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Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

thehobbyist.substack.com

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Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#61

Post by markus_zhang »

jmpman wrote: post #42

I regularly play in Vegas poker no limit hold’em tournaments, and am substantially positive. These are 12+ hour/day, multi day tournaments, and a bad player with luck just isn’t going to last the grind. 90% of the people in these tournaments have no reason being there. The top 10% are solid, and within that group, it does come down to luck.

I think that 90% of the people have no reason being there is the sweet point? But this is tournament so you have to be in the first X to win some return, right?

I'm not a professional player but I have observed in more than a trivial amount of occurences there are sharks in casinos picking the right cash table to maximize returns. They seem to know each other and don't play against each other, but always try to pick a table of fishes. I don't know if I'm thinking too much though.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#62

Post by piltdownman »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #50
annacappa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I programmed and ran a bot that played on real money sites.

Oh, so you cheated people out of their money. That's not cool.

Not in the slightest. No different than a player playing optimally or with tight adherence to a strategy like Brunson's SuperSystem. Game Theory Optimal Poker is just the given when playing MTT - although many platforms have some form of Real Time Assistance detection.

Even in live games they use poker solvers in between breaks to optimise your playing potential and reduce the range of 'playable hands'.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#63

Post by piltdownman »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #39
fred_is_fred wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there specific instances or issues? I am curious if you mean cheating, collusion, fraud, etc...

> you mean cheating, collusion, fraud Yes, all of those things. There are teams at the same table all working together by communicating with each other about what hands they have. The sucker at the table is the one not part of that team. Also, it’s software, which means it can be written to favor the house. Online gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire.

"Online gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire."

Citation/Any evidence would be great, but I won't hold my breath.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#64

Post by piltdownman »

annacappa wrote: post #15

The reason poker is a successful game is because bad players can win. Otherwise why would a person who was bad at the game stake any money at all. Personally I would rather take the luck out of it and attempt to normalize (perhaps by playing duplicate hands) but I imagine it would be quite boring for non poker nerds and therefore non lucrative for everyone.

The reason poker is a successful game, outside of the inherent fun, low barrier to entry, and high skill ceiling, is that you can leverage one or many different skills to achieve victory hand to hand.

This includes 'soft skills' like body-language reads, speech-play, false-representation, baiting players into non-optimal play, as well as the underlying mathematical basis.

The luck element - known elsewhere as RNG Jesus - is mitigated completely over 10,000 hands by appropriately skilled players. There's a reason the composition of the final tables of the WSOP can be so static year on year, multiple bracelet winners wouldn't be a thing otherwise .

A fully optimised 'safe' player can be beaten both short-term and long-term live by a player who is skilled in reading tells, or simply bluffing. The BBV may be different, but the concept of a 'hero fold' exists for a reason - and is often more satisfying than a 'hero call' to veteran players.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#65

Post by raffraffraff »

ryandrake wrote: post #6

His section on volume rings pretty true. I used to play a lot recreationally. And by "a lot" I mean probably on the medium-to-high side of recreational, but not even close to pro. Like attending every major regional event and attending WSOP every year for 10 years. Both cash and tournaments. I've stopped because of how much of a tiring grind poker is, and how much time you have to dedicate in order to make it financi…

That perspective makes me wonder how much you were actually paying yourself per hour even if your net gains were in the tens of thousands?

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#66

Post by raffraffraff »

candiddevmike wrote: post #38
ryandrake wrote: post #6

His section on volume rings pretty true. I used to play a lot recreationally. And by "a lot" I mean probably on the medium-to-high side of recreational, but not even close to pro. Like attending every major regional event and attending WSOP every year for 10 years. Both cash and tournaments. I've stopped because of how much of a tiring grind poker is, and how much time you have to dedicate in order to make it financi…

I think a lot of what you said probably applies to day trading, too.

I was thinking this very thing. At the start of COVID I stuck 20k into a trading account. It went up, it went down, it went up again. But overall I'm probably about break even. Which is too say I did a shitload of researching, buying, selling, watching, worrying and waiting and paid myself a fat zero for all that wasted time and energy.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#67

Post by pavel_lishin »

pverghese wrote: post #54
brigadier132 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poker has a rake and the amount of wealth in the system is the money people put on the table (not even factoring in that gambling winnings are taxed). Meaning the total wealth decreases for every hand played in a raked game. Economic transactions and increasing efficiency are positive sum. You can combine pieces of metal into new alloys and machinery which are more valuable than the sum of their parts. This is positi…

Taxes are the rake in the economy.

That's only the case if you want to pave your own roads and dig your own well.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#68

Post by fartsucker69 »

snikeris wrote: post #9
brigadier132 wrote: post #5

This is why, for earning money, you should participate in positive sum games like the real economy. Poker is worse than 0 sum, its negative sum.

Perhaps in a casino taking a rake. But if you're playing w/ friends? The good times make it positive sum. Even in a casino, the players can be getting enough utility / enjoyment out of the game that it's positive sum.

the sum here is the sum of wins or losses across all players. for you to win, someone else has to lose. in an economy everyone can be a winner.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#69

Post by jajko »

piltdownman wrote: post #63
iJohnDoe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you mean cheating, collusion, fraud Yes, all of those things. There are teams at the same table all working together by communicating with each other about what hands they have. The sucker at the table is the one not part of that team. Also, it’s software, which means it can be written to favor the house. Online gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire.

"Online gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire." Citation/Any evidence would be great, but I won't hold my breath.

"Any gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire". (c) by Jajko, 23/07/2024

It doesn't require advanced studies to realize this, just learn from mistakes of others. Even if 1 in 1000 wins (for now), its a losing game for any honest folks. Scammers prey on simple and powerful addiction and little else, games can be easily rigged in ways you will never realize just as parent describes.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#70

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

piltdownman wrote: post #62
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so you cheated people out of their money. That's not cool.

Not in the slightest. No different than a player playing optimally or with tight adherence to a strategy like Brunson's SuperSystem. Game Theory Optimal Poker is just the given when playing MTT - although many platforms have some form of Real Time Assistance detection. Even in live games they use poker solvers in between breaks to optimise your playing potential and reduce the range of 'playable hands'.

Yes in the fullest. For one thing it's against the ToS of every site. But it's also just plainly unethical. Even the most elite players are merely reaching a moderately accurate approximation of optimal play, which completely pales in comparison to a bot that can find it on every hand. Of course a bot that simply assumes opponents are playing co-optimal strategies will only be minimally exploitative, but more sophisticated bots can easily incorporate historical data and find correct maximally exploitative deviations against opponents in real time, which again is something that even the best players are only able to do accurately a fraction of the time.

Also it's laughable to suggest that playing optimally is "just the given" in MTTs, which are arguably the softest format available where almost nobody in a given field is playing anywhere close to optimal. And even more laughable to suggest that modern bots are akin to players adhering to SuperSystem, a poker strategy book written nearly 50 years ago which was already extremely outdated before the advent of solvers 10 years ago.

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