31–40 of 136 posts
I used to play a lot of poker online back in the day, two lessons stuck with me: Speaking to the variance of the game: "Eventually you will run worse than you ever thought possible" Poker teaches, contrary to most business literature, to not be results oriented. It is the decision not the result that matters. "You can do everything right and still lose".
What’s the opposite of results-oriented in this case? I.e. what should you orient toward, if not results?
Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. The variance is just insane, which is why a lot o…
This is why I don't really like poker. There's just too much variance. Unless you play again and again and again there's not much correlation between skill and the winner. I think it's why people also believe there is "beginners' luck" - there isn't really - the entire game has tons of luck. But when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway , poker fans really don't want to face the reality t…
That’s what keeps the fish around!
Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. The variance is just insane, which is why a lot o…
This is why I don't really like poker. There's just too much variance. Unless you play again and again and again there's not much correlation between skill and the winner. I think it's why people also believe there is "beginners' luck" - there isn't really - the entire game has tons of luck. But when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway , poker fans really don't want to face the reality t…
Good players generally play around 20% of their hands, but even that vastly changes based on how aggressive the player is. Also, there is much more to factor in than just the hand you are dealt. You might want to play a tighter range (play less percentage of hands) in early position (let's say first or second to act in a betting round), compared to being last to act (where you might want to play a higher percentage of your hands). This is because being last to act in each betting round extremely useful in poker (If you want to know why, there's a lots of great articles on the internet who could explain much better than I [1]).
Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. The variance is just insane, which is why a lot o…
This is why I don't really like poker. There's just too much variance. Unless you play again and again and again there's not much correlation between skill and the winner. I think it's why people also believe there is "beginners' luck" - there isn't really - the entire game has tons of luck. But when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway , poker fans really don't want to face the reality t…
Imagine casinos that had cash chess tables or basketball courts. Would you have enough dead money willing to risk playing? I'd wager no. You'd get occasional fish willing to try but they'd get dunked on and go home. Without enough new money, the game would dry up as the best players and the casino accumulate all the rest.
But the really interesting thing to me was how successful the video learning platform SAAS business was for Poker. These sites started to pop up where high level players would record their sessions and talk through their hands, then you paid per month for access to these videos. I remember when Card Runners[0] just came out.
It was one of those niches that lined up perfect for a SAAS business. No shortage of games, lots of online pros playing with different styles, and some of them were really good at talking through their thought process. All they had to do was play (which they were doing already) and comment on their hands.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the opposite of results-oriented in this case? I.e. what should you orient toward, if not results?
To maximize expected value (EV). You can go all in with AA pre-flop and get a bad beat from someone with 27o. While the result is bad (you lost this time), you made a +EV decision because you were ~80% favorite to win so over the long run this move will actually be profitable.
Is there any game that offers so many "life lessons" than Poker?
The game is over when both players decide it is over (skipping a turn). Its usually not worth it to try to kill opponents: the winning strategy is to typically capture territory. There's always more territory (especially in the early game) rather than aiming for conflict.
You've got to know when to fight battles, you've got to know when to sacrifice pieces. The entire opening is basically tradition and still has no unifying theory (there's 3-4 opening and a Joseki for how professionals seem to play, but there's no hard proof that this is the optimal strategy). So its still a very open-ended game with a lot of unknowns.
Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. The variance is just insane, which is why a lot o…
This is why I don't really like poker. There's just too much variance. Unless you play again and again and again there's not much correlation between skill and the winner. I think it's why people also believe there is "beginners' luck" - there isn't really - the entire game has tons of luck. But when confronted with someone who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway , poker fans really don't want to face the reality t…
Depends how closely matched people are. Last few times I've played games with friends/family who aren't poker players, I literally took all the money and I'm just using poker 101 strategy. The skill is all in getting people to play with you more than once :(
And if you ever watch casino games -- it's just a constant money spigot from fish to sharks.
Interesting article. Interesting that her net take was $10,000 after subtracting expenses from the $200k win. I wouldn't say she won that money, I'd say she earned it. Lottery one wins at and is pure luck. Poker is some luck but mostly skill and persistance. FWIW, she refers to it as earnings and income in the quotes in the article.
Yeah, the important thing is to ignore any number you ever see in a headline about poker winnings, because it basically just means gross revenues. It says nothing at all about whether someone actually made money. (Okay, so it's pretty hard to lose all of a really big score, but the sort of people who make them are also disproportionately likely to be able to lose them in a hurry as well).
Where I live there's a commercial for online Casino ("Mr Green") where a woman hit a 2,5 million approx. USD jackpot, and 2 years later she won 5 million USD.
The commercial was reported for fraud by someone of the public because it was unbelievable, but the casino showed for the investigators that the winnings were real.
However, guessing that the woman probably played for a lot of her winnings, a second jackpot is not that improbable. And I guess she didn't stop there either ...
That was a game of pure luck though, and Poker seems to be somewhat equal that off golf in skill vs luck at top level.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9469/72de84cd72f5f7edbcedf4...