making poker decisions
Hermes Suen
Hermes Suen
When facing a move in poker you have one of 4 options (depending on the situation):
- Check
- Raise (n * BB)
- Fold
- Call
I've been trying to figure out the best way to codify the thought process that I've been going through when making these decisions It's definitely not optimal, and I am open to trying to refine this ever more, but I'd like a record of my current thought-making process
- What is the pot size? If I am facing a bet (i.e. I have to decide whether to raise, call, fold), then the pot size is the most important factor. I'll have to decide what "price" Im getting: i.e, what percent of the time would I need to win for this bet to be profitable? In order to determine that percent, I have to take into account, what my hand is, what the board is, and what I expect other people to have
- What position am I in? If I am in later position, my chances should go up because I will have more position in later rounds
- What type of player are the others? If they are loose and call a alot of hands, techcnially the percent chance I need to win should decrease because the pot will grow.
- What does the other player have? Based on what I have seen them play, their current previous actions, and my best estimate of the extent they are mixing their strategy (we should play all hands with a probability distribution), what range of cards do they have?
- Before doing that, it might be useful to look at the board. What could win on this board? What's the best possible hand? What could my opponent be doing/have?
- This should give a good estimate of my chances of winning, and if I think its +EV, I call.
- What if I think I have a MUCH better chance of winning? Then I should bet! But how much...and why?
- I should probably raise to a "fair" value (this would be betting for value)
- I should also think about the extent to which they might fold. I should take that into account for the probability as well - as in, even if I increase the bet to a value that is no longer fair from an EV standpoint, it might become profitable given that it might scare the opponent into folding
- Should I be increasing the variance of my moves? In general, if I am stuck, I think about whether I am being too predictable. Being predictable means it's easy to be exploited.
- Another heuristic is to try "tree search". You mentally can't tree search a huge space but you can tree search a small portion of that space, play out a few possible outcomes that come to mind and put rough estimates.