I sometimes can put together a well-written piece and have published (non-poker) stuff before. I make my living as a "behavioral economist" and am well-credentialed, so I think the magazines will be intrigued...  

Anyway: Which Poker Rag should I send a letter of inquiry to first? Cardplayer? Bluff? Allin? I am wondering which is more fun to be associated with, which more pleasant to work with, which has best readership, and also which suits the likely content better? Any opinions?

I realized after banging this out that I posted on this below, but here's the thought in greater detail...

Research shows that the more you cheat, the more you think others are cheating (and, interestingly, you then start to cheat even more but for "defensive" reasons, to protect yourself from all the other cheaters you think are out there cheating offensively).  This is "projecting" your cheating onto others and is an example of "consensus" effects. In the literature, it is called "false consensus," but I dislike calling it "false," since it is often rational to think that other people are like you... after all... we are average most of the time... and, using Bayes' Theorem, we do have information, namely that +1 persons are cheating, namely us, and that should impact how we think about the population.  That said, the problem (and the "falseness" of it all) is when we overly update our perceptions of the population based on our own behavior... if we knew cheating was rare to begin with, the fact that we begin to cheat should not make us think that everyone is cheating. Consensus effects occur all the time...

To Poker:  When facing a raise, LAGs often think other people are just playing back against them. But (and now I remember where I wrote some of this before: it was in a response to Niman and Giggy in one of their hand history posts, where they said, "CAIN, NO, NITS HAVE THE NUTS!")... one of the biggest lightbulbs I have had for my game is realizing that the nit is not playing back at me b/c I have been pounding on him all day and b/c I would play back at a LAG in this spot... the nit has not loosened up... he tightened up (if I was paying attention); he's raising me b/c he finally found a hand.

So, thinking that the nit is playing back at me compounds two errors: Projecting my thought process too heavily into theirs, and wishful thinking on my part ("Maybe my hand is good; after all, I am at the top of my range here and he can't know that I actually have a pair this time"). Yes, I would play back light in this spot, and that makes it more possible that the villain is doing that, but I need to pay attention to the base-rates... the villain tends to be a nit, and the reason we are destroying him is exactly b/c he RARELY plays back in these spots.  Maybe he is bluffing here, but he's entitled to one every now and then... and after he shows the bluff he will go back to nitting and letting us steal his monys. And, really, if it were not me in the hand but someone else, I'd say to them, "easy fold, dude... nits have the nuts here." So, I should say to myself, "easy fold dude."  (I think this is one of the great benefits of teaching others... you start seeing inconsistancies between what you say to do and what you actually do; and you can then realize the errors of your own ways.)

So, when is your "Consensus" feeling (the notion that he is like you in this spot) correct and when is it false?  Well, that depends on base-rates etc., as suggested above.  But, if you worry that you under-adjusting, ask yourself this... [see one of my earliest posts on: trusting your gut] ... how can you be wrong here... start with what do you want to be true and then consider countervailing facts.  Maybe the reason I am so tempted to believe that the nit is playing back at me is the mere temptation to think that I have the better hand.  I mean, nits usually do have the nuts, and that is hard to swallow right now, coz it means I should.. ick... fold.  I.e., maybe my gut is wanting it to be true that he is lagging it up, not really predicting it to be the case (and it is hard to tell the difference from when your gut is predicting vs. merely hoping-for). When it is a toss-up in my mind, I go against what I hope for, since what I hope for probably biased my judgment... It prolly is not a toss up at all.  Kind of like, when I think that some guy might be a tad smarter than me, he is probably a LOT smarter.  The fact that I think it is even close tells me it ain't.

Funny, while I admit it rarely, someone like that just emailed me... Drazen might be a tad smarter than I am.  Sigh. 

Almost done teaching.... will write more soon. In meantime, let me repost this from my question (about an HSP hand) to Phil on his blog...

____________

(It is not the hand itself that interests me but a more general psych point about how what we know affects how we think about what villains "know" about our hands)...

Basically, Elky vs. Dwan (Dwan has aces full of his pocket tens, Elky has exact same hand). Dwan river bets, Elky pauses, then calls; Dwan berates the pause (I am a Dwan fan, btw, but am maybe on Elky's side here... but yea, Dwan is right that the pause maybe should have included thoughts about raising, I think both for value and, separatetly, as a bluff). But, it was the size of Dwan's bet that got me thinking...

