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January 30, 2007 at 8:41 pm · Filed under Life

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The RL Ratio, Position, and Pre-Flop Play

January 26, 2007 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Poker Strategy

I was talking strategy with a friend the other day when I stumbled on something that I think is relatively new as far as well-defined pre-flop poker strategies go. A lot of attention is put on what cards to play before the flop in various positions, but not much discussion has been had regarding how to play those hands in various positions.

Optimal strategy in poker rarely consists of one uniform recommended move per defined situation. This is for obvious reasons - if I ALWAYS zig when you zag, I become predictable. And in a game of incomplete information such as poker, predictability is a severe downfall. When you become predictable, you allow your opponents to eliminate risk in devising their optimal plays when responding to your informational cues.

So, in poker and other games like it, optimal strategies are often mixed strategies described in terms of ratios. For instance, in reference to some hypothetical situation, you might hear a pro say, “you should bluff half the time and check half the time.” Well, in mixed strategy terms, the pro in our example is recommending a mixed strategy of 1 Bluff for every 1 Check over the long run. We express this as a ratio: Optimal Strategy=[1Bluff:1Check].

Now, when it comes to pre-flop play, a player who has decided that his hole cards meet the minimum standards to become playable, he rarely ever ALWAYS plays the hand the same way—or at least, he ought not to! Rather, if he will be the first player to enter the pot, he will alternate between ‘limping’ (just calling the big blind) into the pot and coming in for a raise.

You will find that most players favor one strategy or the other depending on their overall table image. Most loose/passive players will favor entering the pot with a limp (often as much as 80% of the time) to create action while tight/aggressive players will tend to err (a similar 80% of the time) on the side of entering with a raise. The particular percentages discussed in this example are not the point—rather, these merely serve as a foundation from which to begin to understand the concept of mixed pre-flop strategies.

In our example, the preferences for our two hypothetical players can be expressed in mixed strategy terms as follows: Loose/Passive Strategy=[1Raise:4Limps], Tight/Aggressive Strategy=[4Raises:1Limp]. How did we get these numbers? Well, if a player chooses one move 80% of the time and another move 20% of the time, then he has a 4:1 ratio in favor of the strategy he chooses more often.

At this point, I am sure most readers will be wondering how this can help them when they play. Once you understand the concept of mixed strategies, there is an abundance of discussion that can be had about when and how to change up your particular mix.

For now, I will conclude with one of the simplest ways in which a player should change their Raise:Limp pre-flop ratio (their ‘RL Ratio’) depending upon position.

A Player’s RL Ratio Should Increase With Later Position!

That is, as a player finds himself deciding to enter a pot in later position before the flop, he should increasingly favor a Raise over a Limp as his favored method of play. This is for multiple reasons:

1. In later position, the probability of taking down the pot before the flop is increased as there are less players behind to worry about.
2. In later position, a player is likely to be last to act on future betting streets should he get called. Since most hands will miss most flops most of the time, the advantage of acting last is ENORMOUS. Oftentimes, players who raise pre-flop in late position and get called by the small or big blind will be able to take down the pot on the flop with just one continuation bet. So, since later position increases the likelihood of taking down the pot should you see the flop, why not make the other players invest more to play that flop before the flop? In doing this, you increase the size of the pots you play in position relative to the size of pots you will play out of position.
3. Conversely, it is more difficult to win a pot out of position. Therefore, if you decide to play a hand up front, you might as well do as much as you can to keep the pot small (decreasing the cost to you over time of playing hands out of position). As a result, a limp is favored more often from early position than from late position.

However, this is not to say that a limp should be favored more often than a raise in early position. Much to the contrary, I believe in an aggressive strategy which always favors showing strength before the flop most of the time. So, let me clarify: I like an RL Ratio of 5:1 in late position. That means that if it folds to me and I am in the cutoff or on the button with a playable hand, then I will Raise 5 times for every 1 time that I limp (in the interest of maintaining an unpredictable style). However, if I decide to play under the gun in early position, I prefer an RL Ratio of 3:2—raising three times for every two times I limp. Notice that I still raise more often than I limp, even in early position. However, I limp considerably more in early position for the reasons discussed above.

I hope you enjoyed this post…this is my first attempt to talk strategy in this blog, so any and all constructive feedback is welcome.

All the best,

Vanessa

Phentermine 37.5 Doctor

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Law School is FINALLY over!!

January 24, 2007 at 8:38 pm · Filed under Life

Law School is OVER for the Semester!!!

