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[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I haven't played in your no limit games. I did play a significant sample of hours in 5/5 no limit here in Southern California, and I didn't find there were a ton of special situational decisions. Most players either had narrowly definable ranges (especially in raised pots) or were maniacs, and it was relatively simple to do the math and get your money in good against either type of players. The only time that you had to make significant strategic adjustments were in limped pots, where you ran into a lot of 75 to 90 percent ranges.

And this isn't the only example of "generally wrong" I saw. Defending the blinds with any two cards was common and I would label "generally wrong". Also playing any two cards in late position in raised multi-way pots, playing small pocket pairs and suited connectors without a good stack to pot ratio, and way too much slowplay of sets or better that left tons of money on the table.

Now, all of those things can be defended in particular game situations, I realize that. But what I'm telling you is that you have the tendency to make it sound like NL is this black box where every game is completely different and the expert psychologist has a huge advantage. That was simply not my experience, at all. I was able to do most of the calculations in my head (indeed, they were often simpler than in limit games) and the most common situations repeated themselves over and over. (Indeed, the reason I switched back to limit was because I found NL boring, even though it is profitable.) And certainly a good mathemetician has a huge advantage over a good psychologist in a California NL game.

If you play in NL games where this is not the case, you might want to move out to California.

And I am telling you that you have the tendency to make it sound as if I am allergic to poker math...even though I have never implied that in any of our poker discussions here. The assertion that I place the good psychologist in a "huge advantage" over the good mathematician exists only in your imagination.