Help me explain this to a friend
I’m not good at poker. I know just enough to know I’m bad. I have a friend that got into poker recently and loves to argue his pre conceived notions to the death. It took me an hour to explain to him that “running it once or twice” did not give either player an advantage. He was convinced it did, and I had to give three separate examples and use those online odds calculators to show that having Aces doesn’t mean you win more often if you run it once.
Now that you understand what I’m dealing with, here’s the scenario: He is convinced that having a bigger stack gives you an advantage because it “allows you to see more flops” and it allows you to “bully” players by forcing them to basically go all in.
The problem here is I’m not good enough to ELI5 why he’s wrong in a way that he cannot argue with. (Like I did with the odds calculators).
Context: imagine this is a cash game and everyone is trying to play GTO poker with equal skill levels. That’s the scenario we established for the discussion. Basically having a bigger or smaller stack is the ONLY variable you’re considering.
My understanding is a bigger stack will only change how much you can win and lose in each hand. That a big and small stack play differently but that neither INHERENTLY has an advantage. I made these points ten ways from Sunday, he would just keep saying his side in a new way, and we wouldn’t get anywhere because I couldn’t show him something that he literally could not argue with.
We play together often. I shouldn’t even try to explain it, but I probably just like being right more than I like winning money.