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What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

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Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#61

Post by sokoloff »

technofiend wrote: post #48
kadabra9 wrote: post #11

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…

>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. I specialized in small, quick tournaments for this reason. Live players still weren't used to the even faster pace of online play but with rapid…

When WSOP was in the early spring (when the weather is nice in Vegas and crappy in Boston), I used to go for a week and a bit every year and grind out the trip cost and then some on single table satellites. With the advent of online poker, televised NLHE, and the main event wins by Varkonyi, Raymer, Moneymaker, and Gold, it was like the universe provided an endless stream of avid, willing, timid, and fairly predictable poker players in the weeks leading up to the main event.

Now that WSOP's in the summer, online poker is mostly dead in the US, televised poker mania has died down, and I have kids, I don't bother going anymore, but it was definitely fun and modestly lucrative for a while in my 30s.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#63

Post by splonk »

rhcom2 wrote: post #42
IshKebab wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Another issue with poker - at least Texas Hold'em - is that the best strategy is folding 90% of the time, which is just boring. That's what I always appreciated about professional poker players. Their patience and their emotional regulation. Both of which made me terrible at the game.

"emotional regulation" is not exactly a term I would use to describe the majority of professional poker players, although I think it is more prevalent within the better ones. Patience and discipline are probably present within anyone who manages to survive as a pro for more than a couple years, but it's not a guarantee. There's a reason the term "degen" (for degenerate) gets thrown around so much in gambling circles. I've played thousands of hours against mid/high/nosebleed stakes pros who've played many more thousands of hours of poker than I ever will, and it's always a surprise how many of them are children throwing a temper tantrum whenever they lose any hand where they were a favorite. (This includes multiple people who each have multiple WSOP bracelets.)

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#64

Post by galfarragem »

DigiMortal wrote: post #3

"No one knows what cards you have. All they know is the information that you convey. I think that’s a very valuable thing to remember in any negotiation."

Until somebody is in position of calling your bluff and you're busted.

IMHO poker is about bet optimization and risk management. To take as much as possible with the lower risk possible.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#65

Post by shorsher »

btilly wrote: post #53
shorsher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree with the blanket statement that folding 90% of the time is optimal, and can be discouraging to new players who are interested in learning poker. 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…

Not optimal in all situations. But if you're playing with a full table of weak/loose players, it is good to play even tighter than that. Only play a high pocket pair or AK, and play them aggressively. Your hope being to take people 1 vs 1 for all the money you can. You don't need to be any cleverer than that until people pay enough attention that they won't call you unless they think that they have you beat. Then you…

Right, totally agree with you. Very situational and dependent on the skill level of others, whether you need to play GTO or not, tournament vs cash, how deep you are in a tournament, how many BB you have left, etc.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#66

Post by DesiLurker »

woliveirajr wrote: post #21
Tangokat wrote: post #19

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".

> You can do everything right and still lose This one. I'm not sure how many readers I would have if I tried to explain it in a book, but I'm tired (to the point that I don't read the books, just the covers) about how everything will be ok if you just wish. When you just learn that sometimes people fail even having taking the best possible decision at any point, you get another perspective for your life.

Annie Duke calls it 'Resulting'. I am about halfway through her book "thinking in bets". Recommended read so far.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#67

Post by edmundsauto »

kaycebasques wrote: post #20
Tangokat wrote: post #19

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?

Annie Duke (one of the top players of all time) has a book called thinking in bets that examines this as a central thesis. Highly recommended.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#68

Post by friedman23 »

IshKebab wrote: post #29
kadabra9 wrote: post #11

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…

>who clearly isn't skilled but wins anyway, poker fans really don't want to face the reality that the game is mostly luck.

A game of poker is not one hand of poker. It is typical in poker games to be all in and have a 70% chance of winning. If you are playing a bad player and you go all in 5 times against this person with a 70% chance of winning is there any luck involved? To me it looks more like printing money.

>Another issue with poker - at least Texas Hold'em - is that the best strategy is folding 90% of the time, which is just boring.

You should not be folding 90% of the time.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#69

Post by maxxxxx »

Tangokat wrote: post #19

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".

"You can do everything right and still lose"

I remember the saying "You are entitled to your actions, but not the results" somewhere in Indian philosophy. Means you should always do your best but there is still no guarantee for the expected result.

Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money

#70

Post by technofiend »

sokoloff wrote: post #61
technofiend wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I specialized in small, quick tournaments for this reason. Live players still weren't used to the even faster pace of online play but with rapid…

When WSOP was in the early spring (when the weather is nice in Vegas and crappy in Boston), I used to go for a week and a bit every year and grind out the trip cost and then some on single table satellites. With the advent of online poker, televised NLHE, and the main event wins by Varkonyi, Raymer, Moneymaker, and Gold, it was like the universe provided an endless stream of avid, willing, timid, and fairly predictab…

Yeah the WSOP / WPT era is what I was talking about too. So many people there to play poker! Don't forget black Friday or whatever it was called when UIGEA murdered online poker. That was the feeder into tournament live play. Thanks, Sheldon. I haven't been back in at least 8 years. Vegas doesn't care about anything but whales and slots players anyway.
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