Two Exploitative Frameworks: Theory and Live Play

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Two Exploitative Frameworks: Theory and Live Play

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Sauce123

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Two Exploitative Frameworks: Theory and Live Play

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Sauce123

POSTED Aug 11, 2017

Ben Sulsky aka Sauce123 begins a new series where he discusses the difference between exploitative and optimal play before firing up PIO to get deep into the theory. Ben then looks to put theory into practice with two tables of $500 zoom.

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nittyoldman 7 years, 7 months ago

I think I am getting a lot out of this.

Some thoughts:
Given the goal is to force errors by playing to an off meta spot, is it a prerequisite that we play our range optimally up to the node that villain deviates from his pio suggested strategy? I think yes.
On the Q95 example you used, when we want to check back to force a mistake out of villain's complicated turn strategy, are we gaining the most by perfectly mimicing pio's strategy for our IP flop play, therefore we reach the turn with the pio suggested flop checks? Or would a flop strategy in which we are purposely checking at an increased freq (in order to reach the node we want more often) be better? I'm assuming we want to increase our check, bc we then encounter the turn mistake more often, but I ask myself: Is the OOP turn mistake still necessarily a mistake when IP reaches the turn with a different flop checking range than was solved for. So by this logic, wouldn't we need to define and node lock IP's increased flop check, then have pio resolve to see how OOP should respond on turns to the "new" IP check range as opposed to the "old" IP check range?
Disclaimer: I have only had pio for about 1 month
These many questions don't need individual answers, but can probably be answered with a single thought. Thanks for your time...Big fan of this series idea.

Sauce123 7 years, 7 months ago

When we are playing explo we assume our opponent is not playing clairvoyantly at 1 or more nodes. Resolving equilibrium after a single node lock controls for villain clairvoyancy following a single node, which means we need make a read only at one decision point. The approach I'm introducing in this video isn't explicitly measuring the ev loss vs clairvoyant at multiple nodes, so it's vulnerable to counter exploitation.

Bilt2t 7 years, 7 months ago

great Video,

26 mins the Btn cbets small on 754fd board and you say that this sizing isn't used much on this board. I have found that in a lot of these spots where pio prefers bigger or mutliple sizing if we use 1/3 at a near 100% freq we don't lose very much ev(usually between 1 and 2% of the pot). Some pros that i have found are
-Its very simple, some of the ev we lose could be gained back by not making mistakes with all the mixed strat of the bigger sizing.
-We don't have balance our checking range or delayed betting lines.
-our opponents defense is harder, they usually have a very high raise freq. Which small and mid stakes players are just not doing.

what do you think of this idea?

Thanks

Brian Space 7 years, 7 months ago

Ben, Can you justify the 1-2% comment as too much quantitatively. Intuitively, I lean toward the idea that executing a strategy with much better precision will at least lead to predictably good results. No complex strategy can be executed with much precision at all. At least in some cases this leads to error that have very bad consequences for EV (For example in: http://chemistry.usf.edu/faculty/data/space/papers/OverBettingPolarizedRangesintheShortRunHowBigtoBet-byBrian_Space.pdf . In this case precision in frequency is required for the play to make sense at all. I have no feeling for how unusual this is).

It may be that inaccurately executing a complex strategy leads to a lot of cancelation of error and an overall better strategy than the easier to execute strategy that is 1-2% worse on the flop. However, the equilibrium nature of it suggests deviations all hurt the EV (although its a minimum and first order deviations might vanish).

Note, the simple strategy also does not propagate the loss because we can play a well constructed strategy on the turn.

I ask because you seem to be able to confidently answer that less than 1% is a good target and I have no way of understanding your insight.

I think your content is remarkable and I am grateful that you chose the share with the community.

Sincerely,
Brian Space

Sauce123 7 years, 7 months ago

Brian,

When you say "deviations all hurt the EV," I take it to mean that if villain is clairvoyant, all deviations from optimal hurt hero's EV. I was trying to be careful in this video to say that I'm not assuming my opponent will maximally (or even very precisely) exploit deviations from optimal frequencies. If I don't think my opponent is likely to counterexploit my frequencies over small samples, then I'm free to explore some less traveled parts of the game tree where they may be more likely to make mistakes.

I agree with your claim under conditions of villain clairvoyance. Suppose we were given a random hand at a random "brittle" (brittle means that small freq deviations are counterexploited for a lot of EV) node in the game tree. Your overbet spot would be a good example of this. Because there are so many spots with different equilibria, it's likely our human level execution of equilibrium strategy would be quite imprecise and we'd be better off playing some simpler strategy we were comfortable with. The equilibrium difference in EV between the simple and complex strat might be as high as 1-2% in these cases, but we still might be better off ceding 1-2% of the pot to the computer.

