Negreanu Comments on the Insignificant in Poker
No, I’m didn’t just say that Negreanu’s comments were insignificant. Quite to the contrary, Negreanu has been one of the most influential educators of the game and continually updates his webpage with sound updates. That said, let’s talk about one of his latest posts, titled “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
Go browse any online poker forum. Go ahead, just pick one, any of them. It’s undoubtedly true that you’ll find somewhere, in some thread someone is debating one of the most arcane, complicated, probability based technicality that in real life has not a whole lot of bearing on anything. While the knowledge may be quite important to students of game theory, or variable probability theorists, as Negreanu said, “worrying about such insignificant details won’t have much of an effect on your bankroll at the end of the year.”
Instead of working with infinitesimally small probability statistics, it is suggested that you work on the big holes in the dam that is your poker game. For example, don’t call that all-in bet with a moderate pair just because it’s statistically probable that your opponent might be bluffing. Instead, use the common sense method and only call it if you have a strong hand that has a good chance of winning.
Stop bluffing all-in. You may get by with it everyonce it a while, but more often than not, you’re going to get bit back sooner or later.
Really, it’s just a waste of processing power. And this is all too common when poker players just learning the game become too obsessed with stats.
It comes down to balance. Reading the table instead of reading the raw card probability. Betting the strong hands instead of betting the projected strong hands. Playing with the flow of the table instead of whether or not a card has a 48 or 45 chance of hitting.
If you’re down to a situation on whether you should call based on a 48 vs. a 45 percent probability of hitting your card, you’re doing it wrong to begin with.
