Fundamentals vs Thinking and Soulreading

Here's something that puzzles me a bit. I'll start off with an example:

I'm playing a TAGG, i raise from the CO and i get a call from a reasonable straightforward TAGG in the SB.

Flop is AKQ rainbow, he leads out.

I raise him and bet most turns with a wide range. He folds a good amount and i win a lot of money. One of the reasons for this is because my range is much better than his range.

Now lets say the SB is ISF. The same action happens preflop and the flop comes AKQ.

he leads out. Now, he knows that he will rarely have a hand that wants to stack off here besides JT, and he knows i know this. So he decides to stack off light here to counteract this. He stacks off lightly enough to the point that my aggressiveness on this board is -EV.

So even though i assessed ranges correctly and made a good move according to those ranges i still lose. This is because ISF has out-thought me.

Which leads me to believe that Thinking >>>>> Fundamentals.

So when it comes down to it, does poker theory really matter? Because no matter what understanding of poker a person has, if someone can get in that persons head (and knows how to reasonably exploit knowing his opponents thoughts) he will always be able to outplay that person no matter how good he is at balancing his ranges or exploiting peoples tendencies (in terms of ranges).

Talk amongst yourselves... i don't really know where to go from here yet.

ok hmmm.

lets say that i know ISF will stack off light in my specific example, so i condense my range to the point where he can't stack off light because he's behind too much.

Now am i abusing him for not having a balanced range?

ugh i'm bad at starting threads like this

So even though i assessed ranges correctly and made a good move according to those ranges i still lose.

But you didn't. You assessed ranges and then made a mistake according to the fundamental theorum of poker. You began raising with hands even though you knew they were behind his range. It was ok because he was making a bigger mistake (folding to worse hands).

Once he starts to adjust to your new range you suddenly find yourself making huge mistakes (stacking off with hands weaker than his range) and he wins your monies.

All of this is completely in line with fundamentals. You are just catastrophically losing the battle of mistakes. Make another adjustment so that his mistakes become bigger than yours (i.e. tighten up) and you will start winning again.

The whole point of out-thinking someone is to manipulate their play so that their mistakes are bigger than yours.

ok it's not really fundamentals. I mean i got into a position where my range crushes someone elses and it became unprofitable because he outthought me.

If someone can get in that persons head (and knows how to reasonably exploit knowing his opponents thoughts) he will always be able to outplay that person no matter how good he is at balancing his ranges or exploiting peoples tendencies (in terms of ranges)

If a range is perfectly balanced then surely there is no way to exploit it.

Anyway theoretically I would have thouhgt maximum profit Vs a thinking adjusting opponent shouldn't come from balanced ranges. It should come from playing an unbalanced, but dynamic and unpredictable range where your opponent is always one step behind.

You make him fold too much so you steal more with draws and value bet weaker made hands less, he adjusts to call too much so you stop stealing with draws and start value betting weaker made hands. These are not balanced ranges since at any time if he knew what "gear" you were in he would be able to predict if you were more likely to have a made hand/ bluff/ draw etc. The profit comes from keeping it fluid enough to manipulate them into making their adjustments at the wrong time. Is this not right?

Originally Posted by Massimo

ok it's not really fundamentals. I mean i got into a position where my range crushes someone elses and it became unprofitable because he outthought me.

but you wouldnt have got into that position unless you had already adjusted away from the "theoretical optimum". In other words the line where you try to play according to how you would if you could both see each others cards (or ranges).

edit: I was wrong about whatever I typed

Originally Posted by bigspenda73

Originally Posted by Pelion

If a range is perfectly balanced then surely there is no way to exploit it.

Uh what if I shove a flop with any two, my range is balanced, but something seems exploitable....

thats not balanced. You are shoving with a shit hand far more often than you are shoving with a good hand.


[permaquoted DEC2007]

god damn I edited that quick and you still quoted me

yea I realized that we have air more than we have good hands!!! Lolz I learned something today...

What is wrong with folding if we are not comfortable stacking off?

Originally Posted by Jager

What is wrong with folding if we are not comfortable stacking off?

Nothing at all. Thats the obvious next adjustment. We skew our range towards stronger hands and he ends up stacking off way too light.

PWND

Ok so here's the thing. If you try to outplay someone on that flop by widening your range, if he out-thinks you and you will lose the advantage of ranges you have with that flop.

It's important to keep this range advantage. So vs a thinking player who realizes that you're very aggressive in this spot, you should not widen your range.

but that's obvious

u win money at poker by oscillating your ranges in such a way that ur stronger opponents with history are playing significantly too loose/too tight against you.

however, most opponents continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again and playing in a TAGgy relatively tight style will continue to make you the most money providing you are smart enough to avoid traps...

isn't the clue here that if we are willing to stack off just because our range is ahead of his range and he knows this, he can just pick his spots and stack off when his hand is ahead of our range?

