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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

#121

Post by p1necone »

pyrale wrote: post #114
p1necone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the externalities of winning/losing money the thing that the betting brings to poker that is very hard to replace is the impact it has on the players decision making. People playing poker with "funny money" play the game fundamentally differently to the extent it's almost a different game (arguably worse, certainly less predictable) entirely. If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with s…

> If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with something that matters to the players outside of the game itself for it to work. This claim is genuinely alien to me. I've seen people play lots of games very competitively without tying money in it. No one would seriously claim that chess hustler games are the only serious chess games, yet that claim looks oddly similar to the one made in poker. Why would…

Bit of a tortured example, but imagine if in chess every time you moved your queen you had to put $1 in escrow that you only got back if you won the game - do you think you'd still make exactly the same moves, or would you maybe play a sub optimal game to avoid moving your queen as much?

And if you saw your opponent move their queen would you be more confident that they probably saw a path to victory than you would be otherwise, and would you maybe spend more time analyzing moves that required that queen move instead of what you might have analyzed instead otherwise? (analogous to bluffing in poker).

Basically the fact that there's some external factor you can use to communicate what your move might mean to other players makes the mind games/bluffing/analysis work better than if you were just playing to win. The money isn't just linked to whether you win or lose - it's actually tied to the individual mechanics in a way that affects how each round plays out.

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

#122

Post by tom_ »

pyrale wrote: post #114
p1necone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the externalities of winning/losing money the thing that the betting brings to poker that is very hard to replace is the impact it has on the players decision making. People playing poker with "funny money" play the game fundamentally differently to the extent it's almost a different game (arguably worse, certainly less predictable) entirely. If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with s…

> If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with something that matters to the players outside of the game itself for it to work. This claim is genuinely alien to me. I've seen people play lots of games very competitively without tying money in it. No one would seriously claim that chess hustler games are the only serious chess games, yet that claim looks oddly similar to the one made in poker. Why would…

The money is a countable resource that players are motivated to win and not to lose. The game can be played with a substitute, but it doesn't pan out the same way, because the players don't have the same relationship to other kinds of token. (Same applies to playing for pennies. The amounts have to be at least somewhat meaningful.)

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

#123

Post by tasuki »

internet_points wrote: post #113
sans_souse wrote: post #97

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…

> I'm surprised at the general tone of response here towards the subject of poker overall [...] regarded as living a degenerate lifestyle Maybe the people who are negative have read to the end of the article where we are let into the not-so-hidden agenda of the parent: Teach the kids to hustle their way through college so they can become a market speculator.

I think it was at least partially joke. The author writes a popular newsletter called "Money Stuff", which is about weird things in the finance world.

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

#124

Post by philipallstar »

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,…

> And if the people around the table happen to be my friends - why would I ever wish to victimize them, or ruin their image in my mind by watching them victimize others?

No one is being victimised. Everyone's signing up to potentially lose their money. It doesn't have to be very much money to make it work well, but it generally needs to be some money.

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

#125

Post by tasuki »

pyrale wrote: post #114
p1necone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the externalities of winning/losing money the thing that the betting brings to poker that is very hard to replace is the impact it has on the players decision making. People playing poker with "funny money" play the game fundamentally differently to the extent it's almost a different game (arguably worse, certainly less predictable) entirely. If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with s…

> If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with something that matters to the players outside of the game itself for it to work. This claim is genuinely alien to me. I've seen people play lots of games very competitively without tying money in it. No one would seriously claim that chess hustler games are the only serious chess games, yet that claim looks oddly similar to the one made in poker. Why would…

> Is the game not interesting enough to play without it?

Yes. Poker ceases to be interesting when not played for something. Chess and most other games are certainly different in this aspect.

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

#126

Post by tasuki »

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.

The person you're replying to was reacting to your "reasonable possibilities are too many to analyze, one is forced to pretty much guess" statement. Not about perfect/imperfect knowledge.

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

#128

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

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,…

> Second - the lack of information. … But with poker, the lack of information is so severe that one has no hope of reconstructing the game state.

To me, full-information games feel immensely boring, they all look like a harder version of Tic-Tac-Toe that require a bigger brain. Just don't make mistakes and you're guaranteed to win. Harder games like chess just make it so incredibly expensive and attention draining that only a special kind of people get really good.

The fun part of Poker for me is exactly the psychological game of reconstructing the hidden info. Tuning your intuition when you know you still lack it is also fun and revealing.

Regarding teaching children: bluff and lies are rampant in real life. Poker teaches to take it into account and to do it yourself in a no-consequence conditions. Even if you never resort to it you need to know what it feels like to understand others.

It's the first time I've been classified as suspicious, to my knowledge. Cool.

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

#129

Post by AngryData »

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!

I didn't get that impression playing ai for 2 years. At first it was overwhelming like that but casual play after awhile seemed to leave plenty of room for conversation at even an accelerated pace. If it was like a super serious tournament I could see people trying to account for every visible tile and what it could mean though and not really talking so much.
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