Week In Review #26 September 15th-September 21st
How much of one's face should they be allowed to cover?
The introduction to the Week in Review posts has become a repository of my takes on classic poker disputes and this week in honour of Cristoph Vogelsang winning the Triton Jeju II NLHE Main Event, I will write about the tiresome discussion about if he covers too much of his face when playing poker and if it should be banned. It’s something I briefly touched upon in POTD #65 and have tweeted about before and I’ll expand on my thoughts here. I think he plays too slowly and I think he covers too much of his face. I think it’s absurd that he turtles into his special hoodie during 3 BB pot in level one. I also do not think it should be banned or that it represents an existential concern for live poker. Everyone is allowed to do what Cristoph does and almost no one else does. It annoys me when people throw in one small chip and announce “all-in”. It annoys me to play with people in tank tops who have body odor, there are people who while not in pots will watch videos at the table with the sound on and no headphones. There does not need to be a rule to ban every annoying tic or tactic of every player in the tournament and Cristoph has been doing this for long enough that any concerns about him sparking a giant trend throughout poker are hysterical. There are rules that exist and Cristoph respects and follows them.
The above is a little disingenuous. I am comparing something Cristoph does to gain an advantage at the poker table with matters of etiquette that aren’t designed to get an edge, but I feel like responding disingenuously because I am so tired of this conversation. There was a massive tanking epidemic in live tournaments and they added action clocks and it’s mostly solved the problem. Yet people still complain about slow play. Players covering up their face to hide tells has also existed forever, it did not start with Christoph Vogelsang— is he taking it too far? I don’t really care. There are some tournaments that have the rules you can cover two of your neck, face and eyes. If Cristoph did the same routine, but didn’t wear sunglasses people would still complain about his routine. Some argue that Cristoph is freerolling by doing this, he can get tells off others, but they can’t get tells off him but I don’t think he is. When you’re playing poker every day for two weeks one of the most important skills is stamina. You are in a high stress environment for a long period of time and do not want to burn yourself out. Many consciously chose to be a little more relaxed when the stakes are lower so that they can be fresh later in the tournament. Cristoph is going all out from the first hand to the land hand, a trait that is admired in every other competitive endeavor. Cristoph put on a great performance at the final table and was a deserving champion. We should laud his discipline and competitiveness instead of trotting out the same hacky takes
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Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers
Premium subscribers get the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries, videos of me walking through the sims, and a text summary of how I ran the sims. This week I uploaded
Rocket Solver and PIO sims for POTD #126
PIO sims from testing out a lot of sizes for POTD #127
PIO sims using preflop ranges for the odd 1k/1.5k blind level POTD #128
Two HRC sims and two PIO ICM sims for POTD #130
Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers
Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included on Substack. Today I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #130 where I wrote about how solvers systematically randomizing can model human unpredictability.
POTD #130 #onemorething
Solvers tend to have extreme solutions to poor human strategies. If a human bets more often than the EQ strategy, the solver plays extremely aggressively in response. However, solvers tend to play much more reasonably vs another solver that doesn’t have the right sizing options. In this hand the solver starts mixing preflop folds with TT-66 and suited broadways. I think most humans would see a very small three bet size and decide, “that’s a really small size, I have to call or that’s a really small size, he has aces, I have to fold”. Certainly I can’t imagine many humans seeing a three bet size that they feel is too small and systematically folding some pocket pairs instead of set-mining with all of them or none of them. However, I still think these preflop outputs where the solver mixes are useful because humans are unpredictable and an output that mixes systematically can end up doing a good job of mimicking unpredictable behaviour.
If I were in Ottomar’s shoes and played this spot a million times vs a million different opponents, I think I would randomize with suited aces to determine if I should four bet shove them, but I don’t think I would randomize to mix continues with TT. However, over that million hand sample, I would fold it some of the time due to player reads, live reads, how my brain chooses to interpret this problem in a given moment, etc. If it all adds up to me calling 72% of the time, I am playing the same strategy as the solver, even if it’s totally unintentional.
Housekeeping
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Media
I have a new Run It Once video discussing raising first in from the SB ranges. You can watch it here
For whatever reason, the previous Wednesday albums have not really spoken to me, but I’ve already listened to their new album Bleeds twice and like it so much I want to revisit their entire catalogue. Good album.
Have a good weekend and as always you can reach out to ask me questions about Substack, poker or request private coaching.
i only knew christoph