The Dangers of Oversimplification in Pineapple Open Face

Open Face Chinese (OFC) is an amazing game. Just like traditional poker, it’s a game that really gives you a stage for arguing your “strategy” or point of view to your opponent and having a heated debate. Just like you hear, “How could you make that play?” at the poker table over and over, you will also hear players scoff at terrible sets in OFC.

But, unlike traditional poker, this game offers us the ability to have the “last laugh” by obtaining the absolutely correct answer to whether a play is the best or not. Today, I want to give you a few last laughs that I was able to get against friends who doubted my plays, and were proven wrong by the simulator.

Here we have a typical “go for the gold” situation, in which we can either play it safe and make two pair in the middle right now, or we can go for Fantasyland and play AA up front right this instance.

Now, if you’ve been following my articles or @OFCStrategy on Twitter, then you know I always, always say this, but it is so true: a bird in the hand is almost always better.
And in this case, it’s no different. We should absolutely play one ace in the middle and the other on the front. Any other play is a mistake by over three points. But that isn’t what I want to talk about.

When you’re looking at this situation, and trying to make the right move, you might notice something a bit peculiar… there are no dead kings or queens, therefore we have a relatively large chance of hitting Fantasyland on the next draw with runner-runner. In fact, we have a more than ten percent chance of going to Fantasyland with this “safety set.”

So a friend of mine said, “Well we have to play it safe with so many live kings and queens out there, but I’d probably gamble most of the time.”

Now there is something in that sentence that just sticks out to me. It’s this concept that seems to haunt everyone, especially poker players. It stems from a mix of oversimplification and overjustification and it’s a cognitive bias known as the focusing effect.

What happened is that he focused too heavily on the fact that there are no Kings and Queens, then built the assumption “this is the reason we play it safe.” But this is quite presumptuous and doesn’t take into account many other important factors. Because of A you have to do X, but you forgot about the rest of the alphabet…

Do you get what I am saying? I’m saying that if there had been more dead kings and queens, my friend probably would not have come to this mental justification. Over time, these justifications turn into errors and end up costing real money.

So, why am I telling you this? It’s because I am finding that many players are focusing too much on one aspect of the “why” and not necessarily placing all of the surrounding factors of a decision together.

The next time you catch yourself making an oversimplification, in poker, or in life, I really want you to take a moment to reflect on why you did it. The answer is most likely that you are pressed for time. It’s easier to oversimplify than sit down with a paper and pen and sort something out to the end. But your job as a player striving to get better at their game is to stop and sort it out. So embrace the pen and paper, or keyboard and simulator, and make precise calculations to build your intuition, rather than just “winging it.” That’s the “secret” to success in poker.

So, back to the hand… We went ahead and ran the simulation with all varying levels of kings and queens dead and the answer was always the same: ace middle, ace front. And in many cases, the gap between the best play and AA front actually widened. That means that not only was the oversimplification not having an effect, but it was having an opposite effect than expected.

This is a very similar situation. And we could easily make the same oversimplification: “With more kings and queens live, I would risk it with an ace in the middle, but not this one.” Or you might think, “I won’t gamble here because two jacks are dead, but if there was one jack dead, I would go for it.”

Well, this situation is, in fact, quite different and our options are much closer in value. You can see an immediate value from having more outs when you set yourself “all-in” or when you gain an out towards Fantasyland. Whereas, in the previous situation, we had to hit running outs, and thus the chances were significantly lower.

With this hand, you should gamble only if you are able to put a perfectly live card in the back, or if you are able to put a two-out live card in the back and there is one more king or queen live.

We can turn this into a “Gamble or No Gamble Matrix” and make our own assumptions off of similar situations in the future.

Gamble / No Gamble
3 Live J’s 2 Live J’s 1 Live J’s
2 KQs Live YES NO NO
3 KQs Live YES NO NO
4 KQs Live YES YES NO
5 KQs Live YES YES NO
6 KQs Live YES YES NO

So in this exact situation, we can infer that caring about kings and queens live only matters if we have a two-out jack or other card to put in the back. This is kind of a cool observation, but at the same time, dwelling on it too much would be an oversimplification because the next spot we come across will be different. Maybe we will only have one royalty card up top, or our opponent won’t be beating us in the hand so badly, or what happens if they don’t have a made flush, but only two pair… So there are so many ways it will be different, yet we have to do our best to come to some sort of conclusion about this hand, so let me just say this:

How many live pair cards you have is a significant factor in whether or not to make a risky play. Don’t underestimate the value of one additional out in this game, because one out is a game changer.

This one is another example of the “a bird in the hand is worth more…” situation, and I am sure that by now you know that you should be placing the flush in the back. Gambling for Fantasyland is a mistake of 4.5 points, and it’s actually better to put the six in front than the queen, meaning going for Fantasyland would be a mistake regardless of the suit of the queen (it’s a bigger mistake when it’s the queen of spades, but still 2.5 points when it’s the queen of clubs).

But again, I want to talk about an oversimplification, or perhaps, in this case, overexcitement. In this hand, my friend told me that he would usually play the flush in the back, but because there was a straight flush opportunity, he would go for Fantasyland.

Hmm, that makes sense… not. The problem is that because he focused on the straight flush, he forgot some other key pieces of information. First of all, how many outs does he have in the middle? How many flush and straight cards can he hit? And most importantly, what is that actual additional value of a straight flush worth on average?

Quick Math sidetrack: We have a one-out chance of hitting the 2 of spades, which is 11 percent. When we hit, we gain 15 points. So having a straight flush draw is worth 1.65 points. Sound good, right? But is it better than the alternative? No.

So while a straight flush draw clearly has a benefit and a value, we can’t make decisions solely based on those opportunities. Overvaluing the frequency and value of “big” hands is a common problem among poker players. Don’t do it.

Takeaways

When someone says something at the table that might be oversimplifying or focusing too much on one factor, don’t nod and agree! Even if you subconsciously disagree, it will cause you to fall into the same long term fallacies as everyone else. You have to be stronger than that.

In order to actually improve your game, you have to take that extra 15-30 minutes every so often and run out a calculation, use a simulator, excel spreadsheet, or whatever else it takes to objectively uncover some sort of truth about a hand. Running it by four of your buddies simply will not do.

That’s it from me. If you are an Open Face enthusiast and want to learn more about my simulator and tactics trainer, please visit us at openfacesolutions.com, or follow us on Twitter for a free hand tactic every day at @ofcstrategy. See you guys next time. ♠

Derric “SixPeppers” Haynie is the author of Quantum Poker and creator of OpenFaceSolutions.com and OpenFaceStrategy.com. Check out those sites for more articles, solutions, tactics, news and information on Pineapple Open Face Chinese Poker.