Pokerwiner.com → Within poker principles
In Gambling Theory and Other Topics, Mason Malmuth introduced students of gambling theory to the somewhat obscure statistical concept of self weighting and non-self-weighting strategies. Non-self-weighting strategies are the key to successful gambling in beatable games such as poker. As Malmuth puts it, “Non-self-weighting strategies attempt to identify where the player following a non-self-weighting approach is very selective in looking only for those situations where he has a positive expectation. When he finds one he then invests (bets) heavily.
He will try completely to avoid situations where he lacks a positive expectation. At the very least he keeps his investment in such situations to a minimum. A tight but aggressive style of play reflects this strategy. This of course is the style of nearly all winning poker players. On the other hand, a player who is not selective about where he invests (bets), and who tends to invest a similar amount in all situations, is following a self-weighting strategy. Part of the problem with such an approach is that any correct, profitable bets that are made tend to be offset by incorrect, losing bets. A loose, passive style is a good example of such a strategy.
Notice what happens if you do everything else correctly, but you call raises cold with hands like K♦ J♣. To the pool of all your profitable investments you have added a group of losing investments. The profit from the correct calls and raises you make with something like K♦ J♣ is diluted by the cost of incorrect cold calls made with the same hand. Your cold calls represent a self-weighting feature of your play, and cut into the profit you could otherwise make. I would contend that these cold calls are even more costly errors than might first be apparent. This is partly because they are errors in hand selection, a decision which must be made over and over. Just as importantly, poker hand selection errors tend to compound themselves as players get into trouble with hands that present difficult decisions after the flop.
Moreover, these cold calls are among the most costly hand selection errors. Each such misplay, even before it compounds itself, begins with a misguided investment of not just one, but two or more bets. If someone asked you, “Would you like to find some losing situations and then invest heavily in them?” You would, of course, dismiss the idea as ridiculous. Yet this is precisely what players are doing when they make these self-weighting cold calls. Though they may be selective in the rest of their preflop play, their results are sullied by these horrible calls. While some of these players simply lack knowledge in the poker fundamentals, those who would seem to know better probably lack the ability to lay down a hand that looks better than average.
They fail truly to appreciate that a hand which may be relatively strong in some situations can be a big dog in others. Of course, I don’t mind having these players in my game. Though it can be frustrating to raise with get called by and subsequently lose to every time I raise with a big pair and get a call from someone who I know makes this kind of error, I smile a little inside.
Playing Too Many Hands-I / Playing Too Many Hands-II
Bad Plays Good Players make / Self-Weighting Cold Calls
Do You Pass the Ace-Queen Test /
Conjecture on the Limits of Tell Detectability
Quick Indicators / Afterthought