I mean to say that if we are willing to stack off just because of the theorem, then he knows our stacking of range is basically our whole preflop raising range from the cutoff.

Something Ive been thinking about for a little while (and it relates to my previous post and sauces post) is that the whole purpose for balancing ranges is misunderstood by alot of people, and consequently balenced ranges are overused.
Ideally you want to be playing an unbalanced range to exploit the tendancies of your opponents. Verses an opponent with static tendencies you will use static ranges and tendencies to exploit them. Against a calling station you will value bet "too much" and bluff "too little". Against a rock you will value bet "too little" and bluff "too much". Against an opponent who is trying to adjust to you you must oscillate your ranges so that when he is folding too much you will bluff too more and when he is calling too much you will bluff less. You oscillate your ranges to take advantage of his tendencies oscillating between rocky and stationy, but your ranges remain unbalanced to fully exploit his tendencies at that time.

It is only when someone sits down at the table who can predict your gear changes and remains one step ahead of you that you have to start balancing your ranges against them in order to defend against them exploiting you.

So yea, I think balanced ranges are a defensive tool that we should use when we are at a table with a decent number of players worse than us, but also with a decent player capable of "getting inside our head" at the table. Without this player at the table a balanced range becomes less than optimal, but if we left our ranges unbalanced with him there, he would be able to play against us too easily and would ruin us.

It would be nice if some of the high stakes players would jump in on this. (nice to see sauce here already )

Originally Posted by Pelion

Something Ive been thinking about for a little while (and it relates to my previous post and sauces post) is that the whole purpose for balancing ranges is misunderstood by alot of people, and consequently balenced ranges are overused.
Ideally you want to be playing an unbalanced range to exploit the tendancies of your opponents. Verses an opponent with static tendencies you will use static ranges and tendencies to exploit them. Against a calling station you will value bet "too much" and bluff "too little". Against a rock you will value bet "too little" and bluff "too much". Against an opponent who is trying to adjust to you you must oscillate your ranges so that when he is folding too much you will bluff too more and when he is calling too much you will bluff less. You oscillate your ranges to take advantage of his tendencies oscillating between rocky and stationy, but your ranges remain unbalanced to fully exploit his tendencies at that time.

It is only when someone sits down at the table who can predict your gear changes and remains one step ahead of you that you have to start balancing your ranges against them in order to defend against them exploiting you.

So yea, I think balanced ranges are a defensive tool that we should use when we are at a table with a decent number of players worse than us, but also with a decent player capable of "getting inside our head" at the table. Without this player at the table a balanced range becomes less than optimal, but if we left our ranges unbalanced with him there, he would be able to play against us too easily and would ruin us.

It would be nice if some of the high stakes players would jump in on this. (nice to see sauce here already )

to elaborate a little: often on an Ah 8h 6s flop I'll be check/raising or bet/3betting with any hh combination. people often attribute this to "balancing a range" and attempting to get action on my sets/2prs/AK type hands. while this in a sense applies, i think its more important to note that playing my drawing hands aggressively is the OPTIMAL line against a pretty much everyone. Why? Well if we have 5 high, and can get a pair of tens to fold, thats a pretty big FTOP victory, and our implied odds are relatively low.

Yeah but ISF would stack off with J4o there.

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

Yeah but ISF would stack off with J4o there.

I wouldn't be surprised if i saw a hand where this happened.

Speaking on the point though Max, you are inheritently ahead of my range preflop if you raise preflop and i just call on that board. Most of the time when this happens you are going to be winning and im going to be losing, so its dumb to play this scenario on my part very aggressively.

Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

Yeah but ISF would stack off with J4o there.

I wouldn't be surprised if i saw a hand where this happened.

Speaking on the point though Max, you are inheritently ahead of my range preflop if you raise preflop and i just call on that board. Most of the time when this happens you are going to be winning and im going to be losing, so its dumb to play this scenario on my part very aggressively.

yea, i mean i think if ISF led vs me as the pfr on a QKA board id pretty much just revert to 0th level thinking as its such a spewy spot to lead. as in, i'd peel a pretty wide range but no way in hell would i raise the flop without a hand that beats KQ...

Originally Posted by Massimo

Ok so here's the thing. If you try to outplay someone on that flop by widening your range, if he out-thinks you and you will lose the advantage of ranges you have with that flop.

It's important to keep this range advantage. So vs a thinking player who realizes that you're very aggressive in this spot, you should not widen your range.

but that's obvious

***THOUGHTS FROM A BAD PLAYER***

The fact that he keeps "out-thinking you" is not proving that he is adjusting his ranges to you, meaning that he is one level ahead of you and is still following the theorem.