The action, from cardplayer:

In arguably the most interesting hand of the night, Dwan almost pushed Grospellier off the same hand when the two players both held pocket tens in the hole.

On a Dwan straddle, Brunson opened to $5,500 with 9 8 from under the gun, and Benyamine called with pocket fives. Grospellier, perhaps concerned about the strength of Texas Dolly’s hand, decided to play it safe and just called with his pocket tens in position. When the action came around to Dwan and he discovered two tens, he didn’t hesitate to re-pop it to $24,800. Brunson was in a gambling mood, and he made the call. With so much money out there, Benyamine and Grospellier soon followed, producing a $101,800 pot before the flop.

An A A 3 flop came out, and Dwan — first to act — fired a probe bet of $22,800, just a little more than one-fifth the pot. Brunson and Benyamine threw their cards into the muck, but Grospellier made the call.

“It’d be great if another 10 came up, then we’d really see some action,” Kaplan said, delivering the dry line while knowing that at least a few amateur viewers out there would probably not realize that hypothetical was impossible with a legitimate deck.

A 9 came on the turn. Dwan checked, and Grospellier checked.

A third ace came on the river, and Matusow, seemingly thinking at least one if not both players needed to have an ace to be involved in such a massive encounter, burst out, “Now that card I didn’t expect to see.”

Dwan bet $58,400 into the $147,400 pot and Grospellier thought for a bit before making the call.

“He has to have an ace, doesn’t he,” Matusow could be heard whispering, after Grospellier made the call. Whether Matusow was talking about Dwan or Grospellier, it didn’t matter because neither had an ace and they wound up taking their money back when they saw that they both held the same hand.

The hand was perhaps more interesting for the reactions it caused amongst the players rather than the action that occurred on the felt. After Matusow saw both hands face-up, he proclaimed loudly and sincerely, “Wow, what a call.”

But neither Dwan, nor Eli Elezra was impressed.

“How can you fold?” Dwan asked. “People must be playing a different game than I am.”

And Elezra piped in: “ElkY, I’m sorry, but I would call faster.”

RC Says:

One might read Dwan's milking bet as just that...  10s+ trying to get a call from a hand that is scared of a nine (e.g., 77s). Dwan could have jacks there, since he raised pf, but, yea, even that possibility might be outweighed be other possibilities... fine; I am making a different point anyway, see below. {BTW, I think if that occurs to you (in Elky's spot, that Dwan is either bluffing, has a nine, or has a better value hand; but prolly does not have an ace), you should consider raising and turning you hand into a bluff (first think how often the case ace is in his range, given the action, then ask how to get JJ-KK to fold); ok, granted what would make Dwan fold KK there? I did not say you should raise, I said consider it; can you make JJ  fold if you think Dwan is milking with a better boat? Or for value: Can you get Dwan to call with a nine, or call with 88?}... but, all of that is off-topic (though it does remind me of one thing that I was telling some students: I like to separate my villains' ranges into value ranges and bluff ranges; then I separate my equity given those ranges into showdown equity and fold equity... the more equity, the more agressive I feel; from then on, it's basically maximizing EV; I find the two separations mentally clarifying, as opposed to, e.g., considering his entire range with both bluffs and value hands at the same time):

Dwan seemed to think Elky's pause was rediculous. But, on some levels, Elky might expect a worse hand to bet bigger... I doubt Elky had all this (below) in mind, but may have felt that the bet seemed like a milk and worried that a hand better than a nine had its hand on the cow...

Here's what I was wondering and why I wrote this post: does a nine bet more, for an interesting psychological reason, namely: with 1010, and you think Elky has some underfull (77,88, mayyybe a 9, etc), you don't want, e.g., 88 to fear the nine, so you bet small. That should be the same when you have the 9 (ignoring hand combos for a minute; so assume you already put him on 88), but the nine's potential scare-card-ness to the villain is more salient to you when you have tens, than when you actually have the nine...  so, erroneously, you bet smaller with 1010 than with the 9 (but, ironically, your 9 hurts his range, since - if we were unsure what he had - it makes him having a nine as LESS likely).  Why do you bet smaller with tens full than with nines full; is it rational to do so? Maybe b/c the nine on the board is what you are focusing on when you have tens, as it is "yet another hand he has to be afraid of", or maybe it is because you know how strong your hand is and you conflate that with how strong you think he thinks your hand is.

