How important is Sklansky?

Had a reply from Ewen Mcgill yesterday who asked me about Sklansky Dollars and how important they really are.

Well Ewen, the concept of “Sklansky Dollars” was first discussed to my knowledge in the landmark book “The Theory of Poker”. Basically “Sklansky Dollars” assesses the amount of equity that you have in the pot in all-in situations thus eliminating the result which is obviously luck orientated. If you are making good decisions then your Sklanksy Dollar figure will be good.

eg…..you get all-in on a board of A-7-4 rainbow for 50BB with A-K and you see that your opponent has 4-4 for bottom set. Short of going into the math, the chances that you are going to win this pot are slim as you have to catch runner runner so your pot equity isnt very large thus making your Sklansky Dollars quite tiny as you are clearly losing money in this situation if you were to repeat this scenario over and over.

The concept of Sklansky Dollars helps you to see whether or not you are making correct decisions. The effect of this is that this then helps you to retain emotional equilibrium during bad runs. This in my mind is perhaps the primary advantage to the concept.

However, there is an even better and faster guage to how you are playing and that is to compare your entire range to your opponents hand. What this means is that you have to look at all of the hands that you would have made the exact same action with in that situation and then re-calculate your equity. This range vs opponents hand concept has become known as “G-Bucks” or Galfond Dollars named by the player who first effectively put it into print (Phil Galfond).

So the bottom line is that even though much of this is theoretical in nature, it is actually critical to your success when you play in tougher games against sophisticated players. Calculating your opponents hand ranges is no easy thing to achieve but I have been able to do this in the 25-50 game this year and is why I am now beating the game.

I was looking through my Poker Office data again today and I believe that I may have discovered a faulty thinking process with one of the regulars. This will merit further investigation and my partner gets back next week so it should be back to work as normal. Actually I have had a sneaking suspicion for some time that I m actually missing value in the 25-50 by not looking at the games enough personally……I probably need to start doing this.

Anyway…..see ya soon

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The Dean is sponsored by Cake Poker and can be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk for coaching, mentor schemes and all other poker and gambling related matters.