^You can test this second claim if you like. Click around Pio until you see a spot you classify as suitably brittle such that your intuition is that you'd be better off playing a simpler strategy, and run a sim with a simple solution vs a complex solution where the complexity yields >= some potshare threshold (in our case 1-2%). Give yourself some time interval to study the brittle strategy. Next, node lock your human level memory of the brittle strategy and compute its EV vs MES as a % of pot. Do the same operation with a simple strategy. Finally, see which one of the remembered strategies performed better. Did you make more EV "playing" the simple or the complex strat?

Empirically, we can also see there are variations in framework between top regulars. Some are going full on explo, not bothering to Pio too much and simply computing EV against what they think villain's range is. Others are faithfully executing their best guess at GTO ranges using as complex a model as their computing power allows. And some (like me) are doing a bit of both. There's probably no right answer here, and I encourage everyone to switch between these frameworks and develop a method of thinking which works in their games and with their skills.

Brian Space 7 years, 6 months ago

Ben,
That is a terrific answer, thank you very much.

It seems to me that the benefit of these kinds of analysis is much more likely to come from finding better parts of the game tree to visit than anything else. I am unconvinced humans can even approximate an approximation to PIO strategies in even moderately complex situations. The mathematics of the situation suggest this to me strongly. It is also my intuition from logging many hours playing vs poker snowie that humans just do not play as randomly -- they rarely can bring themselves to take low frequency actions that just feel wrong. Snowie has no such inhibitions.

Another issue is that the idea of fragility applies to particular combos and actions. I think of the problem as an EV landscape that has wells and peaks and steepness but in many dimensions. So while a particular action may be a small part of the strategy EV as a whole, for any given combo the frequencies may or may not dramatically effect the EV, and this is not easy to assess intuitively with accuracy.

Indeed, the problem with the simple strategies that give up some EV may be that those are precisely the strategies that human do respond well to. If we always bet a small amount with our entire range and the opponent knows this they can both prepare for these spots and think through them effectively in the moment.

I suspect that much of what people actually achieve is information hiding allowing them to make better vacuum EV plays without serious repercussion. This itself is an admirable goal that led me to think about bet size distributions (smearing) for a given strategy.

Again, thank you for taking your valuable time and sharing your thoughts with us. It is very much appreciated.

Brian Space

OMG_IM_SEXY 7 years, 7 months ago

do you have a simple rule/shortcut against nitty regs that almost have no bluffrange on turn and river in postflop spots?

Seriously I play some games at the moment and alot of the guys are super capped towards value if they bet Turn and River. What would be your best exploitative approach if the Villains wouldn't adapt.

instead of 1-alpha we defend 0.75-alpha for example :D :D

Sauce123 7 years, 7 months ago

Some hands will have better EV call EV because of beating some combos of villain's value range, good removal effects, or both. Calling with hands that are +EV vs optimal ranges might be near neutral EV vs tight ranges.

Ben Johnson 7 years, 7 months ago

@20:33. You xc river with KsJc on Jh6s5h 3ss 4sss. Why dont you x/jam to make him fold some weirdly played 7x or 2x or maybe 2pair? Do you think x/c is better then x/jam even with our blockers? If we dont choose this hand, which hands are we x/jamming? Assuming AsJx 3betings pre 30-40% of the time so we dont have them all the time.

Sauce123 7 years, 7 months ago

We'll have many Qs, Ks, As combos that arrive at river. The <2PR but >=TP ones should mix XC and XR (and perhaps XF, but my intuition is that we have plenty of Jx and other pairs that XF riv). If we XR every one of these combos we'll be bluffing too often, but you're correct to point out that my hand should be mixing XR fairly frequently, perhaps 30%.

Peddling123 7 years, 7 months ago

So the point of the video is to try to push people to certain parts of the game tree that they aren't very familiar with allowing them to make more mistakes. The problem i'm having is deciding in real time on the play to make them do such actions. Does that mean I just need to experiment more with things like checking hands that I think are a standard flop and turn bet? And also by mixing in some bets with hands I think are a a standard check just to avoid being predictable?

Sauce123 7 years, 7 months ago

I think the point was that certain nodes of the game tree involve complicated strategies that include mixing to many different sizings and lines. In these hard nodes villains are more likely to make mistakes.

koivisto 7 years, 3 months ago

Hey, cool video.

You open 2,1x from the SB, I think there is various ways to play sb but is there some specific reason for that?

kingkong 7 years, 2 months ago

Hi, thinking about the hand at 32:00, I was wondering if you had some thoughts about the monotone boards. People don't talk about it often but I think they're 'special' kind of boards because they really redistribute the equities and I thinking the 3bet caller has more suited cards and thinking they may be a good board to lead ?

Thanks for the video

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