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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

#81

Post by piltdownman »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #70
piltdownman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sophist…

Oh no! Not the ToS that hides inappropriately behind AML/KYC to stop you withdrawing cash, or arbitrarily lets a platform ban your account and seize funds with little recourse to any legal authority (as they're generally operating out of weird territories like Gibraltar/Isle of Man or Malta to circumvent other rules).

As for unethical, things like PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie are basically de facto standard for play at high level online - and are absolutely used at breaktimes in live play. Then you have people multi-monitoring, or running GTOWizard in a VM, as a given.

You're basically claiming that all bots in action are Pluribus style, which is just nonsense. I bring up SuperSystem since its the earliest reference I can think of by a Pro to the concept of range advantage.

The modern poker sites basically just teach game theory optimal... which ends up with people running GTOWizard as a given. The best bots I've seen that avoid detection are basically doing some variant of the strategies outlined in modern guides like RIOs From the Ground Up.

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

#82

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

piltdownman wrote: post #81
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sophist…

Oh no! Not the ToS that hides inappropriately behind AML/KYC to stop you withdrawing cash, or arbitrarily lets a platform ban your account and seize funds with little recourse to any legal authority (as they're generally operating out of weird territories like Gibraltar/Isle of Man or Malta to circumvent other rules). As for unethical, things like PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie are basically de facto standa…

It's a wild false equivalency to imply that using GTOw or Pio as a study tool is the same as using them for real time assistance.

And even if bots are imperfect, people and especially recreational players, don't sign up to real money poker sites to play against bots. Everyone knows intuitively they're at a massive disadvantage over a bot that can execute any strategy perfectly ad infinitum, even if the strategy itself is imperfect.

If you're going to be cheating scum, just own up to the fact that you're a bad guy; don't make intellectually dishonest justifications for it.

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

#83

Post by jonahx »

csa wrote: post #80
jonahx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you were probably putting those numbers in as placeholders to illustrate the concept, but worth pointing out the advantage that (even a lot of) skill gives is nowhere close to 100x over weaker players.

> but worth pointing out the advantage that (even a lot of) skill gives is nowhere close to 100x over weaker players. Not op, but I think you’re right… it’s probably 1000x or infinity depending on how you look at it. The ev of the median player in a typical tournament is negative, while the pro is positive. As a measure of skill, that metric can’t really be expressed as a multiple. As for skill level, I think a prob…

> So a rec can play head up against a top pro like Phil Ivey and can still win, but that victory would be a function of luck rather than skill. Iterate that spot 100x or 1000x, and the rec doesn’t win very often.

The variance in poker is extremely high, allowing long-term losing players to often have winning sessions in cash games, and to (often enough) cash and even win tournaments.

After the entry ticket is purchased (ie, not subtracting it's cost in your EV calculation), the long-term losing rec still has positive expectation in a tournament. So does the pro. EV_pro <<< 100 * EV_rec. This will be true even if the pro is Phil Ivey. Any professional poker player would much, much rather take, say, 50% of the combined winnings of 100 random recs in the WSOP main event than 50% of Ivey, assuming both were offered at the same price.

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

#84

Post by annacappa »

piltdownman wrote: post #64
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 Jes…

I’m an expert poker player.

What I said was 100% correct and didn’t need a bunch of extra unrelated stuff.

I’m making a fundamental point about randomness and poker which you are failing to understand. Stop and try to understand for a second instead of launching into mansplaining.

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

#85

Post by PaulRobinson »

jstanley wrote: post #56
PaulRobinson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think two poker players still in a hand raising each other are doing? They both still think it’s mutually beneficial. The maths if you have full visibility show it isn’t, but I’d argue that’s the same of the “real” economy too. In the latter example we can point to long-standing increasing income and wealth inequality as a proxy for the house rake at poker.

If you think the economy is zero-sum how do you explain that there is plainly more wealth now than there was 200 years ago?

Is there? In real terms once adjusted for inflation? Or is it just distributed differently?

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

#86

Post by piltdownman »

annacappa wrote: post #84
piltdownman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Jes…

I’m an expert poker player. What I said was 100% correct and didn’t need a bunch of extra unrelated stuff. I’m making a fundamental point about randomness and poker which you are failing to understand. Stop and try to understand for a second instead of launching into mansplaining.

And I'm a golden retriever. My tail wags when I've a good hand.

Please take your reductive misandry elsewhere. It's impressing no one.

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

#87

Post by annacappa »

piltdownman wrote: post #86
annacappa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an expert poker player. What I said was 100% correct and didn’t need a bunch of extra unrelated stuff. I’m making a fundamental point about randomness and poker which you are failing to understand. Stop and try to understand for a second instead of launching into mansplaining.