It's kinda like, "I think my hand beats him, and a nine ALSO BEATS him... let alone the ace which maybe I can forget about... so his hand is at least TWO levels worse than my hand [man, his hand is weak compared to mine], so if I get a crying call it's gotta be from a milllllkingly small bet." Vs. "I have the nine, if bet like I have it, he might think I am bluffing and call... I mean, I can't have the ace often at all, and so I am repping a tiny value range here, namely just the nine, he will think I am bluffing... oh I guess I could have tens plus, but whatever... 88 should think it is pretty strong here; it's only sliiiightly worse than my hand."  The salience of the nine vairies depending on your hand, and that shifts what you percieve to be his calling ranges around, even though he cannot see the cause of that shift (your hand).

Basically, if you put Elky on 77 or 88 and want to extract money, do you bet differently with tens than with the nine (supposing that you already know he does not have the nine)?  I think people do, and that's interesting if you think about it...

[sorry for choppy posts during my teaching hell]

From Wikipedia:

"The fundamental theorem of poker is a principle first articulated by David Sklansky that he believes expresses the essential nature of poker as a game of decision-making in the face of incomplete information.

The fundamental theorem is stated in common language, but its formulation is based on mathematical reasoning. Each decision that is made in poker can be analyzed in terms of the expected value of the payoff of a decision. The correct decision to make in a given situation is the decision that has the largest expected value. If you could see all your opponents' cards, you would always be able to calculate the correct decision with mathematical certainty. (This is certainly true heads-up, but is not always true in multi-way pots.) The less you deviate from these correct decisions, the better your expected long-term results. This is the mathematical expression of the Fundamental Theorem."

Raising Cain says: It is simply not true that merely seeing your cards allows me to maximize EV.  I need to know what you think of my cards, what you think of your cards, what errors you are making in reasoning, etc. Consider this potential counterexample that sheds light on the standards by which we evaluate our play ($, Sklansky $, Galfond Bucks, etc.): 

Suppose your hand is better than mine, but I mistakenly think I have you crushed. You read my confidence and lay down your hand. I'd have played differently than I would have had I seen your cards.(There are several errors in my play: I misread your hand and your options with it. And, this is a bit results oriented. But, my point is...) Have I lost? I have not lost $. Have I even lost EV?   

Like my Kabe Gaplan story below (from August, where you base your play on his reasonable range, but his actual range is totally different), this example is about making a decision based on mistaken beliefs, that if true, would rationalize the decision... Sometimes mistaken beliefs are reasonably held, so what does this say for the normative status of the decision on which they are based?      

We could add to the theorem, "assuming you'd play optimally, if you could see his cards," but that begs the question about what optimal play is. 
 

[this post is in progress, gotta run]

From wikipedia, the base rate fallacy:

In a city with 100 terrorists and one million non-terrorists there is a surveillance camera with an automatic face recognition software. If the camera sees a known terrorist, it will ring a bell with 99% probability. If the camera sees a non-terrorist, it will trigger the alarm 1% of the time. So, the failure rate of the camera is always 1%.

Suppose somebody triggers the alarm. What is the chance he/she is really a terrorist?

Someone making the base rate fallacy would incorrectly claim that the false alarm rate must be 1 in 100 because the failure rate of the device is 1 in 100, and so he/she is 99% sure to be a terrorist if the device rings. The fallacy arises from the assumption that the device failure rate and the false alarm rate are equal.

This assumption is incorrect because the camera is far more likely to encounter non-terrorists than terrorists. The higher frequency of non-terrorists increases the false alarm rate.

Imagine that all 1,000,100 people pass in front of the camera. About 99 of the 100 terrorists will trigger a ring — and so will about 10,000 of the million of nonterrorists. Therefore 10099 people will be rung at, and only 99 of them are terrorists. So, the probability that a person who triggers the alarm is actually a terrorist is 99 in 10,099 (about 1/102).

The base rate fallacy is only fallacious when non-terrorists outnumber terrorists, or conversely. In a city with about 50% terrorists and about 50% nonterrorists, the real probability of misidentification won't be far from the failure rate of the device.

Findings in psychology

In some experiments, students were asked to estimate the grade point averages (GPAs) of hypothetical students. When given relevant statistics about GPA distribution, students tended to ignore them if given descriptive information about the particular student, even if the new descriptive information was obviously of little or no relevance to school performance. This finding has been used to argue that interviews are an unnecessary part of the college admissions process because interviewers are unable to pick successful candidates better than basic statistics.

