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Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by DOGISHEAD (Micro/Small Stakes)

AWESOME SERIES.

You lost me with the red marbles...why red? What if they are blue? Can someone explain the dog house - I don't get it...


12.59 min cracks me up

But seriously...a recent thread that touches GTO in HU NL.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/whats-my-play-here-top-pair-25-50-hu-v-krantz-351832/

Dog Is Head is such an awesome fckin teacher!

nice! thanks dog

food 4 thought here.....

Just as an aside....as a cornerstone for a balanced strategy you mention "having appropriate frequencies". Any thoughts on how to explore different aspects of the game by breaking it down into GTO-subgames (e.g. the 3 betting game, the river-bluff game and the like) and come up with GTO frequencies? Being led the way into being self-supporting on this would enable me to explore every subgame I would basically like to explore. For example it was a given in a previous episode that "the norm" for opening ranges would circle around BB35% and SB75%. Good to know, but I kinda take them for granted and I find myself waiting for other expert advice on other optimal frequencies, which in my mind is too passive and yields lesser results than bein self sufficient in learning the game.
How does one explore optimal frequencies one self?

Any thoughts would be appreciated
Dolo

Brilliant video. Thanks for good insight

Wow! I think the first part of the video could be alot shorter, and more concrete. Its not very hard to know that some info is more relevant than other. The last part of the video is awesome. You keep underselling your analogy's, but they are both enlightening and funny.

Still got nothing but 4 ya!

Your goal should be to beat your opponent into the ground with a crowbar and then urinate on his mangled body as it writhes under your feet.

FTW

You lost me with the red marbles...why red? What if they are blue? Can someone explain the dog house - I don't get it...


12.59 min cracks me up

I can't tell if you are serious or you are just making fun of my autistic analogies. Anyway, if you really have a specific question, let me know

One of the best explanations of game theory applications to poker I have seen.

That said, my main criticism is that (unless I missed it) you don't explicitly mention the main reason why you should know GTO. It's *not* so that you can play GTO as a safety net (sure, that is crucial in tough games ...). The reason that you want to understand GTO is so that you use (estimates of) the equilibrium (=GTO) strategies to calibrate your strategy.

Simple example: In the river spot that you went over, your opponent is bluffing 20% of the time. How should you adjust? Well, if you don't know his GTO bluffing frequency (10%), then you don't really know. If the optimal bluffing frequency were higher than 20%, you should adjust by calling less. Since it is actually lower, you adjust by calling more. Also, knowing the GTO strategy can give you a quantitative sense of how large an edge you can acheive by exploting your opponents' deviations from equilibrium.

Now it is true that if you know your opponent bluffs at a frequency of 20%, you can do an EV calculation that tells you how much more profitable it is to call than to fold. The problem is that if you encounter a new opponent who bluffs at a frequency of 15%, you now have to do a new calculation to figure out whether the EV of calling is still higher than that of folding. But if you know going in that the optimal frequency is 10%, you now have the information available to handle any opponent once you figure out his strategy. (Of course, you'll never actually have perfect information about your opponent's strategy, so you'll have to use constantly shifting best estimate.) And you'll also have a quantitative sense of just how exploitable your opponent is, which can help you get a sense of what kind of edge you can have on him.

In limit hold em, there was a big debate between whether the correct VPIP/PFR stats for a top player in a 6max game should be in the vicinity of 25/18 (which is most winning players started out playing) or closer to 35/28 or even higher (which is where a lot of winning players started moving toward). To the extent that the question had an objective answer, one part of it is understanding what the GTO stats would be. From there, you have to realize where your opponents are deviating and what counteradjustments optimally exploit them. But without having an implicit understanding of the GTO strategy of 6max limit holdem, you really can't answer the question. To the extent that the debate is not settled, it's because the equilibrium strategy is still too difficult to determine (and game theory doesn't work as well in multiway pots b/c of collusion -- implicit or explicit -- considerations). [Not the best example b/c it considers LHE as a single ubercomplex game, and reduces strategy to VPIP/PFR, ignoring the importance of postflop strategies.]

So to me, understanding GTO is less about having a safety net to retreat to (which is great to have, but I try to avoid spots where I need to make use of it as I also have the "safety net" of quitting good players ) and more about being able to recognize when someone has strayed too far from the safety net and left himself vulnerable.

