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How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

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Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#71

Post by sesky »

tetromino_ wrote: post #49
kevinwang wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick take: > reasonable possibilities are too many to analyze, one is forced to pretty much guess. You could say the same thing about chess, but an experienced player wouldn't, because they know which candidate moves are reasonable and which lines to delve into through intuition shaped by experience. Similarly, you might say the same about poker. The possible hands your opponent has are actually quite large, but a…

> You could say the same thing about chess No, chess is on the opposite side of the spectrum! In chess, at all times you have perfect knowledge of the entire state of the board; in poker, you know 2 cards.

If you consume any chess media, you would know there's a fair amount of crossover in chess players who enjoy playing poker.

That is because although chess appears to be a game of perfect information, it is impossible to calculate anything but a small fraction of possible future game states in a limited time. So skilled chess players must make educated guesses as to which lines are worth calculating, whether their opponent has already studied the current line, and what moves to play to get them out of their memorization.

This is effectively a game of limited information where solid Bayesian reasoning wins, just like poker.

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#72

Post by BoiledCabbage »

wrs wrote: post #36
djeastm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we replace the word "lying" with "deception" does that change anything?

Poker players very seldom outright lie, like saying out loud "hey everybody, my hand is great!", and it's usually not just simple "deception" either. How about "behaving in a way that increases the probability of your particular adversaries making incorrect inferences about your situation"?

So you're trying to manipulate people into believing false things about you?

Is that better or worse than calling it deception?

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#73

Post by kqr »

tetromino_ wrote: post #42

I have always been mystified by the popularity of poker. To me, it is an unpleasant game. First - the fact that it's played for real money. If I win, I feel like a common swindler stealing money that someone could use to pay their bills or buy something nice for themselves. If I lose, I feel like a swindler's victim. And if the people around the table happen to be my friends - why would I ever wish to victimize them,…

Add to the list that for most of the game, you're not actually playing! Even in more action packed variants like Omaha you spend a lot of time folded watching the others at the table play. (Although that does also have some of the enjoyment of playing, it's not the same.)

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#74

Post by kqr »

tzs wrote: post #69
tetromino_ wrote: post #42

I have always been mystified by the popularity of poker. To me, it is an unpleasant game. First - the fact that it's played for real money. If I win, I feel like a common swindler stealing money that someone could use to pay their bills or buy something nice for themselves. If I lose, I feel like a swindler's victim. And if the people around the table happen to be my friends - why would I ever wish to victimize them,…

What about other games that people play for real money where the money for the winners comes from the losers? For example in amateur chess tournaments it is common for the prize money to come out of the entry fees. Fairly typical might be a $15 dollar entry fee in advance or $20 at the door, and a prize fund of $350 ($200 first, $100 second, $50 third) based on 30 entries. It will be lower if they get fewer entries,…

Surely the variance of amateur chess is far lower than that of poker.

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#75

Post by bawolff »

robocat wrote: post #3

Training your kids how to lie convincingly to you -- what could go wrong?

I'd be more concerned about encouraging gambling.

Bluffing and detecting bluffing is a useful skill as long as used morally. Sort of like learning martial arts - just because we teach kids karate doesn't mean we want them to go around beating people up.

Gambling however can very easily ruin lives and be very adicting.

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#76

Post by bawolff »

wrs wrote: post #36
djeastm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we replace the word "lying" with "deception" does that change anything?

Poker players very seldom outright lie, like saying out loud "hey everybody, my hand is great!", and it's usually not just simple "deception" either. How about "behaving in a way that increases the probability of your particular adversaries making incorrect inferences about your situation"?

> How about "behaving in a way that increases the probability of your particular adversaries making incorrect inferences about your situation"?

I'd call that lying with extra steps.

(Which to be clear, im fine with in the context of a game (and in certain contexts even in real life). Plenty of sports can be traced back to ritualized ways of practising to murder people. Take all the field sports of track and field)

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#77

Post by kqr »

jayknight wrote: post #32
blitztime wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say bluffing in poker isn’t really lying. I mean you certainly can look at it that way, but another way to look at it is “I have good hands here more often than you do so here strategically you have to fold when I bet”

The difference between a lie and a surprise is that soon everyone will know what the surprise was. A lie has the intention of concealing the truth forever.

Correct, and a bluff is not intended to last forever. Bluffing is revealed eventually, because you can only have a pair of aces so often, statistically speaking.

At that point, the table awareness of the bluff is still profitable because it forces others to bet into your strong hands.

A bluff that is revealed is just as good as one kept secret. Many people seem to misunderstand this.

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#78

Post by bawolff »

gretch wrote: post #65
cman1444 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But one of the most common strategies is to posture as if you have a good hand even though in reality you don't. That is deception.

The original claim is that people misconceive "that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker" The claim is not that deception can be used as a strategy at all. That btw is actually an uninteresting claim. In almost all games, you can lie to your opponent and probably gain some advantage. If I were coaching a beginner poker player, I would honestly tell them to play statistically sound poker. That's…

Sure its a spectrum, but i think poker is fundamentally much more about deception than say monopoly is.

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#79

Post by kqr »

robocat wrote: post #3

Training your kids how to lie convincingly to you -- what could go wrong?

As someone else pointed out, bluffing is not lying. Bluffing is about applying some randomness to your betting patterns to force your opponents into overbetting slightly on average.

Lying would be trying to introduce a negative correlation between hand strength and bet size; bluffing is merely removing some of the positive correlation that exists.

Re: How to teach your kids to play poker: Start with one card

#80

Post by throwaway422432 »

tetromino_ wrote: post #42

I have always been mystified by the popularity of poker. To me, it is an unpleasant game. First - the fact that it's played for real money. If I win, I feel like a common swindler stealing money that someone could use to pay their bills or buy something nice for themselves. If I lose, I feel like a swindler's victim. And if the people around the table happen to be my friends - why would I ever wish to victimize them,…

Blackjack, while still a gambling game with a lot of randomness, would be a far better choice for children; particularly learning about calculating the probability of getting a card you want.
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