To POKER:

[will complete post later; just got invited to juicy homegame... basically, this is post will be about paying attention to hand combos and not totally going with reads and ignoring base-rates of card combos.]

[in meantime, check out 2p2 post on Bayes: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10933141&an=0&page=0#Post10933141

Here is an interesting hand that I will think out loud about in order to generate fodder for future psychology posts (not really to analyze the hand correctly)...

 NIMAN SAID IN HIGH STAKES FORUM:

A little over 150BB deep against one of the best regulars in the 1KNL game.  He opens UTG and I call with 99 on the button.  Everyone else folds.  The flop is Q-T-9 with a flush draw.  He bets and I just call.  I would normally raise here, but I think that just calling is better against this player.  He will not overplay a one pair hand, so I think that I would actually be an underdog against the range of hands that we get it all in on the flop with.  Also, he knows that I am opportunistic and is capable of making thin calls.  So if the board turns ugly, I can either pot control my hand or just bet for value (and possibly have him look me up lightly since it would be an obvious spot to bluff).  On the other hand, I can represent a much weaker hand than I have if the board bricks out or if I fill up.

I know that the standard play would be to raise this flop, but please don't dwell on that in the analysis in this thread.  In addition to what I described above, there were a lot of metagame reasons for me to just call here that I don't want to get into detail with at the moment.  I am more looking for analysis of the final river decision.

The turn is a brick - an offsuit 4 I think.  He bets again and I just call again.  The river is a queen (no flush possible) for a final board of Q-T-9--4--Q.  If he bets this river, I am just going to call.  I am certain that is the right play against this player:  I am way ahead of his river betting range, but I am behind his river raise calling range.  Again, you have to trust me on this one:  it is very player and history specific.

However, he just checks the river.  Now of course I am going to bet.  I hope that he will put me on a missed draw and make a call with whatever he might have.  In order to represent a bluff, I go ahead and bet my standard hefty bet (I explained this concept in my check raise bluffs and thin value bets video).  He then surprises me my check raise shoving.

Can I actually fold here?  Think about what he might be putting me on, and what he might have himself.

1) he is bluffing B% of the time.

2) he is thin-value betting with hand 1, h1% of the time; hand two, h2%, etc. For a total of h% thin values which you beat.

3) he is value betting better vbb% of the time. 

Put up numbers, do pot odds, place a value on curiosity (C$), follow the math.

My reads on %:

B%: I doubt he is bluffing here, but I never like to put that % at zero. I'd be bluffing here 15%, and that would make it hard for me to fold, since my bluff capacity would tend to make me think that he could have the same capacity. But, I just made a post on false consensus bias... he is not me and maybe he is never bluffing here; at least (by the sounds of it), he is bluffing way less often.  I bluff way too much in general. The way you (Niman) talked about his calling range on the flop, he probably is not bluffing at all.  I like to auto-adjust for overconfidence (even when we are 100% sure, we are right <90% of the time), so I won't say zero. People can surprise us, and I don't know this guy like you do. B% = <<5% ... (From earlier post: what air does he feel psychologically wed to this pot here, such that he needs to rebluff bc "I WAS DESTINED TO WIN THIS POT"? AJs of flush suit? Is he prone to getting stuck on his draws like that?).

H%: AQ for thin value? Maybe, but he can't expect a call here. Are you ever calling with a worse Q (or *worse*)? I don't know how good he is at reading you, but consider that you are thinking about folding a boat here.  He might not expect that thick a fold, but I think AQ is check calling here. Put AQ as not so likely. (the problem is, as Durrr once said on P.A.D., all options seem unlikely; and... as I am realizing, we will need to add up to 100% somehow; and right now I don't see how; maybe AQ is more likely than I think; maybe the villain is in the heat of the moment and is focused more on your range right now than your range post call; you are very focused on his calling range, as shown on the flop; are you overly extending those range thoughts to his mind also? In the heat of the moment, even a good player can just feel "Ah, screw you.... RERAISE!!". Ok, maybe not as often on paired board for value.)     

