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Teach your kids poker, not chess

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Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#181

Post by MarcScott »

Teach them both. My son learned chess when he was around five, and we play every now an then, and he plays online as well with his mates.

Since he turned fourteen he's been invited to our poker games with friends as well. To be fair, he never gambles with his own money, as I provide his buy in, and he just keeps what he makes or loses it all.

There's more to casual games of poker than just gambling, strategy and luck though. There's chat, shit talking, socialising and bonding. I figure I'm just teaching him how to adult.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#182

Post by [deleted] »

pessimizer wrote: post #55
Asraelite wrote: post #44

One of the worst things about poker IMO is that everyone unnecessarily links it with gambling. It's one of my favorite games to play with friends and money is never, ever involved. You just play to win as many games as possible. I feel like a lot of people miss out on a very fun game simply because they don't want to gamble and can't imagine playing without doing so.

It loses a lot of strategy without the gambling. The way to fix it isn't to nerf it, but just to give everyone the same amount of "funny money" to start. Raid that old copy of Monopoly.

[deleted]

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#183

Post by [deleted] »

mod wrote: post #107
Asraelite wrote: post #44

One of the worst things about poker IMO is that everyone unnecessarily links it with gambling. It's one of my favorite games to play with friends and money is never, ever involved. You just play to win as many games as possible. I feel like a lot of people miss out on a very fun game simply because they don't want to gamble and can't imagine playing without doing so.

It's not unnecessary; poker is inextricably linked with gambling. You can't play poker if you aren't gambling, not truly. You can only play a shell of the game.

[deleted]

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#185

Post by yosefk »

matwood wrote: post #162
routerl wrote: post #95

Nah, teach your kids chess, so that they can exercise their deductive/calculating muscles during that golden phase of childhood in which our brains are malleable enough to easily learn new languages: realize that artificial languages (i.e. deductive systems) are all functionally equivalent, and use chess as just another avenue into building deductive fluency; use multiple such avenues (e.g. music, Euclid). Call this…

> If you choose poker instead, you'll just breed a gambler. Huh? Chess is fun, but deals in perfect information at all times. Poker teaches a person how to make decisions with imperfect information, which is how most life decisions will be made.

Chess deals in perfect information which you cannot fully process in time to make a move, which is not functionally different from lacking perfect information, and similar to most life decisions. What it doesn't have is asymmetric information and chance. Both chess and poker have formal rules unlike most real life situations.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#186

Post by richardw »

matwood wrote: post #162
routerl wrote: post #95

Nah, teach your kids chess, so that they can exercise their deductive/calculating muscles during that golden phase of childhood in which our brains are malleable enough to easily learn new languages: realize that artificial languages (i.e. deductive systems) are all functionally equivalent, and use chess as just another avenue into building deductive fluency; use multiple such avenues (e.g. music, Euclid). Call this…

> If you choose poker instead, you'll just breed a gambler. Huh? Chess is fun, but deals in perfect information at all times. Poker teaches a person how to make decisions with imperfect information, which is how most life decisions will be made.

It’s nowhere near perfect information because we’re limited. We have no idea what an early decision will mean later in the game. If anything it’s a game where the truth emerges slowly as options reduce to those that fit in our brain.

However, it is a closed system and all participants are visible, whereas poker has hidden surprises. It still has known rules. In real life (eg business, investing) the game rules are vague guidelines and you have power laws and pandemics that resemble chaos far more than any game.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#187

Post by marcodiego »

routerl wrote: post #95

Nah, teach your kids chess, so that they can exercise their deductive/calculating muscles during that golden phase of childhood in which our brains are malleable enough to easily learn new languages: realize that artificial languages (i.e. deductive systems) are all functionally equivalent, and use chess as just another avenue into building deductive fluency; use multiple such avenues (e.g. music, Euclid). Call this…

Teach chess in the infancy and poker when adolescent.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#188

Post by TimPC »

The analogy doesn’t work because the edges in chess are huge and the edges in poker are tiny. Many of the best situations in poker are 80-20 advantages. How good of a chess player do you have to be to have a 20% chance against Magnus?

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#189

Post by Tyr42 »

matwood wrote: post #164
jnwatson wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d be surprised how boring it gets at a poker table when you don’t get good cards for a hour. Folks get bored and play suboptimally. Part of what poker teaches is patience.

Yep, boredom is why I quit playing poker in casinos. I'm usually at a casino with friends to have a good time, but winning poker requires folding the large majority of hands [1], and it's just not fun. Craps with friends on the other hand, but I digress... Also, very different than small poker games with friends where the point is hanging out and 'gambling' a bit. [1] Tournament style is different from an open ended…

This is why David Sirlin made a poker variant which is fun to play at the dining room table

https://www.sirlin.net/articles/designing-pandante

And he did so by making more hands good so you don't want to fold all the time

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#190

Post by imustbeevil »

Tenoke wrote: post #87
imustbeevil wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any game could incorporate wagers into its rounds. You could bet on plays in a football game. You could bet on matches in Chess. However, the competitive foundation isn't predicated on these wagers. This allows for more dimensions of skill variation because game participants can take risks that won't kill them. In Poker, especially in tournaments but over time in cash games as well, there will necessarily be more los…

Betting on matches of chess is much different. In poker you have a betting round after every move, the betting size matters and the betting is one of the main sources of information you get. In chess even if you bet after every move the amount wouldn't matter and you get little to no extra information from the bet.

Take all the pieces off the board and now the bets align with the information asymmetry. The only thing exclusive to poker is the hierarchy of the combinations of cards.
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