Market Losers (long,dumb,boring) |
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Posted Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:08 am GMT by snoogins47
Over the past few months I've gotten into the game of Backgammon a little bit. I'm not all that good. However, I've noticed that a lot of Backgammon concepts (mostly centering on the doubling cube) have a lot of nearly direct parallels to poker.
To the uninitiated: Backgammon is a 2 player game with checkers and dice and silliness. Those parts aren't important to this discussion. What is however important, is the doubling cube. How it works:
At the beginning of each game, a stake is agreed upon. Money, 'points,' etc. And then the cube is placed in the middle of the table, available to either player. At any time, they can 'double.' They turn the cube so that the number "2" is on top, and the opponent looks, ponders, grimaces a few times, and decides whether or not to 'accept' or 'reject.' If he accepts, the game continues on, only now the stakes are doubled. If he rejects the game is over, and the person who offered the double wins (the opponent basically gives up.) If the double is accepted, the player who accepted it now has control of the cube, and is the only one who can double after that (this goes back and forth obviously, if there are multiple doubles/redoubles throughout the game)
So, if you want to put it in simpler terms, think of the cube as a special sort of 'raise' as in poker. Ignoring a lot of weird variables, we see that the opponent should accept the double if he has a 25% or better chance of winning the game. Think pot odds. The pot starts at 2x the initial stake. The opponent is looking at the proposition of wagering 1 more unit, to play for a total pot of 4 units. 3:1 odds, 25%.
The decision of whether or not to double (and to a lesser extent, whether or not to take) is way too complicated for me to go in to here: which is great, because I'm pretty much totally clueless. Anyway, one of the more important things to consider when thinking of doubling is the presence of 'market losers.'
What market losers are, essentially... well imagine that you are currently a favorite in the game, and if you doubled, your opponent will accept (this means somewhere between 50% and 75% equity for you). Any sequence of rolls that will make it so on your next turn, your opponent will reject a double, is a 'market loser.' When you don't have any of these as possibilities, waiting to double may not be a bad thing. When market losers are present, doubling is a much more attractive option. When we double now, a subsequent market loser is a huge benefit to us, whereas if we don't double, rolling a market loser isn't that big of a deal.
You can't bring these concepts exactly into the game of poker (a lot to do with the fact that in poker we have incomplete information, as does our opponent), but if you generalize the concept a bit, it proves to be a very important insight in how to play hands... one that seems to be glossed over in discussion fairly frequently.
"What is going to happen on the following betting rounds has a very significant impact on how we should play on the current one."
Really a simple concept... quite obvious. Parts of it get addressed when we talk of implied odds, both of the vanilla and reverse varieties. In a lot of other relevant areas, it is sorely lacking from the discussion, even if we subconsciously think about it from time to time.
Take for instance, if we hold the nut flush on a 3 spade board, on the turn. Obviously, we're happy. And it may well be right to slowplay. However, we may well have 8 'market losers' in the form of the any of the remaining 8 spades. If the fourth spade hits the board, while we're still about as confident in our hand as we were prior, our opponents are almost invariably less confident. Most made hands that didn't hold a spade cannot call a large river bet, or even any river bet at all. Anybody with a smaller flush has now seemingly been counterfeited. They can't call much either. These are all hands that likely would be willing to put in plenty of action prior to the fourth spade, but if you refrain from betting/raising and the fourth spade hits, you have lost your market.
On the flip side, poker 'market losers' can be our friend (silly game of incomplete information) Take for instance the magic of the 'stop n go.'
NLHE Tournament, lots of dollars, table 4444444444
Seat 1: Villain O'Baddie 5600TC
Seat 2: Hero Mc Goodguy 1200TC
Seat 3: Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Hand-At-All: All the rest
Blinds 200/400
DEADMAN posts the SB of 0
Seat 2 posts the BB 400
Seat 3 folds, Seat 1 limps
Seat 2 looks down at 2c, 2s.
As per always, the numbers are totally fudged, just to illustrate the concept. So don't put too much stress into the specifics here, but just the concept they show.
Pushing seems right. If he'll call with any two, and we're 50% to win against that range, we make about 400TC on average with the push. Not too shabby. Sure beats folding.
However, let's say that our opponent will only be able to call a flop push about 33% of the time: typically when he flops a pair, but he will fold occasionally when he pairs up because the board sucks, and will call occasionally with big aces/et al. on ragged boards. When he does call, we'll just say our average equity is about 20%, thanks to suckoutness, sometimes flopping a set, and winning against the evil AK drawin hand.
Here, checking our option, and pushing in regardless of the flop... well:
66% of the time we will take the pot uncontested: that's 800 chips
26.4% of the time we will be called and go BUSTO: that's -800 chips
6.6% of the time we will be called and win somehow: that's +1600 chips
Mathing that out, we see that this strategy gains us around 422 TC. That's not a huge difference, but it'd be better. Also noteworthy, in the tournament setting, is that with plan B, we bust a little more than HALF as often than with plan A. Basically, while pushing all in immediately is a profitable play, it may be better to wait for the flop and the frequent 'market losers' that it brings: he misses flops a lot.
In another weird way, you can flip it yet again, and see why slowplaying is an attractive option in a lot of spots: for instance, let's look at holding AA heads up, facing a preflop raise. It may be right to flat call preflop, given a few conditions:
a)most of the time, the hands that would call our preflop push are big pairs and AK
b)other hands will fold preflop. These same hands will flop top pair and go broke a significant percentage of the time.
c)much of the time, big pairs will go broke against us anyway, after the flop.
It's almost perfectly backwards here: we may wish to refrain from re-raising, because the flop will often create a 'market' where one did not exist preflop.
What does this all mean? Well, it means you always need to be thinking hands through, in depth. Not just the current round, but how the tides may be turning. Get those bets with strong hands in when you can, if there's a good chance you won't be able to get them in later. Pay attention to situations where the tables can turn very drastically with a single card, whether it's because somebody's hand improves, or because of a great card to bluff at... These situations are drastically different from ones where the next card typically doesn't matter much. Also remember that the preflop -> flop transition is a spot where the situation will change quite drastically most of the time.
Most importantly, as with anything else, do not merely stay aware of this information: use it.
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Posted Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:21 am GMT by tame_deuces
A very good post, and something I have often pondered myself, I think for me the archetypical scenario is a cashgame, one which I have experienced some times.
Let's say we're holding something like A 2 against a fairly nitty player on the turn on a board of 9 T 4 5 .
We bet and let's for the cliche of it say he checkraises the turn, or he plays his hand in a manner with shows similar strength. Some people actually slowplay here. Well, you might as well gun it now. If he holds a set, then 10 cards finishes his boat, 8 cards brings a fourflush to the board and any 3,8,J,K,6 can cause him too slow down, maybe even a Q or a 7 slows him down if he is really nitty.
So basically 22 cards can kill your action, 10 others can make you lose a big pot and another 6 may slow your action against horrible players.
The conclusion is pretty obvious. SHOVE FOR VALUE! 
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