H2% ... KJ? Seems plausible, but needs to be suited for UTG? Maybe not. You rep a weak queen and a bluff here A LOT (do you ever have Q4s or can he forget about that?) and yes KJs would think he is ahead of your range; but again: ahead of your calling range???? Again, you are not bluff catching here very often.  He might think he can get away with a bluff and surprise us by turning his hand into one; but if he has KJ, his mind is not deeply in the bluffing court, and he'd never think you were bluff catching but hoping that you were calling lighter (with a Q, maybe needs to be a really big Q). BUT: If he has KJ, he can't expect a light call very often. Would he suspect a little raise with AQ on the flop from you, or not at all? KJ is the most likely hand that you beat. KJ would be in a weird spot: I am ahead of Niman almost always, but not when he calls; he should fold most of his worse hands, I guess there might be some hands that can call (Qx) and, like I said, I am ahead almost always so the worst that happens is that he folds, right? ...  Well, wrong.  And consider that the board is paired and this should raise the hackles of most villains pretty basically.  I doubt he is in rebluff mode, or turn hand into bluff mode (but that is sweet here) and there are a lot of weak qs in your range; doesn't he just call?

Vbb% Q10s? You know better than I, but is he folding this UTG preflop a bunch? Q4s, no. QQ? Hand combo wise, TT is way more likely. TT more likely than any hand except possibly KJs. KJs might not do this bc of above worries, but combo wise, KJ (mostly KJs) was way more likely than TT on the flop.   

I think he is vbetting, not thin, most of the time, but I am not sure by how much a margin... Does he put KJ as a thin bet or not? I don't think he is betting thin here, so how he thinks of KJ will determine if it is likely or not.

Im not being careful with all the possible hands, I forget the pot-odds (were they 2-1?) and I am not even following my own framework carefully, but up to:  VBB% = 60%, ThinH% = 35%, Bluff = 5% MAXXX would garner a call I think... What would it have to be to fold? Without doing the math, at least this would be a fold: 70%, ThinH 27 (mostly KJs)%, Bluff 3%. And I think the right % is actually between there, so WOW. Interesting hand.  I think it is a fold unless you value curiosity a lot (but put an exact value on C$, and walk away if even that cannot justify a call).

Let me follow my own blog advice and CTO (consider the opposite)... I am putting him at VB 60-70% of the time. Does he really have TT and QQ (etc.) that often? Can't he have AQ more often? I may be biased by the fact that this hand is being posted, and bc of that, I feel that villain has either a boat or Niman folded.  So, given that you posted it, I fold to a probably boat. Had it came up in real life (without conditioning on the posting of this hand), I'd announce that I am "probably behind, but I wanna see just in case you have KJ" and call. You know what?  No, I think I look at my second hand and fold 55% of the time, calling when the second hand is past 33 seconds or whatever.

Result? 00:03...  Watch gives me a fold. I don't know how I feel about it. Can I resist showing him my 99?  Did I totally do bumb base-rates and waaaay undervalue KJs?  By letting my watch randomize, did I just chose from Deck B and not for metagame reasons (from earlier post, where people mix between best and second best strategies, instead of taking best always)? Did I not even bother actualy doing the math??? I'm an idiot. What a tough hand.  All that work and I end up flipping a coin...

Another idea that comes out of this but certainly feels patently false is that maybe there are no tough decisions... when it is uncontroversial, the right action is clear; when the decision is so tough that it generates long blogs like this, it is probably just about even EV no matter what you do. Still fun to contemplate.

PS: Maybe, even once we factor in the value of information, maybe on "close calls" we should just fold.  It is painful to fold here, so if it remains 50/50, we probably arrived at this score with some bias and the bias would be towards calling (unless we are so worried about being outplayed that we overly downsize his bluff capacity; but our own bluff capacity might counteract this since it woud lead us to thik that he is also bluffing (more than he is)). I.e., when it feels 50/50, it is probably 55-45 in favor of folding. Yea, it's like: if you feel that it is 50/50 that you are good looking, you probably are not.

(from Wikipedia) The false consensus effect is the tendency for people to project their way of thinking onto other people. In other words, they assume that everyone else thinks the same way they do. This supposed correlation is unsubstantiated by statistical data, leading to the perception of a consensus that does not exist. This logical fallacy involves a group or individual assuming that their own opinions, beliefs and predilections are more prevalent amongst the general public than they really are.

So, how did this and BFP hurt my game this summer?  Well, I took my 6 max training to the 2/5 and 5/10 live games and always thought that others were also (correctly) identifying the tricky spots to be aggro, b/c I saw those spots and was excited that all of my recent poker training was opening my eyes to moves I had not noticed before.  The problem was that, even at 5/10 live, the players are often not super sophisticated and I continually "leveled myself." They did not see the spot, they had JJ. The bluffier I got, the more I thought others were bluffing, and the more I rebluffed.  That was an expensive week. yikes

One of my friends has commented that the consensus bias is totally reasonable (since we are like most people most of the time), and I agree.  That said, the deeper we learn our own games, the more we can contrast them with the games of others. I often bet thin for value; but the lawyer in my home game does *not*. I fold.

