> When it comes to you, nothing is too good to be true. It’s too good to be true for someone else. But you always think, “Oh, I deserve this. This is evidence of how smart I was in making this decision.”
Powerful
What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
81–90 of 136 posts
Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#82Tournament 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…
Is a "cold deck" anything but another way of saying unlucky?
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Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#83Earlier 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…
Beginners luck is notable because most of the time unskilled players get bled dry very quickly. When a beginner makes all of the rookie mistakes but still wins out of sheer dumb luck then people take note. But then as you note the skill cap isn't very high. Once everyone figures out the strategy it goes back to being mostly luck and who has the biggest bank account to ride out the bad times.
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Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm seeing a lot of responses related to EV. Is this an evolutionarily stable strategy? Is there any way for a minority to exploit every one's focus on EV? I understand that, mathematically, this sounds ridiculous. But I'm wondering if, psychologically, there's a way to exploit everyone's EV mindset.
So the first thing to mention is that psychology has very little to do with playing good poker.
Secondly we'll define perfect poker as game theory optimal poker. Game theory optimal poker better known as GTO poker is by definition unexploitable. In the long run, two people playing GTO poker against eachother neither player will win money.
GTO poker is not necessarily the form of poker that will make the most money. Given that 99% of the time you are playing versus amateurs who do not know sound poker strategy you can adjust your play style in order to exploit the mistakes of the other players. When you adjust you are actually exposing yourself to better players. Better players can identify how you are adjusting to take advantage of bad players and in turn adjust themselves to take advantage of the weaknesses you are introducing into your game.
Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#85Making money in poker is like making money in crypto. Done best when there are lots of fish.
Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#86Earlier 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…
Even that is highly dependent on your post-flop skill. Marginal hands and drawing hands like small pairs and small suited connectors can be highly profitable on loose tables if you're confident in your reading ability. Playing like a nit is the easiest way to play profitably on a loose table and has dramatically lower variance, but widening your range and playing intelligently post-flop can often be substantially more profitable.
Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
"Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts" by Annie Duke [1] is just that book. It emphasises that a bad result does not have to be the result of a bad decision. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957157-thinking-in-bet...
See also The Tao of Poker by Larry W Phillips. It's a genuine masterpiece of poker writing.
https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Poker-Rules-Transform-Your/dp/158...
Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The variance is also what allows poker to thrive and pro players to have an income though. Since poker is zero sum (really negative because of the casino's take) there has to be a steady supply of losing money playing. That means bad players have to believe they have a shot. If they never or very rarely won against higher skilled players, they'd dry up. Imagine casinos that had cash chess tables or basketball courts.…
And this is why every card room has Texas Hold'em but you have to search for Omaha High/Lo. (Skill has a lot bigger edge in Omaha.)
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Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Even that is highly dependent on your post-flop skill. Marginal hands and drawing hands like small pairs and small suited connectors can be highly profitable on loose tables if you're confident in your reading ability. Playing like a nit is the easiest way to play profitably on a loose table and has dramatically lower variance, but widening your range and playing intelligently post-flop can often be substantially mor…
I used to be profitable in the golden days being a nit and just letting the huge swaths of players pay me off. So many all-ins to bluff me off while holding top set, nut straight, or nut flush.
Just recently got back playing and am trying to learn to play against real players. I'm down overall after about 50 hours of play, but not very much. Any advice?
Re: What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the opposite of results-oriented in this case? I.e. what should you orient toward, if not results?
Not a poker player, but I think you don't focus on realized results, you have to focus on expected results. What is gone is gone. Let's say you play texas hol'em, you go all-in with AA in the first round and lose. The expected payoff was positive even if you have lost. And if you were given the chance to play again, you should keep playing the same way.