Existential Astronaut.

making poker decisions

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Hermes Suen
Hermes Suen

When facing a move in poker you have one of 4 options (depending on the situation):

  1. Check
  2. Raise (n * BB)
  3. Fold
  4. 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

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  4. 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?
  5. 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?
  6. This should give a good estimate of my chances of winning, and if I think its +EV, I call.
  7. What if I think I have a MUCH better chance of winning? Then I should bet! But how much...and why?
  8. I should probably raise to a "fair" value (this would be betting for value)
  9. 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
  10. 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.
  11. 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.