Also, we have to CTO (consider the opposite, from below posts) on the idea that when we want to think that the player is like us (capable of bluffing here, maybe I should call), we should counter-act the resulting motivated reasoning by asking ourselves all the ways/reasons that this player would not be bluffing here. B/c, as prone to consensus effects as I am, I often think people are different than me when that suits my purposes (I'd never call an overbet with worse here, but he might just play his hand and call it)...  

Re-intro to new readers: As you may know, I am a behavioral economist (academic) and a poker "enthusiast." I am here applying tidbits of my research area to the game we love.  This post is a troll for comments and thumbs up encouragement; i.e., is any of this interesting? Tell me which parts.

This summer, I hope to re-organize/write-up of few of the interesting concepts and coauthor an article with a pro player (I am the pro psychologist, but I am not a pro player), called "Irrational Poker: Poker Insights From Behavioral Economics." I will likely do it with one of the pros who sporadically visits our homegame (both are from two different poker training sites, ickkkk; maybe a BFP pro will be interested instead?)...

I will leave my homegame guests' names unmentioned, but hats off to one of them, a top pro (from what I can tell, up around a mill in 2010 already) who recently joined us in the middle of a micro stakes homegame of 50c/$1 (I adjust stakes based on income of current guests; but often <2k NL and we had started micro before the pro arrived.. the pro was up 72K that day...), and, just around the midpoint of the game, where we often uncap the buyin from 150bb to "whatever" ... the pro asks, "is my credit good?"  When I say "sure," the pro says, "ok, I will take $2500 then."  I gulped for several reasons and had to break out the new 1K plaques. *Effective* stacks were soon $800 and rising in a 50cent/dollar game (it is a willlllld homegame with lots of rebuys and it attracts all sorts, some for the drinks, some for the food (niman ranch sausages over the open fire, old schotch, young margaritas) some for the cards, some for all three: that night we had a gardener, a truck driver, an athlete, a stair builder (he brings the cherrywood for the fire; umyum), a lawyer, a wealthy entrepreneur who recently sold his product for tens of millions, a guy who does very basic psychological experiments on monkeys (don't ask), a diplomat from vietnam, and an online and live tourney pro who was drooling over the fishtank but getting drunk on the schotch -- and it generated many many rebuys and several stacks soon got over $1500); trying to describe being 1500 bb deep with a pro on your left would be like trying to describe being in a canoe during a thunderstorm (you just can't appreciate the feeling of vulnerability until you are actually there); but it was interesting... 

*Anyway*  I'd appreciate feedback on which insights you liked best from this blog (or comments you had) as I will pick the best of my tidbits/posts for an article or two.

From Wikipedia, escalation of commitment is defined thusly:

Escalation of commitment was first described by Barry M. Staw in his 1976 paper, "Knee deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action". More recently the term sunk cost fallacy has been used to describe the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Such investment may include money, time, or — in the case of military strategy — human lives. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying it are reflected in such proverbial images as Throwing good money after bad and In for a dime, in for a dollar (or In for a penny, in for a pound).

Pot odds aside, there are obvious lessons for the poker player in this bias... But, I want to discuss a non-obvious application: calling the big busted draw river bet. People become emotionally committed to pots in which they had monster draws (over and above the money they have sunk into it, like any other draw; these monster draws evoke a deeper commitment to the pot). 

Obviously, we know that opponents sometimes miss their draws and then need to bet the river to win; and we can analyze the play thus far (no raising until the river; wouldn't a strong made hand have raised before now, for protection against the draw?).  But, sometimes the bet seems very forceful and you feel strength in the opponent's mannerisms, even though his hand-range does not make a lot of sense (unless he just rivered a set, etc.).  I have found that, sometimes, they had a *huge* draw and they thought the pot was theirs the whole time ("how can I lose with a straight-flush draw and two overs????"); when they do miss, they feel that they deserve the pot and bet with extra conviction when they miss.  The bet often feels like a value bet, because the opponent seems to think that he actually deserves this pot.   I call it "psychological pot commitment." I have used this insight to make some pretty scary calls lately ("I think he has the K of hearts, and missed that Royal and is stuck with king-high, I call with my middle pair").

