21–30 of 242 posts
I can't help but mention that I play poker on commercial airline flights against the programmed computer opponent. I have crushed them three times in a row. I would've thought the programming would have been a wee bit tougher, but maybe they want us to feel good about ourselves and our card counting, pixel-reading acumen. It works. Next time you're on a flight trying this out and you get an invite to join a table aga…
I can't help but mention that I play poker on commercial airline flights against the programmed computer opponent. I have crushed them three times in a row. I would've thought the programming would have been a wee bit tougher, but maybe they want us to feel good about ourselves and our card counting, pixel-reading acumen. It works. Next time you're on a flight trying this out and you get an invite to join a table aga…
There is an element of chance in chess. Whether an opponent plays an opening you have recently studied and how many mistakes your opponent makes is out of your control. The author says poker teaches you to focus on the process rather than the outcome. A chess player who wants to improve will not assume that winning a game means he played well -- he will analyze the game later, perhaps with a chess engine.
>There is an element of chance in chess. Whether an opponent plays an opening you have recently studied and how many mistakes your opponent makes is out of your control. That's really not what's meant by chance. Chess is no more a game of chance than tennis or golf. In poker, there's an element of randomness that's an explicit core part of the game (the deck). No such mechanic exists in chess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a naive view of poker, which is absolutely a game of skill. You can't force a good hand, but you can use your understanding of probability and human behavior to estimate the value of the hand you are dealt. The bets you place can be more important than the hands themselves. In fact, the best hand can lose you a lot of money if you play it wrong.
Those two things, skill and chance, are not mutually exclusive characteristics. My point is more so that poker should not be treated as if all the skill in the world can account for all the bad luck in the world. I mean there’s a reason there’s no equivalent of the patriots in professional poker. No one is going to win every single game every single time. And I think that forgetting that in the games portrayal is mod…
Daniel Negreanu?
Teach your kids the games they are interested in, and use that as an opportunity to build bonds.
Poker, chess, go, Catan, Magic, whatever. Trying to optimize your child is so backwards to me.
Teach your kids both.
MTG has elements from both chess and poker and it's surprisingly easy to learn but stupid hard to master. You also don't have to worry about sex ed :))