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How to make decisions like a poker player

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Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#131

Post by nogbit »

Raidion wrote: post #11

I'm a serious but hobbyist player with ~15k hands last month. The thinking like a poker player is mostly about being upfront about your risk tolerances and then having a culture supporting people who make the best risk adjusted decision, even if it doesn't work out. Expected Value is complicated because a 50% chance for $100 is the same as a 10% chance at $1000. It's the variance, not the EV that makes a lot of decis…

Poker players use “pot odds”.

The odds of winning a hand with a future card in order to estimate the call's expected value.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#132

Post by cthalupa »

in3d wrote: post #39
beginnercounter wrote: post #24

The author sounds like a losing poker player. If my calling frequency is based entirely on pot odds, a good opponent would just start bluffing me out of every pot by increasing their bet size to a point where I can’t profitably call.

But note that unexploitable, game theory optimal strategy in poker does not differ based on the opponent. It’s not just based on pot odds, but on the whole sequence of actions and cards. Still not a very good article, though.

There are plenty of bots that can play GTO poker better than any human, yet they are consistently losers online at higher levels.

Hold 'em, at least, still ain't fully solved.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#134

Post by bsder »

m12k wrote: post #34

I attended a talk by Richard Garfield, the game designer behind Magic: The Gathering. He made a point that adding randomness to a game can be a way to give it that property of "easy to learn, hard to master", and in turn make it easier for a community to grow around the game. When you add randomness, it becomes possible for novices to sometimes beat more experienced players through sheer luck. Contrast that with e.g.…

> But at the same time, randomness can make it harder to master,

Except that Magic: The Gathering is particularly bad for locking into specific "meta" (metagame) which then persists until new cards come out/old cards rotate out. Hardly random and hardly difficult to master.

The best MTG players are really good at what I call the "game mechanics corner cases". The know all the weird ways to play and resolve the cards--this gives them a quite persistent couple percentage point advantage.

However, it won't give them enough advantage to beat the "meta".

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#135

Post by WJW »

ozim wrote: post #94
stavros wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money would the gain have to be for it to not be worth a 50% chance of getting killed?

I don't think that would make a difference for me if someone offers more money when my life situation is kind of nice. What would make a difference would be my life situation - if it would be worse or totally shitty I could take even 25% for a billion. That was kind of theme of "Squid Games".

Sure but at some point the money gets too low to risk it even if you are in the dumps, no? Would you take 1 million for 50%? 10k for 50%? 10 bucks for 1%? 1 dollar for 1%?

At some point it goes from a life changing amount of money to just "meh" money.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#136

Post by matchagaucho »

nogbit wrote: post #131
Raidion wrote: post #11

I'm a serious but hobbyist player with ~15k hands last month. The thinking like a poker player is mostly about being upfront about your risk tolerances and then having a culture supporting people who make the best risk adjusted decision, even if it doesn't work out. Expected Value is complicated because a 50% chance for $100 is the same as a 10% chance at $1000. It's the variance, not the EV that makes a lot of decis…

Poker players use “pot odds”. The odds of winning a hand with a future card in order to estimate the call's expected value.

Glad someone mentioned this. A 52 card deck with 3 Aces showing means there is only 1 Ace remaining (either in hand or deck).

Future cards have significant impact on odds and betting.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#137

Post by WJW »

ryandrake wrote: post #78
angarg12 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight offtopic, but this is why the "if you try hard enough you will succeed" advice sounds like BS to me. Even if the most dedicated entrepreneur can only try so many startups in their lives. If the odds are vanishingly small then success is far from guaranteed. Rejecting the role of luck in our outcomes is delusional, and people who support it have something to peddle (if only their own personal brand as thought l…

If you're good, your profit depends on the number of hands you get to play. And that number of hands you get to play is based on your bankroll. In the non-poker real world, most people maybe get to play one hand in life, and that’s it. One at-bat in a baseball game, to use a different analogy. You dump 20 years of savings into buying that laundromat, and that’s your only shot of making it. If we are really lucky we m…

Alternately, if you find yourself in the situation where you were not born rich then that should influence your strategy. Apply the Kelly criterion and carefully make a number of appropriately sized bets based on your currently available capital. Don't dump 20 years of savings into anything, but carefully build up investments over time.

Measuring your net worth against those born rich is a fools errand, but you can definitely make your children have a better shot against their children. True wealth is almost never built up in a single generation, despite the fairy tales about the "American Dream" that we tell our children.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#138

Post by crucialfelix »

suzzer99 wrote: post #13
mettamage wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not investing in ETFs after being burned by past downturns Helloooo Japan! ETFs are great, it will never happen to the US economy :) In other words, based on market behavior from multiple countries, it is definitely a possibility that ETFs won't return much in a period of 30 to 40 years.

And what's your alternative? Cash under the mattress gets killed by inflation. Gold has its runs but usually underperforms. Bonds also get killed in a downturn.

Gold has outperformed stocks this year.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/GLD:NYSEARCA?comparison...

10 year Treasury outperformed NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/GLD:NYSEARCA?window=YTD...

That's diversification, even if it just means losing less.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#139

Post by danenania »

beginnercounter wrote: post #24

The author sounds like a losing poker player. If my calling frequency is based entirely on pot odds, a good opponent would just start bluffing me out of every pot by increasing their bet size to a point where I can’t profitably call.

It goes both ways. If you increase your bet size too much on bluffs, it becomes profitable to just wait for a good hand to call you with and fold everything marginal. The bigger your bluffs, the fewer I need to catch.

You'll also become predictable if you only overbet when bluffing. If you try to deal with that by making all your bets larger, then you lose out on value from your strong hands because I can now profitably fold some hands that I would have had to call you down with otherwise.

Put another way: you can't exploit someone who makes decisions based on pot odds just by changing your bet size, because changing your bet size changes the pot odds.

Re: How to make decisions like a poker player

#140

Post by calahad »

jdmoreira wrote: post #23
calahad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expected Value is complicated because a 50% chance for $100 is the same as a 10% chance at $1000" Is it though?

The payout is exactly the same but what op means is that you need less "50% of 100%" bets than "10% chance at $1000" to reach the same payout. 1 in 2 for the first one will pay out. and 1 in 10 for the second one will pay out. Variance is higher for second than for first.

"The payout is exactly the same"

Again I ask, is it really?

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