ITH Poker Forum

[mikeyp]

Hi Everyone,

For Limit games...

I've searched everywhere and can't find an answer to this.

I know there are starting hand charts and so forth, but i'm really curious as to how we can use EV to decide on what our best moves are preflop.

I'm not looking to do this live in a game, just curious about the mechanics of it all.

Can anyone help?

mike

[nsidestrate]

Its hard to answer your question helpfully because it is a bit general, but I'll take a shot at it. The EV of your hand against the opponent's range is just one factor in deciding to raise or not. Position, how your hand plays against the other guy, his aggression, your aggression and other considerations all have significant weight. As an example, if you hold 33 in the SB against a tough, aggressive player on the button who has raised, your EV against his range is likely positive in a vacuum. He is probably raising a broad range of hands and your pair is probably a favorite against his range. However, you will be playing out of position, you know that he is aggressive and therefore may bluff you on scare cards and there are almost no flops that won't be frightening to you. So in this case your EV is positive, but you would likely tend towards taking less aggressive action.

However, you could be on the Button against a raise from a player in the Cut-off who is weak post-flop with 87s. In this case, you are almost certainly holding a hand that has negative EV, but the fact that you have a position on a weak player means that you might be able to successfully raise this hand.

I also note that your original question is framed as a question of if you should raise or call pre-flop based on EV. I find that most pre-flop decisions are not about raising compared to folding and to the extent they are, the decision is based on the likely effect of my action on other players who would be in the hand, not on the EV per se.

I'm not certain that I have correctly understood what you looking to learn, but perhaps this will at least give us a starting point to discuss your question.

[mikeyp]

Hi nsidestrate

hmmm... yea, i see what you're saying.

i'll start from the end-result and work my way back... sorry for not doing that before...

I'm really curious as to how preflop charts are created... i figure that it can't be based purely on win odds, so i'm guessing that the primary input is expected value.... correct?

So, there it is: i'm trying to figure out the math involved in creating a preflop chart..

What do you think?

mike

[nsidestrate]

Well, I'm not sure how other people created their pre-flop charts, but I can tell you that for the cases that are close I did a fair amount of study of my results with those particular hands. If you have a database of your hands, you can fairly easily filter for a particular situation and determine if your play made you money or not.

There is a fairly well-known database of results that are for all players at the site PokerRoom that show how the average player fared with each hand. You can study it here. My experience is that all the hands that make money for the average player are hands that I win money with and that I am also able to make money with many of the hands that other people lose money playing. This is because I assume I am more skilled than a random player.

It turns out that there are a lot of factors that don't reduce to simple EV calculations. The actual qualities of the other players change everything -- a bad player who calls everything requires different adjustments than a bad player who bluffs constantly which requires different adjustments than a player who is extremely timid and folds too much which requires different adjustments than a player who is timid, but refuses to fold. A hand that you would raise if no one else has entered the pot can easily be folded against a player who raised from early position. Sometimes you have position on a particularly bad player and you want to re-raise him any chance you get because you want to play as many pots against him as possible.

Its probably not a question that lends itself to very simple statistical analysis.

[mikeyp]

yea, exactly

that's why i'm so curious as to how these preflop charts (slansky for example) say to raise a certain pocket hand from a given position.

for example, on <<link snipped by moderator>>, it says (for middle position) to call a raised pot with 77 but to fold with 66.

that's a perfect example of what i'm trying to figure out...

any ideas?

[nsidestrate]

I'm not sure I agree to call raises with 77 or 66, but for any decision there has to be a place where you draw the line. It will almost always be the case that if you drew the line slightly to one side or the other it wouldn't really make any difference to your long term results.

If you like, we can discuss Matthew's starting hand charts since he is the author who started this forum and I can ask him to address your questions once we find some specific point to discuss. You'll note that Matthew's chart wouldn't call a preflop raise with any pair but JJ, folding all pairs tens and below. I know that Ed Miller raises JJ/TT in that spot, but they both fold 99. Exactly where you draw the line probably doesn't matter that much, but hands like 77 are well below the line and probably are fairly clear folds.

I'll point out this thread to Matthew and see if he wants to add anything in terms of how he built the charts in the first place. I think he's gone over that a few times, but I can't find the thread easily using search.

[nsidestrate]

Also, these threads are pretty old, but they have two very prominent limit hold-em authors discussing tiny details of their starting hand charts.

SSH/ITH EP
SSH/ITH MP
SSH/ITH LP

The computer gods appear to eaten the ones for the blinds.

[mikeyp]

Hi nsi,

Awesome stuff... Thank you so much for all the great information!

The example on SSH/ITH Comparison in early position where "Miller says to raise JJ/TT, Hilger says to call" is exactly what i'm after.

I'm an expert programmer (15 years - java, .net) and i've already started to build the framework for a simulator to help me out in building my own charts.

I want to build something really good here; not just some simple "everyone stays in up to 5th street" kind of stuff.... also thinking that i need to have player profiles for preflop (SSH player, ITH player, etc) and postflop (with attributes like "makes continuation bets", "always calls on flop", "odds purist", etc)... just thinking aloud here, but maybe a "profile builder" based on entered information plus player hand histories..

If you (or Matthew via yourself) could help me out with any high level conceptual principles that i shouldfollow to really make this thing kick some butt, i'd be so thankful.

Either way, thanks again for all the wonderful information to date.

mike