EV ephiphany
I think things are beginning to click for me with poker. Things I knew but didn't understand: i) Poker is gambling & ii) Always put chips in the middle when expected value is positive.
What does this mean? If you want an easy decision, wait for AA and go all-in preflop. You will win >55% of the time with up to 4-callers. Of course, this strategy is extremely impractical. You only get dealt Aces every 220 hands or so and you'll probably only win a few blinds for you troubles since it's likely you'll get 0 callers. If you can get it all in preflop then you're laughing. You still might lose but it's stupidly +EV.1
So now I really don't care much about results so long as I'm making the right decisions, the ones that are +EV. Or, in a bad situation, the decisions with the least negative expected value. That's it. The money lands where it lands on any given hand but, so long as I keep making the right choices, it will gradually gravitate towards me.
1 0.76 ev (excluding ties). Versus KK (which I imagine is almost the only hand you would ever get to call your all-in): 0.82 ev.
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