Ask me about hustling dummies at the pool table and other forms of gambling.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about hustling dummies at the pool table and other forms of gambling.

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Really loved the thread since the start, Jase! Always a great read!

jase1 posted:

I love late night 2am crap tables action it's usually drunks and degenerates trying to catch a hot shooter on the night and riding the wave of profits. If you can catch a hot shooter you can make really good money but it doesn't happen a lot and you have to be patient.

So, just to be clear, as a professional gambler, you recognize that a "hot shooter" is really just a normal statistical fluctuation, right? Like, you recognize you're going to get a "hot shooter" just as often as you're going to hit a string of shooters who crap out immediately? There's no real way to "cash in" on them, since whenever you bet on them, they're just as likely to crap out as anyone else.

It seems like you're pretty level headed about this kind of stuff (and must be since you haven't gone broke yet), but every once in awhile it sounds like you let a little "I think I'm lucky" gambler logic come out.

Anyway, keep up the awesome stories! They make me crave another trip to Vegas every time I read them!

# ¿ Jun 25, 2013 22:39

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 15:50

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

jase1 posted:

First I don't really consider myself a professional gambler I wish I was because then I wouldn't have to work my rear end off with my buisness.

Well, it sounds like you could (and have) made a living off of gambling / poker / pool if you wanted to, but you took the very, very wise, much more secure route of business. It's way too easy to end up going the other route and end up with no security, no credentials, and in all likelihood, broke at some point. We'll call you a semi-professional gambler I guess.

Anyway, I think you might have said something about this earlier in the thread, but I'd love to get your rundown of places to play poker in Vegas. I've heard many times that the Palazzo has a really nice poker room, but does the competition there tend to be stiffer? Do you ever go to some of the less prestigious poker rooms to pick on the fish there?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 18:17

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Happy Birthday! I'm sure that will make for a few stories as well

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 20:48

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

jase1 posted:

There may be some skill involved to reduce your variance or whatever but at the end of the day it's still gambling.

The goal of "skill" in poker is not to "reduce variance." In fact, there are many high-variance poker playstyles that are very profitable in the long run. If you play poker, you should understand what "variance" means.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 22:00

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

jase1 posted:

I don't think it's gambling for a casino to run a roulette table. They choose the odds, they control the betting like mins and max and they have a huge edge. The player is the one gambling the casino is the house who is letting you gamble.

When I sit down at a poker table, I will pick one that has the stakes I want to play. I also pick a table with the poker variant I want to play. Hell, I can host games at my house and play exactly by the rules I want to play with.

If I sit down at a poker table with players that are worse than me, I will have a skill edge on the other players. This can be a very huge edge if they are much worse than me. This isn't some hypothetical edge: skill edges in poker are something that have been mathematically proven. No matter what, there is always a chance that you will lose, making it a gamble, but if you average that over millions of hands, the chances of you coming out in the absurdly small. The evidence for poker being a game of skill is so overwhelming a federal judge ruled that it is a game of skill, and therefore should not be subject to gambling laws.

And to reiterate Manyak's point: yes, the casino has a mathematical edge, but it still conceivable that they will lose money on any given roulette table, slot machine, or whatever else** in a given day. They are, in essence, gambling, just with a solid edge, no different from a skilled poker player's edge. Casinos minimize their risk of losing money by running lots and lots and lots of games.

_{** the exception being games like poker where the house has a fixed rake; they make money no matter what happens, as long as people are playing}

Imaduck fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 22:11

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 15:50

Imaduck: Apr 16, 2007; the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Heh, yeah, sorry, that came off more jerky than I meant it to be. Certainly, there's nothing wrong with playing poker recreationally and/or for the gambling aspects. There's no need to learn a bunch of formal poker terminology / theory stuff if you're just there to have a good time, regardless of the outcome.

It certainly is a beatable game, however, as many pros have proven.

Poker is different from a game like chess, however, in that you don't have control over every thing that happens. That still doesn't change that it's a beatable game of skill. If you having some burning interest in how luck, variance, and skill play into a game, Richard Garfield, the creator of several prominent games, has a pretty sweet talk on this.

He gives a great example: imagine you played a game that was just like chess, but at the end of every game, you rolled a six sided die. If it comes up a six, the loser becomes the winner.

In a game like this, there's no denying that it's still a game of skill, since 5 out of 6 games on average, will be decided by the superior chess player. However, by some definition, it's still gambling... but Garry Kasparov could play against me for a 1000 games and you can pretty easily guess who'd come out ahead. Yes, there's some small chance I'd win just due to lucky die rolls, but it is exceedingly unlikely.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 22:52

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