Trying to escape the flow of the game

Trying to escape the flow of the game

The game flow is the source through which the entire game of poker flows. It is omnipresent and inescapable. Every hand that is ever played between two people will be processed by this source.

In previous articles, we have talked about equilibrium, constructed frequencies, ranges and similar ideas. When it comes to value hands, since their occurrence is completely random, the only thing we can do is to construct a range. And when we come to the bluff, this is where we see how many decisions we can make, how many games there are in the game, how complex each moment can be. We can say we want to bluff 66%, a nice big number, but the art of bluffing is reductionist, different in every hand. Can these statements contradict each other?

Let's say you have a goal that in a bluff frequency situation X is 50%. At first glance, if you bluffed 50 times out of 100 in this situation during the match, you could say that you have achieved your goal. However, if you didn't bluff X1, X2, X3,...,X50 at all, and bluffed X51, X52, X53,..., X100 all the time, you would naturally realise that the bluff frequency of the first 50 hands is 0%, and that of the next 50 hands is 100%.

Let's extend this argument into a more realistic sequence. You may think you have a balance in a 10-handed hand, so the bluff pattern would look like this:

F - B - F - B - F - B - F - B - F - B -F - B

You would probably call this a balanced sequence with a bluff frequency of 50%

However, we could also say that at each individual location in this sequence, the bluff frequency is either 0% or 100%, depending on whether the sample is even or odd. If we made this sequence more complex and less perfectly repetitive:

B - F - B - F - B - B - F - F - B - F

we could, albeit with less precision, extend each argument (each even case would now be 80% rather than 100%).

It is clear where this argument goes. It may well be that because of our human factor, our inability to generate randomness normally, we will never be able to generate a large-scale statistical frequency of randomness. It is possible that throughout the entire match, in which we aim to maintain a bluff frequency of 33%, we predictably bluff more or less than our target number and never get close to our target at any given moment.

These considerations are fully justified. But let's say we install a random number generator on our computer, where we can enter a frequency (e.g. 50%) and it will choose either B or F frequency. In that case we should stop simulating randomness and instead use Trying to get out of the game flow1the real ones.

If we actually did that, we would take a big weight off our shoulders, we would be one step closer to the computers and we would get out of the flow of the game.

In fact, there have been people who have tried this approach, and it is not difficult to create such a programme. And yet, if you look around, nobody is using these programmes. Why?

Because doing so, trying to make the flow of your game completely random, is the same as trying to achieve a perfect balance. Such an action does not help to exploit the opponent, but instead starts to run away from exploitation altogether. The battlefield is obviously reduced. No matter what potential mistakes your opponent may make, they are all simply missed by chance. If in every situation your action is X, which means you are bluffing 50% of the time completely at random, then it doesn't matter at all how your opponent models his guesses, the only thing that becomes important is his total guesses. The flow of the game breaks down completely.

The truth is that if a player's luck isn't perfect, there will always be someone who has a better understanding of the place. Either you make your opponent think wrong, or he guesses right.It happens in every match. If we were trying to choose when to use the randomness programme, it would be when the opponent is stronger than us in that spot. In every situation where he is not strong, we should play with the flow of the game, analysing the player's speech in detail, watching his downs and trying to outsmart him.

Random programmes have not attracted players, not least because crawling and creating game flow depend on skills that can be learnt through practice. Using a program only slows down your growth as a poker player. It is only through trial, error and challenge that you can improve.

Where is the best place to play poker?