ARTICLES BY: DAVID DOWNING
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published 250 days ago in
Card Player Europe Magazine Volume 5, Number 1
Card Player Europe Magazine Volume 5, Number 1
Chaotic Fractals
Sometime ago, a friend of mine came up with an interesting idea around tournament play. Basically, it boiled down to the notion that a strange attractor existed for playing in these events. Strange attractor is a mathematical term, and without going into too much detail, he was coining something from what is called chaos theory, to show how certain stack sizes can develop into larger or smaller sizes, somewhat regardless of how the person plays. It's an interesting and useful idea, which may lead to playing much more aggressively to get to a stack size that will "attract" you to an ever larger stack; it also means that if you are approaching being short-stacked, you need to get into action to avoid the "pull" of the other attractor, dragging you to the rail.
Another theory from the same set of disciplines, fractals, also has some interesting ramifications for poker thought. Basically, a fractal can be defined as a system having similar detail at all scales. A common, everyday analogy of this would be a snowflake, or the coastline of the UK, where the complexity remains the same no matter whether you are zooming in at a detail or seeing it from further afield. Have you not noticed that a lot of poker games are like that?
Take hold'em, for example. There are lots of differences between, say, the 5-10 limit game and the 100-200 game on Stars. But there also are a huge number of similarities. Sure, the game plays differently because of a huge increase of aggression, and people not making very basic errors, but the fundamentals stay the same. A guy playing 40 percent of his hands in a full ring game would be just as much a fish in the big game as the little. And a lot of the technical plays, such as blinds defence, are also basically the same.
Limit hold'em is a fractal.
However, looking at examples from play, it can be seen that a game like pot-limit Omaha is very different, and how a hand might be played at micro stakes could be very different from how it is treated in more significant ones. Some examples will help qualify.
Imagine in a ring game of PLO that you call a raise with some low connected cards and flop the nut straight, but also with some useful improving cards. Let's say the flop comes 4-3-2 with two spades and you have 7-6-5-2 and a low flush draw. Someone bets and someone else calls, and the action comes to you. In the lower stakes, you will just call, hoping to trap your foes. In the bigger games, you are much more likely to raise. Why is this?
This is a great example of a backgammon concept that crosses the divide really well - losing one's market. This is that you are not afraid that you will get outdrawn, but that the next card will be so terrifying to your opponent that you won't be able to get any more money out of him. So, if he is bluffing, he probably switches off once you flat-call, anyway; if he has a hand, you need to sweep him in now before he gets nervous about a deadly-looking turn. A figure closely approximating zero online players are capable of passing the "dry" nuts at this point. But they can pass it on the turn, when it looks like they have been "outdrawn."
Another interesting example might occur if, in the same game, you are dealt A-A single-suited under the gun, raise, and get one caller, who we know to be a conservative player. The flop comes an innocuous 8-3-3, with no flush draws, and you bet two-thirds of the pot and then get raised the pot. Putting the foe on a big pair, you reraise.
Now, although the continuation-bet on the flop is standard, the reraise is not a good play in most larger-stakes games. First off, although unlikely, the foe could have a 3. But that isn't the real point. The reraise is a variation of my famous "Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't" play. (Well, OK, it's famous only if you have been reading these columns!)
You're damned if he has a 3, because you are putting in a significant part of your stack for two outs. But critically, you are kind of damned if he doesn't have a 3, because you are making him pass when he has something like two outs himself. These aren't free cards; he is charging himself for the privilege of trying to hit them. Now, if you go limp, he may have a rush of blood to the head and bluff off his money. And if you are losing, the result is the same. More upside, same downside.
What does this tell us? If you play games like this, don't expect success to be linear. What you need to do to win at one set of stakes might be completely different from another, and playing the same might not reap the same results, if not being positively dangerous. It also means, you should not be afraid to take stock and stay at the same limits. Moving up is neither inexorable nor inevitable. If you cannot change your game to get to the next stage, it might be better to play as a winner lower down.
"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line."
David has played poker all over the UK for the better part of a decade. Originally a tournament player, now focused on cash play and almost entirely on the Internet for the last three years, David makes a healthy second income playing a wide range of games.
Another theory from the same set of disciplines, fractals, also has some interesting ramifications for poker thought. Basically, a fractal can be defined as a system having similar detail at all scales. A common, everyday analogy of this would be a snowflake, or the coastline of the UK, where the complexity remains the same no matter whether you are zooming in at a detail or seeing it from further afield. Have you not noticed that a lot of poker games are like that?
Take hold'em, for example. There are lots of differences between, say, the 5-10 limit game and the 100-200 game on Stars. But there also are a huge number of similarities. Sure, the game plays differently because of a huge increase of aggression, and people not making very basic errors, but the fundamentals stay the same. A guy playing 40 percent of his hands in a full ring game would be just as much a fish in the big game as the little. And a lot of the technical plays, such as blinds defence, are also basically the same.
Limit hold'em is a fractal.
However, looking at examples from play, it can be seen that a game like pot-limit Omaha is very different, and how a hand might be played at micro stakes could be very different from how it is treated in more significant ones. Some examples will help qualify.
Imagine in a ring game of PLO that you call a raise with some low connected cards and flop the nut straight, but also with some useful improving cards. Let's say the flop comes 4-3-2 with two spades and you have 7-6-5-2 and a low flush draw. Someone bets and someone else calls, and the action comes to you. In the lower stakes, you will just call, hoping to trap your foes. In the bigger games, you are much more likely to raise. Why is this?
This is a great example of a backgammon concept that crosses the divide really well - losing one's market. This is that you are not afraid that you will get outdrawn, but that the next card will be so terrifying to your opponent that you won't be able to get any more money out of him. So, if he is bluffing, he probably switches off once you flat-call, anyway; if he has a hand, you need to sweep him in now before he gets nervous about a deadly-looking turn. A figure closely approximating zero online players are capable of passing the "dry" nuts at this point. But they can pass it on the turn, when it looks like they have been "outdrawn."
Another interesting example might occur if, in the same game, you are dealt A-A single-suited under the gun, raise, and get one caller, who we know to be a conservative player. The flop comes an innocuous 8-3-3, with no flush draws, and you bet two-thirds of the pot and then get raised the pot. Putting the foe on a big pair, you reraise.
Now, although the continuation-bet on the flop is standard, the reraise is not a good play in most larger-stakes games. First off, although unlikely, the foe could have a 3. But that isn't the real point. The reraise is a variation of my famous "Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't" play. (Well, OK, it's famous only if you have been reading these columns!)
You're damned if he has a 3, because you are putting in a significant part of your stack for two outs. But critically, you are kind of damned if he doesn't have a 3, because you are making him pass when he has something like two outs himself. These aren't free cards; he is charging himself for the privilege of trying to hit them. Now, if you go limp, he may have a rush of blood to the head and bluff off his money. And if you are losing, the result is the same. More upside, same downside.
What does this tell us? If you play games like this, don't expect success to be linear. What you need to do to win at one set of stakes might be completely different from another, and playing the same might not reap the same results, if not being positively dangerous. It also means, you should not be afraid to take stock and stay at the same limits. Moving up is neither inexorable nor inevitable. If you cannot change your game to get to the next stage, it might be better to play as a winner lower down.
"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line."
David has played poker all over the UK for the better part of a decade. Originally a tournament player, now focused on cash play and almost entirely on the Internet for the last three years, David makes a healthy second income playing a wide range of games.
