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Teach your kids poker, not chess

momentofdeep.substack.com

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Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#201

Post by seanhunter »

oneoff786 wrote: post #195
abaldwin99 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the bot is playing a Nash equilibrium then it doesn't need to devise the opponent's strategy. It's guaranteed to tie the opponent in the worst case (the opponent is also playing Nash equilibrium) or else win. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium However, if the opponent is playing sub-optimally you can win _more_ by deviating from Nash equilibrium to take advantage of their specific strategic shortcoming…

On its face that seems impossible to be true. Given any bet you could calculate the probability that the bot would fold given an all in raise if you had perfect knowledge of the bot and abuse it

If you can abuse knowledge of the bot's strategy then the bot is by definition not playing a game theory optimal strategy.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#203

Post by Mikeb85 »

oneoff786 wrote: post #144
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true in the slightest. Poker is far, far more mathematical than chess. The idea that poker pros are only going off "reads" is completely ludicrous. They have a set game-theory-optimal style of playing, and then use an opponents flaws/"tells" to deviate from the GTO style to exploit those tells. An example of a flaw could be if the opponent is playing shitty hole cards. If the opponent has played in every…

The fancy deep learning poker bots that beat pros don’t even consider past opponent behavior.

Definitely not true for the top bots.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#204

Post by Mikeb85 »

dwringer wrote: post #194
ThomPete wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any normal chess player can beat the best poker player in the world with a little luck. No poker player can beat the best chess player in the world unless they aren't at their level already.

I believe over multiple poker hands that advantage from luck would quickly diminish and then disappear. I would be very surprised if any normal chess player, a total novice at poker, would be able to beat the best poker player in the world if they sat down to play for a couple of hours straight.

Variance in poker evens out over months, not a single session. A competent but not great player can definitely beat a pro in a single session.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#205

Post by Mikeb85 »

IMO chess is better for kids. And I say this as someone who played competitively as a kid, later who made a living playing poker for a year or so (then decided the lifestyle and stress wasn't for me).

Poker is 100% connected to the money part. It also punishes good play and rewards bad play way too often. A kid who grows up playing poker will just grow up cynical and probably become a gambler. There's other games with imperfect information and random elements that are more fun and less gamble-y.

And chess is great because it's a game of perfect information that rewards good play but has enough combinations to still be interesting, at least until you get to a level where everyone is simply drilling opening combinations and training with AI assistance...

Also, we're in an age where video games are mainstream: tons of them are in the educational but fun category and can teach kids stuff...

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#206

Post by sixo »

andrepd wrote: post #169
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…

You make a lot of unsupported statements in this post.

It's an opinion, not a research paper, so just consider whether it resonates with your experience or kicks up anything that feels worth considering. It did for me.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#207

Post by MiddleEndian »

brianwawok wrote: post #23
na85 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Hey tennis and golf have wind and ant hills and birds. That’s more “chance” than chess.

Tennis (and other interactive sports, like boxing) have a form of built-in randomness similar to rock paper scissors. Obviously not to the same level of randomness, but you both execute an action at the same time not knowing what the other person is going to do (although if your reflexes and awareness are higher, you're playing that RPS game faster than the other player).

An example that makes this element really obvious is turn-based fighting video game Toribash.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#208

Post by dragontamer »

oneoff786 wrote: post #149
dragontamer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pokemon the video game, not the TCG. The video game requires no money aside from the cartridge, and the strategy is surprisingly deep: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-ou-metagame-discuss... Magic is the superior TCG in my opinion, thou Pokemon TCG is fun. In any case, don't play the 'pay to win' formats. Instead, play draft or sealed, which are much more fair.

Pokémon gameplay can be deep but it’s pretty impenetrable for a kid just playing the game on his own. Most kids will just use the biggest attack moves, and that’s absolutely fine for the difficulty of the single player story made last I checked. I wouldn’t really want kids getting deep into an online community meta personally.

Even if the kids are just using the highest-attack moves and switching pokemon, that's still a deep game. That's the basics of "Pivoting" and "damage sponging".

Many pokemon have self-recovery moves (slack off, recover, etc. etc.). Even when I was 10, I knew that if my sponge took a hit, and recovered the damage faster than my opponent could deal damage, I'd force them to switch.

Set-up sweepers, hazards, status effects and ability combos get complicated for sure. Taunt vs Substitute, Prankster vs Dark, there's too much to memorize here. But kids don't need to reach that level to still have the importance of bluffing, reading, and predicting.

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#209

Post by Litost »

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…

I appreciate what you and the article posting are getting at, but this is competitive, would it be better to teach your kids cooperation (teamwork) strategies first and competitive ones like chess/poker next.

Not just because it's pro-social and non-rivalrous, there's arguments for this in game theory itself, in the iterated prisoner's dilemma it's often the strategies that start by cooperating and then fall back on competition that come out ahead when competiting in even good/bad actor competitions.

It's interesting that the original article even says this "Playing games and sports throughout life teach us all sorts of lessons about teamwork, strategy, pressure, practice, emotional control… I could go on."

I don't see any teamwork in chess, I guess there might be in poker (temporarily) but I assume there's only one winner at the end?

Our current culture seems to place most of the emphasis on competition, e.g. Education is all about getting better grades than everyone else and then we put people in workplaces and wonder why it ends up toxic?

Obviously you could argue that people being cooperative first would just lead to them getting exploited more but given we already have vast differentials in wealth, I'd certainly be interested in trying it out or what research on this shows?

Re: Teach your kids poker, not chess

#210

Post by mirceal »

gwd wrote: post #113
jrockway wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never played MTG, but do people "net deck" in that community? I've played other card games and I usually know their deck after seeing the first couple cards. Sure, maybe they added some special flare, but most people cut-n-paste from the Internet. (And those decks crush people that don't, unfortunately.)

I played in a MtG draft tournament once, and it was great. It gives everyone a level playing field (barring chance) and adds another whole level to the game. I got my butt handed to me in the "real" tournament. I've since run little draft tournaments with friends on occasion, and it's been a lot of fun -- nobody has to invest any more money than the packs they buy for that day; and nobody has to invest time play-test…

The playing field is level only theoretically. Experience drafting and knowing really well the set you're drafting from are needed for anything more than just a friendly game.
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