A pleasant Thursday morning before the Boston Monsoon, I was in J’s car going to Foxwoods. With us was T, an aspiring player earnest about improvement who has lamented about his recent rut. This was our first trip together, and he gave me a couple of hands to dissect on the ride. I happily obliged.
His first couple of hands were fairly standard, so a “dude you’re destroying him here, just bet” or “well bottom-two may not be good here since he’s so tight” settled those. The next hand got interesting: after he c-bet a dry Axx flop with mid-pair meh-kicker, the turn paired the A. I asked T to give his analysis, and he gave me several reasons to bet, along the lines of “I think I’m ahead” and “I bet because I didn’t want to look weak since I’ve been checking.”
To me, this was completely fine – these thoughts describe exactly how I would first approach the situation, if not how I might just make the decision. However, for this particular hand several factors bugged me (for example, I knew that his opponent is solid and balances his ranges well), so I decided to ask what I thought to be the natural next question: what is his opponent’s range? What is the range T is representing? What is the expected value in each part of the range given his river plan?
T was confused for a moment, and gave me a few more sentences like “well, I think he’s strong?” or “well, he probably doesn’t have an A.” I was in turn confused myself because he wasn’t answering my questions, but I quickly realized that I was speaking a different language. I understood at that point what his plateau was, why I would make a horrible mathematician, and why Martin Luther King Jr’s battle was so difficult.
I’ll explain. Cards first.
Blue Slate 