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Teach your kids poker, not chess

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Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#81

Post by Herodotus38 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #53
turtledove wrote: post #28

Yeah... Teach your kids the games they are interested in, and use that as an opportunity to build bonds. Poker, chess, go, Catan, Magic, whatever. Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me.

> Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me. I agree. My daughter loves Catan: we'll play on sunday even though she's a bit young for Catan. Recently she discovered hexagonal grids in which you have to find words placed randomly... She loved it. So I quickly wrote a little program generating hexagonal grids and placing words randomly (and then filling the remaining empty hexagons with random letters). Now s…

That’s great. Can I ask more details about which hexagonal grid word game you found? I only know of is the NYT Spelling Bee game.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#82

Post by mattnewton »

dragontamer wrote: post #66
derivagral wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up on Pokemon & MTG. Got competitive, made the Tour, etc. I am not sure I want to repeat this with my son. A friend is going through this with his child ( The upside is that a healthy exposure to "work doesn't equal outcome", risk calcs, and reading people are very helpful lessons to learn, so personally I'm a bit torn on this. I wonder if there isn't a happy middle ground these days that doesn't require a "bu…

Pokemon the video game, not the TCG. The video game requires no money aside from the cartridge, and the strategy is surprisingly deep: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss... Magic is the superior TCG in my opinion, thou Pokemon TCG is fun. In any case, don't play the 'pay to win' formats. Instead, play draft or sealed, which are much more fair.

Or use proxies. Cockatrice is a good client for MTG as well, it doesn't enforce the rules but provides everything you need to play online with friends.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#84

Post by gambiting »

dragontamer wrote: post #67
pessimizer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its got all the reads, bluffs, random chance, meta-gaming, math and strategy, and none of the gambling. The gambling is the most important part, it's balancing between risk and concealing the signal you're sending. Bridge would be another option with a similar problem to be solved, but I don't think pokémon has any of that. edit: also, the last thing you want to do is get your kids addicted to a pay-to-win game. It…

Pokemon the video game is NOT a pay to win game or gambling game. Everyone is on fair grounds. The strategy is surprisingly deep. See one discussion thread from Smogon: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss...

The strategy only gets deep towards the endgame - for the first 30 hours you can literally just keep pressing A at every single encounter and win majority of the time. There's zero reason to use any status effects against AI because it's so shallow and if you never switch Pokémon you will end up massively overleveled for everything the game throws at you before the elite four.

Yes I am aware that the latest games in the franchise attempt to address this somewhat - but pick any Pokémon game from the last 20 years and it will be true 99% of the time.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#85

Post by spekcular »

My problem with this article: I did not see a concrete suggestion for where children should play poker.

Clearly, they cannot play at casinos or for real money online. I suppose they could play for fake money online, but there the dynamics are much different. (Why not go all-in and risk it all if you can just create a fresh account if you lose?) Fake money tournaments, where the goal is to come out on top instead of maximize profit, are probably the best option. But the word "tournament" doesn't appear in the article (and even then, is it really good for kids to be hanging around with the people on online poker sites)?

I suppose implicitly the author is talking about playing heads-up against a parent at the dinner table, or with close family members, with fake money. But people who don't know anything about poker are going to play essentially randomly, and the game won't last long enough/will be too variable for the kid to see any reward from playing "correctly," so I'm not sure there's a point.

Also, the first thing to teach the kid is to fold most of their hands. But sitting out of hands is boring and the kid is going to get bored. It's called "grinding" for a reason...

Something like MTG that isn't pay-to-win would be a better choice.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#86

Post by creakingstairs »

Asraelite wrote: post #44

One of the worst things about poker IMO is that everyone unnecessarily links it with gambling. It's one of my favorite games to play with friends and money is never, ever involved. You just play to win as many games as possible. I feel like a lot of people miss out on a very fun game simply because they don't want to gamble and can't imagine playing without doing so.

> It's one of my favorite games to play with friends and money is never, ever involved.

I personally hate playing poker without real money. I feel like taking out money gets rid of one of the most interesting thing about poker.

I don’t really like fake money either as many people don’t play as seriously as when there is real money involved. I noticed that even when the amount is very small (so it might as well be fake money), people just play different when real money is involved.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#87

Post by Tenoke »

imustbeevil wrote: post #72
quickthrowman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Poker was a good competitive game, there would be an ELO system and people would play because they care about their skill ranking more than they care about gambling. There is an ELO system of sorts, it’s the size of your bankroll. If you are a skilled poker player, you should win more than you lose. Tournament poker is different than cash games, there’s a limited pool of chips and the goal is to win them all. >…

Any game could incorporate wagers into its rounds. You could bet on plays in a football game. You could bet on matches in Chess. However, the competitive foundation isn't predicated on these wagers. This allows for more dimensions of skill variation because game participants can take risks that won't kill them. In Poker, especially in tournaments but over time in cash games as well, there will necessarily be more los…

Betting on matches of chess is much different. In poker you have a betting round after every move, the betting size matters and the betting is one of the main sources of information you get. In chess even if you bet after every move the amount wouldn't matter and you get little to no extra information from the bet.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#88

Post by christkv »

spekcular wrote: post #85

My problem with this article: I did not see a concrete suggestion for where children should play poker. Clearly, they cannot play at casinos or for real money online. I suppose they could play for fake money online, but there the dynamics are much different. (Why not go all-in and risk it all if you can just create a fresh account if you lose?) Fake money tournaments, where the goal is to come out on top instead of m…

You can play for candy or video game time or any other non monetary value the kids value

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#89

Post by Shugarl »

gambiting wrote: post #84
dragontamer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pokemon the video game is NOT a pay to win game or gambling game. Everyone is on fair grounds. The strategy is surprisingly deep. See one discussion thread from Smogon: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss...

The strategy only gets deep towards the endgame - for the first 30 hours you can literally just keep pressing A at every single encounter and win majority of the time. There's zero reason to use any status effects against AI because it's so shallow and if you never switch Pokémon you will end up massively overleveled for everything the game throws at you before the elite four. Yes I am aware that the latest games in…

I thought this discussion was about games you play against other people ? Pokemon battles against anyone who know basic strategies are hard as hell

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#90

Post by iamevn »

spekcular wrote: post #85

My problem with this article: I did not see a concrete suggestion for where children should play poker. Clearly, they cannot play at casinos or for real money online. I suppose they could play for fake money online, but there the dynamics are much different. (Why not go all-in and risk it all if you can just create a fresh account if you lose?) Fake money tournaments, where the goal is to come out on top instead of m…

There are so many other games that (in my opinion) better embody the sorts of lessons TFA describes. I feel something less commonly associated with gambling would be even better than poker. I remember as a kid I went to a summer camp and brought a set of poker chips and some cards in my bag to play purely for fun with people during some free time. My parents asked me to not do that and later let me know that some other kids' parents had taken issue with their kids "gambling".
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