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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

#91

Post by TZubiri »

djeastm wrote: post #15
TZubiri wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common misconception that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker. You can bet with a bad hand, but you don't need to say you have a good hand, if asked you can say you either have a bad hand or a good hand, without any impact to your strategy. Lying holds no advantage in poker, you can easily play poker without lying, no correlation is intrinsic to the game or its rules, it's just a common…

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

or "fraud" or "misrepresentation. No, these would be synonyms.

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

#92

Post by TZubiri »

gretch wrote: post #66
c22 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If reading your opponent is a strategy that confers advantage then it stands to reason that deceiving your opponent is as well.

The original claim is that people misconceive "that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker" Just because other people may try to lie to you, does not mean that you need to lie in order to succeed. No one said "lying can't be used at all"

My claim is a bit stronger, not only can you play without lying, but you don't sacrifice anything, you can play at top level without lying, and you gain no advantage by lying. In essence at optimal play you ignore whatever your opponent says, there is only the bets and game actions, which are independent from the cards held.

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

#93

Post by bawolff »

Talanes wrote: post #84
bawolff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Your definition seems like it would include the entire field of cryptography as lies, would it not?

I don't think cryptography usually results in an increased probability of your adversary making incorrect inferences relative to the base case of the adversary having no information. So no, i wouldn't say so.

Maybe you can argue steganography is lying.

Regardless, i also find the idea that lying is morally wrong reductive. Morality depends on context. There are plenty of cases where being misleading is morally ok in my opinion.

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

#94

Post by kqr »

bawolff wrote: post #78
gretch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only in the sense that poker is more about anything than Monopoly is!

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

#95

Post by TZubiri »

cman1444 wrote: post #56
gretch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You inferred it, but it's not implied. Instead of thinking of a bet as saying "I have good cards" think of it instead as "I have an advantage in this pot", which is not a lie. In poker advantages can come from cards, or from other objective measures such as position, stack size. And of course from subjective measures like being able to read your opponent.

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.

By posture do you mean act verbally and physically? Or bet as if you had a good hand?

The first is mostly inconsequential in poker, you should avoid having tells in your posture and speak, but the goal is to avoid conveying information about your hand, not conveying false information about it to deceive.

The second is just the game itself, acting as if you had strong cards has a cost, and is not lying, when you bet you are not saying "I have a hand". In a sense you may bet with a bad hand, but you are more forcing your opponent to pay for a chance to win the pot on account of your hand potentially containing a strong hand. You are truthful in your representation of a potential strong card.

In fact if you were to bluff on a situation were you could not ever have held a strong hand, it would be a mistake, and you would stand to lose expected value.

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

#97

Post by sans_souse »

I'm surprised at the general tone of response here towards the subject of poker overall (I didn't read the article yet so perhaps something more is in the context, but all the same); I understand there are many in the poker world even regarding the most successful of whom are regarded as living a degenerate lifestyle, but being that I was previously in that world myself and was not a degenerate type; I never gambled outside of "my game" that I had an edge in, I learned and implemented proper bankroll management and I studied the game on fundamental levels and on up, progressing into the meta-psyche game that is NL heads-up.

Which brings me to my point which is that while some forms of poker have proven "beatable" by ai, certain forms ie; short-handed tables of NL Holdem, increase in perpexlity to a point where, in heads-up, there are too many variables at play both "physically" (the cards and corresponding hand ranks) and metaphysically (the story being implied thru the route of actions taken at each street from preflop, flop, turn, to river) for there to exist some perfect approach against a skilled player.

NL Holdem poker is absolutely a game of skill with an element of variance aka luck/lack-there-of.

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

#98

Post by kqr »

c22 wrote: post #16
gretch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You inferred it, but it's not implied. Instead of thinking of a bet as saying "I have good cards" think of it instead as "I have an advantage in this pot", which is not a lie. In poker advantages can come from cards, or from other objective measures such as position, stack size. And of course from subjective measures like being able to read your opponent.

If reading your opponent is a strategy that confers advantage then it stands to reason that deceiving your opponent is as well.

Skilled players read their oppononts' hands (i.e. the cards they're holding), not the opponents themselves.

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

#99

Post by ljf »

prawn wrote: post #96

I taught our youngest Monopoly Deal with similar simplification: removed all but properties, birthday and debt collector/etc. Then added property stealing/swapping. Then rent. It was very effective in getting her quickly up to speed.

After my kids fell in love Uno (in all it's versions) - I got them Monopoly Deal and Monopoly Bid - and I have to say they are both brilliant and fun games in their own right and very different to each other.

We then got the Cludo card games and were equally impressed.

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

#100

Post by toast0 »

grues-dinner wrote: post #86
kqr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Careful what you wish for! Mahjong is the opposite: you're always playing or setting up the next round, there's no down time, you can't stop paying attention even for a moment or you might miss an important tile, and you can't even skip a round for a comfort break. Also it seems to be complex enough there is no mental space or time left to talk about anything other than the tiles. Exhausting!

> Also it seems to be complex enough there is no mental space or time left to talk about anything other than the tiles. Exhausting!

I have been lead to belive that community Mahjong is an excellent time for catching up, but then again, I've never gone and don't know how to play.

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