Poker mistakes we used to make - domination
Dara O'Kearney looks back at some of the pre-solver errors good players made, starting with worrying too much about being dominated.
We are just putting the finishing touches to a new book on GTO and it is remarkable how much Game Theory Optimal poker strategy has penetrated the zeitgeist in a short space of time. In the past three or four years the way the game is played by good players has changed dramatically.
What always tickles me more than anything is how wrong many of the thought leaders were in poker before solvers were introduced. This is not a criticism at all, I believed at lot of these things too and you can only do your best with the tools you have.
There are lots of funny examples and I plan to explore a few of them, starting with worrying too much about domination.
Things elite poker players used to believe (pre solvers)
1. Worried far more about domination than they should have
2. Overrated set mining
3. Blockers weren’t a thing in NLH (only PLO)
4. Backdoors didn’t matter much
5. Limping always terrible (especially from small blind) pic.twitter.com/KqYh8pBtva— Dara O'Kearney (@daraokearney) September 28, 2022
Domination
‘Kicker problems’ were a big part of poker strategy in the early online days. You would worry that you were crushed with a hand like AT, sometimes even with big hands like AJ or AQ. Hands like JT and KQ were, against some players, considered trash hands that got you into trouble.
We have found from the solvers that lots of these broadway and Ax hands play very well and in general you should play a much wider range than first thought.
Hands like AQ and AJ are actually very strong against most ranges, they only suffer when against a real nit. If you VPIP with these hands then fold despite hitting top pair, you become very exploitable. The old advice used to be not to go broke with these hands, the new advice is not to exploit yourself with them by making hero folds.
Board coverage
Then you have powerhouse bluffing hands like A5s that perform well because of their blocker value, their flush and straight value and even a little bit of top pair value. Even hands like K4s make it into a lot of ranges, and on paper that is a very dominated hand.
There is also the issue of board coverage. GTO has shown us that we become exploitable when there are some boards we cannot have hit. If you played an old school tight range of, say, 88+ AJ+, then when the flop comes 332 a good player knows you cannot have hit that. We now know that it is important to play hands like A3s and even K4s in part because, when a thinking opponent knows we have them, we cannot get punished on low flops.
An old school pro of the early online days would have laughed at you for playing hands like A2s, arguing ‘what do you want your opponent to have?’. Solid range construction is very important but worrying about domination, especially with clearly strong hands, is an outdated concern.
Dara O'Kearney's latest book Endgame Poker Strategy is out now.
