Process-oriented versus result-oriented
Examining the process without consideration for the result is a very very basic concept in a mental warfare situation with an element of luck … aka, poker. And yet, despite that, I still hear endless results-oriented remarks on and around the poker table on a daily basis. While I know I won’t be able to stop most of it with this post, I want something that people can cut-and-paste to their results-oriented friends (so yea, if someone C&Ped this to you, then they probably think you’re results-oriented).
So for the people who don’t know what I’m talking about (hopefully no one), the process is your decision-making process. Let’s say you put someone on a range of 12 specific hands in which he’s equally likely to hold any one of them (not realistic, but it’s an easy example). Your hand is currently badly beating 9 of the combos, 2 of the combos are a race against you and one of the combos has you crushed. It should be obvious that if he pushes in, it’s an easy call assuming your reads are correct. But what if he ends up turning over the one that had you beaten badly? Do you care? Maybe. Should you care? No, not really. The ONLY thing you should be examining are your reads and how you arrived at your conclusion about your opponent’s possible holdings. If there’s a failure in your process such as you putting him on too many hands that you’re beating whereas he’s actually a tighter player, then you should fix that leak against that opponent and move on. What if you call and it was a race hand and you lose? Should you care? Still, the answer is no. If you arrived at your decision correctly, then that’s all you can do. It’s much much more important to consistently make correct decisions based on the proper reasoning than it is to actually be right or wrong when the cards are turned over because any given set of outcomes is mostly luck in the short-run.
Now I’ll walk through some of the things that I’ve heard lately which I find to be somewhat ridiculous.
1. While at a friend’s apartment, he played a few STTs, was down a few K and another visitor in the apartment commented: “wow, you could do a lot with a few K, it must really suck to lose that much in 20 minutes.” This is a prime example of result-oriented thinking. The key here was my friend’s expectation in those STTs. He didn’t actually lose in my opinion. In fact, since he’s a proven winning player in that game and at those stakes (he has a proven win rate over about 20,000 of them), I’d argue he actually WON. Of course, expectation is dependent on things like mindset and opponent skill, but over the long-term, those factors tend to even themselves out as well. So anyway, if my friend could “expect” to win $50 per STT, then in my opinion, he actually won $150 by playing three of them. The fact that he took a few beats and lost all of them is really not important.
2. Something you constantly see in chat at final tables when someone turns down a chop is the inevitable: “ur down a lot of chips lately, u shoulda chopped.” That’s pretty much retarded. MTT final tables are a HORRIBLE place for most good players to consider chopping. One way to look at an MTT final table is as a high-buyin STT that you spent 5 hours+ working your equity up high enough for. For example, the typical FT of the 55K 11r on Stars has over $40K in prize money, so that’s about a $4.5K buyin STT. And remember, most of the people at that final table are amateur players who might play $30 STTs or .5/1 nl cash games. Usually, only one or two experienced players make it to that final table and when they make it down to top 3 or 4, there is usually no justifiable reason to chop. Their edge is typically very large against the very poor opponents who remain and usually, the money is way out of the comfort zone for these players, so they play even worse. Therefore, you shouldn’t tell someone who is clearly more experienced and a better player that they should have chopped. Instead, commend them on making the +EV decision to keep playing and try to capitalize on their edge.
3. I’ll do one more since I want to go to sleep. On the show High Stakes Poker, a player recently got all in pre flop with AJ against the AA of Johnny Chan. In addition, he’d just come back to the table from the bathroom. Of course, the commentators went on about how if he’d just stayed in the bathroom A BIT longer, he might have missed the hand and avoided getting stacked. That’s just a horrible way of thinking about it. The player was an amateur and he almost certainly has a negative expectation against the line-up of players on HSP. Therefore, they’re probably right that he would have saved himself money by staying in the bathroom. But it wasn’t the amount of the pot, it was the amount of his negative expectation on any given hand. Just for rough estimation purposes, let’s say he expects to lose about $1K per hand at the 300/600/100 level of NL against this lineup (maybe $30K an hour with 30 hands dealt in the same time span)**. If that’s accurate, then he actually cost himself $1K by rushing back to the table. The fact that he happened to get stacked the very first hand back because he played like a donkey is pretty much irrelevant.
Anyway, I have more things to comment on related to poker, so I’ll be posting them in the future. It’s 6 AM, so I better get to sleep.
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**Okay, I received the following comment from Matt Matros:
User Name: Matt
User Email: jacksup@mattmatros.com
User Homepage: www.mattmatros.com
Comments:
Nice post, but Jesus, how bad would you have to play to have an EV of -1.7 big blinds PER HAND? I don’t think that’s possible. No one’s EV is -50 big blinds/hour. Right?
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Agreed, my numbers aren’t accurate at all. I was just making something up. The important thing to realize is that the equity that he “lost” by coming back is what he would lose on any given hand, not the amount he got stacked for. I agree it’s probably a decent amount less than $1K per hand.
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