I have met Shania...

[Fnord]

http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/...fpart=all&vc=1

[DaNutsInYoEye]

Very interestig to think about... although it really isn't applicable at the limits I play.

[elipsesjeff]

Too much deep thought for me. Maybe the guy should get a girlfriend . Its an interesting theory, but none-the-less I'm happy where I am.

[Fnord]

I find it interesting the different authors refer to the same thing by different names. For example, Bruson or a sports booker would call it "action." "Ya gotta give action to get action."

[pokerfanatic]

umm intreasting little artical there, I wounder if that would work in the higher games, because I don't see it working at lower stakes...

[whileone]

I read that about the time i read a bunch of stuff about taking notes. It seems to me, shania is the idea of your whole game. every action and inaction has a cost.

so, if you're sitting at a live game, friendly lots of people laughing and not paying much attention, do you take notes? will your taking notes make them play better? will the notes help you play better? It comes down to does taking notes increase or decrease shania.

how about posting the big blind. if you sit out for 5 hands waiting for the blind to show up, how much are you helping or hurting your game? dosn't that just advertise that you're a stupid shark? the clueless will never notice, but the vaguely cluefull sure will.

It's a useful concept for measuring the utility of working on a particular aspect of your game. if you allways fold quads, well that's clearly an error. but in the grand scheme of things it dosn't affect shania at all, quads just don't happen that often. Allways calling 1 bet with any 2 suited, that's a big impact.

Thinking in terms of shania forces you to consider how big a deal it is to fix a particular bug in your game.

[ChezJ]

it is definitely true in my home games that if anyone starts playing like a rock, everybody eventually notices and gives that person no action whatsoever when he bets out. so we all tend to play some garbage hands, or raise in EP with suited connectors, just to keep each other guessing.

i think if you are socially adept, it is possible to sit in on a game like this and play super tight but laugh it up so boisterously that nobody notices that you are folding every hand. basic misdirection is highly effective here -- e.g., you are in the middle of telling some great joke and casually toss in your cards while you are speaking. everyone focuses on your joke not your play.

ChezJ

[Fnord]

*bump* and moved to the NL strat section where this concept is 10x more important against opponents with a clue.

[Lodogg]

My Shania is sending me to Hawaii next month!

[aleksandr]

I'd definately like to hear some discussion on how playing a marginal hand like KJo affects Shania?

Shaniiiaa don't like it (duuuummm bummmm)
Rock the khasba
Rock the khasba

[r8ed]

Shania is applicaable at all limits, yet should gain more attention the higher you go. It's not just the hands you play, it's how you manipulate your opponents' view of how you play. That's how I interpreted it at least.

[Pelion]

We have also touched upon Shania's fulcrum ever so gently.

*childish giggle*


Seriously though, thats a very important way of thinking about pretty much anything to do with the game that i hadnt really considered before. I suppose that's what Fnord means when he starts going on about balence.

Ive recently begun raising the odd suited connector in tight games. I dont do it often but it seems to me that you either want to do it often and not get noticed or do it rarely and have it noticed. In either case your "Shania" would go up but if you raised 78s alot and people notcied, or you hardly ever raised and noone noticed, then it hurts you.

I suppose what it all comes down to is this:

You have to be aware of how aware your opponents are of you.

You can start raising suited connectors and trash and stealing pot after pot but when they catch on and start calling with semi-trash, you need to change gears to hang them.

I definatly agree that it isnt nearly so applicable in games where your opponents are not aware.

[Lodogg]

I agree with you Pelion...I play NL $25 and at that level the players only care about two things:

Calling 5xBB raises with A3s OOP
Going all in with TPTK

[EricE]

I don’t see that it makes much of a difference. I mean, the fact that somebody plays a certain hand from a certain position doesn’t cause me to label them a fish. How they play postflop is much more important. Are they calling off lots of money chasing with a low pp or a gutshot? That matters more than what they will play in what positions. I don’t think anyone is going to label us a fish just because of how many hands we play. Let’s say we take it to the extreme; we are playing every hand but we are sitting on twice the buyin and we have shown down only good hands and bought the normal amount. Are they going to give us action just because we play 100% of hands? Nope. So the image change isn’t enough to make this pay off.

The other aspect is just the fact that when we open a certain position we could have X or Y or …… Against a thinking opponent this has merit as it makes it much harder to put us on a hand. So is this alone going to increase our total profits? It could, I think, if applied carefully. I am still thinking about that one.

[Fnord]

How they play postflop is much more important.

I think about Shania post-flop too...

[EricE]

How they play postflop is much more important.

I think about Shania post-flop too...

Well sure. I didn’t mean to imply that the merit or lack of merit applied to only preflop. Rather, I think it applies to the decisions our opponents make throughout a hand. I touched on this in my second paragraph.

[Fnord]

The other aspect is just the fact that when we open a certain position we could have X or Y or …… Against a thinking opponent this has merit as it makes it much harder to put us on a hand. So is this alone going to increase our total profits? It could, I think, if applied carefully. I am still thinking about that one.

Everything we do represents a range of hands. The narrower that range is, the more trouble we get into against a hand reader with lots of money behind.

[EricE]

Everything we do represents a range of hands. The narrower that range is, the more trouble we get into against a hand reader with lots of money behind.

