Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

"The guy who never loses a hand is not the guy who makes the most money in the long run."

If you never lost a hand then you would be the guy who makes the most money in the long run. Everyone else would lose.

Except almost all games is played with blinds or antes. If you're too tight even though you win all the hands you play you'd still be a loser overall.

You "play" every time you're dealt a hand. Even if you fold before the flop, in Texas Hold'em for instance, you lost.

And to win every hand you play past the first street, if you want to ignore the semantics, would still make even the tightest player I know a humongous winner. The reason playing overly tight players lose (which is generally not by much) is that even the average hand that they play is an underdog to win. Make 100% of even the biggest nit's flop hands hold up and yeah, he's the best poker player in the world.

"Folding" has not been counted as "losing" a hand in any poker circles I've been a member of.

Surely it's losing. It's not winning, and it's not a tie. What else could it be?

Folding. Just to clarify, I'm talking specifically about folding before putting any money (beside the ante or blinds) into the pot. I wasn't clear enough with that in my previous post.

I'll clarify a bit too. You get dealt two cards. When it's your turn, you play them. Maybe you fold, maybe you raise, whichever way you make a decision and play.

If you win every hand you play, you can't fold. If you fold then you played a hand and didn't win.

How's that?

In the poker communities I've played with (and I'm by no means an expert), folding before putting any money in the pot would not be considered "playing" a hand (especially if you didn't pay a blind -- but even if you did).

It's not playing at all.

Folding a hand is not playing it? I would define any action (fold, call, bet, raise) as a play. You would almost certainly define folding on the river as a play, why not folding preflop?

Because there's no loss or no gain when you fold preflop and you don't even see cards, so it's more like abstaining completely? I don't know, I see your point though, the metaphor was stretched a bit far.

Suppose when playing live poker, your hand always holds up, but you can only play pocket aces. Suppose even that no one else at the table ever figures this out. Would you take that deal? I bet not.

Well, if your hand always holds up, and you never voluntarily play worse than aces, you would still win every tournament you entered (though it would take forever). If you can't lose an all-in, you can't lose a tournamnet. So yeah, I'd take that bet.

> If you can't lose an all-in, you can't lose a tournamnet.

Only a tournament where you pay no blinds.

Checked your website, you are that semipro poker player. I'm quite sure only playing and always winning AA would be a (relatively) losing proposition for you. Not sure why you're arguing the other side here.

I'm not, I'm saying your argument is wrong. You play every hand your dealt. If you fold pre-flop, you played your hand by folding it. So I assumed you meant more "voluntarily play after the flop".

However, if you still win every hand you take to the flop, even if you voluntarily only play aces, you would in a tournament probably be forced all-in many times, in which case you'd involuntarily see the flop. But we still say you win every hand you play, so you'd never go broke.

But in reality none of this has anything to do with the OP's stupid quote. A guy who won every hand he played, any reasonable way you want to define that, would be by far the most profitable poker player ever.

> You play every hand your dealt. If you fold pre-flop, you played your hand by folding it.

Mmmkay. This is the confusion.

It's pretty common to talk about "playing" as opposed to folding your cards pre flop. I've seen this phrasing many times.

> A guy who won every hand he played, any reasonable way you want to define that, would be by far the most profitable poker player ever.

The point I was trying to make, and probably the OP, is that it is more profitable to win $100 and lose $80 than it is to win $10 and lose $0.

It occurred to me also that many ante games have a forced bring in, and some only that. You'd be profitable in both of those games if you won only the hands you were forced to play. If there were 8 people, for instance, even with an ante and a bring in, you'd bring it in 1/8 times and win 7 antes plus whatever else was put in the pot.

If everyone else folded every time you were the forced bring-in, you'd be break even. You'd have some streaks dependent on your opening cards (sometimes you'd bring in more than your share, sometimes less) but long-run it'd be even. Otherwise you'd win.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com