The whole point of poker is to play the player. By just following the theorem that you write about in the op means you are trying to use that to apply to all opponents. But when you play ISF, who you know knows this, you cannot use that range because you are letting him be one level ahead, you need to adjust your range to abuse him.

Originally Posted by Roel

isn't the clue here that if we are willing to stack off just because our range is ahead of his range and he knows this, he can just pick his spots and stack off when his hand is ahead of our range?

I mean to say that if we are willing to stack off just because of the theorem, then he knows our stacking of range is basically our whole preflop raising range from the cutoff.

If he is only stacking off with the premium hands in his range that means his stacking off range is tightening up, once again going back to adjusting for your opponent and his ranges.

But what do I know, I play 10NL (poorly )

if he can adjust to you, you can adjust to him.

it takes two to tango

Originally Posted by gabe

if he can adjust to you, you can adjust to him.

it takes two to tango

Only in theory! I will out think you.

release the power within yourself

ive gotten really bad/sloppy with fundamentals the past few months because i just rely on the fact i can level ppl

but, doesnt it all...eventually...come full circle again?

just like politics, isnt "poker levelling" simply a continuum? you can go so far away from fundamental poker, and your villain KNOWS it, that when you come back to fundamentals, you start to kick his ass again?

you can be so far left, you are right. you can be so smart, youre stupid. and vice versa.

yea of course. ive been 2 levels higher than opponents hundreds of times and end up making the exact wrong play because of it

yea u dont rly play poker like anyone else

Originally Posted by Chopper

you can be so far left, you are right. you can be so smart, youre stupid. and vice versa.

neither of these make any sense, and neither does loosening up so much you become tight

Originally Posted by Pelion

Originally Posted by Chopper

you can be so far left, you are right. you can be so smart, youre stupid. and vice versa.

neither of these make any sense, and neither does loosening up so much you become tight

always on my jock, pel. i swear, you must think my head is about to implode.

you cant disagree with the political continuum.

socialist(left)----------hillary clinton---john mccain---------------facist(right)

note how close clinton and mccain are. no one in the mainstream US political system is polarized. they are all close to the middle. however, if you dig deep into political history, socialists and facists SEEM like they are worlds apart, but, in reality, have more in common than you think.

we've all run into the "book smart" person who couldnt cross the street if their life depended on it. we've all run into the idiot savant, too.

i never said you can loosen up so much you become tight. i said you can get so far off the fundamentals that you come back to them. exaggeration? yes, but i gave you more credit for both common sense, and a sense of humor. are you by chance an accountant or mathematician? dont make me say where i think you slide into the continuum...jk

Originally Posted by Chopper

always on my jock, pel. i swear, you must think my head is about to implode.

Its not that, its just that I think that alot of what you say is wrong. I don't think you can "move so far away from fundamentals that you come back to them". Saying that you can isnt an exaggeration, it just doesnt make sense.

I don't think you can be so smart you are stupid. In fact, Ive found at uni that the cleverest people around me seem to be fairly well rounded people, good at everything from making ultrafast lasers to crossing roads.

I don't think politically you can move so far left that you become right, and if you look at what happened in any of the countries people use as examples (russia, china etc.) you will see that actually they became dictatorships run for the profit of a beaurocratic minority ruling class (after much of the mass movement was defeated by a combination of foreign invading armies and internal counterrevolution from the more right wing former-ruling class). In other words they moved so far right they became right.

In short, I think that all of these things are just common sayings that actually are pretty meaningless when you think about them.

p.s. youre joke wasnt funny either :P

this was a good thread until pelion and chopper poisoned it with politics.

The better you read your opponent, the less the cheap streets matter. Lots of stuff we take for granted goes out the window. This is how some technically terrible players can do absurdly well in juicy live games.

Originally Posted by Fnord

The better you read your opponent, the less the cheap streets matter. Lots of stuff we take for granted goes out the window. This is how some technically terrible players can do absurdly well in juicy live games.

so say hypothetically, we have KTs on the CO and open $4. button calls whos kind of weak tight.

flop comes AT7 rainbow. we lead $5 and he min raises, we call
turn is 4. we check, and he makes some weak ass $5 bet. say were pretty positive he has an A, but we are getting such good odds. is this what you are saying about reading opponent>>>>>cheap streets?

implied odds and pot odds says call

To the OP,

Just take a look at how two players play the same hand against each other - Smith vs someone HU FT at a PLHE event last year at WSOP. And if I butcher a quote from a pro I read:

"If I try to think what he is thinking what I'm thinking, he'll be trying to work out what I think he is thinking that I'm thinking what he is thinking. You just get to the point where we get off the round-a-bout and just do something completely off the road"