Quote Originally Posted by drmcboy
poker is a game of placing wagers. If you place them with the correct odds, you will win long term. That is all.

What you don't seem to understand is that when you make one of your 'good player' moves to steal a pot, you are still using odds to make this play. Example:

You call a raise from the BB with XX. The raiser is aggresive and bets almost any flop, but he was seen to check once when he flopped a monster.

The pot is 500 chips.

The flop comes AA3r. You check. Raiser bets 500. You feel this is continue bet and you can pick up the pot with a raise. Pot now contains 1000. If you feel there is a 0 percent chance that opp will call if you re raise, clearly the play is to raise, and the amount of the raise is irrelevant. The raise will always show a profit.

But let's make it more real. Say you feel there is a 50% chance opp will not call a raise. The other 50%, he calls or raises and you lose the pot.

So if you bet 500, 50 % of the time you win 1000. 50 % you lose 500. Every two bets you make 500 chips.

Shift to 33 % win, 67 % lose, and the play evens out. You can still make it, but long term it's break even.

Clearly you can shift the numbers, hands, situations all day. But in the end, when you say you 'know your opponent' what you're really saying is you know the odds he has hands XYZ, the odds your hand will beat those hand, the odds you/he will improve, the odds he will fold those hands, etc. That is both based on the probability of opp holding hands in general (for example, 1/221 he'll have AA) and more specifically based on how you have seen opp play previously.

I can't prove to you your knowledge of these situations doesn't give you a better edge than the AA situation you describe. I'll just tell you that I firmly believe you will not find one winning player who would pass up that spot. Eventually, if you stick with it, you'll figure out why.

I highly suggest reading Theory of Poker.
I have read Sklansky's Theory of Poker and refer to it regularly, along with many other texts. I particularly like authors such as Brunson, Cloutier and McEvoy.

Ok, most of you don't agree with me, fair enough, but I still make the point.

It is the first hand in a high stakes freeze-out with 10 players, or the first hand in the final table of a major tournament with everyone having equal number of chips. You are Phil Ivey, or Doyle Brunson, or Phil Hellmuth, or Chris Ferguson. In other words you are one of the gretest players in the world, perhaps ever, and all nine of your opponents have very little experience of live play.

What is your advantage over them? Well, your advantages are numerous - your experience, reading skills etc etc.

The hand is dealt and five players go all-in. You look down in the bb at AA. Are you really going to give up all your advantages over these players for the sake of one hand? Any one of the five could beat you. The eyes of the poker world are on you - your reputation is on the line. Are you going to get involved in a dodgy situation like this? Leading with AA is one thing but there are five players all-in before you.

Or are you going to play to your strengths and try to outplay your inexperienced opponents later on on flops, turns and rivers?

If I was any one of the world's greatest in that situation, I know what I would do.

I'm talking about live play here where the tournament is a one off - not online where there are all sorts of tournaments in which you could play if you busted out of this one.