And I'm a golden retriever. My tail wags when I've a good hand. Please take your reductive misandry elsewhere. It's impressing no one.

So you’ve heard of mansplaining before, I’m guessing quite a few times.

Here is a suggestion. Read the comment the other person states and then engage with it instead of attempting to use it as a jumping off point for your post.

And btw, luck does not disappear over 10k hands. The final table at the wsop has not been static.

Since 2000 when hold’em poker became popular nobody has repeated back to back wins. If it was a game of skill we would expect the best player to keep winning.

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

#88

Post by csa »

jonahx wrote: post #83
csa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but worth pointing out the advantage that (even a lot of) skill gives is nowhere close to 100x over weaker players. Not op, but I think you’re right… it’s probably 1000x or infinity depending on how you look at it. The ev of the median player in a typical tournament is negative, while the pro is positive. As a measure of skill, that metric can’t really be expressed as a multiple. As for skill level, I think a prob…

> So a rec can play head up against a top pro like Phil Ivey and can still win, but that victory would be a function of luck rather than skill. Iterate that spot 100x or 1000x, and the rec doesn’t win very often. The variance in poker is extremely high, allowing long-term losing players to often have winning sessions in cash games, and to (often enough) cash and even win tournaments. After the entry ticket is purchas…

> After the entry ticket is purchased (ie, not subtracting its cost in your EV calculation), the long-term losing rec still has positive expectation in a tournament. So does the pro. EV_pro ROI is a standard metric for measuring MTT success. Pros are typically positive, recs are typically negative.

Flipping the metric to EV after buy in strikes me as a straw man, but I will roll with it…

I am fairly certain that I would take action on the results of a basket of 100 mtt pros being 100x greater than the results of a basket of 100 mtt recs in the wsop ME. Like I said, I’m pretty sure that would be closer to 1000x, since the vast majority of the recs will not cash, while the pros are much more likely to cash and run deep. I think this is a decent proxy for roi. If you’re interested, I will be happy to negotiate terms and have a mutually agreed upon escrow-holder for a bet next year.

I agree with your comment that there is a lot of variance in poker, but that variance can be mitigated quite a bit via skill except in “short stack” MTTs that devolve into shovefests relatively early.

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

#89

Post by piltdownman »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #82
piltdownman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no! Not the ToS that hides inappropriately behind AML/KYC to stop you withdrawing cash, or arbitrarily lets a platform ban your account and seize funds with little recourse to any legal authority (as they're generally operating out of weird territories like Gibraltar/Isle of Man or Malta to circumvent other rules). As for unethical, things like PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie are basically de facto standa…

It's a wild false equivalency to imply that using GTOw or Pio as a study tool is the same as using them for real time assistance. And even if bots are imperfect, people and especially recreational players, don't sign up to real money poker sites to play against bots. Everyone knows intuitively they're at a massive disadvantage over a bot that can execute any strategy perfectly ad infinitum, even if the strategy itsel…

If you want to pretend you know what you're talking about, please at least reference Jonathan Tomayao at the WSOP this year. Person at the rail is four-time WSOP event winner and owner of the DTO Poker Trainer app Dominik Nitsche.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2024/07/wsop-controversy-poker-solv...

Bryan Paris - "“Having this extra feedback between hands is helpful but a far cry from the automation of the game. Even with this feedback, Tamayo very much earned his victory,”

Tamako - "Joe and Dom actually helped. If they weren’t here, I likely do not win this tournament.”

As for the rest, I personally accept the imperfect world and play RTA-less - I'm not a naive child throwing slurs about because I can't accept the world has moved on.

{Example of an Upswing Couch and Pro who previously played online 6-max for a living, and his incredulity due to hilarious RTA in a live televised tournament) https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/1ebi5aq/do_you_want_...

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

#90

Post by piltdownman »

annacappa wrote: post #87
piltdownman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm a golden retriever. My tail wags when I've a good hand. Please take your reductive misandry elsewhere. It's impressing no one.

So you’ve heard of mansplaining before, I’m guessing quite a few times. Here is a suggestion. Read the comment the other person states and then engage with it instead of attempting to use it as a jumping off point for your post. And btw, luck does not disappear over 10k hands. The final table at the wsop has not been static. Since 2000 when hold’em poker became popular nobody has repeated back to back wins. If it was…

Of course. Anyone with Direct Reports in IT gets training on how to handle narcissists and self-appointed experts when they devolve into bigotry to derail conversations.

As for your contention regarding the modern era, I simply answer 'Phil Hellmuth' with his 154 WSOP cashes 64 WSOP final tables. Negreanu, Ferguson and Seidel all have 40+ WSOP final tables. Hellmuth also has 17 bracelets to Ivey's 11.

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