A while back I reviewed Gus Hansen’s Every Hand Revealed. I’ve been playing a lot of poker these last few weeks — a lot. Gus’ book is the only bit of my library which has made it to Dad’s house so I’m giving it a re-read.

There’s a paranoia about poker books: Oh, that’s just how he wants you to think he plays. That’s too multi-level for me though, you have to start thinking about the game somewhere.

I’ve been trying out his strategy — limp a lot and look for good spots to jack stacks — and I have noticed one key fact that he let go tactfully unmentioned (which I stumbled across in my original review but didn’t grok). It is this:

You have to limp intelligently.

Which means, basically, paying attention and then limping into pots with players who are worse than you. He talks an aggro game, but he’s actually a pretty tight player. Do the math: In the entire tournament, including heads up and short handed play over the course of five days he only played 329 hands (in live full-ring play you see roughly 60 hands an hour times a bunch of hours per day times five days). That’s hardly a splashy limp fest.

What he seems to be doing is finding spots with terrific implied odds and then busting them wide open.

Of course, when limping it helps if you run really good. Here’s Dario Minieri taking a $200k lucksaw to Texas Dolly. Kaplan’s right about the odds so his equity running it twice is less than $72k (200*0.6*0.6, though supposedly with lower variance), which is spot-on for a $70k shove. Doyle’s call is a little better than breakeven because he’s more or less getting 2 to 1 (~140 in the pot, ~70 to call, plus noise) on his >33% shot. The hand basically plays itself, with a slight expected value edge (~10k maybe?) to Doyle.

That’s where the “game of incomplete information” factor of poker comes in. If either of them has a different hand they’re pretty screwed (basically both hands are the other’s reasonable worst-case). As-is they both got it in pretty good — against some random know-nothing opponent they’d both probably be giant favorites. This, I think, is why Dario politely offers to run the board twice. They’re both playing right at the far edge of expectation versus variance. Mostly they’re there to carve up Baxter and the blinds.

Minieri’s previous claim to fame was as a pro Magic: The Gathering player.