Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 218 posts

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

#201

Post by Rudybega »

pyrale wrote: post #145
tom_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> (Same applies to playing for pennies. The amounts have to be at least somewhat meaningful.) That's kind of an issue, though. Richer players are advantaged, as are seasoned players who are used to lose large amounts of money. That's not really related to game skills, since there is no way to ensure that players bet something equally valuable to them, which in your reasoning means that some players start with an adva…

This mostly gets avoided with maximum buyin limits on tables. Sure someone can accrue well over that amount, but that's part of cash poker too (dealing with players with large stacks).

Obviously players with much larger bankrolls can weather variance better, but that should even out at pretty much any table a player should reasonably be at (don't play stakes you can't afford where losing the money severely negatively impacts your life).

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

#204

Post by lolive »

There is a boardgame called [at least in France] “The Gang” where a team of 3-6 players play a noTalk noMoney cooperative variant of TexasHoldEm. It is REALLY nice !

https://www.tabletopfinder.eu/en/boardgame/61182/the-gang

[note: from my description, it might seem unclear that this game is ALL about friendly communication and deciding altogether with a very limited set of informations. My nearest definition of a kid-compliant version of poker :)]

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

#205

Post by tom_ »

pyrale wrote: post #145
tom_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> (Same applies to playing for pennies. The amounts have to be at least somewhat meaningful.) That's kind of an issue, though. Richer players are advantaged, as are seasoned players who are used to lose large amounts of money. That's not really related to game skills, since there is no way to ensure that players bet something equally valuable to them, which in your reasoning means that some players start with an adva…

Richer players can keep losing for longer than you could, but that's fine: that means more money for you to win!

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

#206

Post by OkayPhysicist »

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.

Playing for cash normalizes gameplay by eliminating some unwanted incentives (in cashless games, there isn't a huge difference in reward for getting second place while being up 30 chips or down 30, leading to unpredictable, over-aggressive play), and ensures people take it seriously.

It doesn't really take a very high buy-in to achieve those goals. When my buddies and I play, we typically go with a $20 buy in, denominated in dimes or quarters.

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

#207

Post by OkayPhysicist »

pyrale wrote: post #144
p1necone wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

The cost/information function of moves exists in poker regardless of whether it's tied to actual money. You put your money in a hand if you believe that you have good ev, whether that ev is labeled in chips or dollars. I don't see how changing the rules of chess (therefore changing the ev - of course if you change the ev that changes players' behaviour. But that would be like changing the poker ruleset, not changing…

Your chess betting example would play slightly differently than standard chess. Since the goal becomes not just to win, but to win the most cash, you'd be trying to leverage your hidden information in order to improve your outcome, which in chess is just "things you've foreseen but your opponent hasn't", which, due to the nature of chess, you'd weaken by jacking up your bets to try and capitalize. The result would probably be a worse game of chess, since without the chance component the better player will win the chess game far more often than the worse player, and then the optimal move for the worse player would be to forfeit early constantly.

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

#208

Post by OkayPhysicist »

matkoniecz wrote: post #164
globular-toast wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It's not about players not wanting to win, it's about wildly heterogeneous perspectives of winning. If we're not playing for cash, walking away in first place with $30 of the $100 bucks on the table isn't much different than walking away in first place with $80 of the $100 bucks. On the other hand, a second place win with $40 might be considered worse than a first place win with $30 dollars. With cash, those dollar amounts mean something intrinsically.

It leads to overly aggressive, low-information gameplay, because players will opt to "either win or lose by a lot" over "lose by a little".

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

#209

Post by orwin »

schwartzworld wrote: post #163
orwin wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, agree, holdem is to me the most interesting variant of poker because the table and how players react to it carry information.

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

#210

Post by orwin »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #206
orwin wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Playing for cash normalizes gameplay by eliminating some unwanted incentives (in cashless games, there isn't a huge difference in reward for getting second place while being up 30 chips or down 30, leading to unpredictable, over-aggressive play), and ensures people take it seriously. It doesn't really take a very high buy-in to achieve those goals. When my buddies and I play, we typically go with a $20 buy in, denomi…

Like I said, I like MTTs, I agree that incentives is necessary for the game to be playable (i.e players don't play truly randomly), but rewards, at least in my opinion, break games.

If I need to be manipulated for me to appreciate playing, is it really worth? Because we know dopamine rushes have effect on your brain outside of the game, when it's over.

Post reply on HN