Hey Redman
Thanks for your comments. The first thing you should do is check the date on that initial post. As I said, I had only played a few hours of poker at that time. It was just a post to generate some discussion about beginners in trading and what we could learn from Hold-Em. I tried to make that clear.
Quote from RedManPlus:
Actually #11 completely untrue.
Winning poker pros all play a very similar style...
They all know the math cold...
And play semi-tight/hyper-aggressive...
Tending to play the opponent(s)... not the cards.
Is that a fact? Hmmm... well now. Let's compare the style of 'Action' Dan Harrington with that of Gus Hansen. Would you say that these two great pros have a similar style? The idea that good players 'tend to play the opponents and not the cards' is from the first chapter of Poker 101. Kind of like saying 'The early bird gets the worm'. Everyone knows that's true. There's another pro that was featured on the WSOP last year and the guy was just as loose as a cannon. He was raising shit cards from early position, and calling guys on the flop and turn with very little in his hand. I can't recall, what the hell was his name...I think it was Layne Flack. Try going over to twoplustwo and posting that you think Layne and Dan play similar styles.
Secondly, I was not talking about pros in that post. I was talking about the players I saw online.
#12 is also wrong.
In a strict sense... there is no "correct" move in poker.
If you win the pot... your move was "correct"...
If you lose... your move was "not correct".
This is not always true and potentially misleading to anyone learning the game. In poker, the idea is to induce mistakes in your opponent's play, often by controlling the pot odds that he is getting to make a call against you. If you induce a call in a situation in which your opponent has paid too much relative to the size of the pot he can possibly win, he has made a mistake, and you have made a winning play. The correct ratio of 'call amount' to pot size is determined by the odds that his hand will be the best in the end. It doesn't matter what the outcome of that particular hand is. You could lose and your move was absolutely correct and you will take it all day long. If you get all your money in as a favourite, you have made the correct play, at least in cash games. I have read some authors who feel that there are certain situations in tournament play when other factors need to be assessed, but as far as I can tell, this rule holds true for almost any tournament situation. Certainly Harrington thinks so, and he's not a bad player.
This is why people get on Phil Hellmuth so much. He knows that whenever he takes a bad beat, he has been involved in the exact situation he sat down to find, and yet he complains about it.
That's why computers cannot simulate poker well...
Because the "wrong" play in the form of a bluff or whatever... often wins the pot.
Again, it doesn't matter. If a player bluffs, and is called by a player with the best of it, and the bluffer wins, the caller will take that all day long and has made no mistake. It is the bluffer that has made a mistake.
Sometimes you get away with your mistakes, sometimes you don't.
Correctness is purely retrospective...
Purely? Far from it. There are plenty of situations in which you can be 100% sure that you are ahead at the moment or that you have your opponent beat. If you have KK, and you raise preflop, you get one caller and the flop comes K 8 2 rainbow, you know you are ahead, and if you bet properly and induce a call from the caller with i.e. A8 offsuit, you are correct. In fact there is no hand which your opponent can have that makes him a favourite at this time. You can calculate his worst possible holding (from your perspective) and base your betting on that. Retrospect is not needed. So correctness is clearly
not purely retrospective.
I would suggest reading both of Dan Harrington's books. He describes the different styles of the pros he has faced. There is also a detailed explanation of the idea of inducing mistakes in your opponents play. This idea is also the basis for two of the most widely read poker books, David Sklansky's The Theory of Poker and Hold-Em for Advanced Players.
You sound like someone who's played 10 hours of poker...
As opposed to 10,000 hours.
Again, I wrote that when I was just starting out. Please check the time stamp.
The place to go is 2+2 Forums.
Very sharp people over there...
I think I joined in 2003 - not sure, I'd have to check. It was right around the time of that first post.
I play exclusively tournaments now because that is my strength. I'll be at a small stakes ($150 buy-in) freeze-out tomorrow night. Again, thanks for your comments, even though some of them weren't accurate.
