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How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

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Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#61

Post by osazuwa »

crdrost wrote: post #49
metroholografix wrote: post #24

The author makes a lot of assumptions and oversimplifications whilst falling for the mystique of poker as expressed in popular culture. We've all seen the movies where psychological tells ("deception") end up saving (or ruining) the day during a poker game. Unfortunately, in terms of winning strategies, this couldn't be further from how the game actually plays out today. Back when online poker exploded onto the scene…

This is really fascinating to me as the article at least mischaracterizes chess. It is fascinating that it is also mischaracterizing poker and poker is much more robotic than stories have told me. That chess is less robotic, is perhaps not obvious. A postmodern skepticism of “even in principle” thinking is part of it: who cares what’s possible in principle, when in practice that is inaccessible to me? The actual narr…

I don't disagree. But the premise is not that getting good at making less blunders than your opponent in chess isn't fun or fulfilling. It is that getting good at making less blunders in chess doesn't transfer to real life decision-making as well as getting good at games like poker.

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#62

Post by st1x7 »

auspex wrote: post #32
vsareto wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there's a lot of deception around how to play poker, so this is the real meta-game of poker: convincing others to play poker badly! (cue the often useless, recursive aspects of pop-culture game theory)

Actually the entire point of poker is to make your opponent make a mistake or play poorly. A mistake being if you had perfect information a move you would not make. Clarification: If you played with cards face up no one would ever make a mistake. You could calculate the odds and the math would be perfect. The goal of poker is to make an opponent make a mathematically incorrect play.

This isn't quite correct although that's how poker was taught in the 90s. The goal of the top players these days is to play as close as possible to optimal poker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium) and not worry about the individual hand their opponent might have in a given moment.

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#63

Post by fullshark »

klausjensen wrote: post #60

The best lesson I learned from poker is the concept of "expected value". [1] It takes some of the grief out of undesired outcomes - because you made the right decision based on the information you had, and chance just happened to not be in your favor in this case. It affects how I make all kinds of business- and life-decisions. Chosing insurance-package on the rental car, investing in stock, trusting people etc. [1]…

> Chosing insurance-package on the rental car,

FWIW Insurance is a negative expected value "asset", but it makes sense to buy it (not in this case necessarily). A one time massive negative hit to your finances could be devastating compared to periodic insurance payments. Expected value is a simplified representation of the distribution of outcomes which is really what you should be thinking about regarding risk management.

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#64

Post by osazuwa »

kkwteh wrote: post #2

It's ironic that von Neumann said that poker isn't susceptible to computation while a few decades later, the game theory that he invented was used to create poker bots that are provably (within epsilon) unbeatable.

I think that's true for 2 player games but not >2 player games?

reference: https://int8.io/counterfactual-regret-minimization-for-poker...

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#65

Post by Pick-A-Hill2019 »

gregorymichael wrote: post #37
potench wrote: post #6

An anecdote: I play a “home” online poker game with friends every Friday since quarantine started. It has been a great way to have some weekend fun and hangout (we zoom while we play). I love the “all-in” moments when you see the odds displayed for each hand and there’s still at least a turn/river left to watch. Watching the odds play out and seeing the occasional 3% chance win is so fun. I’d love to see odds annotat…

i think we all want to know what software you're using. Pokerrrrrrrrrrrrr 2 seems to be the default, and it's fine, but there has to be something better.

Have you tried PokerTH? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PokerTH

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#67

Post by im3w1l »

jack_pp wrote: post #43
im3w1l wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is true. It's a better strategy to keep bad players in the game by giving them real advice. To ensure they grow and have fun. But not so much advice that they surpass you. That's their own responsibility to seek out.

When those bad players stop playing badly the games die. It is super boring to play live poker with players that don't make mistakes. I know from experience

If people are just folding and folding maybe try playing shorthanded? Then optimal play is much more aggressive and fun.

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#68

Post by milesvp »

st1x7 wrote: post #62
auspex wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the entire point of poker is to make your opponent make a mistake or play poorly. A mistake being if you had perfect information a move you would not make. Clarification: If you played with cards face up no one would ever make a mistake. You could calculate the odds and the math would be perfect. The goal of poker is to make an opponent make a mathematically incorrect play.

This isn't quite correct although that's how poker was taught in the 90s. The goal of the top players these days is to play as close as possible to optimal poker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium ) and not worry about the individual hand their opponent might have in a given moment.

This is only true when playing with others attempting to play optimally. If you only play optimal poker it may be difficult to take advantage of sub optimal players without modifying play.

A simple example is a rock paper scissors tournament. The nash equilibrium says you must always simply pick each with 1/3 chance. But if you play this you are almost gauranteed to finish in the middle of the pack. The winner is going to be someone who can take advantage of other players. There used to be a rps AI tournament years ago (UofAlberta I think), and this is why they wouldn’t take submissions that only played nash equilibrium play.

But you are right, in that usually the first step in getting good at poker is to simply play the strength of your cards based on your position. And this becomes more amd more important the higher the stakes since players tend to be better there.

Re: How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

#70

Post by otoburb »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #69

Game theory fans may want to try a game invented by John Nash (and others) called So Long Sucker aka F * You Buddy! Gameplay consists of making - and breaking - alliances between players. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long_Sucker

Sounds like a possible progenitor to Diplomacy[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)

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