It feels different than the standard "I missed, now I must steal the pot" bet.... watch for it and you'll see...

Probability matching is a decision error, exemplified by the following example:

1) Suppose you are playing a game in which there are two abnormal decks of 25 cards each.  You can draw from either deck and if the card is a face card, you win $1, and if you draw a non-face card, you lose $1.

2) Deck A has 20 face cards (out of 25) and deck B has only 5 (out of 25).  I.e., deck A has 4 times as many face cards as deck B.

3) You need to make 10 consecutive draws, and each draw can be from whatever deck you choose on that particular draw.

4) How many draws do you draw from deck A?

Hopefully, you see that ALL draws should be from deck A, no matter the outcome of each consecutive draw.  But, in practice, many people playing this type of game "probability match," drawing from A 4 times more than B, but still drawing from B some of the time.

Think about how this applies to poker, e.g., calling a head's up river shove from a TAG-reg, who is either A) valuebetting a better hand than yours and, all things considered, you should fold (say, 80% of the time), or B) bluffing (20% of the time) and you should call.  Obviously, pot odds, doublechecking your reads, and metagame is part of the calculus on whether you should call. But, players will often probability match and call some of the time, merely to try to get lucky and synchronize to catch the rare bluff.  This is like drawing from deck B...

The concept is simple, but many players argue themselves into a -EV play merely on the basis that it will sometimes be profitable to deviate from the best EV play (i.e., sometimes outcomes are better than should be "expected"). I once found myself calling a TAG's river raises, "because he has to be bluffing sometime, and I am worried that he is starting now [if I were him, I'd be bluffing more, starting now, so maybe he is bluffing now... [no, he is not me; he has the nuts 80% of the time in that spot; and the idea that my play does not equal his play will be the topic of a separate post on "false consensus" errrors]]."  Then I realized that until he varies his game, he is just bluffing so rarely that I don't mind letting him have it those few times bc I get to fold all those times he plays the nuts face up. I.e., I always fold to him now in that spot... always, and easily.  I will watch for him to vary his game, but up to this point, he has not had to bluff more, because people (now other people) keep calling him enough of the time. Even if he catches on, he will have to really change his game for a call to be profitable.

Random Idea...

(My detail-butchering recollection of) recent research focused on students who said they would donate in the upcoming blood-drive and who knew where to go on campus to donate. The researchers had some of the students draw on a campus map, indicating the route they'd have to take to donate blood.  The ones who were asked to draw the map were much more likely to actually donate when the time came, compared to students who knew where to go but did not actually draw/practice it out.  This research was a lesson in mental priming, commitment, and visualization.

So...

Maybe we can practice folding big hands.

E.g., deal yourself a pair of aces.  Deal a flop and simulate action (pre and on the flop) that dictates an easy fold. And muck them without showing the hand, and without complaint.  Practice avoiding whatever -EV tendencies you have during real hands.  Set up various situations that go from marginal fold to easy fold (this part is more than visualization and playing your A game more often, this part is also on tinkering with your A game; this part can be done with a poker buddy, discussing what is marginal vs. clear against different villains; probably the best thing you can do for your game is to get a good poker buddy to talk poker with).

Practicing fake-folds may sound (or be) kinda dumb, but maybe the irony of "it's hard to fold aces [when they should be folded] in a real hand, but easy and pointless in a practice hand" will become obvious.  The real point is that, as dumb as this task sounds, poker is all about relative hand strength, not absolute hand strength.  So, the very idea that it is "hard to fold aces" is basically silly on its face. When you think you should fold, folding should be easier than not folding.

{new edit} Other recent research looks at implementation intentions, e.g., on visualizing the steps you need to go through to do some act on the day you intend to do it.  Merely saying "I intend to X" is not as correlated to actually Xing as "I intend to X... [ok, tell me how that will go down exactly]... Well, I will do so on the way to work next friday, and..."

So, perhaps we need to not only say that we intend to make big folds when correct [and big calls when correct], we should pre-consider which circumstances those situations might entail exactly (e.g., paired board, uncreative nit reraises my river bet with huge overbet which I will then [in the heat of the moment] be tempted to level myself into thinking that his bet size is suspicious and that he is using is image to big bluff me for the first time ever). When those situations come up and we are not folding, our implementation intention might come back to mind:dude, was this the spot you planned on folding, what's different other than it is now and not later?