Exactly, which is why playing 100% of hands makes it impossible to put us on a hand. But this is impractical. Not only will we leak away our stack but opponents will notice and won’t let us limp in…forcing us to call a raise. If we call a raise with 100% of hands then we are idiots. So once we call a raise we have defined our hand much better as we won’t call raises with just anything. This is why, at the higher levels, people won’t go broke in unraised pots [I only know this from what Fnord has said]. So we are back to square one. We can open up our hand requirements but when we do so our opponents start to raise anything they are going to play…negating our strategy.

[Fnord]

We can open up our hand requirements but when we do so our opponents start to raise anything they are going to play…negating our strategy.

Ahhh... now you're on the right path.

At some point between being too predictable and too loose, we find an optimal balance. Shania is happy.

We can further complicate things for our opponents by shifting gears in response to perceptions, game conditions and expoitable tenencies of our opponents.

I don't open limp much, so my default game forces my opponents to re-raise me. At the 100NL level, a big re-occuring mistake is failing to do so often enough.

[EricE]

Ahhhh. So we need to sometimes call raises with undefined hands. IOW, don’t use a set list of hands you will call raises or raise with from certain positions but just pick one a certain % of the time. [taking into account your particular opponents weaknesses when you pick the situation to do so] I don’t currently do this. I am fairly predictable in the hands that I’ll play. What % of hands should I start with to open up?...Once every couple of orbits?

I don't open limp much, so my default game forces my opponents to re-raise me. At the 100NL level, a big re-occuring mistake is failing to do so often enough.

So if you raise with one of these random hands you will fold to a reraise? Makes sense I guess…wouldn’t want to put in so much money on such a speculative hand. The beauty of it is that they are reraising your legitimate hands too which turns them into monster pots when you hit.

[Fnord]

Having a wide enough range doesn't have to include trash.

[Pelion]

What % of hands should I start with to open up?...Once every couple of orbits?

You are missing the point. The point is it shouldnt just be about numbers. It is far more situational than that. If you open up by a certain % then there is still an optimum and correct strategy to play against it. You may do better than if you dont open up at all, but you still arent doing as well as you could.

I think your % has to be based far more on who your opponent is and what sort of way you think they are playing at the time If they are a good player capable of changing gears then you have to figure out if they are in TAG or LAG mode before you decide to reraise them. They may also be playing TAG against you, but LAG against a tighter player at the table.

Sadly this is where the whole thing gets insanely complicated and goes far too high over my ehad for me to even be able to see it anymore.

[Jimmy Mac]

In what capacity does Shania exist in the land of low limit online poker? If a 2-3 suited was played under the gun, but nobody heard it.. did it ever really happen?

[Fnord]

If a 2-3 suited was played under the gun, but nobody heard it.. did it ever really happen?

They saw you play a hand fast. The more hands players paying any amount of attention (including the recreational 1 tablers) see you play, the more inclined they are to give you loose action.

I'll let you in on a dirty little secret about my game. If I raise pre-flop 3 times in a row, the third time I'm most likely to have Aces.

[strawman]

Ahhhh. So we need to sometimes call raises with undefined hands.

Why would you want to do that? The only way I could see doing that is to show down a garbage hand so that your opponents raise into you more often. By encouraging them to raise into you more often I would think you would be hurting your maginal/limping hands from being playable. So what you might end up with is an inversion of the principles being discussed, the results of which would bring down the value of your premium holdings.

[Pingviini]

an undifined is not necessarily garbage. It can be 22 or 65s. If you define you hand by raising a certain amount with certain cards or calling with certain cards only in certain position just because your chart tells you so you will be in big trouble with opponents with at least some clue of the game.

Lot of people do stupid stuff like min-reraising PF with AA/KK or min-CR'ing a set on the flop, those people have not met Shania. Have you?

[strawman]

an undifined is not necessarily garbage. It can be 22 or 65s. If you define you hand by raising a certain amount with certain cards or calling with certain cards only in certain position just because your chart tells you so you will be in big trouble with opponents with at least some clue of the game.

Lot of people do stupid stuff like min-reraising PF with AA/KK or min-CR'ing a set on the flop, those people have not met Shania. Have you?

If you can't define your hand, than what business do you have playing it in the first place, especially after a raise? I define my hands not by a chart but by a simple preflop question: "How is this hand going to make me money?" Being consistent with calling and raising hands isn't defining your hand IMO, it's advertising your hand to the rest of the table.

The question that I responded to discussed calling a raise and not entering the pot UTG as per the examples. So instead of giving the table misdirection by entering the pot and raising 23s as you would AA, you have just received information from the raiser. Again, I think this would have a negative effect as it would encourage raises into you and actually restrict the number of playable hands you have since you don't get hands that can substain a raise often enough. Of what benefit would it be to call a raise and face two more raises?

From my understanding, Shania would want your 23s to compliment your AA, but not turn your marginal hands into 72o. The only way I could see in keeping with the concept is that you either reraise or are the last to call. I doubt it would be in keeping with Shania if you couldn't at least see a flop and better yet, your opponents get to see your cards.

[Pingviini]

I have always thought that defining your hand PF means the same as almost telling the others what your hole cards are, which is naturally against the fundamental theorem of poker. So I guess we are talking about the same thing..