Remember what it felt like in middle school on the last day when you broke for summer? Well, that’s me. At twenty-four. Sad, I know. I’m out for the summer and the WSOP is on the horizon! I am excited to be able to once again focus entirely on the game that I love.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Okay, got that out of the way. First and foremost, thanks to all the people out there who sent me nice comments on MySpace (www.myspace.com/pokerness) after watching my spot on CNBC with Donnie Deutsch on the Big Idea. A lot of you wanted to know more about game theory and poker and where you could find out about the clinic I will be teaching on the subject this summer. So, here is a link to a news article about the clinic itself:

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/pokernews/newsArticle.asp?newsID=1101727
If this doesn’t answer all your questions, and you want to know more, feel free to email me on MySpace or comment here and I will respond ASAP. Also, I wrote a few articles for a British Magazine on Game Theory and Poker which have yet to be published…but, as soon as they are I will post links.
Also, I gotta comment on NBC After Dark. As many of you know, I was on this week’s series. If you watched all week, it might have appeared to you that I was a lil overly talkative-okay, I wouldn’t shut up-during the first episode. J In my humble defense, I wanna let you all know that I was cooped up at home for two weeks before that segment filmed last December and I was in major need of some social mixin it up…but as you prolly noticed, I settled back into my normal self within the next few episodes. There’s really nothing like watching yourself be a total goofball with the knowledge that hundreds of thousands-if not millions-of others are there to soak it all in. Ahhh, lol, oh well…I always say that if you can’t laugh at yourself, you are takin things far too seriously. I’m not perfect, nobody is-and quite frankly that’s what makes life interesting. So, I guess what I am trying to say is: if you would all delete episode one from your TIVOs I really wouldn’t hold it against you. :p
Finally, I hope you all had a chance to watch Chad on NBC at the heads up championship vs. Paul Wasicka this Sunday. Chad wasn’t able to get the win, but I am really proud of his 2nd place finish over such a difficult field. I also would like to congratulate Paul-he is an outstanding player whose results speak for themselves, and he is also a great guy in general. Congrats Paul!
Talk to you all soon,

Vanessa J

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Weeeeeeeeeeee

January 22, 2007 at 12:00 am · Filed under Life

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My Rookie Year Is Behind Me

January 20, 2007 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Life

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T.W.I.N.E–The World Is Not Enough

January 17, 2007 at 12:00 am · Filed under Life

Last week I was walking across The Bricks (the outdoor common area where students congregate @ University of Miami Law where I am in my 5th semester) when an old friend caught my attention. She knew me when poker was simply what I loved—before it was also what I did, who I was, and where I was going. She, like many of my other peers had noted my absence last semester with passing curiosity—surmising that I had moved on from law school into the world at large with no intentions of ever coming back. It seems I had become an urban legend of sorts at my school—a girl who left school not because she couldn’t hack it (in fact, as rumor had it she was at the top of her class), but because she had climbed to the top in the world of…poker? So, when I returned to school from my leave of absence last semester to finish what I had started what seemed like decades ago, she—and everyone—was surprised. She asked me why I had returned…surely a law degree would be a moot point to me after I had earned almost $700,000 in poker tournaments. She couldn’t understand. And then she said something that resonated within me for hours: why did I want law school when I already had the world? I heard those words in a way that stubborn children must hear that they are too young or too small or too inexperienced. Those words—you already have the world—seemed to enter through my ear canal and bounce around my brain in an attempt to stick to something—in an attempt to be accepted, to become real. But they wouldn’t. They didn’t belong.
I am not saying that I do not have a lot to be thankful for. I do. Ironically enough, I have a world to be thankful for. But my subconscious was trying to tell me something.
It didn’t come full circle until two days ago. I had just picked up my agent and great friend Eric Brewstein from the airport (he used to be business partners with Brent Sibley, my best friend, law school peer, and manager until he decided to pursue his MBA and let Eric take the reigns of the company). Anyhow, Eric explained that he had decided on a new name for his management agency: No Limit Management. I liked it. He was going to specialize in the representation of poker players, so it made sense in its allusion to ‘no limit’ Holdem. But then he said something that I have heard before—hell it’s even the title of a movie—but that I had never really given any thought to. He said, “Yea, no limit…like, even the world is not enough.” And THOSE words—unlike the ones I had heard only a few days before—raced into my brain, unpacked their bags, and put their feet up on a coffee table. They fit in, they felt right, and they stuck.
So, I guess that’s it. The world just isn’t enough. That explains a lot about who I am and why I live the way that I do. I am driven by an insatiable appetite for anything bigger, that out-of-the-box experience, and always something more. I guess I find my calm not at the finish line looking back at the distance I have traveled, but in the journey, on the run, in the moment, out of breath—looking forward. I don’t really know where I am going, and I guess I hope to God that I never get there. I am happy as I am: chasing something eternal and ethereal. The world is not—will never be—enough for me. And that’s just the way I like it.

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