PS: This reminds me of a table chatter of mine, when I sucked out on a huge pot in a live game and got berated by a guy who had not played the hand well anyway: I said [jokingly], "Hey, I put in my money and I put in my time... I practiced sucking out the whole drive here... I was in the passenger seat with two decks and must have dealt myself over 500 rivers... by the time I was done practicing, I was getting pretty good at hitting the card I needed."  [The table laughed and someone asked me, "After practicing, were you sucking out more often?"  To which I responded, "No, of course not, but I was doing it really fast."]

The Taste of Money

by

Arthur S Reber

I really like money. Oh, not just the stuff in a bank or an investment fund or tied up in a mortgage. The real stuff, the paper. I love the feel of it with its slightly raised surfaces rich with ink, embossed with faces, slogans, monuments to greatness past and imagined. I’m a guy. I’m a gambler. I’m a poker player and a horse junkie. I love its smell; I love the texture of the stacked edges laid side by side. I love the sound of counting out stacks of hundreds each slipping off the other with a gentle swish.

When I was young, a mere slip of a kid, a pretender in these games I kept my money in my wallet, tucked into the back pocket of my jeans where its bulk made the obligatory ring on the leather surface (hey, you never know….).

Then I learned. Real men don’t use wallets; they fold their bills. No ostentatious money clips, no bejeweled snap-shut baubles; just an elastic band to hold my stash, thick with importance and wrapped twice about the wad and shoved into my left front pocket where I could and do run my finger tips along its edges as I walked. My rubber-enclosed talisman. It is always with me.

My wife says, as we head into the supermarket, “Do you have money for the groceries?”

“I do,” I smile, for I do. I always do. It is my amulet, my wad, my bullet proof shield and it has, almost always, a couple of thou’ (hey, you never know….). It is the first thing that gets shifted into the new left hand pocket of my clean jeans for I am naked without it, insecure without it. If I get broke in a big game I go get more for I am fragile and weak and feel less a man without it.

I’ve been this way with money for so long that it has begun to bother me. It felt like a drug. Like I was hooked. In the evening I would take out my roll and count it, slowly and lovingly. And I would feel better about life.

Why should this be? The money in my pocket is actually a pittance. It’s nowhere near what’s in my bank, my pension funds, my portfolio, my house, my car. I don’t get out my bank book and rub it or flip through its pages. I’ve never had any desire to pull out my stock holding summary sheets and rub them against my cheeks.

Why the folding stuff? It’s really weird and forty-plus years of studying the human condition has taught me that when these kinds of anomalies pop up, something’s going on. But what?

Then I ran across an article in the journal Psychological Science and I smiled. Few things please me more than suddenly understanding something and it turns out that not only is my fascination with wads of hundred dollar bills fairly common, it has a straightforward, although somewhat surprising basis to it. Money, indeed, acts like and has many of the properties of an addictive drug.

Xinyue Zhou at Sun Yat Sen University in China and Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota and her colleagues (if you’re curious, check out Vohs extensive and fascinating research at http://www.csom.umn.edu/Page6301.aspx) have discovered some rather amazing facts about money, especially paper money.

We know that rejection and physical pain are unpleasant. Zhou and company found that the simple act of handling money reduces both physical pain and the psychological distress of rejection. And it isn’t just the act of handling paper with similar shape and feel. The effects are dependent on it being real bills.

Professional poker player Roy Brindley, in his book Life’s a Gamble, goes on lovingly about the “cash in the pocket” life style. I thought it a bit odd at the time but now it makes sense. Zhou and colleagues also found that having money in your pocket increases confidence and improves mood. Even more remarkable, these effects have symbolic features. Simply being reminded of money spent or money lost increases psychological distress and imaging oneself having money reduces social anxieties.

The message for poker players? Simple. Carry cash. Carry it in rolls that are easily touched and can serve as reminders of its presence. If you go bust, go get more cash. Fat rolls are best. If you’re short on hundreds, get a bunch of tens or fives. Fold them over in a wad, wrap an elastic band around them and, when you get the chance, sit down and count them, smell them, let the loose symbolic taste of money penetrate your brain. It is a drug. It is stimulating the release of endorphins, of dopamine. Your nucleus accumbens is dazzling with activity.

And you will feel more confident. Your game will improve and you will win more money and need a bigger elastic band.

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