Saturday, May 21, 2016

The all in enigma

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma ...

Winston Churchill, in a 1939 radio broadcast
(source: Wiktionary)

I find the all in maneuver in poker as enigmatic as Winston Churchill found Russia. For all intents and purposes, you almost never want to go all in. And yet, you only make a profit (or at least, I only make a profit) by doing so. Here are the numbers:

$-3,599,326: career cash game no limit hold'em aggregate delta when I don't go all in
 $8,799,594: career cash game no limit hold'em aggregate delta when I do go all in

If I never went all in, I'd be losing play money hand over fist. Since I do allow myself to go all in on occasion, I'm making a fairly comfortable living playing play money poker. The trick is not to go all in often, but to have great all in radar; you should only go all in when you have a high percentage of winning.

Since returning to cash games, I've gone all in twice, and won both times.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 129 hands and saw flop:
 - 9 out of 16 times while in big blind (56%)
 - 5 out of 16 times while in small blind (31%)
 - 48 out of 97 times in other positions (49%)
 - a total of 62 out of 129 (48%)
 Pots won at showdown - 9 of 21 (42%)
 Pots won without showdown - 3

delta: $30,768
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,933,551
balance: $10,178,693

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