Note Caddy Implied Strength and Implied Weakness

Implied Strength and Implied Weakness can be hard to understand but they are fantastic additions to NC hand range options. Hopefully this piece will help you to understand their value a little better.

We are all used to using VPIP/PFR as pure numbers. We all know the difference preflop between a 35/4 player and one playing 17/16.

The reason we can use these numbers with some confidence is that these "converge" quickly i.e. it does not take many hands before we can be fairly sure they are accurate. This is because on every hand the player is dealt, they have to make a VPIP/PFR decision.

Even if we never see a hand get to showdown the fact that a player is playing 35/4 over a 100 hand sample would lead us to view this player as a loose-passive preflop player and we would expect to see a lot of weak hands in his range if his cards were face up. Of course, even with as many as 100 hands we may get a distorted view of what the player's actual range is because of sample size but poker is a game of "incomplete" and "imperfect" information and we have to decide at what point the information we DO have is worthwhile using. Personally, after 100 hands, I would be pretty happy to view a 35/4 player as a loose-passive until proven otherwise. I am sure most players would agree with me.

However, many statistics take much longer to converge. In particular, being able to get information from actual showdowns , while extremely valuable, can be a rare bird indeed. In my Rush Full Ring Database, I have one player on whom I have 6500 hands. I know his cards at showdown just 150 times or 2.3% of the time. Another has 63 showdowns in 4800 hands or 1.3%. If you were looking at my statistics you would see that you would have seen my hand just 1.8% of the time.

These showdown hands are from 9 possible seats with various preflop actions giving HU and multiway pots on different board textures versus different styles of opponents with different stack sizes. If we THEN we want to split these into how the opponent acts with different hand strengths given specific post flop actions, we can begin to see that it is extremely hard to be sure of a player's styles and tendencies JUST by waiting to see a hand get to showdown. The information we get at showdown is very valuable because it is complete information but it happens very rarely.

In case you are not convinced, let's take the 35/4 player again. As he is loose, we have seen 3 hands at showdown over his 100 hands. He had AA UTG and made a PFR; AKo OTB and he cold called a raise from an UTG player and KQs in the BB when he called a small blind open raise. If you only look at information gleaned from showdowns, what would you make of this player's preflop style? These are all good hands and his actions taken with them could not be construed as totally unreasonable yet they tell us nothing of any real worth. I would rather have the 35/4 statistic than these 3 showdowns. The statistic is less "perfect" but has more practical use. Of course if his 3 hands at showdown had been Q3o, A2o and J3s we would have learned a bit more but it is a natural feature of the game that it is our better hands that get to showdown.

If you are convinced let's get on with Note caddy

You make a PFR and are called once. On the flop, HU, he raises you. We can get an idea for his frequency simply by looking in the HUD but that does not tell us what ranges he raises. Does he turn middle pairs into bluffs? Does he raise top pair? In other words, is his range polarised or does he simply raise thinner for value than most?

Below is my NC note for raising the flop versus the PFR for the player on whom I have 6500 hands

[F]Raises Flop {impl. weakness-5,MiddlePair,NutStraight,Two Pair}(18)

The [F] is merely for grouping so that all my [F]lop reads are placed together. "Raises Flop" is merely my description of his action. It is what is inside the braces {....} that is important.

The results are:-

impl. weakness 5
Middle Pair1
Nut Straight1
Two Pair1

This is a total of 8 reads. However, the (18) at the end tells us that he has raised 18 times in total. What about the missing 10? These 10 are the times that his flop raise won right then on the flop. The PFR made a CB; this guy raised; PFR folded.

These instant wins tell us nothing about the raiser's range. The HUD could show the %, allowing us to assess the frequency. The results inside the braces show what happened later in the hand.

The last 3 all got to SD and we see that he makes these raises with middle pair as well as 2 good hands. However, the one I want to discuss is the "impl. weakness -5". This tells us the following:-

He raised the CB
The raise did not instantly win
The hand did not get to SD
This player FOLDED before SD

OK, did he have a monster hand these 5 times? Probably not!

Here is another note for a different player:-

[F]Raises Flop {impl. strength-3,Top Pair/High Kicker}(6)

We see that he raised with TP once and a couple of times he won instantly (6-1-3) but let's look at

impl. strength -3

This tells us that

He raised the CB
The raise did not instantly win
The hand did not get to SD
This player WON before SD

Ok, did he have a weak hand these 3 times? Maybe, but probably not since he continued showing aggression

Of course, we cannot know the precise answer to these 2 questions in blue. Perhaps the first player raised with a very strong hand but the board came really scary and he opted to let it go. Perhaps, he raised for thin value versus a player who he felt would never play back unless he was crushed but would call with weaker hands. Perhaps the second player merely believes that once he has raised he should empty the clip and fire 3 barrels.

However, as an aid to your decision making these 2 notes can be invaluable.

If you felt that you might consider a "call to re-evaluate", it would obviously make much more sense to do this against the first player than the second one. The first one gives up; the second either only does this with good hands OR he continues to pound. Either way, calling to fold the turn does not make any sense.

Finally:-

[F]Raises Flop {impl. strength,JJOverpair,MidSet,Two Pair}(12)

I am never calling a flop raise with just TP v this guy am I? He has raised 12 times and won 8 immediately. The remaining 4 were 3 hands that beat TP and 1 hand that he continued to pound with.

This is not "perfect" information because we do not know what the 8 hands were that he won with immediately or what his implied strength hand was. Also, it is a small sample. However, once we start to look at situations like this it will often be a small sample. The information is not as good as we would like but it is all the information we have.

If you do not select the setting to include implied strength and weakness the 1st of these 3 notes:-

[F]Raises Flop {impl. weakness-5,MiddlePair,NutStraight,Two Pair}(18)

would read as:-

[F]Raises Flop { MiddlePair,NutStraight,Two Pair}(18)

In my opinion this is a lot less useful. It shows us that his ratio of good to bad hands that got to SD was 2:1. We would often expect that his better hands get to SD.

The original which includes implied weakness shows us that the ratio of good hands : (bad hands or ones he later folds) is 1:3

It is your choice but I would suggest you spend a bit of time getting used to these implied hand strengths. In my opinion they are a very valuable feature of NC.

Trevor 13/5/11