WHAT IS A THEORY ?
A theory has three characteristics: descriptive, explanatory, and predictive.
None of these characteristics are necessarily explicit or even complete in any particular theory.
A good theory is usually one that can be simply stated in one or more straightforward declarative sentences which have desirable implications for describing, explaining, or predicting observed behavior of the phenomena under study.
A good theory doesn’t need to do all three of these things.
A good theory, however does need to have some strong explanatory power.
A theory that doesn’t help us understand the game doesn’t really help all that much.
An example of a simply stated theory of poker is poker is a struggle among the players for the rights to the ante.
This theory doesn’t lend much toward describing poker. It doesn’t tell us how the betting is structured to facilitate the struggle among the players.
It doesn’t tell us how to determine which player ends up with the pot.
The theory does have some explanatory power for the first round of betting.
It explains why it’s usually best to limit your opening hands to those hands with self-contained power rather than those that have value through drawing power.
Because it does not address the pot growth that comes from multiple betting rounds, it adds nothing to an explanation of the value of such hands as Jack, 10 suited in Holdem.
The theory has some predictive power, but not much.
A theoretical prediction for poker should provide us with a prescription for play- it should tell us something abut the best way to play the game.
For poker variants with multiple betting round, such as Holdem, it just doesn’t do that.
It does help us predict things like a tight range of likely hands which a knowledgeable play who opened from early position might have.
An example of a theory with a different kind of predictive power is money flows from bad players to good players.
This theory doesn’t have much descriptive power; it doesn’t t tell us who the good and bad players are.
Assuming we have some other method to identify good and bad players, it does help us predict the outcome of a poker session.
In fact I sued a simple mathematical model of that theory to develop the recommendations in Chapter 8 for when a single really bad player in a game can make an otherwise unprofitable game profitable.
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
