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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

#161

Post by telesilla »

nkrisc wrote: post #147
mna_ wrote: post #127

Start your kids onto the path of gambling? No thanks. Better to teach them chess, xiangqi, shogi or go/baduk.

That’s funny. I’ve played poker but I’ve never gambled a cent in my life. How does that work? Oh yeah, we played poker with plastic chips not backed by any money. We just played for fun.

Likewise, never gambled once even when exposed to the possibility, but I love a good game of poker or blackjack, it's fun for the mind and it's sociable. Our maths teacher a few decades ago used roulette and other games to teach us about statistics, we all loved it and it engaged the entire class, a bonus for slower maths learners. Today I suppose it's not allowed in the classroom?

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

#162

Post by schwartzworld »

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…

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

I’ve played a lot of Holdem, and I’m not sure I agree. A lot of what passes for skill is just an innate understanding of the odds.

John Scarne writes about gambling that a good bet isn’t one you are likely to win, but one where the payout is enough to be worth the risk. The best players know the odds of pulling a straight and can do math to figure out if it’s worth chasing one.

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

#163

Post by schwartzworld »

orwin wrote: post #160
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

I think you have a middle point between no-information and full-information, and poker isn't that. My issue with poker is the money component, especially in cash games (I don't mind it in MTT): I think it's manipulative, basically using dopamine highs to make the game seem more interesting.

It might depend a little on the poker variant. Holdem (the most popular variant) uses shared cards, which gives you a fair amount of information.

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

#164

Post by matkoniecz »

globular-toast wrote: post #107
looperhacks wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First - the fact that it's played for real money. Don't play for real money then. I played a lot of poker with friends, but never for money - everybody gets the same amount of chips at the start and the winner is the last man standing (i.e. the winner of the random all in once most players are out, usually)

In my experience poker completely falls apart when it's not for real money. It just doesn't seem like a very good game in the sense that people don't try to win unless there's some external benefit to winning. It sucks to play with people who don't care.

Maybe I and my friends are overly competitive at board games, but not tying to win was not a problem for us.

Though poker and similar games were only tiny part of our games.

(except some cases where player was utterly doomed and checked out)

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

#165

Post by cluckindan »

schwartzworld wrote: post #162
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…

> NL Holdem poker is absolutely a game of skill with an element of variance aka luck/lack-there-of. I’ve played a lot of Holdem, and I’m not sure I agree. A lot of what passes for skill is just an innate understanding of the odds. John Scarne writes about gambling that a good bet isn’t one you are likely to win, but one where the payout is enough to be worth the risk. The best players know the odds of pulling a strai…

Also known as Expected Value (EV), as in, how much is in the pot right now compared to how much you’re betting/calling, usually compared to how likely you are to win a hand using the cards you’re holding.

That works well for limit games, where you can’t bet more than a set amount (in relation to the blinds or the current pot), especially when there are multiple people at the table, and you’re in an advantageous late position so others act before you do.

In high-stakes no-limit heads-up (1v1) play, the cards you’re holding matter less, especially before the flop. EV and pot odds are almost useless except for gauging when to bluff / if you’re being bluffed. Hands rarely end in a showdown as opposed to one of the players folding. The hands that do are essentially coin-flips, with both players holding what they believe are strong hands.

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

#166

Post by thoroughburro »

nkrisc wrote: post #158
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling is a huge addiction problem. Your comment is like saying someone that occasionally smokes cocaine isn't addicted so cocaine isn't addictive.

We weren’t gambling. Nobody won or lost anything.

What were the chips for, then? How did you determine a result to the session?

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

#167

Post by bombcar »

mrexroad wrote: post #47
coderintherye wrote: post #40

Blind Man's Bluff is a great variant: Give everyone a card face-down, they put it on their forehead without looking at it. Bet based on whether or not you think the card on your forehead is higher than other people's. More fun in my opinion.

Article footnote mentions this with the caveat that it requires some dexterity that young children may find challenging. That aside, I think the two games make a great complementary pair and switching between provides a nice contrast for kids.

You play normal one card poker until the kids realize the benefit of seeing other player’s cards - then you play blind man’s and learn that incomplete information can go the other way.

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

#168

Post by kqr »

mettamage wrote: post #111
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…

Hey I've started playing poker occasionally again, wanna have a chat about poker? My email is in my profile. I used to be a winning player at small stakes about 20 years ago, so nothing major but enough for me to show that it's a game of skill. But yea, for anyone interested why poker is a game of skill, it's due to the law of large numbers. You can easily see the law kick into effect when you simulate a dice roll an…

Poker has much, much higher variance than dice though (or weighted coins, which is what you're actually modeling). It takes hundreds of thousands of hands to establish a statistically significant win rate.

At a common online pace of 1.5 hands per minute (live games are much slower) that's over a thousand hours of playing. I.e. even if playing for one hour every day, it takes years before a player knows whether they're profitable or not.

Seems disingenious to compare to dice when you presumably know poker belongs to that class of distributions to which the central limit theorem applies very slowly.

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

#169

Post by Nemi »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #152
Muvasa wrote: post #135

A lot of starcraft players transitioned to Poker. Because both games require decision making in a system with incomplete information(like real life). That's why parents should teach their kids how to play poker. Otherwise they risk going by in life without critical cognitive skills.

Yeah, the only way to learn those skills is to engage in a degenerate gambling pastime, that is a gateway to many other degenerate gambling pastimes. This entire thread is exactly like arguing with weed smokers on Reddit/r/trees.

This is so overly simplified. There are many things in life that require you to make decisions with incomplete information. E.g., Business decisions and investment decisions. Not learning how to properly make decisions with incomplete information keeps you relegated to simply being an employee without the opportunity to vastly change one's own circumstances in life.

If you listen to a person describe the way to play as a Tight Aggressive poker player, you will see that the message parallels what Warren Buffett says about Value Investing.

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

#170

Post by infecto »

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,…

It’s a card game that does not have to be played for money. It’s a game of risk using tokens. It’s pretty great considering you just need a deck of cards. How can people like yourself be so comfortable to openly judge others for a card game?
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