Your discussion of opponents trying to exploit each other implicitly assumes that they both know the GTO strategy (or have a reasonable estimate for it). This is a key to being a successful poker player. Many people lose because they don't have a good sense for the GTO strategy and that screws up their judgments. For example, they might see someone who is very LAG preflop and not realizable that this can be part of a strategy that is close to GTO optimal. So they decide that they can win just by playing tighter, playing a strategy that is far from GTO. The tough LAG can then exploit their strategy and acheive a long-term edge. The tight player might be otherwise strong in poker theory, but his misestimate of the GTO equilibrium point strategy is leading to adjust to his opponent improperly.

All that said, I think this video is absolutely fantastic and really liked the thought you put into making a rather difficult area accessible to people without training in game theory.

DIH, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the flexibility of an overall gameplan and its relevance/relation to the plausibility of a given line in isolation.

I think those are two different concepts but I often use the word "balance" to describe each one. I think you mentioned this idea for a second (you said something like "I can have range x and also I can have frequency x-- which I think is basically what I'm getting at) in the video but didn't really get into how you think the two concepts are related.

V interested in your thoughts on the matter.

Sorry to be so slow to respond, I've been really busy over the last few days. I'll try to answer any questions now.

food 4 thought here.....

Just as an aside....as a cornerstone for a balanced strategy you mention "having appropriate frequencies". Any thoughts on how to explore different aspects of the game by breaking it down into GTO-subgames (e.g. the 3 betting game, the river-bluff game and the like) and come up with GTO frequencies? Being led the way into being self-supporting on this would enable me to explore every subgame I would basically like to explore. For example it was a given in a previous episode that "the norm" for opening ranges would circle around BB35% and SB75%. Good to know, but I kinda take them for granted and I find myself waiting for other expert advice on other optimal frequencies, which in my mind is too passive and yields lesser results than bein self sufficient in learning the game.
How does one explore optimal frequencies one self?

Any thoughts would be appreciated
Dolo

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you sir - I don't know a lot about what I'm talking about. But I made the goddamn video, so I'm going to pretend I am legitimized enough to offer some responses to anyone who elicits them. But in my estimation, which as I said is without any significant qualification, is that trying to determine GTO play in a game that's as complex as preflop or flop play is exceedingly difficult, pretty much to the extent that the sort of precise model of how we should be approaching GTO play (typified in my video by analyzing river decisions) is not going to give us any results when analyzing more convoluted games. So considering a game like preflop play, if you want to find (read: approximate) the GTO point, then your best bet is to look for the primary characteristic of the GTO point - it is the point at which your opponents optimal strategy changes. So, in reference to preflop raising standards, we might say the GTO point is the point at which our opponent playing tighter or looser than we are will minimally exploit us. So, it's going to be something like hitting the sweet spot between being too tight and too loose - the place at which he has a tough time deciding whether playing tighter or playing looser is a good counterstrategy for him.

In reality, I have no idea if 75/35 is that point. In fact, I don't think that it really matters - you could think about it this way. We could spend our time trying to analyze every spot and find what we think is closer to the GTO strategy and then use that around which to build our overall strategies and basic adjustments. Or, we could just use the conventional form of strategizing - that is, we employ the simple heuristic: "people who are making money at poker are probably making good decisions." So, this heuristic commands us to emulate people who are making money, and presume that their strategies will net the highest (or close to the highest) money against the average opponent. And how does following this heuristic embody itself? Well, you're already doing it. Just having joined Deucescracked, deciding to watch my video, asking me questions shows that you have a lot of faith in this heuristic in giving you the right answer. Now, you're right, it's not very self-directed, but you have to realize that poker is built up of many different games or subsystems. If we could analyze every single one of them a priori then that'd be great, but we can't - we have to decide what is more or less valuable to apply this sort of analysis to. And again, employing that same heuristic, you should take my word for it that using GTO analysis globally on your game is a waste of energy. There are only certain situations which benefit enough from GTO analysis to justify using it over learned or "borrowed" rationale, and almost all of them are in the simplest of subgames.

That was a convoluted response, but hopefully it got the message across. If you have any more questions or want to know what the hell I'm talking about, please let me know.

DIH, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the flexibility of an overall gameplan and its relevance/relation to the plausibility of a given line in isolation.

I think those are two different concepts but I often use the word "balance" to describe each one. I think you mentioned this idea for a second (you said something like "I can have range x and also I can have frequency x-- which I think is basically what I'm getting at) in the video but didn't really get into how you think the two concepts are related.

V interested in your thoughts on the matter.

To be perfectly honest, I don't believe I'm grasping your question. Can you clarify a little bit what "the flexibility of an overall gameplan and its relevance/relation to the plausibility of a given line in isolation" refers to exactly?