December 6, 2005
Raising can be a dicey proposition. Most of the time you raise you will not be entirely sure you have the best hand. Moreover, you'll encounter some Pokerstars opponents who take raising so personally that their response to any raise is simply to raise back even when their hands don't warrant it.
But you don't always have to hold the best hand to raise. Suppose you're on the button with Ad-Kd and the flop is Jd-9d-6c. It's a loose Pokerstars game. The blind comes out betting and is called by 4 others. Now it's your turn to act. You're getting 5:1 on your money, and with two cards to come the odds against making the nut flush are better than 2:1.
Bankroll management deals with how much of a reserve you need to keep from going broke, given the rather protracted runs of statistically predicable bad luck one can expect at the poker table. Money management is easier to deal with than bankroll management, since all of the theories surrounding it are fallacious. Regardless of how much of your bankroll you put at risk, you'll never be able to beat table games.
I was curious about just how big an underdog Gary Furness was, so I ran a few simulations. In the first, I gave Gary and Ice their pairs, and kept the suits the same, to eliminate any wins Gary might have by making a four-card flush. With random flops, turns, and rivers, and a million hands dealt, Gary Furness won 17 percent of the time. The remaining 83 percent of the victories belonged to Steve Eisenstein.
If you bluff whenever two predetermined cards come up in addition to the eight you need, you are bluffing at a frequency that precludes your opponent from taking advantage of your bluffing proclivities regardless of what he chooses to do. How easy is that to pull off? You can trigger your bluff versus not-bluff decision by randomizing it with cards. Suppose you are looking for either a seven or a queen to complete your hand.
The size of one's bankroll, and willingness to assume a much high variance in return for a relatively small increase in Pokerstars winnings, all enter into this equation, as do such factors as your current image at the table, and the relative difference in your playing skill compared to the skill level of your opponents. Remember, we're just talking cash game limit poker here, and relatively full ones at that.
It apparently takes more than one year. Maybe more than two, maybe more than five years. I intend to do more research on this in the future. Until then, I've got a new appreciation for the expected fluctuations in a poker game. And if I'm right - if these fluctuations can be expected to persist for a long time before aggregate results can be attributed solely to skill - then it is clear to me that the majority of players are playing in games with stakes too big for their bankroll.
If this situation were to repeat itself and your estimate of successfully bluffing was accurate, you would bet $30 twice and lose, but you'd win $90 the third time. In the long run, this is an opportunity with a positive expected value. But what happens if you add a third player to the mix? Once again, you figure that your chances of successfully bluffing the additional player are one chance in three. The presence of a third Pokerstars player will, of course, increase the size of the pot.
