I spent over an hour trying to come up with a good answer to this question from Jim on balance:
"1.) At what point does balancing your play cause your play to become "poor"? i.e. How often do you give up some pre-flop equity for future consideration."
I was trying to construct an example of balancing your flop/turn play on a paired board when defending from the big blind and it got way too complicated.
And then I found this article today and didn't feel so bad.
http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue51/Jordan-Cairns-Balancing-Your-Call-Down-Ranges-against-Tough-Players.php
I think this illustrates how complicated balancing can be and finding that exact point of perfect balance is extremely difficult.
I think this is a good article on how to balance against "thinking" players but what about "non-thinking" players (i.e. players that don't know what they hold much less think about what you hold, players who are multi-tabling a large amount of tables and aren't spending too much time analyzing your play, or maniacs that are just going to bet/raise without trying to put you on a hand)
ReplyDeleteAgainst those players it's more important to exploit their weaknesses than be concerned about whether you're balanced.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, you can leave yourself vulnerable in areas for the sake of exploiting your opponent's weaknesses because it's unlikely they'll take advantage of you.
ReplyDelete