Welcome

Hello all, welcome to my online poker blog.

I've been playing on and off for a decade after being introduced by a friend.

I played regularly for a few years during the poker boom and had a decent record at the micros, particularly Rush and Zoom No Limit Hold'em games (here's one of my graphs).

Around 2012 I began a new career which involved immersing myself completely in study in my spare time, so I had little to no time for poker. However recently this burden has eased and so I have been gradually dipping back in.

I'm an amateur player who still hopes to some day beat the rake.





Friday, 27 November 2009

Decision Tree

Ok, I'm a little drunk and been playing about with what I talked about in the last post. I feel the simplest way to do this is a tree with two branches, each with it's own two branches giving us four conclusions.
Do we have showdown equity?
If we do not this is the simplest route to follow. the next question on this branch is:
(No) Do we have enough steal equity to make betting profitable?
Bluff mathematics is straight forward. When we bet we are laying ourselves odds. We just need our bet to work a certain amount of the time for it to be right. Typically, this is maximised when we can represent a hand on a certain board and make a stronger hand fold.
(No).(No) : Generally fold.
(No).(Yes) : Generally bet.

The next branch is trickier...
We have some showdown equity. Now the branch becomes:
(Yes) Can we get value from a weaker hand (including draws) calling?
Now we must obv consider opponents' range and hands that might call us if we bet.
If weaker hands will often call we should bet. Otherwise we should either try to see a showdown cheaply, or, given the right situation - turn our hand into a bluff. So the remaining options are now:
(Yes).(No) : Generally showdown if we can or turn hand into bluff
(Yes).(Yes) : Generally bet to extract value from weaker hands.

This is a grossly simplified way of thinking about poker decision making but I think it will help if I use this simple decision tree every time I am considering a move. If I can make this process second nature I am convinced it will make me considerably stronger. I think I do these things most of the time, but my mistakes are made when I deviate...

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